Current Brit Energy Policy – a short critique.
You would need to be a politician to have belief in this.
Based on the unproven, crackpot hypothesis of CAGW, the UK decided to provide itself with one of the most expensive sources of electricity yet devised – so called renewable energy, exemplified in the wind farm.
Massive subsidies for the wind farms are necessary for them to be brought into production else they are utterly uneconomic; such subsidies are paid for by the UK taxpayer.
The cost of producing a unit of electrical power by wind power is far more than that of traditional methods and the wind farm industry has been guaranteed returns thereby denying the possible utilisation of alternate technology – that single fact in itself is a disgrace and even the MSM aren't buying into the concept any longer.
The usual decision tools, such as cost-benefit analysis, don't enter into such politically inspired policy.
The traditional forms of UK energy generation have been closing down on the understanding that carbon-free generation will replace those methods – but this isn't proceeding as intended e.g. implementation of new major nuclear power plants in particular is a tad problematic.
This link provides a potted recent history of the fated Hinckley Point C project.
With Hinkley Point, squandermania has reached dangerous new heights | Simon Jenkins | Opinion | The Guardian
Alternatively, the previously coal powered Drax power station in the UK now ships wood “biomass” across the Atlantic ocean from the forests of the USA to fuel the boilers, on the grounds that it is using a sustainable resource, the forests of north America 1000s of miles away; the law of unintended consequences in action.
The high cost of such electricity leads to the loss of jobs in the UK: any UK industry that uses a lot of power, such as steel manufacturing, is at a decided disadvantage compared with other countries.
Hence, as a general rule, they are inclined to close down production and concentrate it elsewhere.
This will generate more of the CO2 emissions that the environment lobby loves to hate, with steel production in, say, China, powered by electricity from coal fired generation stations (or even lignite powered new-build stations in Germany).
You really do have to be a politician to think this one through.
So, the UK government and its' agencies, such as Ofgem, have developed plans to deal with the potential shortfalls in electricity generation that are increasingly likely during periods of high demand such as during winter.
What are these solutions?
On the supply side, it is to pay for existing systems of generation to remain in mothballs against the possibility of being brought on stream in extremis; some of the methods of earlier generating capacity are to remain available, but doing nothing useful, thereby requiring maintenance and oversight against the future possible intervention requirement, but only in times of emergency.
Stand by mobile generating capacity should also be held “on call” under retainer type contracts from those who specialise in such.
On the demand side, the intention is to pay large consumers of electricity to lower their use of electricity at peak periods; in other words, to stop productive work in UK factories to save the grid from cutting supplies of electricity to the general population – a rationing system, funded from taxation, via buying off the large consumers.
By this logic, and as a dooms-day type scenario, employees on zero hour contract conditions could have to go into their place of work on a windy winter day in order to harness the electricity generated in real time and remain laid off at peak demand times when the wind is not blowing.
Then there is CCS which is the carbon capture and storage nascent technology contained in government planning assumptions for national policy, but the research and pilot programmes have now been shelved, perhaps rightly so; but it remains a planning assumption by a current government that won't be around to either see the results of those plans or the consequences.
The economics of the madhouse, driven by the falsehood, and continually perpetrated by the political elites of the UK, anointed by the European Commission to be our new-age-green-religion mentors and masters.
139Likes
Linear Mode
