Europe’s decline as oil overtook coal and the most important energy source is clear. The push to move away from oil by Europe because of this is interesting to say the least.
Check this site each day and you’ll soon pick up which countries have consistently low emissions and can export excess electricity.
They all have one thing in common…. and it isn’t weather energy.
Just waiting for the KWH to move up to £1 and then we can have as much as we like.
Theres only one option for energy security.
And we havent taken it.
Wind and solar arent it
The UK after investing all that taxpayers public money won’t see any of that £70 billion though, for it’ll all be sold off and privatized. That £70bn will be taken out of the country into the hands of other foreign state owned companies/corporations/Tory donors etc etc It won’t benefit the nation or the common people.
Paid for by tax payer.
Given to private Energy firm so the profits go to shareholders and the company with fancy accounting will pay no tax.
Tory MPs get donations from Energy firm.
Daily Mail run headline about Immigrants getting free holidays.
Regular Britons pay record Energy prices.
The circle of shit is complete.
Could, but the current government would rather give huge tax breaks to oil and gas companies.
Shame our politicians are so deeply in the pockets of fossil fuel giants.
big gas and oil,corps s, run this country now, shut up and pay your bills
This country has huge renewable energy resources. If only *this* time, they could be developed to support the country’s economy, rather than sold off for a pittance to everyone who wants to offer a tory a dollar (or a euro, they’re not as prejudiced as they make out when it comes to these things).
I’ll forgive Starmer a *considerable* amount of regressive bigoted “small c conservative” fuckery if he can just get this right because it turns out that we don’t have another planet to use instead and a fucking lot of this country lives on or near that 3 meter sea level mark.
All filtered into to government leaders pockets so it makes no difference anyway
Won’t happen.
Doing so would require the majority of wind and wave infrastructure to be done in Scotland where the overwhelming majority of power generating capacity is.
This would turn Scotland into a potential economic powerhouse, and Westminster can’t have that. For the UK to function, all parts need to be continually economically dependent on the South East.
They won’t be able to pull the same trick as with North Sea oil and gas, so they will just do the bare minimum to meet environmental requirements and continue to make the UK reliant on the London-driven service industry.
Don’t worry, our government will find a way to fuck it up and make it more expensive.
Ok. So here are my questions and requirements, please.
1) Who is building it, us or a company from somewhere else, and so all profits are extracted?
2) Some of this should be nationalised so that we retain some of the energy we produce.
3) Energy is supplied to locals, us, at below market rates. We get our usage before it hits the open market.
4) Energy is also supplied to UK based businesses at the same rate. Possibly other countries businesses as well if this means they invest in business here.
That’s all at the moment. I may add later. Signed, me, voter, and taxpayer.
In other words, this means 279,000 British people will be given work to do, all to provide other countries with electricity.
Wouldn’t you rather it was, say, the Germans working more, all to provide *us* with electricity?
This will make the generation of electricity cheaper, but will still be sold at a high high profit, regardless.
France produces a surplus of energy (from nuclear) and is just closer to people that would buy it. We’re not going to be selling much electricity to foreign nations. I guess maybe Ireland, since it still uses a comparatively large amount of coal and gas. But we’re still using gas too.
I dont care where the energy comes from providing it is affordable, and right now since gas prices are so damn low compared to their peak, I’m steadily getting more pissed off that the cut hasnt been passed on
Okay but why do that when Shell can personally pay you £250,000 to lie and take an anti-renewables stance? ^/^s
Does it matter? My energy bills are still bloodh ridiculous
Renewable energy was never going to provide cheap energy. People who think it does don’t understand how the grid works. The grid has one basic job – to keep the grid running within a frequency range. In grid terms, there is no such thing as a power station. Energy sources are known as Balancing Mechanisms – which is why power stations have BM codes. Demand for energy goes up and down and the grid calls on balancing mechanisms accordingly to keep the grid frequency stable. If they fail, you get rolling blackouts.
Conventional power stations are known as dispatchable energy. You can call on them at any time. To get the most efficient performance it’s best to have them running at their optimal thermal output. Only that doesn’t happen because the grid is obliged to use wind energy when it’s available – so gas stations have to be dialled down. They are then sat there, with all the overheads of existing, but they can’t be decommissioned because we can have weeks at a time with little or no wind. Then there are times with below average wind when you’re running gas stations, but below their optimal thermal output.
Those losses are directly a consequence of using intermittent energy – and to get a true cost of wind energy, those costs have to be added to the cost of wind. But the statistics never show this. Balancing cost figures do not include the capital cost – and cost of wear and tear of gas stations.
Moreover, the capital cost of windfarms cannot be directly compared with other sources of power. A gas station might cost around £800m, whereas a wind farm will cost less. But that wind farm will need replacing in under twenty years and will need nee pylon and substation infrastructure. It is not cheap to build and the industry believes more than £50bn will have to be added to bills to connect new wind farms to the grid. Onshore conventional power can use existing infrastructure.
