Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova; Under emergency energy rationing plans, the British government is considering launching winter appeals for ordinary people to sacrifice their personal comfort to prevent blackouts.
Back to the dark ages? Now millions of Britons could be told to switch off the lights and turn down the thermostat to avoid blackouts this winter under emergency plans
The government could introduce the plan if the energy crisis worsens in winter
The National Grid might also have to pay big energy users to cut down
A document shows contingency plans for avoiding blackouts in the UK this year
By ALASTAIR LOCKHART FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 10:49 AEST, 24 July 2022 | UPDATED: 10:52 AEST, 24 July 2022Households might have to turn down their thermostats and switch off lights to avoid blockouts under emergency plans.
Government measures to tackle the energy crisis this winter would include appeals to the public to cut down on energy use in the event of an electricity or gas supply shortage.
A document of contingency plans by the National Grid seen by The Telegraph showed ministers would use the option if the energy crisis worsened even further.
The news comes as EU countries were told to cut their usage by 15 per cent from next month over concerns they will not be able to store enough for winter after Russia reduced its supply of gas on the NordStream pipeline.
…
Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11042881/Millions-Britons-told-switch-lights-avoid-blackouts.html
Lest we forget, the politicians making this appeal are the same clowns who earlier this year ordered Britain’s only shale gas wells be sealed with concrete, lest the evil of trying to ensure adequate domestic gas supplies undermine their net zero push.
Last I heard the deadline for sealing the gas wells has been deferred to 2023. But no entrepreneur should have to put up with such inconsistency and bullying. British Shale Gas entrepreneur Francis Egan (picture at the top of the page) is a hero to be on the receiving end of such political persecution, yet still keep trying. But continuous threats of permanent shutdown are not going to help Egan raise funds to expand his business, to fill Britain’s energy shortfall with his product.
If British politicians started right now, gave Egan’s company Cuadrilla an unequivocal green light to drill more shale gas wells, and maybe a few grants to help him buy equipment and hire US experts, there is a chance Britain might have enough fracked gas in production by January 2023 to alleviate Britain’s coming winter energy shortages.
Instead, the British government plan is to tell ordinary people to turn their thermostats down, and put up with the hardship.
I guarantee important people like the politicians in Whitehall who created this mess will not go cold or hungry this winter. I can’t say the same for everyone else in Britain.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well, Boris Johnson is out, so maybe his replacement will recognize his folly.
One is ‘continuity candidate’ who got in there at the last moment as the BoJo’s self destructing plant, so he can come back sooner than later.
The other is ‘hare Krishna hare Krishna Rama’ semi-socialist with a billionaire missus.
You can be certain of one fact, this Will only affect the hoi polloi. The houses of Windsor (Mountbatten) will be quite toasty as will the Manor Houses of the Entitled Titled
Most of the elite will be unaffected so, sure, Charles and Camilla will be toasty. So will Bojo, the WEF folks, and Extinction Rebellion. But don’t diss the Queen; during WW2 she went through the same rationing and energy restrictions as everyone else. She’ll likely drive everyone around her crazy insisting on the same privations this time too (in spite of the fact she’s 96).
Her bridal dress was bought with ration coupons.
Well I’m not holding my breath.
Leave off, we are busy watching tories’ elections sh1t show
source:https://www.thetimes.co.uk
In life, everybody gets who they deserve.
All brought to you by the Great Climate Crisis Lie.
Anyone who believes in the net zero bullshit needs to stop exhaling CO2, right now.
It’s not CO2 it’s Carbon.
You need the sarcasm tag.
Not really, others who down voted him need training in sarcasm recognition.
Please.
It is completely Kwasi I tell you. He would rather buy gas from anywhere rather than give permission to frack our own massive gas deposits here in Blighty.
That lunacy is driven by Net Zero ideology. The politicians are scared witless. They can not be seen advocating any rules or authority that allow domestic fossil fuel extraction/increase.
Madness complete madness.
Dirty cost of keeping the Government’s net zero strategy alive is revealed by analyses of data from UK’s Drax wood chip burning power station.
Plan to hit green targets relies on burning the equivalent of 25 million trees a year (one New Forest every five months) to supply electricity.
