Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova; Britain may be about to pay a heavy price for their mad dash for renewables, and neglect of energy self sufficiency. As Brexit negotiations enter a standoff, France is threatening to embargo desperately needed British imports of dispatchable electricity generated by French nuclear reactors, unless Britain permanently cedes fishing rights in British territorial waters to the EU.
Macron in last-ditch Brexit punishment with threat to devastate UK with energy blockade
By OLI SMITH
PUBLISHED: 00:46, Mon, Oct 19, 2020Emmanuel Macron reacted furiously to Boris Johnson’s claims that trade talks are “over” between the UK and EU. Mr Macron has played hardball in the talks on fisheries, insisting on Thursday that French fishermen would “not be sacrificed” for the sake of a deal. However, if the UK leaves the EU without a deal then French fishermen could faced being banned from British waters.
In response, the French President has signalled the EU would launch a devastating energy embargo against the UK unless Boris Johnson gives in on fisheries.
Following the EU summit in Brussels on Friday, Mr Macron told French radio that if the UK does not allow French fishermen in its waters, the EU would have to block the UK’s energy supplies to the European market.
…
Read more: https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1349210/Brexit-news-Emmanuel-Macron-France-fisheries-energy-blockade-threat-EU-punishment-vn/
This vulnerability to French energy blackmail is a disaster of Britain’s own making.
For over a decade British politicians have pandered to radical greens, by penalising British operators of reliable dispatchable generators with carbon taxes and subsidies for renewable investors.
So long as France was willing to prop up Britain’s green charade by sending their electricity to Britain, everyone was happy. But now the green fantasy is unravelling, Britain might be about to learn the hard way why reliable energy is important.
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Macron is threatening to stop UK electricity imports to France. He didn’t say he’d block French exports to us. Read the end of the Express article.
When two PWR closed by fiat and more closure down the line, with dams being destroyed, how is workable in the long term for French energy supply?
Ah! I should have read more closely. Gridwatch seems to show me that right now UK is exporting power to France
Griff, Since May the average for the French IC is 540MW and the Dutch 400MW imported into the UK. Using Gridwatch data. My estimate is that the UK has imported 150GWh from France and 110GWh from Holland which comes to about 3.5% of demand over that period.
Now if I were Macron I’d up the price rather than cutting off the supply completely, after perhaps cutting if off during a particularly cold windless morning/evening. Refusing to take the UK’s excess wind, there’ll be plenty from Spain, Germany and Denmark anyway, will cause more expense for the UK who’ll have to pay wind and solar generators to switch off.
The top article makes the same mistake – France are threatening to block imports, not necessarily exports.
For renewables which routinely overproduce, that’s almost worse.
Not sure how blockade is not a declaration of war. That could escalate quickly.
Macron is not known for his subtlety, but for his pride and his opinion of having exceptional intellect.
EDF made big nuclear investments and can’t afford a war.
A blockade is preventing anyone from trading.
France is just saying that they will no longer buy and sell.
Imported natural gas, anyone? Or back to coal.
Put a Challenger 2 on a cross channel ferry. They’ll have chucked the white towel in before it docks in Calais!
Isn’t there a place where you can play high stakes poker and if you are a rookie the TV producers lend you money?
That way Macron could put his skills in practices without betting the electric grid.
A reliable nuclear energy vs hand waving wind farm allegorical tale :
“La Cigale, ayant chanté
Tout l’été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue :
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau.
Elle alla crier famine
Chez la Fourmi sa voisine,
La priant de lui prêter
Quelque grain pour subsister
Jusqu’à la saison nouvelle.
« Je vous paierai, lui dit-elle,
Avant l’août, foi d’animal,
Intérêt et principal. »
La Fourmi n’est pas prêteuse :
C’est là son moindre défaut.
« Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud ?
Dit-elle à cette emprunteuse.
— Nuit et jour à tout venant
Je chantais, ne vous déplaise.
— Vous chantiez ? J’en suis fort aise.
Eh bien ! Dansez maintenant.”
Jean de la Fontaine – 1668
Not a very merry dance, I’ll say!
Terrible article. Britain imports French nuclear electricity because it is cheap. In the depths of winter Britain exports coal and gas power to France, when France and renewable NW Europe is deficient. Nuclear electricity is Frances third biggest export.
Spinning it into a critique of Britain’s renewable idiocy is tempting, but wrong.