Moreover, the cost of wind is not coming down as the industry claims. Renewable energy is no different to conventional energy in that it requires a great deal of rare earth minerals, the price of which is skyrocketing. Only now, we have to ensure that for every GW of wind capacity we add, that there is equivalent backup capacity. That means either new gas plant (because it’s the only thing you can build quickly), or rely on interconnectors to import energy from Europe – just as Europe is shuttering its own nuclear plants and the French nuclear fleet reaches retirement age. We have not seen the last of energy shocks.
Consequently, wind is diverting much needed investment away from more reliable and cost effective sources of energy. The £50bn required for new substations and transmission lines form the north sea alone would pay for two respectably sized nuclear plants. The renewables “industry” has consistently lied about the costs and reliability of wind. The more wind capacity we add, the more instability we add to the grid, and the greater the costs of mitigating it – because the system was never designed to cope with intermittency. The more we invest in wind, the bigger the problem becomes, and the bigger the bill to correct it.
Where I live, a company was trying to get the backing and a little bit of additional funding for a tidal lagoon. There are very few places in the world with tides like ours. The government have made it impossible for this tidal lagoon to go ahead. Set them back YEARS of green renewable energy. If this lagoon had been built when it was proposed, they would have had 6 years of data already on how good this is for the environment, reducing costs for those living there and maybe even pushing towards other coasts in Britain having these tidal lagoons built. The government won’t do anything unless it benefits them. Unless they get to pocket some of those billions.
bloddy hell stop using up our good quality farm land for solar farms. they’ve probably been farmed for centuries and will never go back to arable. we’re an island so have plenty of offshore where renewables are really successful.
​
Future us: oh we have less farmland than monaco, oh well better import everything like they do. but at least we have electricity we can sell sometimes and until someone else builds desert super solar and works out how to export it.
Don’t know why every party isn’t promising to go nuts on green energy.
It’s more popular than the NHS. The only reason you wouldn’t tap that sweet vein of vote juice is if you had something sweeter offered to you, like fossil fuel directorships.
How can we sell energy to countries closer to the equator who would generate more energy if they had the same panels within their own borders? And why can’t I find any other comments asking this obvious question? How could this make economic sense?
26 comments
Europe’s decline as oil overtook coal and the most important energy source is clear. The push to move away from oil by Europe because of this is interesting to say the least.
Could have, would have, should have … but didn’t.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
Check this site each day and you’ll soon pick up which countries have consistently low emissions and can export excess electricity.
They all have one thing in common…. and it isn’t weather energy.
Just waiting for the KWH to move up to £1 and then we can have as much as we like.
Theres only one option for energy security.
And we havent taken it.
Wind and solar arent it
The UK after investing all that taxpayers public money won’t see any of that £70 billion though, for it’ll all be sold off and privatized. That £70bn will be taken out of the country into the hands of other foreign state owned companies/corporations/Tory donors etc etc It won’t benefit the nation or the common people.
Paid for by tax payer.
Given to private Energy firm so the profits go to shareholders and the company with fancy accounting will pay no tax.
Tory MPs get donations from Energy firm.
Daily Mail run headline about Immigrants getting free holidays.
Regular Britons pay record Energy prices.
The circle of shit is complete.
Could, but the current government would rather give huge tax breaks to oil and gas companies.
Shame our politicians are so deeply in the pockets of fossil fuel giants.
big gas and oil,corps s, run this country now, shut up and pay your bills
This country has huge renewable energy resources. If only *this* time, they could be developed to support the country’s economy, rather than sold off for a pittance to everyone who wants to offer a tory a dollar (or a euro, they’re not as prejudiced as they make out when it comes to these things).
I’ll forgive Starmer a *considerable* amount of regressive bigoted “small c conservative” fuckery if he can just get this right because it turns out that we don’t have another planet to use instead and a fucking lot of this country lives on or near that 3 meter sea level mark.
All filtered into to government leaders pockets so it makes no difference anyway
Won’t happen.
Doing so would require the majority of wind and wave infrastructure to be done in Scotland where the overwhelming majority of power generating capacity is.
This would turn Scotland into a potential economic powerhouse, and Westminster can’t have that. For the UK to function, all parts need to be continually economically dependent on the South East.
They won’t be able to pull the same trick as with North Sea oil and gas, so they will just do the bare minimum to meet environmental requirements and continue to make the UK reliant on the London-driven service industry.
Don’t worry, our government will find a way to fuck it up and make it more expensive.
Ok. So here are my questions and requirements, please.
1) Who is building it, us or a company from somewhere else, and so all profits are extracted?
