h/t strativarius, Daily Skeptic – A public writ for resource misallocation and higher British energy bills.
Consultation
ED3 Sector Specific Methodology Consultation –Climate resilience stress testing methodological
framework Annex
Publication date: 08 October 2025 Response deadline: 03 December 2025 Contact: Chris Bishop, Alex Holder Team: Climate Resilience Team Telephone: 020 7901 7000 Email: ClimateResilienceTeam@ofgem.gov.uk
…
We are consulting on the methodologies we will apply for the electricity distribution sector in the ED3 price control which will run from 1 April 2028 to 31 March 2033. We would like views from stakeholders with an interest in the regulation of energy networks. We would particularly welcome responses from groups representing consumers of electricity. We would also welcome responses from other stakeholders and the public.
This document provides the framework to the methodology for Phase A stress testing with outputs expected from ED licensed network operators by December 2025. More detailed guidance and templates will be provided to network operators separately. This document is an Annex to the ED3 Sector Specific Methodology Consultation (SSMC) core document and should be read alongside it.
…
The methodology of Phase A is comprised of five key steps (for more detail see Chapter 5):
Step 1 evidence gathering – Ofgem undertakes a Rapid Evidence Review of existing literature and evidence to inform vulnerability of network assets to climate hazards. DNOs attribute location data to fault data and submit to Ofgem;
Step 2 fragility curves and vulnerability analysis – The Met Office correlates the fault data with weather data to understand the relationship between a specific impact parameter, eg customer minutes lost, and specific weather conditions, namely windstorms and extreme high temperatures. This will produce fragility curves according to asset classes. …
Step 3 climate stress test analysis – The Met Office will estimate how the vulnerability thresholds for windstorms and extreme heat are projected to change in 2080 based on climate projections using a 4°C warming scenario using RCP8.5. 12 DNOs consider flood risk assessments for substations in line with ETR138 and, for England, utilising the latest relevant flood maps;
Step 4 valuation and resilience options – DNOs estimate the investment that will be required to maintain current levels of service and mitigate future changes to vulnerability thresholds by following guidance provided by Ofgem; and
Step 5 Final analysis and findings – We will analyse the DNOs’ submissions and utilise its findings, alongside other evidence, to inform a long-term climate resilience goal for ED3.
…
Step 3 climate stress test analysis
5.8 This step looks to consider how climate in 2080 could impact on the impact parameter based on 4°C global warming under RCP8.5. For windstorms and extreme temperatures, this will be done by the Met Office who will explore using ERA5 data to assess past event impacts and produce any necessary bias corrections to wind projections.
…
5.10 The UK Climate Projections (UKCP18)15 will be used to provide projections of future climate change, using the RCP8.5 warming scenario pathway. Temperature data can be provided to 5km grid resolution whilst wind gusts can be provided up to 12km resolution which will affect the level of granularity we can provide on future changes. It should be noted that assessing the climate change signal and robust projections is more challenging for windstorms than for temperature derived metrics.
…
Step 4 climate resilience options and cost analysis
5.13 Step 4 aims to understand the costs of resilience options and actions which:
Would be required to maintain “current levels of resilience” – specifically, which resilience actions could be taken to reduce the updated impact parameter value (identified in step 3 as change to projected impact expected under climate change) back down the vulnerability threshold level (as agreed under step 2).
Are identified by applying ETR138 to substations, assuming a climate scenario of RCP8.5 in 2080, using DNOs existing approaches to flood risk assessment alongside any additional investments for other assets at risk of flooding.
The implausibly extreme and hugely popular climate scenario RCP8.5 made it into President Trump’s executive order last week on “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” Ironically, the Trump administration’s characterization of RCP8.5 did not quite reach the “gold standard,” and maybe not even a “bronze standard. “
The EO states:
[Federal a]gencies have used Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenario 8.5 to assess the potential effects of climate change in a “higher” warming scenario. RCP 8.5 is a worst-case scenario based on highly unlikely assumptions like end-of-century coal use exceeding estimates of recoverable coal reserves. Scientists have warned that presenting RCP 8.5 as a likely outcome is misleading.
