Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewll B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
What you say is true, but not new. Did you view the video and understand what he was getting at?
We don't have solar to the degree they do in the deserts of California. What we do have though is a tidal range resource that the US does not.
The US still produces far more power than we do to start with. We simply don’t generate enough power. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of that in France: 4,800 kilowatt-hours per head versus 7,300 in France. In the US it is 12,762. The US is already much nearer to being ble to provide pwoer in that sweet spot.
While that's true (and you should declare an interest here @MarqueeMark), solar panel pricing is rapidly heading towards zero. This means that new warehouses and shopping centers and car parks and office and residential buildings are going to end up covered in solar, simply because if you're doing building work anyway, then adding solar is going to be essentially free.
That means that the price of energy during summer and during sunny periods is heading to zero. Which is what hammers the forecasts for people talking about (say) tidal barrages, because you have to expect that for half the year, the power you produce is going to be largely valueless.
That said tidal is far from the worst economic proposition: HPC manages to win that one by a country mile. We have to pay massive amounts for power from there, even when the grid won't need it.
Your "free" solar panels still cost on average £7,000....
Some distant off zero.
That’s the installation cost of a large array - a 450w panel costs £65 at the moment
Wake me up when the installation cost gets to zero!
Yes, Kemi is a dud. But no idea why this should surprise anyone. She was useless, absent and cowardly as BizSec, as many of us pointed out repeatedly.
What on Earth commended her to the top job? What credentials did/does she have?
The whole episode is weird beyond measure.
Partly, an incredible amount of ambition. She give the impression of really, really wanting the job. That helps you get to the top in politics, even if it is a huge red flag in terms of being suitable.
Mostly, that most of the alternatives are visibly worse. Jenrick is too cynical in his nastiness, Morduant too not-an-MP, Hunt too past it. Cleverly would probably be better, but mostly because I think he would appreciate the absurdity of the situation more.
The next few years are where the purges of 2019 threaten to really come back and bite the Conservatives on the bottom. Even if they want to change direction fundamentally, they don't really have the people to do so.
So who was lost in the 'purges of 2019' ?
Here are the names:
Guto Bebb Ken Clarke David Gauke Sam Gyimah Justine Greening Dominic Grieve Philip Hammond Olly Letwin Anne Milton Antoinette Sandbach Rory Stewart
Give their ages and the loss of seats this year how many would even still be MPs ?
It wasn't so much about the MPs (though 2022-now would have benefitted from having people like Gauke, Greening and Stewart on-call) as the effect on the candidates' list. The people who didn't enter parliament in 2019 or 2024. The people who won't be interesting spokesmen in 2028 or senior Cabinet members in 2033.
The curse of delayed consequences strikes again.
I think you had to go back earlier. The Tory Party of 2015/6 was quite civilised but after Brexit and the defenestration of Cameron Osborne Clark and co all the civilising influences melted away and you were left with the Johnsons Goves Patels Rees Moggs Bravermen and the most unfit and unpleasant leading Tory politicians most of us can remember.
Isn't this largely vibes-based though? In terms of policy and rhetoric, Cameron and Osborne were well to the right of Johnson.
I promised @Andy_Cooke some opinions on the NPPF and Planning.
This is some of my thoughts so far, but I'd say we can currently only see the first 14 feet of 100 on the centipede. There's a lot more to come, in strategy and in detail. And I have more thinking still to do to come to a more thorough assessment.
As I see it, what we have so far is certain moves towards putting a more strategic, longer term process in place under Council control, and significant pressure to make Councils be in control and get it in place according to re-established mandatory targets - to make sloping shoulders by Councils more difficult.
My phrase for this would be "clearing the planning slipway", removing or reducing some things currently used as obstacles, whether by developers, landowners, Councils + their local politicians, residents, and campaign groups (think eg CPRE).
In terms of incentivising delivery, we have:
Mandatory housing targets, and pressure to get local plans in quickly. In my area they were rushing a local plan through for 2012, and it still isn't here.
Changes to what happens if a local plan is not in place around the "preference to approve" (whatever the wording is), which means development is done on a piece by piece basis according to which developments come forward, rather than through any strategic multiyear process.
For first elements of a downward on planning gain, we have more demanding affordable housing requirements arriving, and limitations on potential use of "viability assessments" - which are a profitability modelling process currently used as a lever by developers to force affordable housing levels to be reduced.
Given that increased affordable housing may undermine the total of sales revenue developers may get, I expect to see things to reduce potential or actual land prices somewhere in this - to help reduce costs at the other end. One mechanism could be Councils having a stronger right to purchase land at a regulated price and then supply to developer at a price including a defined margin; that would put some pressure on the market even for land sold privately, and reduce landowner windfalls. Other ways are possible. For that to work there would need also to be some mechanism by which pressure is put on developers to implement planning permissions in a reasonable time.,
One thing to watch is the possibility that there may be features of the Planning Act 1948, which included provisions beyond what has ever been implemented, used. I'd need to check detail, but there's stuff there.
I'm still thinking about the NPPF, and Andy's comments to my original points (later). The NPPF is a document where a very small seeming change can have major implications.
I also note that "Grey Belt" has not been defined.
And the rebalancing of housing targets away from cities is very interesting - but I think that the previous numbers may be skewed, which would mean that the rebalancing has little meaning.
Thanks, Matt.
I'd agree that the NPPF element must just be the tip of the iceberg. My fundamental disappointment with it was that they'd foregone the opportunity for a reset - it's tweaked. Somewhere between 90% and 95% of the contents word-for-word identical with the previous one. This doesn't fill me with confidence.
Mandatory housing targets have been a thing for ages. The fact that the last government suddenly un-mandatorised them (is that a word? It is now) for a few months on the run-up to the election was the unusual thing; I think everyone was expecting that to flip around as it has.
Another concern of mine is the entire stance around the housing targets - there's no real linkage between the number given and how to achieve it. It's sort of like an atomisation of the aspiration rather than anything else. The Government decrees we'll build however-many houses per year, so this is how it breaks down per LA. If they had a linkage of "you get this much funding for this number of houses for infrastructure up front/to pay for x% of them as social housing," I think we'd get a lot more thought into practicalities.
Your area doesn't sound impressive. We've gone from "We need a new Local Plan" through "Let's brainstorm what goes into it," and "Actually, best to work hand in glove with the LA next door because much of the needed infrastructure sprawls across both" to submitting our new Joint Local Plan to the inspectors (including every single step and consultation and associated consultation periods en route) in three years flat.
I promised @Andy_Cooke some opinions on the NPPF and Planning.
This is some of my thoughts so far, but I'd say we can currently only see the first 14 feet of 100 on the centipede. There's a lot more to come, in strategy and in detail. And I have more thinking still to do to come to a more thorough assessment.
As I see it, what we have so far is certain moves towards putting a more strategic, longer term process in place under Council control, and significant pressure to make Councils be in control and get it in place according to re-established mandatory targets - to make sloping shoulders by Councils more difficult.
My phrase for this would be "clearing the planning slipway", removing or reducing some things currently used as obstacles, whether by developers, landowners, Councils + their local politicians, residents, and campaign groups (think eg CPRE).
In terms of incentivising delivery, we have:
Mandatory housing targets, and pressure to get local plans in quickly. In my area they were rushing a local plan through for 2012, and it still isn't here.
Changes to what happens if a local plan is not in place around the "preference to approve" (whatever the wording is), which means development is done on a piece by piece basis according to which developments come forward, rather than through any strategic multiyear process.
For first elements of a downward on planning gain, we have more demanding affordable housing requirements arriving, and limitations on potential use of "viability assessments" - which are a profitability modelling process currently used as a lever by developers to force affordable housing levels to be reduced.
Given that increased affordable housing may undermine the total of sales revenue developers may get, I expect to see things to reduce potential or actual land prices somewhere in this - to help reduce costs at the other end. One mechanism could be Councils having a stronger right to purchase land at a regulated price and then supply to developer at a price including a defined margin; that would put some pressure on the market even for land sold privately, and reduce landowner windfalls. Other ways are possible. For that to work there would need also to be some mechanism by which pressure is put on developers to implement planning permissions in a reasonable time.,
One thing to watch is the possibility that there may be features of the Planning Act 1948, which included provisions beyond what has ever been implemented, used. I'd need to check detail, but there's stuff there.
I'm still thinking about the NPPF, and Andy's comments to my original points (later). The NPPF is a document where a very small seeming change can have major implications.
I also note that "Grey Belt" has not been defined.
And the rebalancing of housing targets away from cities is very interesting - but I think that the previous numbers may be skewed, which would mean that the rebalancing has little meaning.
Thanks, Matt.
I'd agree that the NPPF element must just be the tip of the iceberg. My fundamental disappointment with it was that they'd foregone the opportunity for a reset - it's tweaked. Somewhere between 90% and 95% of the contents word-for-word identical with the previous one. This doesn't fill me with confidence.
Mandatory housing targets have been a thing for ages. The fact that the last government suddenly un-mandatorised them (is that a word? It is now) for a few months on the run-up to the election was the unusual thing; I think everyone was expecting that to flip around as it has.
Another concern of mine is the entire stance around the housing targets - there's no real linkage between the number given and how to achieve it. It's sort of like an atomisation of the aspiration rather than anything else. The Government decrees we'll build however-many houses per year, so this is how it breaks down per LA. If they had a linkage of "you get this much funding for this number of houses for infrastructure up front/to pay for x% of them as social housing," I think we'd get a lot more thought into practicalities.
Your area doesn't sound impressive. We've gone from "We need a new Local Plan" through "Let's brainstorm what goes into it," and "Actually, best to work hand in glove with the LA next door because much of the needed infrastructure sprawls across both" to submitting our new Joint Local Plan to the inspectors (including every single step and consultation and associated consultation periods en route) in three years flat.
I may have missed something, but the clause: "having particular regard to key policies for directing development to sustainable locations, making effective use of land, securing well-designed places and providing affordable homes, individually or in combination" was all that was added to the paragraph (which was, admittedly, added to the sub-sub-para on granting consent unless: "any adverse impacts of doing so would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed against the policies in this Framework taken as a whole." I suppose it could be seen as sort of pushing to a quasi-Plan existence. I guess we'll have to see how that plays out.
More affordable housing and reduction in viability assessment validity - would be valuable if it turns out to work. Developers are usually very good in wriggling out of these, so (perhaps cynically), I'm not holding my breath. The fact that it's using exactly the existing way of doing it rather than, for example, Council buys and sells on, is what's making me think that we won't see a case of "This time, it'll work," so as to speak. Essentially, your suggestions immediately afterwards - they'd be great, but my instinct is that they're not going to do that. I'd love to be wrong.
"Grey Belt" is defined in the Annex: "For the purposes of plan-making and decision-making, ‘grey belt’ is defined as land in the Green Belt comprising previously developed land and/or any other land that, in either case, does not strongly contribute to any of purposes (a), (b), or (d) in paragraph 143. ‘Grey belt’ excludes land where the application of the policies relating to the areas or assets in footnote 7 (other than Green Belt) would provide a strong reason for refusing or restricting development.." (2/2)
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewll B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
What you say is true, but not new. Did you view the video and understand what he was getting at?
We don't have solar to the degree they do in the deserts of California. What we do have though is a tidal range resource that the US does not.
The US still produces far more power than we do to start with. We simply don’t generate enough power. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of that in France: 4,800 kilowatt-hours per head versus 7,300 in France. In the US it is 12,762. The US is already much nearer to being ble to provide pwoer in that sweet spot.
While that's true (and you should declare an interest here @MarqueeMark), solar panel pricing is rapidly heading towards zero. This means that new warehouses and shopping centers and car parks and office and residential buildings are going to end up covered in solar, simply because if you're doing building work anyway, then adding solar is going to be essentially free.