The power station is accused of “greenwashing” which is handed £2.4 million in government subsidies every day must justify its environmental claims, the OECD has said.
Drax last year received £891 million in green subsidies – largely paid from consumers’ bills – because biomass is falsely classed as carbon neutral at the point where it is burnt.
This is what Prof Helm of Oxford University has to say about Drax
“Finally there is the sorry and often illusional story of biofuels and biomass. At the very local level biomass has a role to play – though not the 50% of the EU’s 2020 target, for example, but…….the global production, shipping and burning of wood pellets makes little sense in tackling global warming. To claim that wood pellet burning is less bad than burning coal says it all. The fact that emissions from burning wood pellets in the UK do not count against the UK’s territorial emissions is absurd.
www. dieterhelm.co.uk/energy/climate-change/the-retreat-from-net-zero/
Note: Prof Helm is by no means a climate change sceptic but he is an acknowledged expert on energy policy
If I, as a taxpayer and electric bill-payer, was to be happy about Drax keeping open – until it can burn coal again, then the OECD have no standing.
Whatever their watermelons think.
Auto.
Rod, did you hear the news today that the IMF have downgraded the UK’s future growth because they are too reliant on ‘expensive’ fossil fuel for their energy. Doh!
The IMF are famous for getting economic predictions wrong. It is a novel departure for them to try and assign their flawed thinking to such an obvious errant statement of fact.
as uk has adequate rainfall etc and doesnt rely on groundwater may be less risk to frack but any other options would be preferable surely?
naff all decent farmland so unless its otherwise non arable land its dumb
“may be less risk to frack but any other options would be preferable surely?”
Less risk of what? how is frac’ing so frightening as to convince you that ‘other options’ are preferrable?
The nice thing about bashing one’s head against a wall is that it feel marvelous when you stop doing it…
I’m sure it’s been explained in better detail many times before, but ‘frac’ing’ involves nothing more than drilling a gas well, landing it horizontally in a reservoir (or source rock) comprising low permeability rock and then pressurizing the reservoir section with water so as to produce artifical fractures in the rock. Those fractures are held open with sand pumped in with the water and in addition additives are included to reduce friction, inhibit bacteria growth and inhibit corrosion of steel casing and tubing in the well. The fractures allow the production of gas at a commercialy acceptable rate from a reservoir that is otherwise so low in permeability that its production rate would be the equivalent of mouse flatulence. Nothing new, nothing fancy, nothing especially risky.
Potable groundwater is only found in shallow aquifers, the fractures produced in a tight reservoir don’t impact potable aquifers.
The only time I’ve seen fracturing go particularly wrong was in wells where oil companies are injecting slurries of rock cuttings from new wells mixed with drilling fluid slop. Those disposal wells are relatively shallow since there is no profit to be made drilling a deep well in strong rock when the intention is to dispose of liquid/paste waste. The only reason that WOFTAM exercise is done in the first place is to appease onerous ecomental regulations (because the smarter method of burning the oil based drilling fluid off the rock before then dumping the crushed rock cuttings is deemed objectionable since burning contributes to thin air emissions and material from ‘subsurface’ is considered a hazardous waste, even though it’s nothing more than dirt)
And what are the ‘other options’ in Blighty?
Extension cords to neighbouring countries who have energy shortfalls of their own*?
More hydropower in a more or less flat island?
More tricky mirrors covering arable land in mostly overcast small island?
More shiploads of woodchips from across the globe?
More subsidies and more transmission lines to support more whirlygigs?
Perhaps more sensibly Blighty could reopen more deep coal mines and convert coal into electricity or expensive synthetic gas; provided the likes of Extinction Retardation, Greenpricks and the Davos Skiing Club can be kept at arms length.
Actually the best ‘other option’ would be to pay Rosatom to build a fleet of floating nuclear power plants (like the one keeping the lights on in the Chukotka peninsula) or submersible nuclear plants (like the ones being designed to support hydrocarbon exploitation of the Arctic).
*Let me tell you an energy ‘clown world’ story from Norway. It may sound familiar to anyone from Tasmania…
Hydroelectric generation accounts for around 90% of Norway’s generation and on account of this, electricity has long been ‘cheap’ in Norway. Reservoirs in south-western Norway are presently below half full and generation is being rationed to allow sufficient water storage for the winter demand peak. Norwegian electricity tarrifs have risen to the point where government subsidies are planned to ‘cushion the blow’.