RCP8.5 is not simply “highly unlikely” — it is falsified, meaning that its emissions trajectory is already well out of step with reality. We showed this conclusively in Burgess et al. 2021, from which the annotated figure below comes from.
The gap between the black arrow (RCP8.5) and the blue arrow (reality) indicates that RCP8.5 is not just unlikely, but impossible — it is already wildly wrong. Since we published that paper, that gap between RCP8.5 and reality has only grown larger (stay tuned on that!).
To model and predict future climate it is necessary to make assumptions about the economic, social and physical changes to our environment that will influence climate change.
Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) are a method for capturing those assumptions within a set of scenarios. The conditions of each scenario are used in the process of modelling possible future climate evolution.
RCPs specify concentrations of greenhouse gases that will result in total radiative forcing increasing by a target amount by 2100, relative to pre-industrial levels. Total radiative forcing is the difference between the incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere. Radiative forcing targets for 2100 have been set at 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 watts per square metre (W m-2) to span a wide range of plausible future emissions scenarios and these targets are incorporated into the names of the RCPs; RCP2.6, RCP4.5,
RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. Each pathway results in a different range of global mean temperature increases over the 21st century (see Table 1).
RCP8.5, by any reasonable measure, is junk science. But until the IPCC or UK MET or other official body comes clean and issues official guidance about the implausibility of RCP8.5, bureaucrats have to defer to the officially sanctioned worst case scenario for any stress testing guidance.
Unfortunately in this case the choice of such an unrealistic scenario has real world consequences. Unless this bureaucratic train wreck is somehow diverted during the consultation phase, Energy companies are going to be forced to build flood defences and more elaborate cooling systems, to guard against a fantasy scenario which will never happen. I’m not sure what impact this will have on already exorbitant British energy bills, but I’m sure glad I won’t have to experience that impact first hand.
“Climate impacts” (reference title of above article) are based on weather impacts averaged over a period of 30 years or more for a specific geographically-defined area, according to both NASA and NOAA.
I seriously doubt any current corporations, let alone “energy companies”, anywhere around the globe have business plans for the next 30+ years!
What part of “Energy companies are going to be forced to build flood defences and more elaborate cooling systems, to guard against a fantasy scenario which will never happen ”
did you not understand? Energy companies will be required NOW to start making these investments, not 30 years from now.
Yep. My impression is the renewables people believe they are building for eternity, that renewables will be the last word for the rest of time, so if they anticipate a problem a hundred years from now, they want it solved today.
I read a plan for an investor owned utility that was wrong the day after it was issued, due to a major change in a regulation. And they want projections for 2080 and 2100 based on a scenario that is already proven wrong?
Ah, good point. I will not send a response as barring a miracle I will not be around then.
cotpacker
November 9, 2025 2:36 pm
The madness will end when
1) the generation system and grid fail due to simultaneous wind & solar outage
2) a severe storm that takes out major parts of wind and solar farms
and/or
3) the industrial base of big European economies collapses due to energy costs and supply issues.
Australia, Germany and the UK are planning and regulating their own collapse. There won’t be an financial base to tax for the subsidies that the plans incorporate.
Bob
November 9, 2025 4:11 pm
What can I say? More worthless crappy government, only government can remain so ignorant in the face of contrary observations.
Since warming, cooling or stability of ambient temperatures conditions can happen unevenly all around the world throughout the legions of climates in all the different localities, why is just RCP8.5 characterized as – by any reasonable measure, is junk science ?
Surely ALL the RCPs are “junk science” for compiling “average global temperature” constructs, and pretending that these represent any realistic reflections of the world’s climates?