That means that the price of energy during summer and during sunny periods is heading to zero. Which is what hammers the forecasts for people talking about (say) tidal barrages, because you have to expect that for half the year, the power you produce is going to be largely valueless.
That said tidal is far from the worst economic proposition: HPC manages to win that one by a country mile. We have to pay massive amounts for power from there, even when the grid won't need it.
Your "free" solar panels still cost on average £7,000....
Some distance off zero.
The curve is the curve. And it's only going in one direction.
But that curve flattens out well before zero.
The curve has already flattened out - 80% of the cost of solar panels is installation
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
If you are arguing for the continued use of gas to fill in the gaps then surely it will be needed indefinitely, and if overall energy use goes up, then it will be needed in greater quantities on those days when renewables aren't available.
There used to be a diesel power plant down in Devon, I forget who owned it.
But it was the peakiest of peaking power plants in the UK. Some years it wouldn't generate a single kilowatt of power, beyond the monthly checks to make sure it still came on as planned. Other years it would run for 6 or 12 or 18 hours.
It existed solely because very occasionally a bunch of plants would be down for maintenance or a tree falling would have killed a connector down to the south west of the UK or power demand was simply at a all time peak for one reason or another. (Indeed, it usually ran when there was some combination of these.)
And you know what, that was fine!
But over time, people built Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) as peakers. These cost almost nothing to buy, and had lower maintenance costs (gas doesn't block up pipes if left too long). And that oil (well diesel) fired peaking power station ended up closing down.
Every year more solar will be added to the grid, and every year more batteries. (And quite possibly more wind and some tidal too.)
So the amount of time that those gas plants will need to fill in will fall and fall and fall, just as the amount of time that plant in Devon operated fell and fell and fell.
Will it ever reach zero?
Does it matter? As @Malmesbury points out, after three cycles of 80% reductions, you're only at 0.4% of where you were before.
“A friend in Latakia tells me they're very scared by what they're seeing.
Since yesterday heavily armed men, including some foreigners speaking languages they've never heard before, have been parading through and patrolling the streets.
These men are behaving like religious extremists. They are shouting at unveiled women and demanding they wear a hijab. They are asking with hostility any men and women who walk together if they are married or not. There is no more alcohol, shops that have alcohol have been vandalized, burned and closed.
"Latakia and Tartous have never been Islamic cities and this is very dangerous for them because the majority is Alawis and Christians," says my friend.
Still, some of the armed men are trying to comfort people. HTS guys are insisting everything will be fine and fair in the future, people just need to wait. But it feels like a massive gaslight as people are afraid by what they see as a rapidly changing Syria they don't recognize and perhaps don't have a place in.
There are also complaints about the media portraying everything as rosy and free when people feel a different kind of scared under these emerging authorities.
My friend did not want this attributed to their name out of fear. Reminds me of the old Syria.”
Was is ever going to be any different. We traded a secularish tyrant for Islamists and terrorists. The best case scenario is an Egypt style government, the worst case is Afghanistan.
This is why many of us on PB weren’t “celebrating” the fall of Assad - unlike others. It was grimly satisfying seeing him go, shame they couldn’t try him and execute him; but it was obvious that what would follow could easily be worse
I suspect it will be worse
The leader Jolani is a serious Islamist, ISIS-style, a genuine believer. He will impose strict sharia law. Around him are people even more extreme
The result will be closer to Afghanistan than Egypt, with one difference, Afghanistan is remote and it can be ignored, Syria is pivotally placed in the MENA and it borders Israel and NATO
It will suck in jihadis and export trouble
No Syrian was willing to lift a finger to defend Assad, so in their eyes, he was the worst available option.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Except, to Miliband, they are still the work of the Devil...
The problem there is that Miliband isn’t that bright
Solar, wind, nuclear and gas form a sane energy plan with storage / tidal possibly added to the mix
I struggle with the economic case for nuclear: it has high capital and maintenance costs, and historically has had horrible uptime. It's lack of dispatchability also makes it a very poor fit for a grid with increasing amount of intermittent power.
I also struggle with our politicians. Over the next decade we could reduce CO2 from power generation about 80% from peak, all while increasing the share of electric vehicles on the road. It would be an incredible achievement, and could be done without any negative economic consequences. (Indeed, it may well come with positive ones.)
Aiming for 100% by an arbitrary date, though, means going from a world where the energy transition is essentially painless to one where it becomes a massive drag on the economy.
Miliband is very exposed on that 2030 date. His political opponents can make hay with it.
Whilst slapping down Miliband your girl came out with mini-nukes today.
2030 you say? Check your calendar, we could well be a year into our first RefCon Government.
Yes, Kemi is a dud. But no idea why this should surprise anyone. She was useless, absent and cowardly as BizSec, as many of us pointed out repeatedly.
What on Earth commended her to the top job? What credentials did/does she have?
The whole episode is weird beyond measure.
Partly, an incredible amount of ambition. She give the impression of really, really wanting the job. That helps you get to the top in politics, even if it is a huge red flag in terms of being suitable.
Mostly, that most of the alternatives are visibly worse. Jenrick is too cynical in his nastiness, Morduant too not-an-MP, Hunt too past it. Cleverly would probably be better, but mostly because I think he would appreciate the absurdity of the situation more.
The next few years are where the purges of 2019 threaten to really come back and bite the Conservatives on the bottom. Even if they want to change direction fundamentally, they don't really have the people to do so.
So who was lost in the 'purges of 2019' ?
Here are the names:
Guto Bebb Ken Clarke David Gauke Sam Gyimah Justine Greening Dominic Grieve Philip Hammond Olly Letwin Anne Milton Antoinette Sandbach Rory Stewart
Give their ages and the loss of seats this year how many would even still be MPs ?
It wasn't so much about the MPs (though 2022-now would have benefitted from having people like Gauke, Greening and Stewart on-call) as the effect on the candidates' list. The people who didn't enter parliament in 2019 or 2024. The people who won't be interesting spokesmen in 2028 or senior Cabinet members in 2033.
The curse of delayed consequences strikes again.
I think you had to go back earlier. The Tory Party of 2015/6 was quite civilised but after Brexit and the defenestration of Cameron Osborne Clark and co all the civilising influences melted away and you were left with the Johnsons Goves Patels Rees Moggs Bravermen and the most unfit and unpleasant leading Tory politicians most of us can remember.
Isn't this largely vibes-based though? In terms of policy and rhetoric, Cameron and Osborne were well to the right of Johnson.
I seem to recall that Roger et al were very hostile to the Conservatives pre 2015/16.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewll B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
What you say is true, but not new. Did you view the video and understand what he was getting at?
We don't have solar to the degree they do in the deserts of California. What we do have though is a tidal range resource that the US does not.
The US still produces far more power than we do to start with. We simply don’t generate enough power. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of that in France: 4,800 kilowatt-hours per head versus 7,300 in France. In the US it is 12,762. The US is already much nearer to being ble to provide pwoer in that sweet spot.
While that's true (and you should declare an interest here @MarqueeMark), solar panel pricing is rapidly heading towards zero. This means that new warehouses and shopping centers and car parks and office and residential buildings are going to end up covered in solar, simply because if you're doing building work anyway, then adding solar is going to be essentially free.
That means that the price of energy during summer and during sunny periods is heading to zero. Which is what hammers the forecasts for people talking about (say) tidal barrages, because you have to expect that for half the year, the power you produce is going to be largely valueless.
That said tidal is far from the worst economic proposition: HPC manages to win that one by a country mile. We have to pay massive amounts for power from there, even when the grid won't need it.
Your "free" solar panels still cost on average £7,000....
Some distance off zero.
The curve is the curve. And it's only going in one direction.
But that curve flattens out well before zero.
The curve has already flattened out - 80% of the cost of solar panels is installation
There is a bit that has changed though- the "we have to build a wall, fence or roof anyway, we might as well make it out of a photovoltaic material" threshold might have been crossed without most people noticing.
The David McKay calculations implicitly assumed that the panels would remian expensive, so the only ways to generate sufficient payback were either to restrict them to fairly favourable locations and orientations, or drive up the cost of energy a lot. Once the panels are super-cheap, you might as well put them everywhere- even if they don't collect much energy, they collect some, and it all adds up.
Paraphrasing one of my other favourite boffins, J.E. Gordon, the passing age of engineering was about controlling more and more energy in less and less space- nuclear being the acme of that. The coming age he saw as being about sucessfully collecting and managing diffuse energy. I reckon he would have loved cheap solar panels.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
More wind turbines and interconnectors to europe would be a better solution than carbon capture nonsense.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
If you fixate on net zero, and you pile costs on UK consumers, you will end up with a backlash that results in worse carbon emissions.
Concentrate on building out solar and batteries (and maybe even tidal, although I have my doubts) and maybe build the connector to North Africa for solar from there, and gas demand will keep falling year after year.
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
All these PBers angsting about low growth who voted for Brexit. They're like me as a kid always going out in winter without a coat and complaining it's cold.
If the economies of EU member states were booming, there might be a point there. Low growth is a problem across the board.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewll B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
What you say is true, but not new. Did you view the video and understand what he was getting at?
We don't have solar to the degree they do in the deserts of California. What we do have though is a tidal range resource that the US does not.
The US still produces far more power than we do to start with. We simply don’t generate enough power. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of that in France: 4,800 kilowatt-hours per head versus 7,300 in France. In the US it is 12,762. The US is already much nearer to being ble to provide pwoer in that sweet spot.
While that's true (and you should declare an interest here @MarqueeMark), solar panel pricing is rapidly heading towards zero. This means that new warehouses and shopping centers and car parks and office and residential buildings are going to end up covered in solar, simply because if you're doing building work anyway, then adding solar is going to be essentially free.
That means that the price of energy during summer and during sunny periods is heading to zero. Which is what hammers the forecasts for people talking about (say) tidal barrages, because you have to expect that for half the year, the power you produce is going to be largely valueless.
That said tidal is far from the worst economic proposition: HPC manages to win that one by a country mile. We have to pay massive amounts for power from there, even when the grid won't need it.
Your "free" solar panels still cost on average £7,000....
Some distance off zero.
The curve is the curve. And it's only going in one direction.
But that curve flattens out well before zero.
The curve has already flattened out - 80% of the cost of solar panels is installation
Which is why my comment was about "new warehouses and shopping centers..." etc. If you're building something anyway, adding solar is a marginal new cost. Retrofitting has very different economics.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewll B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
What you say is true, but not new. Did you view the video and understand what he was getting at?
We don't have solar to the degree they do in the deserts of California. What we do have though is a tidal range resource that the US does not.
The US still produces far more power than we do to start with. We simply don’t generate enough power. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of that in France: 4,800 kilowatt-hours per head versus 7,300 in France. In the US it is 12,762. The US is already much nearer to being ble to provide pwoer in that sweet spot.
While that's true (and you should declare an interest here @MarqueeMark), solar panel pricing is rapidly heading towards zero. This means that new warehouses and shopping centers and car parks and office and residential buildings are going to end up covered in solar, simply because if you're doing building work anyway, then adding solar is going to be essentially free.
That means that the price of energy during summer and during sunny periods is heading to zero. Which is what hammers the forecasts for people talking about (say) tidal barrages, because you have to expect that for half the year, the power you produce is going to be largely valueless.
That said tidal is far from the worst economic proposition: HPC manages to win that one by a country mile. We have to pay massive amounts for power from there, even when the grid won't need it.
Your "free" solar panels still cost on average £7,000....
Some distance off zero.
The curve is the curve. And it's only going in one direction.
But that curve flattens out well before zero.
The curve has already flattened out - 80% of the cost of solar panels is installation
There is a bit that has changed though- the "we have to build a wall, fence or roof anyway, we might as well make it out of a photovoltaic material" threshold might have been crossed without most people noticing.
