Via The GWPF
Energy bills will soar as green policies shut coal-fired power stations and cause an “electricity supply crisis”, experts say. Prices will be forced up as the UK has to import more power, according to a report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers today. –Craig Woodhouse, The Sun, 26 January 2016
The UK is heading for a severe electricity supply crisis by 2025, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) is warning today. IME, which has more than 112,000 members in 140 countries says the closure of coal and nuclear plants would lead to a 40-55% shortfall amid growing demand. And the group’s new report – Engineering the UK Electricity Gap – also says plans to plug the gap by building combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants are unrealistic as the UK would need about 30 of them in less than 10 years. IME head of energy and environment Jenifercorr Baxter, lead author of the document, said: “The UK is facing an electricity supply crisis. As the UK population rises and with the greater use of electricity use in transport and heating, it looks almost certain that electricity demand is going to rise.” –Keith Findlay, Energy Voice, 26 January 2016
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Watching Britain launch itself into one lunatic escapade after another it’s very hard to remember they were at the forefront of the industrial revolution and built a global empire. The expression ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire’ has now become ‘the sun has set on Britain.”
…Time to bring back the guillotines ??
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/paul-lepage-guillotine-drug-traffickers-218236
“What we ought to do is bring the guillotine back,” he said, interrupting the hosts. “We could have public executions and we could even have which hole it falls in.”
Hey, he must read my comments on WUWT !! LOL
Make it pay per view.
..Hansen being realistic ??
https://youtu.be/s0GFrQdhikY
One wonders if the data that shows renewable’s cause an increase in electricity in Europe, why are the leaders continuing the insane policy. Look at the data here:
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/europeelectricprice.png
Interesting. Thanks!
How many of these countries are providing subsidies or other offsets for residential rates? I don’t think it would be safe to they are uniform across this many countries.
Catcracking
January 26, 2016 at 6:44 pm
Totally awesome data. In a better world the “Renewables” disaster in Europe would be noted here in the USA so that we won’t behave like a bunch of lemmings.
Unless Donald Trump gets elected you can bet that the political elite will ensure that us “little people” are forced over the precipice of “Unsustainability” (aka unaffordable electric power).
Catcracking,
Here on the “Space Coast” I pay $0.10 per kVAh for my electricity. The cheapest electricity on your graph above is 0.12 Euros ( $0.13 per kVAh).
Florida is far from being the home of “cheap electricity” while Connecticut has the most expensive power in the USA at $0.17 per kVAh, It is shocking to note that no European nation can match the cost of electric power in Florida, while more than a dozen European nations charge more for electricity than Connecticut.
You folks need to heed the Republic of China that is building one Nuke per month and one coal fired electric power generating station per week:
https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/electric-power-in-florida/
‘You folks need to heed the Republic of China that is building one Nuke per month and one coal fired electric power generating station per week:’
They are also installing most of the wind power too. Not sure what that leaves one to conclude. In 2014 they installed 45% of the installed new capacity of wind and are by far the largest wind power producer in the world with 31% of total global installed wind capacity as at end 2014.
Really doesn’t matter “why” China did that (could be a purely political maneuver).
Keep your eye on the ball, Hop: Wind power can NEVER supply enough energy to power an economy useful to the modern world of any meaningful scale.
What % of China’s total power is supplied by windmills?
There you go.
26 Jan:BM Magazine UK: Threat of power crisis is growing, warns CBI
Tens of billions of pounds worth of investment in power stations, wind farms and other critical energy projects needed to guarantee reliable electricity supplies are in jeopardy because of a failure by ministers to reach key policy decisions, the CBI has warned.
In a letter released today by the business lobby group, and seen in advance by The Times, it argues that Britain is facing the threat of a supply crunch because of a shortage of investment and uncertainty around the future subsidies available for low carbon power…
“UK industrial firms already pay higher electricity costs than EU competitors, and spare capacity on our grid is getting squeezed out as we phase out older power stations,” says the letter, which is co-signed by 18 executives from some of Britain’s biggest companies, including ScottishPower, Ineos, Tata Steel and BOC…
Among other things, the CBI is seeking an extension beyond 2021 of the Levy Control Framework, a key green subsidy budget without which many wind and renewable energy projects will be unviable. It is also urging an extension of the Carbon Price Support mechanism beyond 2020. The lack of any clarity after that date muddies the economics of any power project due to come onstream…
ScottishPower is set to shut down Longannet, Britain’s second-biggest coal power station, in March because of increasingly tough emissions legislation. The loss of Longannet is likely to exacerbate electricity shortages at periods of peak demand, raising the likelihood of supply disruptions.