“For windstorms and extreme temperatures, this will be done by the Met Office who will explore using ERA5 data to assess past event impacts and produce any necessary bias corrections to wind projections.”
Just wait until someone in the Met Office figures out from ERA5 that “temperatures” (relating to internal energy + potential energy) and “wind” (relating to kinetic energy) undergo a continuous conversion from one form of energy to the other in both directions throughout the depth of the troposphere. This means there was/is no sound basis for having attributed any of the reported warming or any reported trend of climate variables to incremental CO2. This also means there can be no emissions scenario that can be reliably determined to differ in its resulting projections from another scenario or from a result of zero trend in any climate variable going forward. This is why I keep posting that dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation massively overwhelms the static increase in the IR absorbing power of the atmosphere from rising pCO2. This is true for any emissions scenario being debated.
The world’s climates are mostly water, rocks, sand, ice and snow. Activities of humans will have no effect on the vast Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, the Andes, Alps and Rocky mountains, or the Sahara, Gobi and Mojave deserts. In cities, activities of humans can effect local climates due to the UHI effect.
Companies do not have worry about any climate impacts from their activities.
Honestly I think we are pretty close to RCP8.5 in terms of CO2 emissions. The RCP model I have from the PIK (potsdam institute..) has total CO2 emissions (not just from fossil fuels) in 2023 at 48Gt, vs. 38.5Gt with RCP45. Strangely enough RCP6 has a lower emission pathway at that point.
Reviewing the emission figures, there appears to be a significant downward bias in the reported figures. I am pretty confident we have at least emitted 45Gt 2023, likely even more. There are sinister motives to underreport emissions..
What is the difference between “a scientific assessment of empirical data” and “the feelz” ?
.
The ATL article is about using RCP 8.5 for “long-term” planning.
The attached graph dates from (just) over a year ago, but shows how the RCP 8.5 “projections” of (Fossil-Fuel and Industry) CO2 emissions compare with other pathways up to 2070, as well as against a widely used dataset of actual emissions up to 2023.
NB : Even the IPCC, in their AR6 WG-I assessment report, described the SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0 pathways as “counterfactual”. Check carefully how RCP 8.5 “fits into” the spread compared to those two options.
When planning for the second half of the 21st century the RCP 8.5 emissions pathway is … checks notes for the correct technical term … oh yes, here we go … “a steaming pile of bovine excrement”.
a) emissions have culminated over the last 10-15years. Net zero efforts in the west are kind of paying off. Regrettably CO2 sinks then are indeed failing, because either it is too late, or because the bern model was right in a restrictive sense.
b) emissions are growing like ever, but they are being underreported. Net zero is meritless and only shifts emissions from the west to other countries. CO2 sinks then are just fine, showing no sign of weakening.
Option a) is definitely the one to support the climate agenda, b) does not. I do not suggest to chose one of these options based on sympathy. Rather I say the evidence points to b)..
Many people credit Trump’s second term as the main event in fixing Climate Change™ but the evidence indicates his first term actually fixed it.
Attached shows the monthly highest temperature recorded globally using the GHCN database. Clear peak around 2010 then a step down from 2016. I am not giving any credit to Obama.
It is also interesting to see air temperature records above 60C. I have been in 54C but never experienced 60C other than on the top of a solar panel in direct sunlight.
So my rerspopnse to the question of resilience is that Trump has fixed Climate Change™. If you disagree, check the maximum temperature record on GHCN. Don’t bother with anomalies, just focus on the highest temperature.
John Hultquist
November 9, 2025 7:16 pm
When 2080 rolls around, I wonder if anyone will check on the predicted impacts of these Framework reports. [electricity distribution price control (ED3) ] – is this the 3rd one?