The David McKay calculations implicitly assumed that the panels would remian expensive, so the only ways to generate sufficient payback were either to restrict them to fairly favourable locations and orientations, or drive up the cost of energy a lot. Once the panels are super-cheap, you might as well put them everywhere- even if they don't collect much energy, they collect some, and it all adds up.
Paraphrasing one of my other favourite boffins, J.E. Gordon, the passing age of engineering was about controlling more and more energy in less and less space- nuclear being the acme of that. The coming age he saw as being about sucessfully collecting and managing diffuse energy. I reckon he would have loved cheap solar panels.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewll B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
What you say is true, but not new. Did you view the video and understand what he was getting at?
We don't have solar to the degree they do in the deserts of California. What we do have though is a tidal range resource that the US does not.
The US still produces far more power than we do to start with. We simply don’t generate enough power. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of that in France: 4,800 kilowatt-hours per head versus 7,300 in France. In the US it is 12,762. The US is already much nearer to being ble to provide pwoer in that sweet spot.
While that's true (and you should declare an interest here @MarqueeMark), solar panel pricing is rapidly heading towards zero. This means that new warehouses and shopping centers and car parks and office and residential buildings are going to end up covered in solar, simply because if you're doing building work anyway, then adding solar is going to be essentially free.
That means that the price of energy during summer and during sunny periods is heading to zero. Which is what hammers the forecasts for people talking about (say) tidal barrages, because you have to expect that for half the year, the power you produce is going to be largely valueless.
That said tidal is far from the worst economic proposition: HPC manages to win that one by a country mile. We have to pay massive amounts for power from there, even when the grid won't need it.
Your "free" solar panels still cost on average £7,000....
Some distance off zero.
The curve is the curve. And it's only going in one direction.
But that curve flattens out well before zero.
The curve has already flattened out - 80% of the cost of solar panels is installation
There is a bit that has changed though- the "we have to build a wall, fence or roof anyway, we might as well make it out of a photovoltaic material" threshold might have been crossed without most people noticing.
The David McKay calculations implicitly assumed that the panels would remian expensive, so the only ways to generate sufficient payback were either to restrict them to fairly favourable locations and orientations, or drive up the cost of energy a lot. Once the panels are super-cheap, you might as well put them everywhere- even if they don't collect much energy, they collect some, and it all adds up.
Paraphrasing one of my other favourite boffins, J.E. Gordon, the passing age of engineering was about controlling more and more energy in less and less space- nuclear being the acme of that. The coming age he saw as being about sucessfully collecting and managing diffuse energy. I reckon he would have loved cheap solar panels.
"The David McKay calculations."
This is another opportunity for me to say that I wish someone could update the late, great man's book. It's over 15 years old now, and the renewables world has changed considerably.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewll B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
What you say is true, but not new. Did you view the video and understand what he was getting at?
We don't have solar to the degree they do in the deserts of California. What we do have though is a tidal range resource that the US does not.
The US still produces far more power than we do to start with. We simply don’t generate enough power. Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of that in France: 4,800 kilowatt-hours per head versus 7,300 in France. In the US it is 12,762. The US is already much nearer to being ble to provide pwoer in that sweet spot.
While that's true (and you should declare an interest here @MarqueeMark), solar panel pricing is rapidly heading towards zero. This means that new warehouses and shopping centers and car parks and office and residential buildings are going to end up covered in solar, simply because if you're doing building work anyway, then adding solar is going to be essentially free.
That means that the price of energy during summer and during sunny periods is heading to zero. Which is what hammers the forecasts for people talking about (say) tidal barrages, because you have to expect that for half the year, the power you produce is going to be largely valueless.
That said tidal is far from the worst economic proposition: HPC manages to win that one by a country mile. We have to pay massive amounts for power from there, even when the grid won't need it.
Your "free" solar panels still cost on average £7,000....
Some distance off zero.
The curve is the curve. And it's only going in one direction.
But that curve flattens out well before zero.
The curve has already flattened out - 80% of the cost of solar panels is installation
There is a bit that has changed though- the "we have to build a wall, fence or roof anyway, we might as well make it out of a photovoltaic material" threshold might have been crossed without most people noticing.
The David McKay calculations implicitly assumed that the panels would remian expensive, so the only ways to generate sufficient payback were either to restrict them to fairly favourable locations and orientations, or drive up the cost of energy a lot. Once the panels are super-cheap, you might as well put them everywhere- even if they don't collect much energy, they collect some, and it all adds up.
Paraphrasing one of my other favourite boffins, J.E. Gordon, the passing age of engineering was about controlling more and more energy in less and less space- nuclear being the acme of that. The coming age he saw as being about sucessfully collecting and managing diffuse energy. I reckon he would have loved cheap solar panels.
"The David McKay calculations."
This is another opportunity for me to say that I wish someone could update the late, great man's book. It's over 15 years old now, and the renewables world has changed considerably.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Only if other people are buying it. It's no good leading the field in a technology that nobody wants.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Not really, what would be great for UK cos are lower electricity costs - which (should if the economics are set up correctly) correlate with more solar/wind capacity; which also happen to have CO2 benefits. I don't see how carbon capture lowers prices at all ?!
Yes, Kemi is a dud. But no idea why this should surprise anyone. She was useless, absent and cowardly as BizSec, as many of us pointed out repeatedly.
What on Earth commended her to the top job? What credentials did/does she have?
The whole episode is weird beyond measure.
Partly, an incredible amount of ambition. She give the impression of really, really wanting the job. That helps you get to the top in politics, even if it is a huge red flag in terms of being suitable.
Mostly, that most of the alternatives are visibly worse. Jenrick is too cynical in his nastiness, Morduant too not-an-MP, Hunt too past it. Cleverly would probably be better, but mostly because I think he would appreciate the absurdity of the situation more.
The next few years are where the purges of 2019 threaten to really come back and bite the Conservatives on the bottom. Even if they want to change direction fundamentally, they don't really have the people to do so.
So who was lost in the 'purges of 2019' ?
Here are the names:
Guto Bebb Ken Clarke David Gauke Sam Gyimah Justine Greening Dominic Grieve Philip Hammond Olly Letwin Anne Milton Antoinette Sandbach Rory Stewart
Give their ages and the loss of seats this year how many would even still be MPs ?
It wasn't so much about the MPs (though 2022-now would have benefitted from having people like Gauke, Greening and Stewart on-call) as the effect on the candidates' list. The people who didn't enter parliament in 2019 or 2024. The people who won't be interesting spokesmen in 2028 or senior Cabinet members in 2033.
The curse of delayed consequences strikes again.
I think you had to go back earlier. The Tory Party of 2015/6 was quite civilised but after Brexit and the defenestration of Cameron Osborne Clark and co all the civilising influences melted away and you were left with the Johnsons Goves Patels Rees Moggs Bravermen and the most unfit and unpleasant leading Tory politicians most of us can remember.
Isn't this largely vibes-based though? In terms of policy and rhetoric, Cameron and Osborne were well to the right of Johnson.
On most things except Brexit yes but in Roger's view Brexit brought in a lot more oiks into the Conservative parliamentary party in 2019 who were often Northern, uncouth and non Oxbridge and non public school educated and fewer patrician smoothies he could even consider having to dinner like Rory Stewart, Gauke and Grieve. Even if Kemi is a bit more palatable than the ghastly Johnson and Farage she is still a bit common, mouthy and non Europhile elitist
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Only if other people are buying it. It's no good leading the field in a technology that nobody wants.
+1 - it’s a solution to a 20th century problem and unless we change how we charge for electricity it’s going to make it even more expensive than it currently is
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
More wind turbines and interconnectors to europe would be a better solution than carbon capture nonsense.
£20bn would pay for something over 5000km of HVDC undersea cable, I think.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
More wind turbines and interconnectors to europe would be a better solution than carbon capture nonsense.
£20bn would pay for something over 5000km of HVDC undersea cable, I think.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Only if other people are buying it. It's no good leading the field in a technology that nobody wants.
There is no sensible economic case for CCS. As others have pointed out, the money would be better off spent on tidal, or panels, or interconnectors, or whatever.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Not really, what would be great for UK cos are lower electricity costs - which (should if the economics are set up correctly) correlate with more solar/wind capacity; which also happen to have CO2 benefits. I don't see how carbon capture lowers prices at all ?!
Spending £20bn on something that neither generates nor transmits nor stores electricity as part of your energy strategy can only make prices higher.
And the opportunity cost of not spending those resources on renewable generation is huge.
Yes, Kemi is a dud. But no idea why this should surprise anyone. She was useless, absent and cowardly as BizSec, as many of us pointed out repeatedly.
What on Earth commended her to the top job? What credentials did/does she have?
The whole episode is weird beyond measure.
Partly, an incredible amount of ambition. She give the impression of really, really wanting the job. That helps you get to the top in politics, even if it is a huge red flag in terms of being suitable.
Mostly, that most of the alternatives are visibly worse. Jenrick is too cynical in his nastiness, Morduant too not-an-MP, Hunt too past it. Cleverly would probably be better, but mostly because I think he would appreciate the absurdity of the situation more.
The next few years are where the purges of 2019 threaten to really come back and bite the Conservatives on the bottom. Even if they want to change direction fundamentally, they don't really have the people to do so.
So who was lost in the 'purges of 2019' ?
Here are the names:
Guto Bebb Ken Clarke David Gauke Sam Gyimah Justine Greening Dominic Grieve Philip Hammond Olly Letwin Anne Milton Antoinette Sandbach Rory Stewart
Give their ages and the loss of seats this year how many would even still be MPs ?
It wasn't so much about the MPs (though 2022-now would have benefitted from having people like Gauke, Greening and Stewart on-call) as the effect on the candidates' list. The people who didn't enter parliament in 2019 or 2024. The people who won't be interesting spokesmen in 2028 or senior Cabinet members in 2033.
The curse of delayed consequences strikes again.
I think you had to go back earlier. The Tory Party of 2015/6 was quite civilised but after Brexit and the defenestration of Cameron Osborne Clark and co all the civilising influences melted away and you were left with the Johnsons Goves Patels Rees Moggs Bravermen and the most unfit and unpleasant leading Tory politicians most of us can remember.
Isn't this largely vibes-based though? In terms of policy and rhetoric, Cameron and Osborne were well to the right of Johnson.
On most things except Brexit yes but in Roger's view Brexit brought in a lot more oiks into the Conservative parliamentary party in 2019 who were often Northern, uncouth and non Oxbridge and non public school educated and fewer patrician smoothies he could even consider having to dinner like Rory Stewart, Gauke and Grieve. Even if Kemi is a bit more palatable than the ghastly Johnson and Farage she is still a bit common, mouthy and non Europhile elitist
Rubbish. She's one of us. She worked at MaccieDs!*
* Disclosure; I've never worked under the Golden Arches.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
More wind turbines and interconnectors to europe would be a better solution than carbon capture nonsense.
£20bn would pay for something over 5000km of HVDC undersea cable, I think.
Are the proposed North Africa cables two way ?
We could export wind by night...
Yes, but the N Africa scheme includes wind generation.
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Still no comment on the obvious fakery of that CNN news report, which had you weeping tears for Syria?
If it's a fake story, fine. If we're to pursue each other for apologies, then I won't have time for anything else.
Doesn't alter the fact of Assad disappearing tens of thousands in his prisons,, though.
Your UAP obsession remains deeply odd.
