h/t Energywise; The UK needs “a power sector two to three times the size of the one today… ” – but who is going to pay for this?
Energy UK CEO: “We are on the cusp of a new energy era”
Dmitris Mavrokefalidis
Wednesday 18 October 2023
Image: Energy UKEmma Pinchbeck, Chief Executive of Energy UK, addressed the audience at the Energy UK Annual Conference, highlighting the broader challenges affecting the energy sector.
…
“The costs of projects have gone up by as much as 40% – such that no offshore wind developers could bid into the government’s most recent renewables auction. And hanging over all of this, the havoc that rising temperatures and extreme weather are already inflicting on countries and people across the world.”
Ms Pinchbeck said the UK needs “a power sector two to three times the size of the one today to power that future economy and to build five times the amount of infrastructure in the decade ahead as in the previous three.”
…
Read more: https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/10/18/energy-uk-ceo-we-are-on-the-cusp-of-a-new-energy-era/
I don’t know how much longer Brits will put up with this politically inflicted hardship. According to a survey by Currys, 69% of Britons have had to make lifestyle changes to cut costs. (also h/t Energywise). Currys is Britain’s answer to Walmart.
A power sector three times the size of today, providing the same energy as today, is not a good thing, it would be an economic disaster. Consumers at best would receive the same electricity as today, but they would have to pay three times the wage costs of today’s electricity sector. On what planet would this be a good thing for consumers?
If British consumers genuinely want affordable zero carbon power, and protection from wild fluctuations in global energy prices, the only viable option is to copy the French nuclear program.
France is the only major country in the world which successfully decarbonised most of their electricity sector, without the help of a fortunate abundance of hydroelectricity. Nuclear generates just under 70% of French electricity. And best of all, from a consumer point of view, nuclear plants are shielded from global energy price fluctuations, because unlike fossil fuel plants which require continuous refuelling, nuclear plants only need to be refuelled every two years. Even better, most of the next batch of fuel can be recovered from the spent fuel. Two years between refuelling cycles is plenty of lead time to secure a good deal and ensure affordable continuity of power generation.
Copy what works.
We’re on the cusp of the new dark ages… and the bill is going to get ever larger
“”Low income UK homes ‘should be given free heat pumps’ to meet climate targets”
All 2 million of them, apparently
As someone said way way back
“There’s no such thing as a free heat pump” 😉
Would you believe a free hydrogen filled balloon?
Where is Maxwell Smart, now that we need him?
Yes, shame they won’t be able to afford the energy to actually run the heat pump.
“The costs of [Renewable] projects have gone up … 40%”
In fiat ‘money’. In other words: by printing euros, pounds and dollars like there is no tomorrow we have seen an inflation of 40% over the last few years. Your money now buys a lot less stuff because it lost purchasing power killing your savings in the process. And all because governments don’t want to pay the bills but keep on promising ‘free’ stuff.
Energy UK also needs more inflated pounds to do the same projects.
Not much use giving them away when the poorest cannot afford to run them to keep their once warm homes, much colder
I’m not sure the UK National Infrastructure Commission lives in the same country as the rest of us. A free heat pump is an oxymoron given all the other changes that will be needed to people’s housing – new water boiler, double glazing, larger radiators, underfloor heating etc etc
Not to mention regular water system treatments to eradicate legionnaires disease due to cooler water temps as well as black mould infestations due to cooler, damp homes
Goodness me, this Lady has realised that it cannot be achieved even by throwing money at it, in any reasonable timescale. To start with, the materials to triple (the real number) the electricity supply by 203? are not available at any price. So all those heat pumps are completely useless! Thee next problem is that she is a “greenie” with lies at the first point, weather is not getting worse due to anything, let alone “climate change ™”. She wants to build something (she doesn’t know what) to give us “carbon free” electricity at affordable cost, probably 150 GW of nuclear! That is 50 stations of 3GW output. Unaffordable, no materials, no labour, no skills. Really clever!!!