From an early statement: ” As we accelerate to net zero and …”
Translation: As we depopulate Great Britain …
RCP8.5…sure, why not? As long as they’re using fantasy scenarios, how about 10 ⁰C warming and 10 meters of sea level rise by 2100? You have to be sure of any contingency, right? And 10 degrees is just as likely as 4 degrees. They’re both utterly ridiculous numbers with no connection to what’s actually happening. Then again, all the climate zealots are completely disconnected from the real world so it makes a perverse kind of sense that they would pick a fictional scenario.
I like “10 ⁰C warming and 10 meters of sea level rise“, it’ll make selling the scam understanding the unprecedented existential emergency climb it crisis (& any maths involved) so much easier.
The previous 1.5 or 2°C or 5.6°F = 3ft or was it 3m or 10ft, or it might be 3°C = 2ft or 2m rise is really confusing, much better to have simple figures that simple minds can remember & anyone who uses another figure is automatically a denier; simples.
I’ve already submitted my commentary on the proposals with copies to Badenoch and Farage.
Here’s the summary of a much, much longer commentary:
“Summary
Ofgem’s climate stress testing framework relies the Met Office which relies on RCP8.5 — a worst-case emissions scenario that leading climate scientists consider highly implausible. It assumes runaway fossil fuel use and no climate action, which contradicts current global trends.
Using RCP8.5 to guide UK energy policy risks overestimating threats and misallocating resources.
More realistic scenarios like RCP4.5 or SSP2-4.5 reflect moderate emissions with mitigation — and are better suited for planning resilient, cost-effective infrastructure.”
“Professor Peter Stott is a world-leading expert on climate attribution based at the Met Office and the University of Exeter in the UK. He said: “Our provisional study compared computer models based on today’s climate with those of the natural climate we would have had without human-induced emissions. We find that the intensity of this summer’s heatwave is around 30 times more likely than would have been the case without climate change.”
Met Office scientist Dr Nikolaos Christidis who was also involved in the study said: “Our models show that there is now about a 12% chance of summer average temperatures being as high as the UK experienced in summer 2018. This compares with a less than half per cent chance we’d expect in a natural climate.””
The greatest scientific fraud by the Met Office. The 2018 heat was discretely solar driven, it was the same type of event as the 2003 and 1976 heatwaves. They are a cause and not a product of climate variability, such events can never happen without their solar forcing. The same goes for extreme cold events in the mid latitudes, which the energy companies should be more concerned about.
“Climate impacts” (reference title of above article) are based on weather impacts averaged over a period of 30 years or more for a specific geographically-defined area, according to both NASA and NOAA.
I seriously doubt any current corporations, let alone “energy companies”, anywhere around the globe have business plans for the next 30+ years!
ROTFL!
What part of “Energy companies are going to be forced to build flood defences and more elaborate cooling systems, to guard against a fantasy scenario which will never happen ”
did you not understand? Energy companies will be required NOW to start making these investments, not 30 years from now.
Yep. My impression is the renewables people believe they are building for eternity, that renewables will be the last word for the rest of time, so if they anticipate a problem a hundred years from now, they want it solved today.
You’d think they would be concerned about recycling wind turbine blades and solar panels. Nope, landfills for thee.
I read a plan for an investor owned utility that was wrong the day after it was issued, due to a major change in a regulation. And they want projections for 2080 and 2100 based on a scenario that is already proven wrong?
” This step looks to consider how climate in 2080 could impact ….”
55 years.
Ah, good point. I will not send a response as barring a miracle I will not be around then.
The madness will end when
1) the generation system and grid fail due to simultaneous wind & solar outage
2) a severe storm that takes out major parts of wind and solar farms
and/or
3) the industrial base of big European economies collapses due to energy costs and supply issues.
Australia, Germany and the UK are planning and regulating their own collapse. There won’t be an financial base to tax for the subsidies that the plans incorporate.
What can I say? More worthless crappy government, only government can remain so ignorant in the face of contrary observations.
Since warming, cooling or stability of ambient temperatures conditions can happen unevenly all around the world throughout the legions of climates in all the different localities, why is just RCP8.5 characterized as –
by any reasonable measure, is junk science
?