There's no shame in accidentally posting fake stories. It gets harder and harder to tell, and we will see more and more
The other day I posted that ABC report that Ukraine had lost 1m troops (which you correctly questioned). However, the difference between us is that I instantly got suspicious of my own post - the narrative voice wasn't quite right, so I went down the rabbit hole and found the original source which had been doctored. I corrected my own error within 3 minutes
You, however, just posted that fake CNN shit - which I told you was dodgy right away - and you are content to leave it there and can't be arsed to even check if it's right, days later. I think that merits a big fat Christmas TUT
The new NATO Sec Gen Mark Rutte yesterday gave an estimate of total casualties on both sides of the Ukraine war, killed and wounded, as around a million.
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden.
Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Merkel continues to find new ways to cause problems from beyond the political grave. It would be ironic if it were her energy policies that ended up blowing up the single market.
She seems to have joined Tony Blair as a hugely successful, electorally speaking, and dominating figure who has become hugely unpopular since, not least with their own side. A curious trick to have pulled.
“A friend in Latakia tells me they're very scared by what they're seeing.
Since yesterday heavily armed men, including some foreigners speaking languages they've never heard before, have been parading through and patrolling the streets.
These men are behaving like religious extremists. They are shouting at unveiled women and demanding they wear a hijab. They are asking with hostility any men and women who walk together if they are married or not. There is no more alcohol, shops that have alcohol have been vandalized, burned and closed.
"Latakia and Tartous have never been Islamic cities and this is very dangerous for them because the majority is Alawis and Christians," says my friend.
Still, some of the armed men are trying to comfort people. HTS guys are insisting everything will be fine and fair in the future, people just need to wait. But it feels like a massive gaslight as people are afraid by what they see as a rapidly changing Syria they don't recognize and perhaps don't have a place in.
There are also complaints about the media portraying everything as rosy and free when people feel a different kind of scared under these emerging authorities.
My friend did not want this attributed to their name out of fear. Reminds me of the old Syria.”
Was is ever going to be any different. We traded a secularish tyrant for Islamists and terrorists. The best case scenario is an Egypt style government, the worst case is Afghanistan.
This is why many of us on PB weren’t “celebrating” the fall of Assad - unlike others. It was grimly satisfying seeing him go, shame they couldn’t try him and execute him; but it was obvious that what would follow could easily be worse
I suspect it will be worse
The leader Jolani is a serious Islamist, ISIS-style, a genuine believer. He will impose strict sharia law. Around him are people even more extreme
The result will be closer to Afghanistan than Egypt, with one difference, Afghanistan is remote and it can be ignored, Syria is pivotally placed in the MENA and it borders Israel and NATO
It will suck in jihadis and export trouble
No Syrian was willing to lift a finger to defend Assad, so in their eyes, he was the worst available option.
The Ukrainians, and others, initially welcomed Hitler's troops
Yes, Kemi is a dud. But no idea why this should surprise anyone. She was useless, absent and cowardly as BizSec, as many of us pointed out repeatedly.
What on Earth commended her to the top job? What credentials did/does she have?
The whole episode is weird beyond measure.
Partly, an incredible amount of ambition. She give the impression of really, really wanting the job. That helps you get to the top in politics, even if it is a huge red flag in terms of being suitable.
Mostly, that most of the alternatives are visibly worse. Jenrick is too cynical in his nastiness, Morduant too not-an-MP, Hunt too past it. Cleverly would probably be better, but mostly because I think he would appreciate the absurdity of the situation more.
The next few years are where the purges of 2019 threaten to really come back and bite the Conservatives on the bottom. Even if they want to change direction fundamentally, they don't really have the people to do so.
So who was lost in the 'purges of 2019' ?
Here are the names:
Guto Bebb Ken Clarke David Gauke Sam Gyimah Justine Greening Dominic Grieve Philip Hammond Olly Letwin Anne Milton Antoinette Sandbach Rory Stewart
Give their ages and the loss of seats this year how many would even still be MPs ?
It wasn't so much about the MPs (though 2022-now would have benefitted from having people like Gauke, Greening and Stewart on-call) as the effect on the candidates' list. The people who didn't enter parliament in 2019 or 2024. The people who won't be interesting spokesmen in 2028 or senior Cabinet members in 2033.
The curse of delayed consequences strikes again.
I think you had to go back earlier. The Tory Party of 2015/6 was quite civilised but after Brexit and the defenestration of Cameron Osborne Clark and co all the civilising influences melted away and you were left with the Johnsons Goves Patels Rees Moggs Bravermen and the most unfit and unpleasant leading Tory politicians most of us can remember.
Isn't this largely vibes-based though? In terms of policy and rhetoric, Cameron and Osborne were well to the right of Johnson.
On most things except Brexit yes but in Roger's view Brexit brought in a lot more oiks into the Conservative parliamentary party in 2019 who were often Northern, uncouth and non Oxbridge and non public school educated and fewer patrician smoothies he could even consider having to dinner like Rory Stewart, Gauke and Grieve. Even if Kemi is a bit more palatable than the ghastly Johnson and Farage she is still a bit common, mouthy and non Europhile elitist
If that is Roger's view, I am delighted to say that for once I partially agree with him, except that I know what you are trying to do with this clumsy characterisation HY; you are trying to suggest that those of us that observe that your Clownish hero hollowed out the the Tory Party are snobs. Now, where did Johnson go to school again? Kwasi? Jacob Rees Mogg? I could go on, but the idea that Brexit obsessed Tory nutters are simply good old fashioned salt of the earth northerners does not stand up to even the most perfunctory scrutiny.
The new NATO Sec Gen Mark Rutte yesterday gave an estimate of total casualties on both sides of the Ukraine war, killed and wounded, as around a million.
Which would suggest about a ratio of 3:1, which sounds intuitively right for attacker vs defender.
“A friend in Latakia tells me they're very scared by what they're seeing.
Since yesterday heavily armed men, including some foreigners speaking languages they've never heard before, have been parading through and patrolling the streets.
These men are behaving like religious extremists. They are shouting at unveiled women and demanding they wear a hijab. They are asking with hostility any men and women who walk together if they are married or not. There is no more alcohol, shops that have alcohol have been vandalized, burned and closed.
"Latakia and Tartous have never been Islamic cities and this is very dangerous for them because the majority is Alawis and Christians," says my friend.
Still, some of the armed men are trying to comfort people. HTS guys are insisting everything will be fine and fair in the future, people just need to wait. But it feels like a massive gaslight as people are afraid by what they see as a rapidly changing Syria they don't recognize and perhaps don't have a place in.
There are also complaints about the media portraying everything as rosy and free when people feel a different kind of scared under these emerging authorities.
My friend did not want this attributed to their name out of fear. Reminds me of the old Syria.”
Was is ever going to be any different. We traded a secularish tyrant for Islamists and terrorists. The best case scenario is an Egypt style government, the worst case is Afghanistan.
This is why many of us on PB weren’t “celebrating” the fall of Assad - unlike others. It was grimly satisfying seeing him go, shame they couldn’t try him and execute him; but it was obvious that what would follow could easily be worse
I suspect it will be worse
The leader Jolani is a serious Islamist, ISIS-style, a genuine believer. He will impose strict sharia law. Around him are people even more extreme
The result will be closer to Afghanistan than Egypt, with one difference, Afghanistan is remote and it can be ignored, Syria is pivotally placed in the MENA and it borders Israel and NATO
It will suck in jihadis and export trouble
No Syrian was willing to lift a finger to defend Assad, so in their eyes, he was the worst available option.
The Ukrainians, and others, initially welcomed Hitler's troops
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
More wind turbines and interconnectors to europe would be a better solution than carbon capture nonsense.
£20bn would pay for something over 5000km of HVDC undersea cable, I think.
Are the proposed North Africa cables two way ?
We could export wind by night...
The North Africa scheme is not stupid: modern HVDC cables are relatively inexpensive and transmission losses are remarkably small.
It would do a very good job of adding a few extra hours of power in the morning and evening during winter, and (indeed) would produce at a decent level, very consistently, during daylight hours year round.
The issue with it is the same thing that bedevils all high capital cost energy production (nuclear and tidal too), is that you are going to be generating a lot of power at times when the cost of electricity is very low.
The new NATO Sec Gen Mark Rutte yesterday gave an estimate of total casualties on both sides of the Ukraine war, killed and wounded, as around a million.
Which would suggest about a ratio of 3:1, which sounds intuitively right for attacker vs defender.
The new NATO Sec Gen Mark Rutte yesterday gave an estimate of total casualties on both sides of the Ukraine war, killed and wounded, as around a million.
Which would suggest about a ratio of 3:1, which sounds intuitively right for attacker vs defender.
Russia has 3.88 times the pop though.
Sure: but defenders will typically fight to the last man, woman and child. The cost-benefit is rather different for the attacker.
Edit to add: the situation is that the Ukrainians do not have the strength to drive the Russians out. And the Russians cannot take more than a mile or two here or there without utterly horrendous casualties. If the Russians stopped attacking, then the situation could solidify very quickly. But a fifty mile inroad into Ukraine and a frozen conflict isn't a victory for Russia, so they keep pushing. And Russians keep dying. And the Russian economy keeps getting more fucked up.
The new NATO Sec Gen Mark Rutte yesterday gave an estimate of total casualties on both sides of the Ukraine war, killed and wounded, as around a million.
Which would suggest about a ratio of 3:1, which sounds intuitively right for attacker vs defender.
Russia has 3.88 times the pop though.
But Russia gas to try to keep its economy going, and make all the weapons it needs to fight in Ukraine. This means it needs more men not fighting as well. Ukraine is handed a lot of weaponry, and its economy is sustained (minimally) by financial help from civilised countries.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Not really, what would be great for UK cos are lower electricity costs - which (should if the economics are set up correctly) correlate with more solar/wind capacity; which also happen to have CO2 benefits. I don't see how carbon capture lowers prices at all ?!
I agree lower energy prices would be great.
If govt is contributing to CCS, then presumably that shifts some part of the cost of that from private to public. So that would be lowering energy prices and increasing general taxation, assuming the CCS is going to happen anyway.
If CCS is the only way to meet climate targets AND we want to meet them, then it seems a reasonable use of public money to derisk it and make sure it happens.
Anyone yet commented on our Complaints Support Specialist/"Economist" CoE comments about being "disappointed" at the economic news?
I suspect that her previous Lloyds Bank boss said that when they realised she was appearing to take time off for hospital and doctors appointments to do Labour Party work.
She is a liar and should resign. Have I said that before? Oh yes, and I will keep saying it.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Not really, what would be great for UK cos are lower electricity costs - which (should if the economics are set up correctly) correlate with more solar/wind capacity; which also happen to have CO2 benefits. I don't see how carbon capture lowers prices at all ?!
I agree lower energy prices would be great.
If govt is contributing to CCS, then presumably that shifts some part of the cost of that from private to public. So that would be lowering energy prices and increasing general taxation, assuming the CCS is going to happen anyway.
If CCS is the only way to meet climate targets AND we want to meet them, then it seems a reasonable use of public money to derisk it and make sure it happens.
Shifting electricity spend into gov't coffers doesn't help anything ! All Gov't spend has to be eventually paid for through tax, inflation or a weaker currency. Gov't spend on a wind turbine is OK because it generates power which can make goods, generate revenue and so on. CC simply doesn't do this.
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Not really, what would be great for UK cos are lower electricity costs - which (should if the economics are set up correctly) correlate with more solar/wind capacity; which also happen to have CO2 benefits. I don't see how carbon capture lowers prices at all ?!
I agree lower energy prices would be great.
If govt is contributing to CCS, then presumably that shifts some part of the cost of that from private to public. So that would be lowering energy prices and increasing general taxation, assuming the CCS is going to happen anyway.
If CCS is the only way to meet climate targets AND we want to meet them, then it seems a reasonable use of public money to derisk it and make sure it happens.
Here's the thing though: if CCS results in higher electricity bills, then it slows the transition from petrol powered cars to electric ones.
In which case, it might have managed to make people poorer, disadvantaged British industry, and made net zero further away.