Normally, if properly managed, the reservoirs would be drawn down for generation purposes each year by about the same volume as is caught and impounded courtesy of winter snowmelt. The reason for the low water levels is blamed by the fake news on a ‘drought’ but in reality is that ‘lecky distributors on the Peninsula (EUssr) will pay top-notch tarrifs for ‘green’ energy and the companies who operate Norwegian dams are not going to miss out on the opportunity to separate fools from their money via the interconnectors built to Germany and Blighty in 2020 and 2021 respectively. In addition, the Norwegian oil and gas industry is under political pressure to produce ‘low carbon energy’ and the simplest way to do this (on paper) is to take ‘green’ hydropower generated ashore and keep the production platforms running via an extension cord instead of generating their own electricity by gas turbines burning gas produced on site. Each platform saddled with power-from-shore adds about the same demand to the grid as adding a city of around 50000 people (and just keep schtum that the emissions ‘saved’ by power-from-shore are emitted anyway since the gas not burned on the platform is exported via pipeline to be burned by German, Dutch and British consumers).
The solution might be to build more dams in the mountains of Norway, but ecotards have seen to it that new large dams are out of the question, so some half-wits seriously talk about pumped hydro schemes, where the North Sea is the low storage (I’m sure pumping sea water into mountain rivers will be just dandy for the environment and perfect for the longevity of pipelines and turbines).
hmm, maybe it’s time to find a wall to park my forehead on again…
Hmm, people will be expected to suffer through the cold because the planet is overheating.
Makes perfect sense.
Let’s just hope for a really freezing winter with loads of snow and ice, airports closed, trains stopping for the wrong sort of snow and a nice anticylone with lots of freezing fog and zero wind to make that plonkers in Government get the message loud and clear…
It’s well overdue for the “great reset” methinks.
How about a frozen Serpentine and parts of the Thames just to rub it inm how Dickens and frost fairs on the Thames would be fun stuff for the millenials who wouldn’t know what snow was…..
Sounds like a “Zhivago” winter scene to me. Revolution in the EU? Moron politicians everywhere.
Moron politicians ousted everywhere.
Fixed it for you.
I was going to write
‘Moron politicians tarred and feathered everywhere’, but I certainly don’t condone violence except in self-defence.
Tho’, come to think on it . . . . .
Auto..
….while a land war in Europe is playing out and the Americans are busy with electric airplane testing and biofuel mechanized units and woke recruiting and base renaming ceremonies
That’s after falsifying waiting lists at VA hospitals and prioritizing solar panels on the hospital rooftops.
Funny, why is anything having to do with the US military of concern due to a land war in Europe.
I vote that we, the US, sit this one out.
TRUMP! tried to get the European members of NATO to meet their minimum military spending requirements. How many European countries met the 2% GDP minimum? 8 of 28? UK yes, just barely, but Germany, France, Canada, Italy, NOPE.
I think it is long past time for the US to resign from NATO.
Bring our troops home. If TRUMP! were still president, that process would be already underway, and there would be no Russian incursion into Ukraine.
If Trump brought the troops home he would have no leverage with Putin short of nuking him so how would Trump keep Putin out of Ukraine?
Ah, but the rise in the temperature causes extreme cold, you see. Well it does whenever there is lots of snow, ice and frost. It’s all very logical.
British politicians, administrators and bureaucrats are stupid and evil.
The BBC has played a big part in promulgating this mass delusion.
I have to admit that I find it difficult to believe I am witnessing and living through such an amazing popular delusion in this day and age.
Yes, all of that John, and also a compete failure of journalism. There’s not a single enquiring mind amongst Fleet Street’s finest. They just receive the Press releases, nod their heads like nodding dogs and churn out their columns.
In the face of Net Zero, not one UK journalist has worked out that we contribute 0.000012% of CO2 emissions to the global atmosphere. Or if they have they are too scaredy cat to write that piece.
It’s like talking to children.
The same Fleet Street hacks claim that the UK is a leader in field of “The fight against climate change” and that the rest of the world looks up to us.
Wrong
The rest of the world is p*$$**g itself laughing at our politicians gulibility
Of course John you are correct.