Macron’s threat is empty: France would lose far more than England. England has enough reserves to power itself as well as part of France.
Data: https://gridwatch.org.uk
You’re just confusing us by using facts!
JF
Correct. I posted more detail upthread. I wonder if Macron even consulted before spouting. I doubt it: the EdFpeople are smart.
France’s Macron bluster won’t make any difference on current Brexit negotiations. Germany’s Merkle is not keen on U.K. being a thoroughly alienated market for the European Union members who sell so much to the U.K. people.
France wants a longer time line for negotiated fishing rights in U.K. waters & U.K. says they’ll only revisit French access limits on a year by year basis. They probably are seeking a compromise that allows the French more than just an annual short term plan establishing fishing access & yet not much longer before U.K. requires periodic access limit reviews.
The scale of the transfers hourly between Germany the UK and France is illustrated here
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/graphic-presentations-of-electricity-generation-in-three-european-countries-2018-12-2019-11/
Any spare French capacity will be needed by the nation still in EU that has comm3to renewable – Germany. I imagine that the Dutch Interconnector will go off for the same reason
Even with a UK – EU trade deal it’s likely that the energy will stay in the EU in the direst circumstances
A note: France needs to export its nuclear power at times of low demand… it can’t easily turn its reactors on/off, up/down. That’s why Germany imports French nuclear power – and the UK: given a weekend, French national holiday, etc, there’s a lot of nuclear electricity going cheap…
And then there are those times when the flow in the Loire is low, knocking off a few nukes. France then imports
I have long wondered why the EU chose an intransigent French spokesperson i.e. Michael Barnier to handle the Brexit discussions, which have been dragging on since the UK decided to exit the EU in 2016.
Now I see the reason it has been such slow going.
The French logic is completely inverse to what any sane negotiator would be trying to do .
Here we have a situation where the Brits will take back total control of their internationally defined waters around the UK. The UK will license boats that wish to fish in its home waters from whatever nation they might originate. The rules for licence holders will be fair and equal.
The French position is to demand open unfettered access to the possession of another nation’s assets, i.e. fishing waters, and if they do not get that right, they will stop energy trades between UK and France.
That threat would take away from France 2GWs of almost continuous exported electricity to the UK with the resulting loss of income so desperately needed in France, to help cover the cost of state expenditures.
The phrase cutting off ones nose to spite ones own face comes to mind.
Good points. The EU negotiator commented derisively about the English habit of high tea.
This shows he was not focused on any real issue and only played to some European crowd, not the UK.
That just breaks trust and confidence in the process.
The UK would be better to use international norms and negotiate the power exchange and fishing, from a position of strength.
Another note: there is a day ahead European electricity market… spot prices set 24 hours ahead, based on availability of predicted and predictable renewables across Europe as well as fossil and nuclear.
All European nations are in a connected electricity market, expecting to import/export as prices change.
See it’s all about the money.
Otherwise they would import/export as Demand required rather than as Prices Change
Well, this is an excellent development (if true). This may be just what is needed to crush the parasitic renewables “industry” in the UK. Nothing like the reality of an energy crisis to focus minds and spirits on what really matters. After all, it was the energy crisis in the 70’s when the Arabs turned off the supply of cheap oil that sent the French on a crash program of nuclear power.
Umm, re fishing. What are we going to enforce the new fishing rules with. Can’t stop a few inflatables at Dover
We British have a traditional hand gesture which we now attribute (almost certainly erroneously) to our victory over the French at Agincourt.
Its the two-finger salute.
The French used to cut the first two fingers off the right hand of any English archers they captured to stop them pulling a longbow..
The two finger salute was showing them that the remaining archers had their bow fingers and were up for a fight.
In WW2 Churchill used a reverse two finger salute to signify victory, probably with a hint to the Nazis of the traditional salute.
Why do you think it is almost certainly erroneous? It might be erroneous, but it’s a bloody good story. And if, as seems entirely likely, the French treated captured British (English?) archers to the two-bow-finger chop, to render them useless as combatants, then the gesture has a very solid explanation – this is rarely the case for complex gestures, so why not enjoy it?
Apologies to the Welsh as they also provided expert archers.
The archers needed to be trained up from boyhood to cope with the war bows, and had upper bodies built like gorillas.
If you visit the Mary Rose museum in Portsmouth they have various types of bow you can try out with captive arrows. The war bows need a lot of grunt to pull, whereas the ladies bow is easier but still needs quite a strong pull.