“A friend in Latakia tells me they're very scared by what they're seeing.
Since yesterday heavily armed men, including some foreigners speaking languages they've never heard before, have been parading through and patrolling the streets.
These men are behaving like religious extremists. They are shouting at unveiled women and demanding they wear a hijab. They are asking with hostility any men and women who walk together if they are married or not. There is no more alcohol, shops that have alcohol have been vandalized, burned and closed.
"Latakia and Tartous have never been Islamic cities and this is very dangerous for them because the majority is Alawis and Christians," says my friend.
Still, some of the armed men are trying to comfort people. HTS guys are insisting everything will be fine and fair in the future, people just need to wait. But it feels like a massive gaslight as people are afraid by what they see as a rapidly changing Syria they don't recognize and perhaps don't have a place in.
There are also complaints about the media portraying everything as rosy and free when people feel a different kind of scared under these emerging authorities.
My friend did not want this attributed to their name out of fear. Reminds me of the old Syria.”
Was is ever going to be any different. We traded a secularish tyrant for Islamists and terrorists. The best case scenario is an Egypt style government, the worst case is Afghanistan.
This is why many of us on PB weren’t “celebrating” the fall of Assad - unlike others. It was grimly satisfying seeing him go, shame they couldn’t try him and execute him; but it was obvious that what would follow could easily be worse
I suspect it will be worse
The leader Jolani is a serious Islamist, ISIS-style, a genuine believer. He will impose strict sharia law. Around him are people even more extreme
The result will be closer to Afghanistan than Egypt, with one difference, Afghanistan is remote and it can be ignored, Syria is pivotally placed in the MENA and it borders Israel and NATO
It will suck in jihadis and export trouble
No Syrian was willing to lift a finger to defend Assad, so in their eyes, he was the worst available option.
The Ukrainians, and others, initially welcomed Hitler's troops
If you are speaking in the present, what parallel universe do you live in?
For anyone with any doubts, a painful take-down of the CNN report - which had @NigelB in literal tears obver his laptop, barely able to reach his cocoa as he wept
"Taking a look at the extremely bizarre video of CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward supposedly rescuing a Syrian prisoner, and the huge number of questions it raises:"
There are many other take-downs, and even more questions. The "prisoner" has clean fingernails, neatly manicured. He doesn't exactly look starved, he needs to go on a diet. His hair and beard have been recently trimmed. His acting is terrible. He's wearing a rather nice camel coat. 3 months locked in darkness??? Even genuine Syrian prisoners freed from Assad's dungeons are angry at this absurd pantomime, which - remember - got @NigelB lustily sobbing over his Tesco value prawn sandwich
“A friend in Latakia tells me they're very scared by what they're seeing.
Since yesterday heavily armed men, including some foreigners speaking languages they've never heard before, have been parading through and patrolling the streets.
These men are behaving like religious extremists. They are shouting at unveiled women and demanding they wear a hijab. They are asking with hostility any men and women who walk together if they are married or not. There is no more alcohol, shops that have alcohol have been vandalized, burned and closed.
"Latakia and Tartous have never been Islamic cities and this is very dangerous for them because the majority is Alawis and Christians," says my friend.
Still, some of the armed men are trying to comfort people. HTS guys are insisting everything will be fine and fair in the future, people just need to wait. But it feels like a massive gaslight as people are afraid by what they see as a rapidly changing Syria they don't recognize and perhaps don't have a place in.
There are also complaints about the media portraying everything as rosy and free when people feel a different kind of scared under these emerging authorities.
My friend did not want this attributed to their name out of fear. Reminds me of the old Syria.”
Was is ever going to be any different. We traded a secularish tyrant for Islamists and terrorists. The best case scenario is an Egypt style government, the worst case is Afghanistan.
This is why many of us on PB weren’t “celebrating” the fall of Assad - unlike others. It was grimly satisfying seeing him go, shame they couldn’t try him and execute him; but it was obvious that what would follow could easily be worse
I suspect it will be worse
The leader Jolani is a serious Islamist, ISIS-style, a genuine believer. He will impose strict sharia law. Around him are people even more extreme
The result will be closer to Afghanistan than Egypt, with one difference, Afghanistan is remote and it can be ignored, Syria is pivotally placed in the MENA and it borders Israel and NATO
It will suck in jihadis and export trouble
No Syrian was willing to lift a finger to defend Assad, so in their eyes, he was the worst available option.
The Ukrainians, and others, initially welcomed Hitler's troops
What parallel universe do you live in?
Are you claiming it is not a historical fact that many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazi invasion as being preferable to Stalin's tyranny?
That is a fact. Also entirely understandable. Stalin had within recent living memory inflicted Satanic suffering on the Ukrainians, esp the Holodomor, the deliberate starvation of the entire nation, which led to widespread cannibbalism
No wonder many Ukrainians preferred - at first - the efficient, smartly dressed Nazis. Then they realised that, incredibly, the Nazis were probably worse
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Still no comment on the obvious fakery of that CNN news report, which had you weeping tears for Syria?
If it's a fake story, fine. If we're to pursue each other for apologies, then I won't have time for anything else.
Doesn't alter the fact of Assad disappearing tens of thousands in his prisons,, though.
Your UAP obsession remains deeply odd.
There's no shame in accidentally posting fake stories. It gets harder and harder to tell, and we will see more and more
The other day I posted that ABC report that Ukraine had lost 1m troops (which you correctly questioned). However, the difference between us is that I instantly got suspicious of my own post - the narrative voice wasn't quite right, so I went down the rabbit hole and found the original source which had been doctored. I corrected my own error within 3 minutes
You, however, just posted that fake CNN shit - which I told you was dodgy right away - and you are content to leave it there and can't be arsed to even check if it's right, days later. I think that merits a big fat Christmas TUT
You didn't correct your post about Syrian groups fighting each other in Manchester which was extremely irresponsible because it could stir up right wing thugs to get involved.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
More wind turbines and interconnectors to europe would be a better solution than carbon capture nonsense.
£20bn would pay for something over 5000km of HVDC undersea cable, I think.
Are the proposed North Africa cables two way ?
We could export wind by night...
The North Africa scheme is not stupid: modern HVDC cables are relatively inexpensive and transmission losses are remarkably small.
It would do a very good job of adding a few extra hours of power in the morning and evening during winter, and (indeed) would produce at a decent level, very consistently, during daylight hours year round.
The issue with it is the same thing that bedevils all high capital cost energy production (nuclear and tidal too), is that you are going to be generating a lot of power at times when the cost of electricity is very low.
Which is fine - offer sufficient cheap electricity, at sufficiently low prices, and you will start up new businesses to use it.
And it could be an absolute game changer for the N African economies.
“A friend in Latakia tells me they're very scared by what they're seeing.
Since yesterday heavily armed men, including some foreigners speaking languages they've never heard before, have been parading through and patrolling the streets.
These men are behaving like religious extremists. They are shouting at unveiled women and demanding they wear a hijab. They are asking with hostility any men and women who walk together if they are married or not. There is no more alcohol, shops that have alcohol have been vandalized, burned and closed.
"Latakia and Tartous have never been Islamic cities and this is very dangerous for them because the majority is Alawis and Christians," says my friend.
Still, some of the armed men are trying to comfort people. HTS guys are insisting everything will be fine and fair in the future, people just need to wait. But it feels like a massive gaslight as people are afraid by what they see as a rapidly changing Syria they don't recognize and perhaps don't have a place in.
There are also complaints about the media portraying everything as rosy and free when people feel a different kind of scared under these emerging authorities.
My friend did not want this attributed to their name out of fear. Reminds me of the old Syria.”
Was is ever going to be any different. We traded a secularish tyrant for Islamists and terrorists. The best case scenario is an Egypt style government, the worst case is Afghanistan.
This is why many of us on PB weren’t “celebrating” the fall of Assad - unlike others. It was grimly satisfying seeing him go, shame they couldn’t try him and execute him; but it was obvious that what would follow could easily be worse
I suspect it will be worse
The leader Jolani is a serious Islamist, ISIS-style, a genuine believer. He will impose strict sharia law. Around him are people even more extreme
The result will be closer to Afghanistan than Egypt, with one difference, Afghanistan is remote and it can be ignored, Syria is pivotally placed in the MENA and it borders Israel and NATO
It will suck in jihadis and export trouble
No Syrian was willing to lift a finger to defend Assad, so in their eyes, he was the worst available option.
The Ukrainians, and others, initially welcomed Hitler's troops
What parallel universe do you live in?
Are you claiming it is not a historical fact that many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazi invasion as being preferable to Stalin's tyranny?
That is a fact. Also entirely understandable. Stalin had within recent living memory inflicted Satanic suffering on the Ukrainians, esp the Holodomor, the deliberate starvation of the entire nation, which led to widespread cannibbalism
No wonder many Ukrainians preferred - at first - the efficient, smartly dressed Nazis. Then they realised that, incredibly, the Nazis were probably worse
Ukraine has had far more tragedy than any nation deserves. Slava Ukraini
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Still no comment on the obvious fakery of that CNN news report, which had you weeping tears for Syria?
If it's a fake story, fine. If we're to pursue each other for apologies, then I won't have time for anything else.
Doesn't alter the fact of Assad disappearing tens of thousands in his prisons,, though.
Your UAP obsession remains deeply odd.
There's no shame in accidentally posting fake stories. It gets harder and harder to tell, and we will see more and more
The other day I posted that ABC report that Ukraine had lost 1m troops (which you correctly questioned). However, the difference between us is that I instantly got suspicious of my own post - the narrative voice wasn't quite right, so I went down the rabbit hole and found the original source which had been doctored. I corrected my own error within 3 minutes
You, however, just posted that fake CNN shit - which I told you was dodgy right away - and you are content to leave it there and can't be arsed to even check if it's right, days later. I think that merits a big fat Christmas TUT
You didn't correct your post about Syrian groups fighting each other in Manchester which was extremely irresponsible because it could stir up right wing thugs to get involved.
I saw a quite convicing video of scuffles, so I didn't see a reason to retract it
For anyone with any doubts, a painful take-down of the CNN report - which had @NigelB in literal tears obver his laptop, barely able to reach his cocoa as he wept
"Taking a look at the extremely bizarre video of CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward supposedly rescuing a Syrian prisoner, and the huge number of questions it raises:"
There are many other take-downs, and even more questions. The "prisoner" has clean fingernails, neatly manicured. He doesn't exactly look starved, he needs to go on a diet. His hair and beard have been recently trimmed. His acting is terrible. He's wearing a rather nice camel coat. 3 months locked in darkness??? Even genuine Syrian prisoners freed from Assad's dungeons are angry at this absurd pantomime, which - remember - got @NigelB lustily sobbing over his Tesco value prawn sandwich
Still being a dick, I see. How many posts did I devote to it, and how many did you ? Chew on that, IQ guy.
For anyone with any doubts, a painful take-down of the CNN report - which had @NigelB in literal tears obver his laptop, barely able to reach his cocoa as he wept
"Taking a look at the extremely bizarre video of CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward supposedly rescuing a Syrian prisoner, and the huge number of questions it raises:"
There are many other take-downs, and even more questions. The "prisoner" has clean fingernails, neatly manicured. He doesn't exactly look starved, he needs to go on a diet. His hair and beard have been recently trimmed. His acting is terrible. He's wearing a rather nice camel coat. 3 months locked in darkness??? Even genuine Syrian prisoners freed from Assad's dungeons are angry at this absurd pantomime, which - remember - got @NigelB lustily sobbing over his Tesco value prawn sandwich
Still being a dick, I see. How many posts did I devote to it, and how many did you ? Chew on that, IQ guy.
All you have to do it say Sorry, yeah, that was shit
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
A friend of mine's father had polio as a child. He was very successful which was handy because he could afford to make his substantial home wheelchair friendly.
