Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Prime Minister Theresa May has responded to climate scientist Myles Allen and others urging her to commit Britain to 100% renewable energy by 2050, and has demanded other countries follow Britain’s lead.
Climate change: UK government to commit to 2050 target
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analystGreenhouse gas emissions in the UK will be cut to almost zero by 2050, under the terms of a new government plan to tackle climate change.
Prime Minister Theresa May said reducing pollution would also benefit public health and cut NHS costs.
Britain is the first major nation to propose this target – and it has been widely praised by green groups.
But some say the phase-out is too late to protect the climate, and others fear that the task is impossible.
…
Number 10 said it was “imperative” other countries followed suit, so there would be a review within five years to ensure other nations were taking similarly ambitious action and British industries were not facing unfair competition.
…
But there will need to be a massive investment in clean energy generation – and that has to be funded by someone.
The government hasn’t yet spelled out if the cost will fall on bill-payers, or tax-payers, or the fossil fuel firms that have caused climate change.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48596775
British politicians have set the the goal; it is now up to Britain’s engineers to step up and do their part, to prove the doubters wrong, and figure out how to make solar power work during prolonged nation wide low wind conditions in the middle of a 50° North winter.
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Winter 🥶 is coming.
With it an army of white walkers.
Led by their High Zombie Lords,
Paul Ehrlich and Al Gore.
After a victorious fight against “pollution” our single-use PM is now engaged in a fight against plastic. I think this is a sign of decadence when the govrnment can find nothing better to do than tilt at windmills.
Thank you for sending your factories to South Carolina. We do appreciate it.
At least the project will get the highly qualified oversight such a transformative undertaking requires:
**
For the first time, young people will have the chance to shape our future climate policy through the Youth Steering Group. The Group, set up by DCMS and led by the British Youth Council, will advise Government on priorities for environmental action and give a view on progress to date against existing commitments on climate, waste and recycling, and biodiversity loss. They will start their review in July.
**
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-theresa-may-we-will-end-uk-contribution-to-climate-change-by-2050
Back to the 1850’s? Wood burning stoves, horse and carts, no flying, wind-powered international shipping, little refrigeration, and no cost/benefit analysis. It’s said that we get the politicians we deserve.
‘“imperative” other countries followed suit, so there would be a review within five years to ensure other nations were taking similarly ambitious action and British industries were not facing unfair competition.’
Seriously? They said this non ironically?
“Hi! I have decided through my own free will to not study for the exam. Now can we just check that everyone else has also not studied for the exam so my grades don’t look utter shite compared to theirs?”
Seriously, if you are the best in the world at anything, and you discover that one of your rivals has decided to stop competing at the same level, do you match with their self imposed restrictions in so that everything is still fair, or do you shamelessly remind them that Second is just First of the Losers and now even those people laugh at you.
The only plus out of this ‘plan’ is that in about 10 years I am going to be able to holiday in the UK for about 28 cents a day.
Apparently, May’s net zero emissions by 2050 is a got to the world;
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/bigger-than-brexit-theresa-may-s-parting-shot-is-a-gift-to-the-world-20190614-p51xnp.html
I should not post and type on a train with bass playing fingers on a tiny mobile phone. Gift!
I have been criticised above for inaccurate figures for the UK electricity domestic electricity supply. These figures may help people to understand why there is a problem.
Domestic properties in UK: approx 40million.
Grid maximum capacity 50 GW.
Other loads which cannot be dumped 10GW
40GW/40m = 1kW.
Perhaps you now see, but if not I will explain further. The distribution network depends on something called diversity. This means that full load (normally 60A / house or 13kW) is not drawn at the same time in all houses. Usually about 300 homes are fed from a 600A 3ph supply, each can take approx 6A (single phase) AVERAGE at the same time with no danger to the fuse. The supply transformer is usually 500kVA capacity in towns.
The consumption of showers and other high consumption appliances works only because all houses do not shower at once, If they do happen to do so the “big fuse” in the substation blows and there is a power outage. As this is rare one can see that the diversity works, without the infrastructure cost of a real supply of 13kW to each house, which would need a large transformer for every 40 or so houses, and would very unusually used at anything like full capacity. As the losses in each transformer are several kW even at no load, electricity prices would be considerably higher, just to support the losses.
I often wonder just what we (Brits) did to deserve to have such a person in charge of the UK.
A permanent bureaucracy, known as the Civil Service (Deep State for Americans) decides what a Prime Minister can do. ukcolumn.org has researched this – The Cabinet Office is the real power broker, its chief is the actual King of England.
One gets the feeling the vote does not matter. Brexiteers refuse to address the EU Defense Union, for example.
So the UK version of GND, which is thoroughly annoying CA labor right now, likely comes from that Office. How many powerfull positions are concentrated in one figure? Separation of Powers anyone? This permanent bureaucracy even extends to Australia!
It sure looks like a Commonwealth Common Purpose Effect.
Sadly, a once great nation has fallen into the ultimate corruption of the “climate Lie”. I truly hope that someday people pushing these lies are incarcerated.
The above comments are fine but will do nothing to convince the general public. Is there a scientist(s) prepared to stick his head above the ‘virtue signalling Group Think parapet and unequivocally provide the proof that CO2 does not cause anthroprogenic global warming ? If there is one could he/she please tell the world that we are not doomed, Professor Bryan May perhaps ? But then he gets money from the BBC so that wont work!
A lame duck PM in every sense.
I am not a detail guy, and maths was never my strongpoint. But I felt the need to do some sums – this is what I came up with – I thought I would attempt to figure out how many wind turbines we need to “power” our vehicle fleet…….the inter web gave me various figures i use these below…
we know that hydrocarbon fuels have a high energy density. One litre of petrol contains 34.5Mj
A few assumptions.
Cars only – (not trucks and other heavier vehicles) which total 30.9 million in the UK
Lets assume each have 45 litre tanks, and each day either use or have stored half a tank of petrol – so the amount of energy to meet this theoretical demand each day is
30,900,000 x 22.5 x 34.5 = 2.4E10 (23,986,125,000) Mega Joules
do you see where this might be going?
Lets look at wind turbine energy. Making the massive leap that we somehow get to an electrical nirvana so that all the electrical energy gets into our vehicles (we already know from above how much energy the driving public needs)
An offshore wind turbine is rated at 600MW, with approximately 50% conversion factor, so lets assume 300MW – thats 300MJ per minute. Energy produced during the day is
300 x 60 x 24 = 432,000 MJ
dividing one by t’other we get a notional energy requirement of 55,523 offshore wind turbines.
The UK currently has the largest offshore wind turbine population in the world ~ 2,000 turbines………
“Houston – we have a problem…….”
but maybe nuclear is the answer?
It’s relatively common for nuclear reactors to have a nameplate capacity in the vicinity of one GW or 1,000 MW.
In 24 hours, that could produce 24,000 MWH.
A MWH is 3,600 megajoules.
24,000 MWH is 86,400,000 megajoules.
Averaged over time, the global nuclear fleet has around a 90% capacity factor. For a combination of technical and economic reasons, it can’t afford to do less than that, has trouble turning down and can’t easily get over that with one to two year maintenance breaks.
So call it 77,760,000 megajoules for a nuclear power plant
so for the UK car fleet, we need around 23,986,125,000 / 77,760,000 = 300 Nuclear plants….
so that’s OK then…..
As I said, I am probably wrong in the maths and assumptions , but I think the general thrust and order of magnitude is about right…