To cap it off, interest rates are up, and they are staying there. link
With renewable energy,, most of the cost is up front. (ie. no fuel costs) That means most of the ongoing cost is the interest on the money borrowed to finance the projects.
Peter Zeihan predicts that, because the workforce is ageing into retirement, labor is going to get more expensive and that will lead to wage inflation and even higher interest rates.
It isn’t unrealistic to predict that the cost of renewable energy is going to double, or more.
link
I realize there’s a possibility of some confusion here. I’m not talking about the price of windmills and solar panels per se.
Even if the price of windmills and solar panels doesn’t change, the price of the electricity they generate doubles if the interest rate doubles.
I think we’re past the point where the greenies can even pretend that renewable energy makes economic sense, no matter how they cook the numbers.
The West has an imploding centrally controlled central banking system. In other words ‘we are broke’. The only way to keep the ship afloat was by printing like there is no tomorrow inflating the fiat money supply creating at least a 40% inflation over the last few years. There you have the real problem. That is why they need wars and climate change and a digital money system and any crisis they can lay their hands on.
Be happy if prices are only going to double.
Untrue: “That means most of the ongoing cost is the interest on the money borrowed to finance the projects.” Why forget the others ongoing costs: backup (required by renewables), subsidies and CFD costs, and needed grid expansions to support renewables.
Show us the grids where renewables have lowered the prices forits rate payers.
Just one main point, Eric……this isn’t simply a case of the same energy costing 3 times as much. The energy industry will need to increase energy supply & distribution by a factor of at least 2 (but more likely closer to 3) simply to deal with the proposed expansion in electric heating (by heat pumps) and the banning of petrol/diesel cars.
And, of course, since “renewable” energy is so inefficient, we will require a vast overbuild of infrastructure to take into consideration the ability of wind energy to provide only 25-30% of its nameplate capacity and solar to perform even worse in the UK (which lies at 50-60 degrees North of the Equator). And, of course, we’ll still need either to import energy via Inter-connectors or run a shadow grid of hydrocarbon-powered CCGT to ensure the lights don’t go out when the wind doesn’t blow!
The whole thing is an absolute farce!
I completely agree Phil. Once you consider all the downstream impacts, like electrolysing hydrogen to produce “green steel”, it is likely renewables cannot generate sufficient energy for their own replacement, let alone to power anything.
But it was fun to take their own number (3x larger) and demonstrate even on their own numbers renewables are an economic disaster.
If only they would accept it, Eric. But they’re still in la la land.
But Eric, renewables don’t need to generate energy for replacements.
It will all be manufactured in China or India, using coal fired power stations.
I published a funny a few years ago. Since China was permitted to keep raising emissions until 2035, they believed they could economically deliver Paris Agreement compliant coal electricity generated in China to Germany via HVDC. By my calculation they would lose 30%, but probably still cheaper than Energiewende.
Eric, isn’t that ‘green steel’, not really steel, but a form of sponge iron, akin to wrought iron?
Who knows. Hydrogen and iron are not a good mixture.
It’s the ‘Red Queen’ AGW scheme: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”
Phil Rae, I like your comments, but the really dark side of the UK’s rush into energy dysfunction, where price goes up and dependable, dispatchable, energy goes down, is the loss of the fabrication sector. Think James Bond driving a Peugeot. Looks like it’s back to sheep and knitting woolies for the UK.
“Looks like it’s back to sheep and knitting woolies for the UK.”
No, farmland will have to be closed down as well.. and re-wilded.
complete with lots of beavers!
There’ll be a whole new industry in ‘shank’s ponies’.
Trabant.
This is something that’s really peeing me off! I’m constantly seeing articles about some ‘new, improved’ electrical storage system. On paper, look fine, but when viewed from an engineering eye, totally impractical. All proposing massive gov’t subsidies to build, to allegedly overcome the inherent limitations of ‘ruinables’. When it’s so s*dding obvious that the whole ‘green’ concept will require massive overbuild, incredible complexity, and totally unaffordable. Why the hell, aren’t engineers speaking out, about this stupidity?
