Place your bets now on when the lights will go off
Deepening Energy Crisis: Britain Has Become ‘Uninvestable’, Analyst Warns
Danny Fortson, The Sunday Times
The German owner of Npower is set to write off hundreds of millions of pounds on the value of its British power plants in the latest sign of a deepening crisis among the big six energy suppliers. RWE, one of Europe’s largest power companies, will reveal the British loss as part of an expected £4bn writedown of the value of its fleet of power stations.
RWE npower’s Major Power Plants in the UK (2007)
The loss arises from pollution taxes that are forcing the closure of old coal-fired plants. Big subsidies for renewable energy, meanwhile, have made even gas-burning plants, which are much cleaner than coal stations, loss-making.
The hit will alarm Whitehall, which is increasingly worried about the lights going out. Companies have stopped building new power stations amid a political and regulatory backlash, sparked last year by Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices.
RWE, for example, has not commissioned a new plant in Britain since 2009, when it broke ground on a big wind farm and a gas-fired plant in Pembroke. Since then it has sold out of a consortium to build new nuclear plants, closed down plants capable of lighting more than 4m homes, and cancelled a proposed £4bn offshore wind farm. […]
Peter Atherton, analyst at Liberum Capital, said Britain had become uninvestable as political pressure over soaring household bills has intensified. “I can think of a dozen very good reasons not to invest in the UK, and not one good one to invest here this side of the election,” Atherton said.
Full story (subscription required)
==============================================================
h/t to The GWPF
When the light and heat (or the a/c in summer) go off because of the lack of basic solid power that can’t be met by renewables (wind, solar etc) will the populace finally rise up and toss out the politicians that created such a regulatory mess that building new power stations is next to impossible?
That might be the day the execrable Bob Ward goes back to his home planet.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This is an useful web site for monitoring UK National Grid status …
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Shows total demand and sources of supply.
One thing puzzled me. Despite warnings of the UK running short of energy supply, the current annual peak demand looks to be in the low 40s GW. Looking at the top left Demand dial, that 40 or so GW doesn’t look anywhere near a danger zone where available supply would be inadequate. Any thoughts?
Actually, it must be breezy in Blighty today. Wind is shown supplying 8.44% of electricity demand. Lots of politicians with their mouths open I assume. 🙂
At those who say you get what you vote for? Well actually you don’t. The current government was formed with no clear mandate from the people yet we still got it.
It’s worth noting that this news is about 3 weeks old and Peter Atherton has been saying it for much longer. He’s looking at it simply from an investment angle. Even should the power companies become attractive once again to investors it won’t change the policy of the power companies Re: new projects because they are firmly in the wind power subsidy trough for as long as it remains full.
And it really is old news as this time last year at the Power Gen conference it was suggested that the whole of the power industry in Europe was too sick to invest in due to it being subject to the whim of government policy and the vast diversity of those policies across borders.
http://news.cision.com/power-gen-europe-2013/r/is-the-european-power-sector–uninvestable-,c9372809
The large power plant DRAX has been converted from coal-fired to wood-pellet burning. The energy to mass wood to coal is 18.5:31 0 (roughly) and density, 370:750, for a combined energy by volume ratio of 0.30 [0.60 & 0.50, combined]. The cost of operation (providing the fuel, special plant maintenance and removal of residue) on a mass basis for wood pellets has to be 0.30 that of coal for this conversion to break even. It is obvious that pellets brought from the US will be more than 1/3rd the cost of coal brought from railway-connected British coalmines. The Drax facility must rely on subsidies or, the same in a different way, a price advantage to the other stations.
Drax supplies 7% of UK power. If other, lower-cost per unit energy plants are shut, the financial impact of just this one powerplant will be noticeable.
If Britain is worried about cost as well as energy security, look for Drax to reconvert to coal in its entirety or to limit its biomass portion “until market conditions improve”. Drax is one of the canaries on the CAGW coalmine.
We might be approaching the state when the parties that stood most to gain from green energy policies may begin to realize that the society they are ripping off for their self interests cannot sustain them and they will need to decide what worst, going down with the society or getting an honest job and earn a living from doing real work that does not involve scaring the public.
@John F. Hultquist
Next thing will be National Bundling Day.