Our politicians are just plain stupid, not even clever enough to be evil. Climate scientists advocating this new ‘profoundly immoral and wicked religion’ are the evil lot.
They aren’t Scientists.
Agree
I just told my 13 year old daughter an answer to her question.
“What do scientists do” ..something useful?
I reply “ASK FOR MONEY” more than 90% do nothing of use, and are no better than street beggars.
MetOfice’s Dr Betts cemented in his evil legacy by prevailing upon outgoing PM Teresa May to put up another £Billion for Climate Change as her last act, scooped out of the nearly empty pockets of poor taxpayers. (I’m keeping my promise to shame evil scammers and neomarxist centrally planned purveyors of hell on earth for their ordinary citizens and for 3 billion of the earth’s poorest. We’ve been marginalized and cut off from scientific debate, but we can shame these evil doers so those suffering know where it is coming from).
I agree Vuk.
Say goodbye to trees in urban and suburban areas.
And an increase in chimney/house fires and carbon monoxide deaths because people under 60 have never operated an open fire and are ignorant (lacking knowledge or awareness) of the dangers
Nice fence … here in the evening, gone by the morning
If you stapled posters stating “We need Reliable Affordable Energy NOW” to every third picket, you’d have a true Picket Fence
Look, the government is constantly telling that they understand the urgency of the issues the UK faces today, almost daily increases in prices of fuel, energy, basic foodstuffs, and the knock-on effects of all their previous policies. Just as soon as they figure out who is going to be the new leader they will get right on it. Well, after their 6 week vacations in Italy, the South of France, the Maldives.. you know, places nicer than here. They are going to hit the ground running sometime in September. Oh wait, September is conference time, so they’ll get to it in October. Honest. Anyways, they will come up with some creative new policies that will solve all our problems ready to be implemented about 6 weeks before the next general election. Some of us may even still be alive to vote for them.
Notice that all their vacation spots are WARM. Hypocrites, all of them.
At the price gas is climbing to I doubt many in Britain will be able to afford to run the gas heating this winter..
UK electricity is still 4x the price of gas per kWhr.
My energy use is approximately 50/50 so my strategy is to minimise electricity use and maximise gas for hot water, heating etc.
The UK government will face far more than the winter of our discontent. It is a pity there is no easy way to boot out all the politicians and replace them with people that have some common sense and a track record of responsible behaviour.
You might get better results, if you kick out all of the existing politicians and then have a lottery of all the citizens for their replacements. With no former politician allowed to be in the lottery. Could it really be any worse?
and the civil service that feed this bullshit to the pollies
and they ARE the actual problem and source
you can throw a pollie out
but the civilservants remain and do as they wish or theyre suited/paid on the side etc to do regardless
Turning off lights just means that the heater has to run more.
Even better, turn the heater off to save even more.
That will save on making ice cubes. Come to think of it you can just open the doors to the fridge/freezer and save even more!
James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis, dies on 103rd birthday https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/27/james-lovelock-creator-of-gaia-hypothesis-dies-on-103rd-birthday
(ps. my granddad died decades ago, he was born on 28 Jan, died 103 years later on 14 Feb)
Richard Branson: James I’m starting a new airline, have I your permission to call it ‘Gaia Airlines’
James Lovelock: Yes, if I have your permission to open brothel and call it ‘Fly Virgin’
Chinese are laughing their asses off at the West.
And all of this to support a Ukrainian dictator who took time out from his war to pose for photographs for Vogue magazine.
The citizens of Europe & the US are chumps.
He was an actor, moving on stage an parroting according to scripts handed over to him to memorise; is it possible that only the stage and scriptwriters have changed.
BLYAT PUTIN!
BLYAT PUTIN!
Better than support a murderous dictator that wants to rule the world and brags about wanting to be called Peter.
Still doesn’t give Putin or any other dictator license to strike up a war against them
Where have I heard “beware foreign entanglements?”
George Washington, but you knew that.
Just because Washington said it does not mean he was right. Had the US cut a deal right after Trafalgar when relations were good to look after British Maritime interests in the Western Atlantic in exchange for Royal Navy protection of US commence in the Mediterranean then there would not have been a War of 1812.