Is it only we men who can understand this repeated stupidity? is it just my imagination that all these recently-qualified lady-engineers never had to experience the practicality of working on the shop-floor?
“Why the hell, aren’t engineers speaking out, about this stupidity?”
Excellent question.
Aren’t there any whistleblowers out there?
It’s a good thing the ruling elites will also suffer power outages, otherwise, they wouldn’t ever give a damn
The IEA has released a new report saying the world needs to replace and build 50 million miles of transmission lines to make the transition work, which will only take $600 billion a year by 2030. As any fule do kno, as demand for a commodity goes up, so does price – and then some the farther behind demand leaves supply. Oil being a good example. So that $600 billion can probably be multiplied by at least three.
No indication of the copper ore mining industry’s capacity to meet rising demand and its capability of scaling up mining operations to meet the demand for copper to make all the copper wire that 50 million miles of transmission lines plus ancillary equipment like transformers would require.
Off now to feed the færies at the bottom of the garden.
Greenies not happy with the costs of Green electricity-
Australia’s Snowy 2.0: A Vision of Progress or a Mirage of Mismanagement? (msn.com)
There was always $10 billion worth of nuclear power station on a retired coal site and save poor Nemo or whatever but hey you do what you do with the public circus experts.
Thanks, hopefully Four Corners will cover it properly. They did a good job with their carbon credit story.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/14/carbon-colonialism-four-corners-exposes-carbon-farming-chaos-in-new-guinea/
“I’ll have a hamburger, for which I will gladly pay you Tuesday.”
J. Wellington Wimpy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Wellington_Wimpy
That 40% figure stinks to high heaven…
This is where you need a good memory and not least, an ability to articulate the same.
My Memory extends back to when offshore windmills were fairly new and modest and the example I recall was that a 2MW (nameplate) windmill cost, whenever it was, it cost £10Million
UK government said “Fine, that’s good, we’ll have a few hundred of those please”
No sooner had the ink dried on that contract than the windmill suppliers used a loophole that they themselves engineered into it – about ‘Rising material costs and that Government would cover those’
Bingo, ‘something’ happened to the price of steel, which went up (with great fanfare) by 25% and this triggered the loophole clause
The windmill makers then said that their “£10million windmills” would now cost £14million apiece and UK Government was liable for the whole lot
Good friggin grief, what is the fraction of steel in an offshore windmill – compared the other costs, not least the installation costs of the god-awful things.
But UK Government in their kindergarten dreamworld and reality-deficient la-la-land had signed it all away and had totally no come-back.
Here it is being repeated all over again…
(No comeback apart from raising tax revenue –
I’d not at all be surprised if it was UK Special Air Services who blew up Nordstream pipeline – in order to skyrocket inflation and thus tax revenue into the bankrupt Bank of England – thank you Mark Carney and Gordon Brown/Tony Blair prior to that.
And not least Bojo for his special trip to meet Zelensky to dissuade him from entering peace negotiations before anything had even started)
and now Israel
something smells round here, really really bad
…because Israel was about to bring a huuuuge natural gas field online
Peta – I apologise for my comment above about lady-engineers, which was not intended to imply universality . I hope you learned while getting your hands dirty!
“the havoc that rising temperatures and extreme weather are already inflicting on countries and people across the world”
The evidence for which is what, exactly? Another shallow-thinking useful idiot in an influential position.
Somebody told her CO2 causes bad weather and she believed them. Apparently, she is rather gullible.
That’s going to cost UK citizens a lot of money and cause a lot of hardship.
Delusional government officials are a real problem.
Virtually the whole political class, including the civil service, are completely delusional. They must have put something in the Whitehall tea. It’s going to take a huge seismic political shift to move them towards rational policies.