A good policy badly implemented. but at least the Welsh government accept Drakeford.was wrong and have addressed it and it seems it will end up being where it should have been at the beginning
“A friend in Latakia tells me they're very scared by what they're seeing.
Since yesterday heavily armed men, including some foreigners speaking languages they've never heard before, have been parading through and patrolling the streets.
These men are behaving like religious extremists. They are shouting at unveiled women and demanding they wear a hijab. They are asking with hostility any men and women who walk together if they are married or not. There is no more alcohol, shops that have alcohol have been vandalized, burned and closed.
"Latakia and Tartous have never been Islamic cities and this is very dangerous for them because the majority is Alawis and Christians," says my friend.
Still, some of the armed men are trying to comfort people. HTS guys are insisting everything will be fine and fair in the future, people just need to wait. But it feels like a massive gaslight as people are afraid by what they see as a rapidly changing Syria they don't recognize and perhaps don't have a place in.
There are also complaints about the media portraying everything as rosy and free when people feel a different kind of scared under these emerging authorities.
My friend did not want this attributed to their name out of fear. Reminds me of the old Syria.”
Was is ever going to be any different. We traded a secularish tyrant for Islamists and terrorists. The best case scenario is an Egypt style government, the worst case is Afghanistan.
This is why many of us on PB weren’t “celebrating” the fall of Assad - unlike others. It was grimly satisfying seeing him go, shame they couldn’t try him and execute him; but it was obvious that what would follow could easily be worse
I suspect it will be worse
The leader Jolani is a serious Islamist, ISIS-style, a genuine believer. He will impose strict sharia law. Around him are people even more extreme
The result will be closer to Afghanistan than Egypt, with one difference, Afghanistan is remote and it can be ignored, Syria is pivotally placed in the MENA and it borders Israel and NATO
It will suck in jihadis and export trouble
No Syrian was willing to lift a finger to defend Assad, so in their eyes, he was the worst available option.
The Ukrainians, and others, initially welcomed Hitler's troops
What parallel universe do you live in?
Are you claiming it is not a historical fact that many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazi invasion as being preferable to Stalin's tyranny?
That is a fact. Also entirely understandable. Stalin had within recent living memory inflicted Satanic suffering on the Ukrainians, esp the Holodomor, the deliberate starvation of the entire nation, which led to widespread cannibbalism
No wonder many Ukrainians preferred - at first - the efficient, smartly dressed Nazis. Then they realised that, incredibly, the Nazis were probably worse
Ukraine has had far more tragedy than any nation deserves. Slava Ukraini
There's a really great book on why this strip of Europe, north to south, has seen such terrible suffering: from the Baltics and Poland down through Belarus to Ukraine then the Balkans
They are the "shatterzone", a geopolitical faultline where so many empires and civilisations meet - Islam v Christianity, Orthodox v Catholic, Slav v Teuton, East v West, Russia v Europe, Ottomans v Austro-Hungarians
There's a more important point in the CNN fake prisoner report than a PB-er refusing to apologise for posting it, and that is: this is a major news outlet, faking a news story
What possessed them? The female journalist in question has a history of faking news, or glamming it up, why does she still have a job? Also, there must be loads of real heart-rending stories in Syria, why stage this bollocks?
Surely, as we are engulfed by evermore bullshit, generated by machines and miscreants, the last remaining legacy media have a greater duty to be scrupulously honest? Otherwise their last remaining viewers will turn away and despair and rely entirely on social media
There's a more important point in the CNN fake prisoner report than a PB-er refusing to apologise for posting it, and that is: this is a major news outlet, faking a news story
What possessed them? The female journalist in question has a history of faking news, or glamming it up, why does she still have a job? Also, there must be loads of real heart-rending stories in Syria, why stage this bollocks?
Surely, as we are engulfed by evermore bullshit, generated by machines and miscreants, the last remaining legacy media have a greater duty to be scrupulously honest? Otherwise their last remaining viewers will turn away and despair and rely entirely on social media
Tut TUT
Now that is a good comment. You see, it's not hard.
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Still no comment on the obvious fakery of that CNN news report, which had you weeping tears for Syria?
If it's a fake story, fine. If we're to pursue each other for apologies, then I won't have time for anything else.
Doesn't alter the fact of Assad disappearing tens of thousands in his prisons,, though.
Your UAP obsession remains deeply odd.
There's no shame in accidentally posting fake stories. It gets harder and harder to tell, and we will see more and more
The other day I posted that ABC report that Ukraine had lost 1m troops (which you correctly questioned). However, the difference between us is that I instantly got suspicious of my own post - the narrative voice wasn't quite right, so I went down the rabbit hole and found the original source which had been doctored. I corrected my own error within 3 minutes
You, however, just posted that fake CNN shit - which I told you was dodgy right away - and you are content to leave it there and can't be arsed to even check if it's right, days later. I think that merits a big fat Christmas TUT
You didn't correct your post about Syrian groups fighting each other in Manchester which was extremely irresponsible because it could stir up right wing thugs to get involved.
I saw a quite convicing video of scuffles, so I didn't see a reason to retract it
If it has been emphatically debunked, then my bad
I'm sorry this is bizarre. There are no reports whatsoever of Syrians fighting in Manchester. Only celebrations. None at all and you made a very provocative post that could influence right wing nutters to react. Fortunately being here that is exceedingly unlikely, but it has happened several times by this sort of stuff being posted on the internet. Yet you complain when someone posts a video from a mainstream reporter (fake or not) and demand an apology.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
More wind turbines and interconnectors to europe would be a better solution than carbon capture nonsense.
£20bn would pay for something over 5000km of HVDC undersea cable, I think.
Are the proposed North Africa cables two way ?
We could export wind by night...
The North Africa scheme is not stupid: modern HVDC cables are relatively inexpensive and transmission losses are remarkably small.
It would do a very good job of adding a few extra hours of power in the morning and evening during winter, and (indeed) would produce at a decent level, very consistently, during daylight hours year round.
The issue with it is the same thing that bedevils all high capital cost energy production (nuclear and tidal too), is that you are going to be generating a lot of power at times when the cost of electricity is very low.
Which is fine - offer sufficient cheap electricity, at sufficiently low prices, and you will start up new businesses to use it.
And it could be an absolute game changer for the N African economies.
You know, there will be nutters out there, who accuse us of stealing North Africa's sunshine.
Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that "she's furious with Germany" for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden. Stil Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.
Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.
A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today's price spike.
Still no comment on the obvious fakery of that CNN news report, which had you weeping tears for Syria?
If it's a fake story, fine. If we're to pursue each other for apologies, then I won't have time for anything else.
Doesn't alter the fact of Assad disappearing tens of thousands in his prisons,, though.
Your UAP obsession remains deeply odd.
There's no shame in accidentally posting fake stories. It gets harder and harder to tell, and we will see more and more
The other day I posted that ABC report that Ukraine had lost 1m troops (which you correctly questioned). However, the difference between us is that I instantly got suspicious of my own post - the narrative voice wasn't quite right, so I went down the rabbit hole and found the original source which had been doctored. I corrected my own error within 3 minutes
You, however, just posted that fake CNN shit - which I told you was dodgy right away - and you are content to leave it there and can't be arsed to even check if it's right, days later. I think that merits a big fat Christmas TUT
You didn't correct your post about Syrian groups fighting each other in Manchester which was extremely irresponsible because it could stir up right wing thugs to get involved.
I saw a quite convicing video of scuffles, so I didn't see a reason to retract it
If it has been emphatically debunked, then my bad
I'm sorry this is bizarre. There are no reports whatsoever of Syrians fighting in Manchester. Only celebrations. None at all and you made a very provocative post that could influence right wing nutters to react. Fortunately being here that is exceedingly unlikely, but it has happened several times by this sort of stuff being posted on the internet. Yet you complain when someone posts a video from a mainstream reporter (fake or not) and demand an apology.
Double standards or what.
I genuinely didn't follow it up, nor notice any questions pertaining; it seemed quite a resonable news story as we have often seen Asian/African conflicts played out on European city streets - Kurds and Turks fighting in Germany, Hindus and Muslims in Leicester? Palestinians and Jews, obvs. And probably many others
As I have said, if it has since been thoroughly debunked then My bad, I apologise
A good policy badly implemented. but at least the Welsh government accept Drakeford.was wrong and have addressed it and it seems it will end up being where it should have been at the beginning
Communication between the councils and Cardiff Bay was dire. Here in the Vale the Council did a great job (on the whole). In Carmarthenshire it was dreadful. Every village from Carmarthen to Lampeter drops to twenty and there are plenty of villages.
Donne's Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day no longer rings true. Thanks to Pope Gregory's calendar reform it doesn't fall on the solstice any more, but retains attenuated existence as the day of the earliest sunset. Tomorrow's sunset will be ever so slightly later but of course this is just a cheering illusion caused by the equation of time. The days continue to shorten until the 21st. Head South. There Is No Alternative. They say New Zealand's nice.
A good policy badly implemented. but at least the Welsh government accept Drakeford.was wrong and have addressed it and it seems it will end up being where it should have been at the beginning
Communication between the councils and Cardiff Bay was dire. Here in the Vale the Council did a great job (on the whole). In Carmarthenshire it was dreadful. Every village from Carmarthen to Lampeter drops to twenty and there are plenty of villages.
A good policy badly implemented. but at least the Welsh government accept Drakeford.was wrong and have addressed it and it seems it will end up being where it should have been at the beginning
Communication between the councils and Cardiff Bay was dire. Here in the Vale the Council did a great job (on the whole). In Carmarthenshire it was dreadful. Every village from Carmarthen to Lampeter drops to twenty and there are plenty of villages.
Bright blue skies in Los Angeles, and it started getting lighter in the evenings about a week ago.
i have a sudden Pang for Penang. The place not the curry
As a retirement spot you could do a lot worse. Short flights to multiple amazing cities. High quality of life. Amazing quality of food. Great mix of people. Safe streets. Civilised. Not as Islamic as the Malaysian mainland, much more easygoing
All these PBers angsting about low growth who voted for Brexit. They're like me as a kid always going out in winter without a coat and complaining it's cold.
If the economies of EU member states were booming, there might be a point there. Low growth is a problem across the board.
Ok, but that wasn't quite my point. I agree we're in an era of low growth. Indeed I keep saying (am just about alone in saying) we should be realistic about this and stop expecting the government to somehow break us out of it. It's not going to happen.
What I meant with the Brexit angle is that the people who voted for Brexit demonstrated, by the act of doing so, that growth is not a top priority for them. It becomes a matter of paramount importance only when it comes in low under a Labour government.
Passing over the surname coincidence, this does illustrate two conflicting visions held by Team Trump, that for convenience we can identify with Elon Musk and JD Vance respectively. Sack workers, automate and trade (Musk) or impose tariffs and protect American workers (Vance). This extends to cars: Musk makes subsidised electric cars with Chinese bits; Vance wants to subsidise US-built petrol cars instead.
All these PBers angsting about low growth who voted for Brexit. They're like me as a kid always going out in winter without a coat and complaining it's cold.
If the economies of EU member states were booming, there might be a point there. Low growth is a problem across the board.
Ok, but that wasn't quite my point. I agree we're in an era of low growth. Indeed I keep saying (am just about alone in saying) we should be realistic about this and stop expecting the government to somehow break us out of it. It's not going to happen.
What I meant with the Brexit angle is that the people who voted for Brexit demonstrated, by the act of doing so, that growth is not a top priority for them. It becomes a matter of paramount importance only when it comes in low under a Labour government.
To add some cheer to the seasonanl gloom, various *technological developments* are - almost certainly - about to turbocharge growth around the world, UK included. Starmer might get lucky, even tho he doesn't deserve it
OTOH the same changes might mean millions unemployed - what can you do
“A friend in Latakia tells me they're very scared by what they're seeing.