Last year Ms Rudd called for the closure of all UK coal plants within ten years, but no clear plan has been developed for how this will be achieved without creating power shortages…
http://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/newswire/threat-of-power-crisis-is-growing-warns-cbi/
26 Jan: UK Govt: What the Government is doing to secure investment in clean, secure and affordable energy
From: Department of Energy & Climate Change
In response to a letter about energy policy in the Times newspaper on 26 January 2016, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd said:…
“We know that old and dirty coal, and some ageing nuclear power plants will be closing over the next few years, and that’s precisely why we’ve put in place a long-term plan to ensure we have secure, affordable and clean energy supplies that can be relied on now and in the future.
“We are the first country to propose an end date to using unabated coal and we will do so in a way that maintains energy security, which comes first…
The top 10 things the government is doing to secure investment in clean secure energy:…
4.Set out world leading plans to close all unabated coal-fired power stations by 2025 ***IF WE’RE CONFIDENT THAT THE SHIFT TO NEW GAS CAN BE ACHIEVED WITHIN THE NECESSARY
TIMELINES…
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-the-government-is-doing-to-secure-investment-in-clean-secure-and-affordable-energy
Well that’s not helping … http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35415187
More detail in the telegraph …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/12123674/Hinkley-Point-go-ahead-delayed-amid-EDF-funding-doubts.html
I am actually a supporter of green power. Hydro, even unreliables like wind and solar have a place. But the devil is in the detail. And the detail I need answered is what are your priorities. In other words, when the wind stops at night (yes it happens – South Australia had a major power outage because of that): who’s power will keep going? In what order do you “shed load”, ie turn off the lights?
So, the machinery of government can be assumed to be so important it has to keep going, no matter what.
Likewise politicians.
And the police because correct thinking needs to be enforced.
And then greens, because it’s obvious.
But then where does that leave industry?
Hospitals?
You and me?
– in the dark, I suspect !
Simple – running on diesel. Dirty great gen sets dotted all over the place chucking out particulates and NO2. To say nothing of the noise nuicance for some of us. Thank you green idiots!
The major number of consumers (domestic) have little realisation how much power is actually used by industry, and how small a market their homes constitute. They also do not realise how dependent industrial processes are on a continuous supply compared with homes. Productivity in cities with unreliable power is really poor compared with the opposite because without reliable power one cannot manufacture anything efficiently.
Green policing or wish police cannot make up for lost production. Some have a vague notion that if everyone had these interruptions the standard of living would drop and that’s alright because we consume too much. This fails to accommodate the fact that investment remains high while productivity is low – in short, it is inefficient. Much more investment in resources and labour for scant return because they work only part of the time. It would be like building everyone two houses and living in one.
Resource consumption will increase without benefit. Consider how many windmills would be required – the resources involved – to generate anything close to the power of a gas turbine. Windmills won’t reduce resource consumption, they increase it because of their inherent inefficiencies.
“have little realisation how much power is actually used by industry”…
If you have ever been to an aluminum or steel smelting plant, there you’d feel the electric power shake the atoms of your bones.
It is mind boggling how much power this places use.
All the flower children, engaged in self pleasuring, worry about the power used in their USB LED keyboard light….They have ZERO knowledge, hence, zero perspective…..and they vote…for drama teachers.
Thankyou Paul. Yes I have posted before about a Bessemer Converter when I really was talking of an EAF. Yes, 80MW+ typically. Never seen a solar or wind powered EAF making metals for Apples etc.
Would that wood would be the answer! Rumford fireplaces & pizza ovens.
http://www.rumford.com/
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=outdoor+pizza+ovens&rlz=1C1CHFX_en-GBGB547GB547&espv=2&biw=878&bih=424&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizu82C08nKAhWHPhQKHSv8D9EQsAQIUQ
Just to open a bottle of 2016 Schadenfreude from Down Under, recall that if Germany exports electrons anywhere, on average 28% of them little particles or wavelets of stringy things (my understanding of sub-atomic matters is, as you can surmise, limited) are generated by digging up and burning that Greenest of Green fuels.
Lignite.
Another triumph of Die Grünen…..
When electricity prices soar and power shortages become common, the populace will revolt and send all the cagw controllers packing. It will take a while after that to recommission the coal fired generators. The greens will never recover after that as people will remember that bit of history.
“When electricity prices soar and power shortages become common, the populace will revolt . . .”
They are so arrogant and narrow-minded that this scenario has never occurred to them.
It’s important for the technically minded and responsible parties to speak up now so they in turn are not part of the excuse list later when the finger pointing and scapegoating process starts.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/26/the-value-of-petroleum-fuels/comment-page-1/#comment-2107795
[excerpt]
I have worked in the energy industry for much of my career.
When challenged on this question by green fanatics, I explain that that fossil fuels keep their families from freezing and starving to death.
Cheap abundant reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.
A few facts:
Wind Power is what warmists typically embrace – trillions of dollars have been squandered on worthless grid-connected wind power schemes that require life-of-project subsidies and drive up energy costs.
Some background on grid-connected wind power schemes:
The Capacity Factor of wind power is typically a bit over 20%, but that is NOT the relevant factor.