Emma (according to online bio & career information) is a woke radicalised decarbonisation climate alarmist crusader – with zero competence in climate science, geology etc, or Energy, she joins a long line of climate alarmist shills regurgitating the elitist IPCC narrative, with no independent research or analysis – just another more of the same incompetent in a position of Govt policy influence
The new UK Energy Minister is another appointment of the incompetent type, so we have incompetence advising and guiding incompetence – incompetence^2 is a recipe for disaster
Until people with real life, unbiased climate & Energy competence are put in these influencing positions, we will continually prove Einsteins theory of ‘doing the same thing, over and over and expecting a different outcome……………’, is correct
You’re completely wrong in assuming that all this is incompetence. A plan is being followed. The decision-makers are making the decisions that will have the most positive effect for them personally, especially in a financial sense. In the case of western institutions, there’s no punishment for making a bad decision that can have a terrible effect on huge numbers. On the other hand, making a decision to kiss or have sex with one certain other person, or expressing an opinion about the same by others can get almost a death sentence. The bad decisions of Emma Pinchbeck may put a slight curve in her life path but won’t lead to ostracism or even relegation to a career in janitorial service. There’s no substantial risk to her in staying with the plan. Its failure won’t put her in the class of John Profumo.
Agreed GC – if your plan is the wholesale regression of the living standards of the masses, you wouldn’t put someone competent in charge, rather counter productive
I too feel the incompetence is by design, it’s the only logical conclusion
An action by someone that’s contrary to your ideas isn’t necessarily an indication of incompetence. The lady probably wasn’t selected for her position on the basis of competence but instead because of party loyalty, personal charm, nepotism or other considerations, one of which is likely to be ability to follow instructions. If the plan was indeed the “wholesale regression of the living standards of the masses” a competence in the engineer of it would be very important. That would be a big job, especially as there would be much opposition by those most negatively affected. Don’t underestimate the talents of your enemies.
Currys is Britain’s answer to Walmart.….
No …..completely wrong.
The closest equivalent to Walmart in the UK is ASDA.
Curry’s is a tech/media/home appliance outlet.
Also called Currys-PCWorld. ASDA was owned by Walmart for a few years.
Currys = Best Buy ?
They’re utter crap.
Curry’s?
Go John Lewis.
Having visited many Walmarts, I can confirm they sell what Curry’s do and much more
More protests….
Thunberg has joined campaigners again in London just two days after she was arrested while demonstrating at a Fossil Free London protest. The Swedish climate campaigner has been seen sitting out JP Morgan’s London office this morning alongside other protesters including one holding a yellow flare.
…sitting on the pavement chanting “oily money out” and waving yellow flags and banners.
Fossil Free London said the bank has been a major source of funding of fossil fuel projects since the Paris Agreement.”
https://www.gbnews.com/news/greta-thunberg-protest-london-arrest-jp-morgan
Given that we can’t deport even the most rabid islamist dogs, it looks like she’s going to hang around causing a nuisance.
Like a fart in a spacesuit
Arrested in Sweden, Norway, Germany and now the UK. Do you think she’s just collecting arrest warrants from as many different countries as she can?
From the article:
“Emma Pinchbeck, Chief Executive of Energy UK:
“And hanging over all of this, the havoc that rising temperatures and extreme weather are already inflicting on countries and people across the world.”
Emma is delusional. Emma is seeing what she expects to see.
There is no evidence that CO2 is causing rising temperatures or is contributing to make weather more extreme than it was in the past.
Emma couldn’t prove her assertions if her life depended on doing so. Emma doesn’t live in the real world.
It’s not good when you have a delusional Chief Executive of Energy. I’m sure this means more problems for the people of the UK.
I have lived in the center of Canada for 70 years. I have not experienced any of the “…havoc that rising temperatures and extreme weather are already inflicting on countries and people across the world.” In my lifetime, I remember both colder and warmer summers, plus winters with huge amounts of snow and some with little snow. None of it seemed apocalyptic at the time. Where is the human caused havoc occurring?
In their heads and bank accounts
They aren’t getting rich fast enough.
Crisis
Same
You sir have experienced global boiling but you are in denial over that and here spreading misinformation and disinformation. The pre-recorded haranguings by Greta will ensue until your science is settled.
“Where is the human caused havoc occurring?”