The US fought two wars with European nations and one war because of events in Europe between 1798 and 1815. So if the United States could not stay out of foreign conflicts when we were an insignificant third rate country on the wrong side of the Atlantic during the age of sail how do you expect to do that now? You probably don’t even know that stock markets closed for three months in 1914 beause Europeans were dumping stocks and exporting gold in such volumes that if left unchecked would have caused a 1929 level financial crisis.
Isolationist have always lived in fantasy world.
The elites will be toasting with fine wine, chomping down on rare steaks and soaring across the mostly empty skies while the rest of us search for crumbs in the cold and dark, just as they planned it to be. The climate will keep doing what it does without concern about human actions or CO2 and eventually the voters, assuming they still have that right will take their revenge. The time will come when the elites see being made redundant by the electorate as a welcome alternative to the other option which was swift and far less to be desired by the French aristocracy not that long ago.
The Bowland Basin, where Cuadrilla has drilled 2 laterals (8,000 foot TVD, 6,000 foot laterals, IIRC) has enough natgas to supply the UK for about 50 years. Two stages have already been frac’d with promising early shows.
When the Weald Basin shale gas is added in, the UK could be self sufficient in natgas out to the end of the century.
Perhaps the crushing pain of scarcity and high costs will prompt a sane approach to recovering their hydrocarbon bounty.
It is not as if the presence hydrocarbons in west lancashire is news. I have an old (1954) copy of British Regional Geology which states tjhat oil seepages at Formby , on the coast , have been known since mid 19th Cent.In the 1950s drillings were producing 2000gallons/week oil from the Keuper Marl sandstone layer which, the report says is “impregnated with oil”. They were shallow borings however .
How many sitting members of parliament and within the bureaucracy have direct or indirect pecuniary interests in wind energy?
That will not be evident until after they retire to their sinecures as highly paid non execs working six days a year.
Some may even go on the speech circuit where they will be paid millions for a few appearances. Who amongst us would pay money to hear them? But we are led to believe that it is so.
We of course have to jump through hoops backwards to ensure we are not money laundering.
Maybe they should sacrifice the British government members and return to a rational life.
I’d like to cut off the British governments members and feed them to the pigs
Oops, Camerons already been there
As unpleasant as these ‘preparations’ sound, they will likely not be enough to stop the UK climate madness. That takes a real catastrophe. Like if the UK grid goes dark midwinter during a bitter cold high with no wind. Would take up to a week to do a black restart. The NE US blackout of 2003 took 4 days to restore even with interconnections to other Midwestern, southern, and Canadian grids that remained up to facilitate black starts.
The two candidates to take over from BoJo both have degrees in PPE from Oxford. Be nice to have someone in the top job who knew a bit about science
The degree is not of the most influence, it is that they went to Oxford. They are contaminated and should not be allowed to become PM.
If the UK cleared out ALL of the Oxford educated from elected and appointed positions in the government, it would be far better off.
In the US, clearing graduates of Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford would be a good start.
BTW, How many Protestant Christians (not Catholic) are on the SCOTUS, only 2, both appointed within the last 2 years. There are 6 Catholics and one is Jewish.
Almost 50% of the US is Protestant, less than 25% Catholic. about 2% Jewish.
Until Jackson replaced Breyer, there were more Jews than Protestants on the SCOTUS.
Time for the levers of power in the US, and the UK to reflect the “great unwashed”.
I understand Kemi Badenoch is an engineer.
No wonder she was out of the race early on.
Wait till John Kerry is safely away on his jet before freezing to death. It would not look good.
Quartermass never envisioned this level of chaos and mind control. Better get the giant crane in place to zap the grid.
Think both 10 Downing Street and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue should lead the way by setting their thermostats to 10C / 50F this winter.
I was an electrical engineering student when Smiling Jimmy was at the height of his stupidity in the 1970s. The university turned down the thermostats that winter at his advice. The campus newspaper published a picture of us huddling over lab resistors to provide heat in a 58 ℉ basement lab. FJB. FLeftists.
AN electrical engineering student should have been able to bypass the Tstat.
It was more fun to get in the school paper.
To avoid a blackout…
Turn out the lights!
¿Que?
When the music’s over…
Well done.
It’s more a case of:
Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain,
And all the children are insane…