And sorry I meant to also say in my previous comment that ‘the lights will not go out’ as there is adequate generation now for demand. What will happen is that more and more expensive overseas fuel for generation will have to be bought driving prices up. And I think that the country is already at breaking point on fuel prices, the politicians know it and see action on it as a vote winner. My next vote could well be for a different party than usual and it will be based upon energy policy. And for me that’s a huge thing after voting the same way for 30 years.
“When the light and heat . . . go off because of the lack of basic solid power that can’t be met by renewables (wind, solar etc) will the populace finally rise up and toss out the politicians . . . .?”
Of course not. Demagoguery works.
The politicians will convince enough low-information voters that their suffering was caused by the rich, and by corporations, and by those rapacious climate deniers.
Face it. We’re long past Tyler’s point in time when “voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.” Combine this knowledge with the fact that the average voter wouldn’t understand such a concept at all, and we’re well and truly . . . doomed.
Gamecock says:
“The Dems are decadent. They don’t know where things come from, or how things get done.”
Yes. And this is their primary constiuency.
MarkG says:
March 2, 2014 at 12:21 pm
“What exactly did you expect me to do, in order to get a government I ‘deserved’?”
Nothing, my friend, unless you seriously want to get into a discussion of who is in power in any given country and why. The simple point is that any given individual is powerless in a democracy. The herd voting for the mainstream will always maintain the status quo.
If you believe, as I do, that the current consensus in energy policy rooted in deference to the IPCC and its forecasts of doom is cobblers that no amount of wind power can resolve, then you have nobody to vote for.
democracy can be improved by requiring anyone standing for election to have demonstrated some skill in governance and leadership.
as it is anyone on the political list ie mates of mates of fundraisers who are perhaps not even local get ‘elected’ then are expected to learn on the job which gives the civil service at least 2 years to bamboozle them before the politco realises the civil servants and the lobbies have been playing ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ with him.
qualification will never happen as people will see that as an ‘oppression’
however some are putting forward the idea of direct democracy. Why ‘elect’ someone to vote ‘for you’ [which is essentially a pre internet model from the middle ages] when these days u can vote on the issue yourself so u end up with real crowd source governance e.g http://www.opendemocracy.net/thorvaldur-gylfason/iceland-direct-democracy-in-action
if u can do your tax return online no reason why u can’t vote online/mobile etc.
if the current model is not working and results in serious ‘evils’ e.g iraq, climate change taxes etc seems reasonable a change could be tried?
The prophecy for this period is that the philosophy of Thomas Moore would be totally discredited due to the over reach of his followers.. England was the home turf of Thomas Moore. Things will have to get very bad before Liberal Progressive and Socialist become a curse for all time. pg
“We might be approaching the state when the parties that stood most to gain from green energy policies may begin to realize that the society they are ripping off for their self interests cannot sustain them”
That mattered a few decades ago, when the politicos would go down with the sinking ship. But, today, they expect to move on to a fat EU job before it collapses, so the long term impact of their short term choices is irrelevant to them.
Modern mass democracy is the only political system that actively selects for psychopaths. Why should they care how many people suffer, so long as they get what they want?
jauntycyclist Mar 2 12:1m – you are so right about democracy institutionalising incompetence. As Winston Churchill said “Democracy is the worst form of government ….. …..“. Do I need to finish the quote?
johnofenfield says:
March 2, 2014 at 12:25 pm
“We have also converted other Coal Burning stations to enable them to burn WOOD”.
Yep, absolutely, and wood chips imported from the US, don’t forget. Drax has been converted to wood power, but it all rolls over the Atlantic in ships.
Now, I’m an ‘environmentalist’, so to speak. Not a green freak, but I believe in protecting the environment, and trying to make sure that our children have a decent world to inherit from us. We all are. I also believe in them having jobs and an economy to inherit from us, and trying to make sure we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
But to a world-friendly (I recycle as much as possible and expertly compost everything for my garden) and a logical kind of guy, can somebody please explain the eco benefits of shipping all these wood chips across the Altantic? That seems like an environmental cost, not a benefit.
Mike Jonas
Voting someone else in to vote for me is technologically outdated and philosophically redundant . why can’t i vote on the issue myself and thus have real democracy?
Personally i have no objection to trying direct democracy where people vote on the issues themselves. If twitter can cause revolutions then it would be crowd electing that would determine the laws.
crowdsourcing works with finance and it works with open source creation software which would be similar to creating open source law.
the uk would probably end up with both death penalty and legalising certain drugs but it wouldn’t have ended up with iraq war.