In Emma’s mind.
The UK doesn’t actually need an enlarged power sector and to waste huge amounts on unwarranted infrastructure if it just accepts the reality the Net Zero can never work.
It will, it won’t
Prof Dieter Helm of Oxford University puts it this way
“a dense mass of overlapping aspirations, strategies and targets over more than 10,000 pages of reports, consultations and white papers.It is now beyond any minister or civil servant to name them all, let alone understand how they interact with each other, and the resulting complexity is the prime route to enabling lobbying by vested interests and the consequent capture of each of the technology – specific interventions.The Treasury and the Climate Change Committee estimates for the cost of net zero assume all the policies are efficiently implemented, an assumption for which there is no supporting evidence”
Multiply that across the whole of the western world and weep.
https://dieterhelm.co.uk/publications/net-zero-electricity-the-uk-2035-target/
France: the 59 nuclear plants were built by the State-owned EDF with taxpayer money and electricity subsidised. EDF was part privatised with the State keeping about 70% (I think). The nukes provided 80% of demand but had an over capacity so France was a net exporter of electricity. But… the ageing fleet started to near end of life and EDF didn’t have the cash to replace. It was decided that nukes would be retired and replaced by wind. But… the stunning ‘success’ of wind was noted by Emperor Macron, who declared France would ‘invest’ (taxpayer loot) in nuke. No sooner the words were out of his mouth, than half the fleet had to be shut down because of corrosion through lack of maintenance.
This coincided with Europe’s self-inflicted gas crisis, and France had been relying on German electricity through the European Interconnector to tide them over whilst they fixed their nukes. It was touch and go. The upshot is the State has renationalised EDF to fund new reactors.
Electricity prices have been kept artificially low over the years by Government edict so semi-private EDF struggled. Then about 5 years ago the monopolies investigator for France declared EDF prices had been too low, unfair to other market players. Therefore, they calculated what the ‘fair’ price per kWh should have been and all EDF customers were retrospectively charged the difference for prices paid over a number of years, and the ‘fair’ price, on their monthly bills over a two year period, plus immediate increase in prices to the ‘fair’ price.
It should always be noted, when Government is involved, the low market price of something is a con, because the real price is the market price plus the outside market price collected via the tax system.
The notion that France has competently handled its energy needs, is not accurate. Plus there is no national gas grid as in the UK, with only cities and some big towns having piped gas. And whist it is true it ‘decarbonised’ its electrical sector, most of rural France still uses wood for heat and cooking, LPG/gas bottles and oil.
Remember that gasoline cars are being forced out. More electricity is a must. The free electricity (wind and solar) is cheap even at a 40% premium.
Put Ms. Pinchbeck in charge of anything, and she will run out of your money really fast.
Working out where all the (UK / British) money is going to come from can be described as “a puzzle”.
Choosing a stock photo of a burning 50 Euro note, instead of a burning 50 pound note (*), for an article about what a British “Energy CEO” said in a speech is more of “an enigma”.
_ _ _ _ _
(*) The person whose face was chosen for the back of the latest 50-quid note is Alan Turing.
Yes, I am indeed that bad a person …
C’mon . . . tell the truth now . . . did the actual costs really go up by as much as 40%, or is it rather that the initial, pie-in-the-sky projected prices were intentionally underestimated in order to sell the green, renewable energy projects to gullible, uninformed politicians and bureaucrats that authorize/fund such projects?
I’m pretty sure where the truth is in this matter.
But it’s such a minor discrepancy on cost. Just use the old Sen. Ed Markey excuse of “who could have known” in defending monumental policy stupidity.
France actually getrs a lot of help from its hydro generation that provides much of the intraday flexibility in the system. Much of the rest is provided by gas and by varying exports (or imports during the period when many nuclear power stations were shut for repairs).
https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/
The Stupidity .. it burns …
Epoch Times (paywall):
Through his foundation Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mr. Gates is a part of the $6.6 million seed investor pool backing Kodama Systems in its proposal to remove trees in California’s fire-challenged woodlands and bury them in Nevada to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2).