Since yesterday heavily armed men, including some foreigners speaking languages they've never heard before, have been parading through and patrolling the streets.
These men are behaving like religious extremists. They are shouting at unveiled women and demanding they wear a hijab. They are asking with hostility any men and women who walk together if they are married or not. There is no more alcohol, shops that have alcohol have been vandalized, burned and closed.
"Latakia and Tartous have never been Islamic cities and this is very dangerous for them because the majority is Alawis and Christians," says my friend.
Still, some of the armed men are trying to comfort people. HTS guys are insisting everything will be fine and fair in the future, people just need to wait. But it feels like a massive gaslight as people are afraid by what they see as a rapidly changing Syria they don't recognize and perhaps don't have a place in.
There are also complaints about the media portraying everything as rosy and free when people feel a different kind of scared under these emerging authorities.
My friend did not want this attributed to their name out of fear. Reminds me of the old Syria.”
Was is ever going to be any different. We traded a secularish tyrant for Islamists and terrorists. The best case scenario is an Egypt style government, the worst case is Afghanistan.
This is why many of us on PB weren’t “celebrating” the fall of Assad - unlike others. It was grimly satisfying seeing him go, shame they couldn’t try him and execute him; but it was obvious that what would follow could easily be worse
I suspect it will be worse
The leader Jolani is a serious Islamist, ISIS-style, a genuine believer. He will impose strict sharia law. Around him are people even more extreme
The result will be closer to Afghanistan than Egypt, with one difference, Afghanistan is remote and it can be ignored, Syria is pivotally placed in the MENA and it borders Israel and NATO
It will suck in jihadis and export trouble
No Syrian was willing to lift a finger to defend Assad, so in their eyes, he was the worst available option.
The Ukrainians, and others, initially welcomed Hitler's troops
What parallel universe do you live in?
Are you claiming it is not a historical fact that many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazi invasion as being preferable to Stalin's tyranny?
That is a fact. Also entirely understandable. Stalin had within recent living memory inflicted Satanic suffering on the Ukrainians, esp the Holodomor, the deliberate starvation of the entire nation, which led to widespread cannibbalism
No wonder many Ukrainians preferred - at first - the efficient, smartly dressed Nazis. Then they realised that, incredibly, the Nazis were probably worse
Ukraine has had far more tragedy than any nation deserves. Slava Ukraini
There's a really great book on why this strip of Europe, north to south, has seen such terrible suffering: from the Baltics and Poland down through Belarus to Ukraine then the Balkans
They are the "shatterzone", a geopolitical faultline where so many empires and civilisations meet - Islam v Christianity, Orthodox v Catholic, Slav v Teuton, East v West, Russia v Europe, Ottomans v Austro-Hungarians
The savagery of the fighting between Russia, Poland, the Cossacks, Austria/Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Crimean Khanate was simply off the scale. Sienkewicz's books, With Sword and Fire, The Deluge, and Fire in the Steppe, bring it vividly to life.
One of the main characters ends up being slowly impaled, blinded, and burned alive, all from his POV (in turn, the character sold the hero's mother and girlfriend into Ottoman slavery).
A good policy badly implemented. but at least the Welsh government accept Drakeford.was wrong and have addressed it and it seems it will end up being where it should have been at the beginning
Communication between the councils and Cardiff Bay was dire. Here in the Vale the Council did a great job (on the whole). In Carmarthenshire it was dreadful. Every village from Carmarthen to Lampeter drops to twenty and there are plenty of villages.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Not really, what would be great for UK cos are lower electricity costs - which (should if the economics are set up correctly) correlate with more solar/wind capacity; which also happen to have CO2 benefits. I don't see how carbon capture lowers prices at all ?!
I agree lower energy prices would be great.
If govt is contributing to CCS, then presumably that shifts some part of the cost of that from private to public. So that would be lowering energy prices and increasing general taxation, assuming the CCS is going to happen anyway.
If CCS is the only way to meet climate targets AND we want to meet them, then it seems a reasonable use of public money to derisk it and make sure it happens.
Here's the thing though: if CCS results in higher electricity bills, then it slows the transition from petrol powered cars to electric ones.
In which case, it might have managed to make people poorer, disadvantaged British industry, and made net zero further away.
Is there another way to get to net zero? If not - (and I don't know, I'm not an expert) - then CCS has to happen. The question is who should pay for it.
If its govt subsidised, then that will reduce energy bills relative to otherwise and increase taxation.
If govt doesn't subsidise it, then the cost will fall on energy users - potentially as you say slowing the transition to electric cars.
Personally I don't know that all the way to net zero is necessary, but my understanding is CCs is necessary to get even vaguely close.
Passing over the surname coincidence, this does illustrate two conflicting visions held by Team Trump, that for convenience we can identify with Elon Musk and JD Vance respectively. Sack workers, automate and trade (Musk) or impose tariffs and protect American workers (Vance). This extends to cars: Musk makes subsidised electric cars with Chinese bits; Vance wants to subsidise US-built petrol cars instead.
Musk builds his cars in Shanghai now for the most part.
Omoda and BYD dealers springing up everywhere. The European motor industry I fear is about to die on its arse. Ford and General Motors will follow quickly irrespective of Vance tariffs, Stellantis/ Chrysler/Jeep is already dead in the water.
All these PBers angsting about low growth who voted for Brexit. They're like me as a kid always going out in winter without a coat and complaining it's cold.
If the economies of EU member states were booming, there might be a point there. Low growth is a problem across the board.
Ok, but that wasn't quite my point. I agree we're in an era of low growth. Indeed I keep saying (am just about alone in saying) we should be realistic about this and stop expecting the government to somehow break us out of it. It's not going to happen.
What I meant with the Brexit angle is that the people who voted for Brexit demonstrated, by the act of doing so, that growth is not a top priority for them. It becomes a matter of paramount importance only when it comes in low under a Labour government.
Well I voted for it, and a large part of my vote was for growth (or, more accurately, not-sclerosis) - I think membership of the EU contains a moderate risk of a catastrophic impact on growth. But I do accept your point: growth is not the be all and end all for all voters. To take a crass example, care for the elderly or the mentally handicapped does little or nothing for growth, but we still pay for it because we value it as a society.
But that doesn't mean government can't or shouldn't promote growth. Growing the country's economy is not the same as growing your own wealth, but there are broad paralells - the more nice stuff we have now, the less we can invest in our future. The more we can invest in the future, the better off we will be in 5, 10, 20, 50 years' time. There's a balance to be struck, of course. I appreciate a bit of state spending as much as the next man, and for some people it's critical. But we do also rather need to be investing in things which will enable future generations to put food on the table.
For anyone with any doubts, a painful take-down of the CNN report - which had @NigelB in literal tears obver his laptop, barely able to reach his cocoa as he wept
"Taking a look at the extremely bizarre video of CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward supposedly rescuing a Syrian prisoner, and the huge number of questions it raises:"
There are many other take-downs, and even more questions. The "prisoner" has clean fingernails, neatly manicured. He doesn't exactly look starved, he needs to go on a diet. His hair and beard have been recently trimmed. His acting is terrible. He's wearing a rather nice camel coat. 3 months locked in darkness??? Even genuine Syrian prisoners freed from Assad's dungeons are angry at this absurd pantomime, which - remember - got @NigelB lustily sobbing over his Tesco value prawn sandwich
No such thing as a "Tesco value" prawn sandwich. That's not how they're badged.
Blimey, Leccy peaked at £369/MwH wholesale yesterday.
Not enough wind.
Plenty of wind, just the fact the last government was so distracted by Nimbys that we can't generate enough of it.
Miliband is doing 100% the right thing
Increasing solar capability, increasing offshore and onshore wind capability, ensuring we have a gas back up, talking about limited small nuclear back up.
2030 is very ambitious, 2035 the end of a second Labour term is very achievable.
He coukd define his political career as the Minister who built A renewable energy platform for the 21st century in the same way Bevan built the NHS after Ww2
He must revisit the Seven Boom and look again at Hydro like Electric Mountain in Snowdonia, a concept sadly ignored for too long.
Wind generation for the previous day was 2.36 GW. On the 5th December we hit 22 GW for the first time, so 10.7% capacity of the system. Just how much wind capacity do you propose we build to produce significant wind power on days like yesterday ?
That's for the US - the analysis for the UK may well be different particularly for solar. We just don't have the sunshine duration that the USA has due to our latitude and position east of the atlantic.
The figures might work for us, but it'd need analysis based on the UK's specific factors.
All solar has 50% inbuilt obsolesence - it averages dark half the time, wherever you are. The problem for the UK is that when we need maximum power - during the winter months - that obsolecence is near to two thirds.
True, but we do have wind and quite a lot occurs in the winter.
Indeed. But if you have a high-pressure system sat over the UK in the winter, it can be well below freezing at night, but not a single turbine blade is turning. We had that situation this autumn for I think 12 days. We dusted down the programme for rolling brown-outs and black-outs to get ready for not enough power. Not helped by Sizewell B going through a 6-week shutdown to change out fuel.
Natural gas came to the rescue.
It's OK to rely on natural gas during periods of low renewables generation! It's clean, it has low capital and maintenance costs, and very large amounts of it can be stored.
In fact the joy about natural gas is that the dominant part of the cost of electricity generation is the fuel: having plants sitting around only lightly used is isn't a problem. (In this way, it is better than essentially all the alternatives.)
The UK should embrace gas as a bridge fuel, and remember there is nothing wrong with gas fired power stations only running for a small fraction of the time. (Indeed: in the old days - say 2000 - that was the role of gas. Most electricity generation then was coal or nuclear, and gas was just "peaking plants".)
Natural gas is of course the cleanest of the fossil fuels, but it's only really clean if you capture the carbon emitted in burning it. Hence the need for gas power stations with carbon capture.
That's bonkers, given that every year, the amount of energy that those plants will produce is going to diminish. If gas plants were going to be running 24/7, 365 days a year, then you could make a case for it. But in a world where gas load factors are going to be in the 30s or 20s, then the amount of carbon captured relative to the cost simply doesn't make economic sense.
Edit to add: 30s or 20s and falling.
How are you going to get to net zero without carbon capture gas plants? Gas is going to remain a significant part of the UK energy mix for, I'd guess, another couple of decades and a minor one after that. There's just no way you reach net zero in a reasonable time frame without carbon capture, and the best place to capture carbon is where it's emitted.
From a industrial strategy point of view, could be great for UK companies if they can lead the field in CCS.
Not really, what would be great for UK cos are lower electricity costs - which (should if the economics are set up correctly) correlate with more solar/wind capacity; which also happen to have CO2 benefits. I don't see how carbon capture lowers prices at all ?!
I agree lower energy prices would be great.
If govt is contributing to CCS, then presumably that shifts some part of the cost of that from private to public. So that would be lowering energy prices and increasing general taxation, assuming the CCS is going to happen anyway.
If CCS is the only way to meet climate targets AND we want to meet them, then it seems a reasonable use of public money to derisk it and make sure it happens.
Shifting electricity spend into gov't coffers doesn't help anything ! All Gov't spend has to be eventually paid for through tax, inflation or a weaker currency. Gov't spend on a wind turbine is OK because it generates power which can make goods, generate revenue and so on. CC simply doesn't do this.
I'm clearly failing to get my point across. My point is... CCS has to happen I think to achieve net zero. Someone has to pay. If it is energy users, then we will have higher energy prices. If it is govt, then we will have lower prices for users and higher taxation.
If you think CCS is unnecessary or won't work or don't believe in net zero then obviously you will think spending money on CCS is a waste. But that is not the position of our govt.