2) Some of this should be nationalised so that we retain some of the energy we produce.
3) Energy is supplied to locals, us, at below market rates. We get our usage before it hits the open market.
4) Energy is also supplied to UK based businesses at the same rate. Possibly other countries businesses as well if this means they invest in business here.
That’s all at the moment. I may add later. Signed, me, voter, and taxpayer.
In other words, this means 279,000 British people will be given work to do, all to provide other countries with electricity.
Wouldn’t you rather it was, say, the Germans working more, all to provide *us* with electricity?
This will make the generation of electricity cheaper, but will still be sold at a high high profit, regardless.
France produces a surplus of energy (from nuclear) and is just closer to people that would buy it. We’re not going to be selling much electricity to foreign nations. I guess maybe Ireland, since it still uses a comparatively large amount of coal and gas. But we’re still using gas too.
I dont care where the energy comes from providing it is affordable, and right now since gas prices are so damn low compared to their peak, I’m steadily getting more pissed off that the cut hasnt been passed on
Okay but why do that when Shell can personally pay you £250,000 to lie and take an anti-renewables stance? ^/^s
Does it matter? My energy bills are still bloodh ridiculous
Renewable energy was never going to provide cheap energy. People who think it does don’t understand how the grid works. The grid has one basic job – to keep the grid running within a frequency range. In grid terms, there is no such thing as a power station. Energy sources are known as Balancing Mechanisms – which is why power stations have BM codes. Demand for energy goes up and down and the grid calls on balancing mechanisms accordingly to keep the grid frequency stable. If they fail, you get rolling blackouts.
Conventional power stations are known as dispatchable energy. You can call on them at any time. To get the most efficient performance it’s best to have them running at their optimal thermal output. Only that doesn’t happen because the grid is obliged to use wind energy when it’s available – so gas stations have to be dialled down. They are then sat there, with all the overheads of existing, but they can’t be decommissioned because we can have weeks at a time with little or no wind. Then there are times with below average wind when you’re running gas stations, but below their optimal thermal output.
Those losses are directly a consequence of using intermittent energy – and to get a true cost of wind energy, those costs have to be added to the cost of wind. But the statistics never show this. Balancing cost figures do not include the capital cost – and cost of wear and tear of gas stations.
Moreover, the capital cost of windfarms cannot be directly compared with other sources of power. A gas station might cost around £800m, whereas a wind farm will cost less. But that wind farm will need replacing in under twenty years and will need nee pylon and substation infrastructure. It is not cheap to build and the industry believes more than £50bn will have to be added to bills to connect new wind farms to the grid. Onshore conventional power can use existing infrastructure.
Moreover, the cost of wind is not coming down as the industry claims. Renewable energy is no different to conventional energy in that it requires a great deal of rare earth minerals, the price of which is skyrocketing. Only now, we have to ensure that for every GW of wind capacity we add, that there is equivalent backup capacity. That means either new gas plant (because it’s the only thing you can build quickly), or rely on interconnectors to import energy from Europe – just as Europe is shuttering its own nuclear plants and the French nuclear fleet reaches retirement age. We have not seen the last of energy shocks.
Consequently, wind is diverting much needed investment away from more reliable and cost effective sources of energy. The £50bn required for new substations and transmission lines form the north sea alone would pay for two respectably sized nuclear plants. The renewables “industry” has consistently lied about the costs and reliability of wind. The more wind capacity we add, the more instability we add to the grid, and the greater the costs of mitigating it – because the system was never designed to cope with intermittency. The more we invest in wind, the bigger the problem becomes, and the bigger the bill to correct it.
Where I live, a company was trying to get the backing and a little bit of additional funding for a tidal lagoon. There are very few places in the world with tides like ours. The government have made it impossible for this tidal lagoon to go ahead. Set them back YEARS of green renewable energy. If this lagoon had been built when it was proposed, they would have had 6 years of data already on how good this is for the environment, reducing costs for those living there and maybe even pushing towards other coasts in Britain having these tidal lagoons built. The government won’t do anything unless it benefits them. Unless they get to pocket some of those billions.
bloddy hell stop using up our good quality farm land for solar farms. they’ve probably been farmed for centuries and will never go back to arable. we’re an island so have plenty of offshore where renewables are really successful.
​
Future us: oh we have less farmland than monaco, oh well better import everything like they do. but at least we have electricity we can sell sometimes and until someone else builds desert super solar and works out how to export it.
Don’t know why every party isn’t promising to go nuts on green energy.
It’s more popular than the NHS. The only reason you wouldn’t tap that sweet vein of vote juice is if you had something sweeter offered to you, like fossil fuel directorships.
How can we sell energy to countries closer to the equator who would generate more energy if they had the same panels within their own borders? And why can’t I find any other comments asking this obvious question? How could this make economic sense?