“We must dramatically accelerate forest thinning treatments,” the Boston-based firm says on its website. Kodama calls itself a “technology-driven forest restoration service.”
There is more than a hint of insanity in this idea
Yes, the stupidity does burn . . . and it clearly encompasses ignorance of basic chemistry and basic ecology.
A “tree” actually contains very little CO2 at the time it might be cut down, since its metabolism is to convert CO2 into cellulose and sugars that comprise the tree and enable it to grow in size naturally. Instead, it is comprised mostly of organic hydrocarbon compounds.
Burying a tree in the desert (Nevada or elsewhere) would not sequester CO2! If anything, doing such would contribute water vapor to the atmosphere (and water vapor is far and away the strongest greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere) via the process of desiccation of that organic matter.
Then too, removing trees from a forested area deprives other/future trees of the nutrients that the natural death and decay of such trees would provide toward the overall health of the associated forest area . . . not something you really want to do given that trees are one of the primary means of nature removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Stupidity, insanity . . . its all there.
Ooops . . . in my second paragraph of my previous post I should have stated “organic carbohydrate compounds” instead of “organic hydrocarbon compounds”.
I sure hope the stupidity isn’t contagious 😉
Have thr prices really gone up or were they horribly under priced with the delusion that increased production would bring down costs, even with out a break through in physics?
Both. The much-touted decrease in costs due to mass production has, of course, never materialised as every manufacturer is making to his own designs then redesigning again after a few years as well as material costs increasing due to increased demand. They were also somewhat undervalued in order to get something built that, once in place, would have to be replaced after 20-25 years with an enormous price hike. Then, of course, the inevitable bottleneck in offshore wind occurred as there were never enough installation ships to handle the workload from both the oil/gas industry and the wind industry at the same time so hiring costs have multiplied as well. They gambled, unwisely, on everything getting cheaper without any sound economic or scientific basis and lost.
A bit pointless if they aren’t going to fix lorries. Esp great big ones from Europe. And aircraft landing at Heathrow. Whose carbon (dioxide)? An army of civil servants employed calculating whether Britain is still carbon (dioxide) neutral years later? Whole thing is so laughably nonsense that I can’t believe anyone supports it. Actually most people couldn’t care a toss – they have other problems- but wait till they join the dots
Wake up UK, you have wasted enough on this lie.
This is yet another example of energy planners failing to do their homework in estimating costs, benefits, and demands for the renewable power projects that they’re so enamored with. Now we see that the price of building wind and solar generation stations is spiraling out of control. Earlier we found that these couldn’t supply adequate energy when demand increased and have had to rely on fossil fuel backup systems. We’re also hearing of increasing evidence that consumers are refusing to buy overpriced electric vehicles so that these are piling up at dealerships and the manufacturers have had to lay off workers. And where is the supposed enthusiasm for solar roof panels and heat pumps? What about tourists’ reduction in air travel to reduce their carbon footprint? Little or none of this will happen simply because, as predicted, people aren’t going to make major lifestyle changes that will supposedly save the planet.
“the havoc that rising temperatures and extreme weather are already inflicting on countries and people across the world.”
This got me thinking (a dangerous and futile exercise for me). I always ask, “Whose climate has changed, how and where?” What about mine? I decided to see what the weather was at my location fifty years ago for the month of October (October, 1973). We have ended our 80+ degree F days. Temps are only going to go down per the two-week forecast.
Fifty years ago, the high temperature of the month was 83.8 degrees. The high for the month this year was 82 degrees. The lowest temperature fifty years ago was 41 degrees. We have already had a low of 41 this year, and it is predicted that we will see the low 40s again at the end of the month, so it may be lower.
Ok, that is just comparing one month’s weather, but the months are separated by fifty years. Surely there can’t be much, if any change in the climate here, at least for the month of October (maybe a little COOLER).
So, the question still remains: whose climate has changed, where, and how. The next question will be: is the change GLOBAL?