And isn’t this fun? Speaking from a climate-change-skeptic UK position, that is. I, we, have been waiting for reality to bite for some time. Now it is doing so. As they say in the USA – popcorn time (nobody eats popcorn in cinemas here – it smells, and eating with the fingers is vulgar except when out on a grouse-shoot).
And there’s the rub. Ireland relies on EU energy wheeled across the UK.
The cheapest fix is to build CCGTs on the closing coal- plant sites and import from our friends in Norway.
“For over a decade British politicians have pandered to radical greens, by penalising British operators of reliable dispatchable generators…”
At least the Drax biomass power plants are reliable and dispatchable thanks to imports of American wood pellets.
“… unless Britain permanently cedes fishing rights in British territorial waters to the EU.”
Oh, sod the fish! Let them eat wild pork! There’s plenty of boar hunting in the wilds of France. There’s also the Med and the Atlantic.
Seriously though, I didn’t think Macron was quite that clever. I have long wondered how the Brits will like having to return to the pre-Industrial Revolution state, when gas lights finally lit up the streets of London. While I do enjoy the illumination provided by a kerosene lamp when the power (occasionally) goes out around here, I really do prefer flipping the switch for the ovrehead.
It may be time for the carbon tax on French wine and cheese….out of an abundance of caution.
What the media will never mention, is that for renewables to work in the UK, we need about 7,000 gwh of stored backup energy (to cope with anticyclonic winter days). That is a lot of energy.
At present the UK has 10 gwh of pumped water storage (Dinorwig), and there are no plans to build any more. In which case, chasing the renewable fantasy will plunge the UK into the dark.
RE
but in fact there are plans to build more…
There is a scheme at Loch Ness and possibly the Glyn Rhonwy Pumped Hydro may be going ahead in Wales…
But the largest proposal is the Coire Glas project:
https://www.hydroreview.com/2020/10/20/sse-renewables-receives-government-consent-for-coire-glas-pumped-storage-scheme/
It seems they can’t get enough subsidies to justify building it at the moment, although they have evidently persuaded the planners to let them churn Loch Loughy with the outflow from 1.5GW rather than 0.6GW.
http://euanmearns.com/coire-glas-the-raging-best-of-pumped-hydro-storage/
The Brits and Germans are buying power that they have rejected to produce for themselves. Might as well start mining French coal as well.
They are buying cheap nuclear electricity the French are dumping…
Get out the yellow vests and where’d we’d put that Guillotine?
https://www.modernghana.com/news/1035940/france-slaps-new-weight-tax-on-heavy-cars-suv.html
Are actual facts allowed, or only bigotry?
Britain has plenty of reliable capacity beyond interconnects wind and solar.
"Wind Onshore" 12.835 GW Unreliable
"Wind Offshore" 10.365 GW Unreliable
"Solar" 13.276 GW Unreliable
"Other renewable" 2.249 GW Unreliable
"Other" 3.906 GW - not clear what this is: probably emergency generators and STOR
"Nuclear" 8.209 GW Reliable
"Hydro & Run-of-river" 1.882 GW - semi reliable if its raining
"Pumped Storage" 4.052 GW Fully reliable for two hours only
"Fossil Hard coal" 6.780 GW Fully reliable
"Fossil Gas" 38.274 GW Fully reliable
"Biomass" 4.237 GW Fully reliable
Source: Bmreports.com
Total reliable generation is 61 GW – more than I have ever seen demand, in 10 years.
reliable short term hydro adds amother 5.9GW
unreliable generation stands at 25.476GW of renewables and 4GW of EU interconnectors. We have a little to Ireland as well.
You can see how little the EU inter connectors matter in terms of reliability. They are arbitrage mechanisms, not genuine sources of supply. People who Believe in Renewable Energy think of them as terrific ways yo make renewable energy work, but they don’t. Not really, not in the UK
On the other hand the practical availability of capacity is rather less. The National Grid Winter Outlook forecasts a margin of 4.8GW for its base case, or 3.5GW in its high demand case. That assumes 16% capacity factor on wind generation and 3GW of imports from the Continent. Even before winter, we had several days of low winds and reduced exports from France caused by extended nuclear shutdowns due to slowed maintenance over the summer caused by the virus, leaving the Grid scrabbling to fill the holes.