The real truth is told by the Substitution Capacity, which is dropping to as low as 4% in Germany – that is the amount of conventional generation that can be permanently retired when wind power is installed into the grid.
The E.ON Netz Wind Report 2005 is an informative document:
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
(apparently no longer available from E.ON Netz website).
Figure 6 says Wind Power is too intermittent (and needs almost 100% spinning backup);
and
Figure 7 says it just gets worse and worse the more Wind Power you add to the grid (see Substitution Capacity dropping from 8% to 4%).
Same story applies to grid-connected Solar Power (both in the absence of a “Super-Battery”).
This was all obvious to us decades ago – we published similar conclusions in 2002.
Trillions of dollars have been wasted globally on green energy that is not green and produces little useful energy.
**********
Today’s comment:
The following numbers are from the 2015 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, for the year 2014:
http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-review-2015/bp-statistical-review-of-world-energy-2015-primary-energy-section.pdf
Global Primary Energy Consumption by Fuel is 86% Fossil Fuel (Oil, Coal and Natural Gas),
4% Nuclear,
7% Hydro,
and 2% Renewables.
That 2% for Renewables is vastly exaggerated, and would be less than 1% if intermittent wind and solar power were not forced into the grid ahead of cheaper and more reliable conventional power.
This is not news – we have known this energy reality for decades. As we published in 2002.
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
We also write in the same article, prior to recognition that the current ~20 year “Pause” was already underway:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
I (we) now think global cooling will commence after the current El Nino runs its course, prior to 2020 and possibly as soon as 2H2017. Bundle up!
Regards to all, A
Substitution rate is 4%? That’s about 8% higher than I suspected.
…
plus or minus 10%
What did Japan do to compensate for the large power supply loss due to shutting down all its nuclear plants for several years immediately following the loss of Fukushima Daiichi Site by tsunami?
Well they did many things. But, one critically important thing they did was to immediately import a very large number of already manufactured gas turbine-generator units for peak demand periods; while also really ramping up imports of gas.
Expensive as hell due to urgent supply/demand premium, but they had to do it.
UK will probably procrastinate due to the dream of green and visions of COP21 ideas, then UK will be forced into a too late to do anything else reactionary effort. I think one of the things they then will need to do is the gas turbine generator route like Japan.
John
And where did Japan get all that natural gas?
– from Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imports costing about four to eight times as much as North American natural gas.
Oh Fukushima!
Re: richardscourtney 1/27/16 @ur momisugly 12:06pm.
Students should heed what richardscourtney writes. Feeding it back in PoliSci 101 will get them high marks. What he writes is academic, i.e., impractical. He is right about an intellectual difference between Fascism and Communism, but it is a microscopic view based on the propaganda of the movements, not on their reality. Some suggest the left-right dichotomy lies on a circle, not a line, the Equator in some socio-political sphere of influence. From the top down, both isms remove power from the people to enslave them under one person, the omnipotent dictator.
RSC at one point says, I proclaim socialism which attempts to give everyone the ability to live the way they each individually want to live. Is a comma missing? Without a comma after socialism, RSC hedges his bet by proclaiming only that socialism in which the people are free. Or, what seems more likely, RSC proclaima all “socialism, which attempts to free the people”?
Either way, socialism doesn’t do that. It is no more for the good of the people than was the regulation of DDT, the dietary fat scare, or the anti-CO2 movement. Socialism is political environmentalism. It’s for the good of the dictators and for tenure. These movements work by taking freedoms and well-being from the people, which the people resist by working around the rules, answered by the government handing down more rules. The end game would be complete enslavement, except it is historically wrecked by war, rebellion, or bankruptcy. Socialism is unique, being self-limiting.
A strong movement exists in the US to restore RSC’s ideal, recognized as individualism or anti-socialism. That movement is not likely to prevail. The national debt, a legacy of the left, represents a massive expansion of the money supply. It is, by the better definition, inflation, but the inevitable price rise has been forestalled by the concurrent low velocity of money. The next administration, odds-on Republican, will relieve that bottleneck, immediately cutting back on regulations and restoring confidence, but thereby unwittingly, like everything GOP, unleashing perhaps the worst bout of inflation-in-name the US has ever known. The response will be price controls, shortages, and more regulations, not less. The combination will limit the GOP to one term, and socialism will be reinvigorated, a backdoor win for richardscourtney.
It’s the stupid party vs. the evil party. And while they duke it out, the climate will lag behind the Sun, the ocean will quickly regulate the CO2, and both parties will remain clueless.
P.S. Apologies to Tony and all for yesterday’s lengthy double posting. Explanation on request.
Don’t need no steenking power stations…..we got Demand Side Regulation!
Not enough electric stuff in de wires, cut off dem big users den….
Britannia rules the seas. And next the sea surface temperatures.
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
Same as it ever was,
same as it ever was,
same as it ever was
Same as it ever was,
same
as it ever was,
same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was,
same
as it ever was.