Net zero is sinking to new lows

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

Far too much like common sense!

With the Conservative leadership race now swinging, we are hearing a lot about unity and the expected tough talk on immigration, defence, benefits and the tax burden. If only many of the candidates had been around the Cabinet table recently, to advance the Conservative policies our membership wishes to hear.

But there has been less discussion of net zero. Previous prime ministers, from Blair onwards, dithered on energy policy. But all committed by varying degrees to international Climate accords, even going as far as legislation.

Tony Blair oversaw the Climate Change Act (CCA) 2008, Theresa May the 2050 target amendment. We are one of just a handful of nations to have bound ourselves legislatively. But Parliament is sovereign and can repeal and adapt any legislation it wishes. I recommend, on energy policy, that it does.

The results of this target are now becoming clear, with British consumers paying some of the highest prices for electricity in the world. We pay 2.5 times that paid by US consumers, and four times the amount paid in China. We then wonder why high energy businesses, from steel to ceramics, are preferring to invest overseas.

What all previous administrations agreed on, no matter how misguidedly, was a reduction in fossil fuel use with little to no plan on how to replace the gigawatts of power lost through detonating perfectly serviceable power stations, and all the while planning for massive increases in electricity demand — electric cars, heat pumps and the substitution of gas or coal power from high energy industrial processes.

As we destroyed our traditional fossil fuel-provisioned power stations, our international competitors, notably China and India, have turbocharged the building of new ones. The power stations we haven’t knocked down have been repurposed to burn pelletised wood, largely from virgin North American forests.

The CO2 output per KWh of energy is roughly 1.5 that of coal burning and three times that of using natural gas. This form of biomass energy accounts for 15pc of UK electricity production and yet we call this a “zero carbon” form of energy. Net zero has indeed sunk this low.

Beyond burning North American forests, substitution, where planned at all, consists of wind turbines and solar power. Far from being “cheap”, a claim dependent on ideal conditions of generation in the right place, meeting demand through existing distribution networks, the true cost is yet to be seen.

Disparate wind or solar farms need to be connected to the grid through copper, aluminium and concrete-hungry pylons and cabling, and the reserve power needed to cope with generation irregularity has yet to be considered.

The choices include storage batteries at an unimaginable scale. Californian studies suggest a cost of $15 trillion (£11.5 trillion) for that state alone, with replacement every 10-12 years.

The plundering of Africa and South America to yield up the minerals required has not been calculated.

Other energy storage methods include: water being raised uphill to reservoirs, geography-permitting, using the stored gravitational energy for release later; the electrolysis of water into hydrogen; or the production of liquid e-fuels, but using current liquid fuel infrastructure and transportation via the reliable internal combustion engine.

In order to cope with often long periods of anticyclones of low wind, freezing conditions and low light which can sit upon an entire continent for days, the cost of wind and solar with back-up is significantly amplified. That’s a lot of copper, steel and concrete, and a lot of despoiled land taken out of productive agricultural use.

The other “grand plan” is for massive interconnectors between countries to share generation and match demand. How this is supposed to equate to energy independence and security is never explained. France’s threat to the energy supply of the Channel Islands in the face of a mini “fishing war” three years ago should be instructive that reliance on others, however benign, is not a good idea.

The final piece of the current thinking involves maintaining and building new gas-powered plants to provide reserve power when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. The wasted capital in building underused gas plants (the owners of which will demand super-high prices as their fixed cost, capital intensive plants are only partially used) is obvious.

Labour’s latest plan to stop further North Sea gas exploration guarantees imported gas, with a far higher carbon footprint, will be needed to burn in these plants. There will be little of GB plc left for Qatar to buy over future decades.

Whereas the last decade has been the battle for Brexit, the next decade will be the battle for energy. Labour’s plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030 is not only impossible, it will be astronomically expensive in its futility and potentially dangerous. Electricity blackouts are likely. This will be a factor that will bring this Labour Government down.

Our energy policy needs to be entirely different. I propose the following.

First, we must amend the Climate Change Act 2008 to put Britain back on track with most of the world. Not only does the CCA result in warped energy policy, it is now being used regularly to oppose most infrastructure developments by well-funded activist groups. More worryingly, some Supreme Court judgments have supported this view. If we want growth, we must regain the right to build necessary infrastructure.

Second, we must move towards a nuclear future. We are still considering Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), but the Conservatives wasted our final years in government with more indecision. The large EDF reactors in progress or on the drawing board are complex, overpriced and beset with delays.

We need scalable Model-T Fords, not Bentleys. If nuclear fusion ever becomes a reality, a whole new chapter in human energy production opens up with sufficient cheap electricity to produce hydrogen and e-fuels at scale. Traditional fission reactors can still deliver this.

Third, we need a “dash for domestic gas”. Gas is the bridging fuel as we scale up nuclear. Domestic is key and we need to open up, as Norway continues to do, all and every extractable field in the North Sea basin.

We should look favourably at fracking to ensure domestic gas consumption, diminishing as is likely over coming decades, is at least matched by domestic production. Exports would be a bonus. The benefits are obvious: investment, high paying jobs, big tax receipts and balance of payment savings.

Lastly, we need an end to taxpayer support for wasteful wind and solar projects. Energy auctions need to be a price for 24/7, 365 energy provision. If wind and solar owners can provide this, then the economics should be a commercial decision for them, not an additional burden for the taxpayer.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/22/net-zero-is-sinking-to-new-lows