A good policy badly implemented. but at least the Welsh government accept Drakeford.was wrong and have addressed it and it seems it will end up being where it should have been at the beginning
Communication between the councils and Cardiff Bay was dire. Here in the Vale the Council did a great job (on the whole). In Carmarthenshire it was dreadful. Every village from Carmarthen to Lampeter drops to twenty and there are plenty of villages.
Comments
I'd agree that the NPPF element must just be the tip of the iceberg. My fundamental disappointment with it was that they'd foregone the opportunity for a reset - it's tweaked. Somewhere between 90% and 95% of the contents word-for-word identical with the previous one. This doesn't fill me with confidence.
Mandatory housing targets have been a thing for ages. The fact that the last government suddenly un-mandatorised them (is that a word? It is now) for a few months on the run-up to the election was the unusual thing; I think everyone was expecting that to flip around as it has.
Another concern of mine is the entire stance around the housing targets - there's no real linkage between the number given and how to achieve it. It's sort of like an atomisation of the aspiration rather than anything else. The Government decrees we'll build however-many houses per year, so this is how it breaks down per LA. If they had a linkage of "you get this much funding for this number of houses for infrastructure up front/to pay for x% of them as social housing," I think we'd get a lot more thought into practicalities.
Your area doesn't sound impressive. We've gone from "We need a new Local Plan" through "Let's brainstorm what goes into it," and "Actually, best to work hand in glove with the LA next door because much of the needed infrastructure sprawls across both" to submitting our new Joint Local Plan to the inspectors (including every single step and consultation and associated consultation periods en route) in three years flat.
I didn't see any significant changes to the presumption to approve (the long-standing para 11 compulsion) - the previous one is here: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20240103082015mp_/https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65829e99fc07f3000d8d4529/NPPF_December_2023.pdf
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More affordable housing and reduction in viability assessment validity - would be valuable if it turns out to work. Developers are usually very good in wriggling out of these, so (perhaps cynically), I'm not holding my breath. The fact that it's using exactly the existing way of doing it rather than, for example, Council buys and sells on, is what's making me think that we won't see a case of "This time, it'll work," so as to speak.
Essentially, your suggestions immediately afterwards - they'd be great, but my instinct is that they're not going to do that. I'd love to be wrong.
"Grey Belt" is defined in the Annex: "For the purposes of plan-making and decision-making, ‘grey belt’ is defined as land in the Green Belt comprising previously developed land and/or any other land that, in either case, does not strongly contribute to any of purposes (a), (b), or (d) in paragraph 143. ‘Grey belt’ excludes land where the application of the policies relating to the areas or assets in footnote 7 (other than Green Belt) would provide a strong reason for refusing or restricting development.."
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https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1867196581776077230
Just the most astounding bit of TV journalism imaginable. @clarissaward is a titan.
But it was the peakiest of peaking power plants in the UK. Some years it wouldn't generate a single kilowatt of power, beyond the monthly checks to make sure it still came on as planned. Other years it would run for 6 or 12 or 18 hours.
It existed solely because very occasionally a bunch of plants would be down for maintenance or a tree falling would have killed a connector down to the south west of the UK or power demand was simply at a all time peak for one reason or another. (Indeed, it usually ran when there was some combination of these.)
And you know what, that was fine!
But over time, people built Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGTs) as peakers. These cost almost nothing to buy, and had lower maintenance costs (gas doesn't block up pipes if left too long). And that oil (well diesel) fired peaking power station ended up closing down.
Every year more solar will be added to the grid, and every year more batteries. (And quite possibly more wind and some tidal too.)
So the amount of time that those gas plants will need to fill in will fall and fall and fall, just as the amount of time that plant in Devon operated fell and fell and fell.
Will it ever reach zero?
Does it matter? As @Malmesbury points out, after three cycles of 80% reductions, you're only at 0.4% of where you were before.
2030 you say? Check your calendar, we could well be a year into our first RefCon Government.
The David McKay calculations implicitly assumed that the panels would remian expensive, so the only ways to generate sufficient payback were either to restrict them to fairly favourable locations and orientations, or drive up the cost of energy a lot. Once the panels are super-cheap, you might as well put them everywhere- even if they don't collect much energy, they collect some, and it all adds up.
Paraphrasing one of my other favourite boffins, J.E. Gordon, the passing age of engineering was about controlling more and more energy in less and less space- nuclear being the acme of that. The coming age he saw as being about sucessfully collecting and managing diffuse energy. I reckon he would have loved cheap solar panels.
If you fixate on net zero, and you pile costs on UK consumers, you will end up with a backlash that results in worse carbon emissions.
Concentrate on building out solar and batteries (and maybe even tidal, although I have my doubts) and maybe build the connector to North Africa for solar from there, and gas demand will keep falling year after year.
If we're to pursue each other for apologies, then I won't have time for anything else.
Doesn't alter the fact of Assad disappearing tens of thousands in his prisons,, though.
Your UAP obsession remains deeply odd.
This is another opportunity for me to say that I wish someone could update the late, great man's book. It's over 15 years old now, and the renewables world has changed considerably.
We could export wind by night...
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
And the opportunity cost of not spending those resources on renewable generation is huge.
* Disclosure; I've never worked under the Golden Arches.
The other day I posted that ABC report that Ukraine had lost 1m troops (which you correctly questioned). However, the difference between us is that I instantly got suspicious of my own post - the narrative voice wasn't quite right, so I went down the rabbit hole and found the original source which had been doctored. I corrected my own error within 3 minutes
You, however, just posted that fake CNN shit - which I told you was dodgy right away - and you are content to leave it there and can't be arsed to even check if it's right, days later. I think that merits a big fat Christmas TUT
The new NATO Sec Gen Mark Rutte yesterday gave an estimate of total casualties on both sides of the Ukraine war, killed and wounded, as around a million.
It would do a very good job of adding a few extra hours of power in the morning and evening during winter, and (indeed) would produce at a decent level, very consistently, during daylight hours year round.
The issue with it is the same thing that bedevils all high capital cost energy production (nuclear and tidal too), is that you are going to be generating a lot of power at times when the cost of electricity is very low.
Edit to add: the situation is that the Ukrainians do not have the strength to drive the Russians out. And the Russians cannot take more than a mile or two here or there without utterly horrendous casualties. If the Russians stopped attacking, then the situation could solidify very quickly. But a fifty mile inroad into Ukraine and a frozen conflict isn't a victory for Russia, so they keep pushing. And Russians keep dying. And the Russian economy keeps getting more fucked up.
If govt is contributing to CCS, then presumably that shifts some part of the cost of that from private to public. So that would be lowering energy prices and increasing general taxation, assuming the CCS is going to happen anyway.
If CCS is the only way to meet climate targets AND we want to meet them, then it seems a reasonable use of public money to derisk it and make sure it happens.
I suspect that her previous Lloyds Bank boss said that when they realised she was appearing to take time off for hospital and doctors appointments to do Labour Party work.
She is a liar and should resign. Have I said that before? Oh yes, and I will keep saying it.
If so we have a winner.
Ken Skates explains what went wrong with Wales' 20mph rollout
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/ken-skates-what-went-wrong-30570405#ICID=Android_DailyPostNewsApp_AppShare
In which case, it might have managed to make people poorer, disadvantaged British industry, and made net zero further away.
"Taking a look at the extremely bizarre video of CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward supposedly rescuing a Syrian prisoner, and the huge number of questions it raises:"
https://x.com/CharlieNash/status/1867070374623707166
There are many other take-downs, and even more questions. The "prisoner" has clean fingernails, neatly manicured. He doesn't exactly look starved, he needs to go on a diet. His hair and beard have been recently trimmed. His acting is terrible. He's wearing a rather nice camel coat. 3 months locked in darkness??? Even genuine Syrian prisoners freed from Assad's dungeons are angry at this absurd pantomime, which - remember - got @NigelB lustily sobbing over his Tesco value prawn sandwich
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/health/aaron-siri-rfk-jr-vaccines.html
That is a fact. Also entirely understandable. Stalin had within recent living memory inflicted Satanic suffering on the Ukrainians, esp the Holodomor, the deliberate starvation of the entire nation, which led to widespread cannibbalism
No wonder many Ukrainians preferred - at first - the efficient, smartly dressed Nazis. Then they realised that, incredibly, the Nazis were probably worse
And it could be an absolute game changer for the N African economies.
If it has been emphatically debunked, then my bad
How many posts did I devote to it, and how many did you ? Chew on that, IQ guy.
You still can't do it
Private Eye's review of the year video:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uGOGIBw_84
They are the "shatterzone", a geopolitical faultline where so many empires and civilisations meet - Islam v Christianity, Orthodox v Catholic, Slav v Teuton, East v West, Russia v Europe, Ottomans v Austro-Hungarians
A really good read:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bloodlands-Europe-between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0099551799
https://x.com/mattparlmer/status/1867356653777301566
A preview of Making the US economy Great Again.
What possessed them? The female journalist in question has a history of faking news, or glamming it up, why does she still have a job? Also, there must be loads of real heart-rending stories in Syria, why stage this bollocks?
Surely, as we are engulfed by evermore bullshit, generated by machines and miscreants, the last remaining legacy media have a greater duty to be scrupulously honest? Otherwise their last remaining viewers will turn away and despair and rely entirely on social media
Tut TUT
You see, it's not hard.
Double standards or what.
As I have said, if it has since been thoroughly debunked then My bad, I apologise
London smog? Probably getting better after all those ULEZ extensions.
Donne's Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day no longer rings true. Thanks to Pope Gregory's calendar reform it doesn't fall on the solstice any more, but retains attenuated existence as the day of the earliest sunset. Tomorrow's sunset will be ever so slightly later but of course this is just a cheering illusion caused by the equation of time. The days continue to shorten until the 21st. Head South. There Is No Alternative. They say New Zealand's nice.
As a retirement spot you could do a lot worse. Short flights to multiple amazing cities. High quality of life. Amazing quality of food. Great mix of people. Safe streets. Civilised. Not as Islamic as the Malaysian mainland, much more easygoing
I might check it out this January
What I meant with the Brexit angle is that the people who voted for Brexit demonstrated, by the act of doing so, that growth is not a top priority for them. It becomes a matter of paramount importance only when it comes in low under a Labour government.
OTOH the same changes might mean millions unemployed - what can you do
One of the main characters ends up being slowly impaled, blinded, and burned alive, all from his POV (in turn, the character sold the hero's mother and girlfriend into Ottoman slavery).
If its govt subsidised, then that will reduce energy bills relative to otherwise and increase taxation.
If govt doesn't subsidise it, then the cost will fall on energy users - potentially as you say slowing the transition to electric cars.
Personally I don't know that all the way to net zero is necessary, but my understanding is CCs is necessary to get even vaguely close.
Omoda and BYD dealers springing up everywhere. The European motor industry I fear is about to die on its arse. Ford and General Motors will follow quickly irrespective
of Vance tariffs, Stellantis/ Chrysler/Jeep is already dead in the water.
I think we've seen the last of Mr Wallace though. Unless he's in court at some point.
But I do accept your point: growth is not the be all and end all for all voters. To take a crass example, care for the elderly or the mentally handicapped does little or nothing for growth, but we still pay for it because we value it as a society.
But that doesn't mean government can't or shouldn't promote growth. Growing the country's economy is not the same as growing your own wealth, but there are broad paralells - the more nice stuff we have now, the less we can invest in our future. The more we can invest in the future, the better off we will be in 5, 10, 20, 50 years' time.
There's a balance to be struck, of course. I appreciate a bit of state spending as much as the next man, and for some people it's critical. But we do also rather need to be investing in things which will enable future generations to put food on the table.
If you think CCS is unnecessary or won't work or don't believe in net zero then obviously you will think spending money on CCS is a waste. But that is not the position of our govt.