UK energy policy is ridiculous and unworkable from all the main parties. Only UKIP seems to have any grip on the subject at all. But conversely the Green Party policies are even more daft than what is going to be elected – the main parties.
And, yes, the main parties are going to be elected. Why? Because, although they have no workable energy policy, no-one cares about energy policy. It won’t affect people’s voting intentions.
Here are the most important issues for the UK electorate. Energy policy doesn’t even register. And that won’t change because the price of importing energy across the connectors will rise very gradually.
“The UK public voted those clowns into power and keep doing so” A lot of commentators are blaming us voters but who can we vote for? All but 5 of the MPs in the House of Commons voted for the 2008 Climate Change Act, the source behind all this mad policy. Any party with any chance of forming a government is led by paid up members of the CAGW brigade. My generator is primed!
jauntycyclist says:
March 2, 2014 at 11:37 am
if russia turns off the gas and oil to europe that would be a game changer.
===========
Why do you think the Germans have made an about face and are building coal fired power plants all of a sudden? They don’t want to be held hostage to the whims of Russian territorial ambitions.
@M Courtney. Energy policy will have the sort of impact on the economy that a banking bubble has had in the recent past. Only difference, it will happen more slowly and take a lot longer to recover from, in other words jobs will be driven abroad. This is happening in Germany.
In this and many other regards, the ConLibLabs are very dangerous animals. They have that combination of never having had a real job yet believe they know best. The only (democratic) way to deal with them is vote them out of office, which means there’s no ootion but UKIP.
“Personally i have no objection to trying direct democracy where people vote on the issues themselves.”
Until you wake up one morning and discover your neighbours voted to steal all your stuff while you were asleep.
jauntycyclist says:
March 2, 2014 at 12:51 pm
“Personally i have no objection to trying direct democracy where people vote on the issues themselves. If twitter can cause revolutions then it would be crowd electing that would determine the laws.
the uk would probably end up with both death penalty and legalising certain drugs but it wouldn’t have ended up with iraq war”.
The point you make at the end is absolutely the right one. Given absolute power, the people will make a mess of it. The “people” are overly influenced by the media, they believe pretty much everything they are told if it’s on TV, they never bother to check things for themselves and they are highly given to being manipulated by appearance, not substance.
Mike Jonas:
As Winston Churchill said “Democracy is the worst form of government ….. …..“. Do I need to finish the quote?
~~~~~
It’s impossible to escape such propaganda in the west, so of course there is no need to finish the line.
Churchill was the first to gas the Kurds. What a legend! What a hero! What a fabulous man little man he was.
Topically, Hamburg reclaimed it’s public electricity from the fascist sector. The wishes of the people prevailed:
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/news/hamburg-germany-buys-its-energy-grid-back-400-million
Fascism (according to Mussolini) is when the government works with corporations to rule over us, and we get the privilege of choosing between pre-selected celebrities foisted upon by the banskters.
Churchill called that system of fascism “democracy” and said it was the best thing we could hope for.
I want our public electricity restored to public ownership.
I don’t want to be pimped out to corporations by my public “servants” (masters).
I want some say in how I live my life: in prison colony Australia we don’t have any say – just a choice of dictator every few years. I want someone to come and liberate us from the fascist tyranny.
Stephen Richards says: March 2, 2014 at 11:03 am Can’t wait to see the old eatonians…
The ‘old eatonians’ will probably eat each other but I expect the Old Etonians to keep contributing the benefit of a good education to the life of UK. ‘The battle of Waterloo…’, loses in the First World War 1,157 dead, 37 Victoria Crosses… (Disclosure; I went to a much less grand school that only lost 650 dead, from a school of 450, in WW1).
Bill Marsh says:
March 2, 2014 at 1:01 pm
“Why do you think the Germans have made an about face and are building coal fired power plants all of a sudden? They don’t want to be held hostage to the whims of Russian territorial ambitions”.
Interesting question. The answer is that it was a political knee-jerk to Fukushima. Merkel decided she didn’t like nuclear power. Ergo, they have decided to move away from nuclear into coal options.
The best part of this is that she is clearly being briefed that the CO2 panic is over. That it’s a dead duck.
Oh, incidentally, the German policy decision to abandon nuclear means that until their new coal plants are up and running they will end up importing large amounts of electricity from France, which is 70% nuclear generated, but never mind that. Not to worry.