Surely ALL the RCPs are “junk science” for compiling “average global temperature” constructs, and pretending that these represent any realistic reflections of the world’s climates?
Fair, “even junkier science”?
“For windstorms and extreme temperatures, this will be done by the Met Office who will explore using ERA5 data to assess past event impacts and produce any necessary bias corrections to wind projections.”
Just wait until someone in the Met Office figures out from ERA5 that “temperatures” (relating to internal energy + potential energy) and “wind” (relating to kinetic energy) undergo a continuous conversion from one form of energy to the other in both directions throughout the depth of the troposphere. This means there was/is no sound basis for having attributed any of the reported warming or any reported trend of climate variables to incremental CO2. This also means there can be no emissions scenario that can be reliably determined to differ in its resulting projections from another scenario or from a result of zero trend in any climate variable going forward. This is why I keep posting that dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation massively overwhelms the static increase in the IR absorbing power of the atmosphere from rising pCO2. This is true for any emissions scenario being debated.
Please see the Readme file, time-lapse video, plots, and histograms in this Google Drive folder for a complete explanation with references.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PDJP3F3rteoP99lR53YKp2fzuaza7Niz?usp=sharing
Thank you for listening.
You cannot approach what the Met Office do with common sense given that they open new weather stations that are of the junk category from Day 1.
The world’s climates are mostly water, rocks, sand, ice and snow. Activities of humans will have no effect on the vast Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, the Andes, Alps and Rocky mountains, or the Sahara, Gobi and Mojave deserts. In cities, activities of humans can effect local climates due to the UHI effect.
Companies do not have worry about any climate impacts from their activities.
Companies don’t worry about climate impacts from their activities, they worry about how climate policies affect their activities.
Fantasy built on top of delusion.
A scam built on top of a lie.
A fantasy built on top of delusion built on top of a scam built on top of a lie.
On top of de-industrialization of the West.
Honestly I think we are pretty close to RCP8.5 in terms of CO2 emissions. The RCP model I have from the PIK (potsdam institute..) has total CO2 emissions (not just from fossil fuels) in 2023 at 48Gt, vs. 38.5Gt with RCP45. Strangely enough RCP6 has a lower emission pathway at that point.
Reviewing the emission figures, there appears to be a significant downward bias in the reported figures. I am pretty confident we have at least emitted 45Gt 2023, likely even more. There are sinister motives to underreport emissions..
CO2 Sinks failing?
What is the difference between “a scientific assessment of empirical data” and “the feelz” ?
.
The ATL article is about using RCP 8.5 for “long-term” planning.
The attached graph dates from (just) over a year ago, but shows how the RCP 8.5 “projections” of (Fossil-Fuel and Industry) CO2 emissions compare with other pathways up to 2070, as well as against a widely used dataset of actual emissions up to 2023.
NB : Even the IPCC, in their AR6 WG-I assessment report, described the SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0 pathways as “counterfactual”. Check carefully how RCP 8.5 “fits into” the spread compared to those two options.
When planning for the second half of the 21st century the RCP 8.5 emissions pathway is … checks notes for the correct technical term … oh yes, here we go … “a steaming pile of bovine excrement”.
There are two options:
a) emissions have culminated over the last 10-15years. Net zero efforts in the west are kind of paying off. Regrettably CO2 sinks then are indeed failing, because either it is too late, or because the bern model was right in a restrictive sense.
b) emissions are growing like ever, but they are being underreported. Net zero is meritless and only shifts emissions from the west to other countries. CO2 sinks then are just fine, showing no sign of weakening.
Option a) is definitely the one to support the climate agenda, b) does not. I do not suggest to chose one of these options based on sympathy. Rather I say the evidence points to b)..
Many people credit Trump’s second term as the main event in fixing Climate Change™ but the evidence indicates his first term actually fixed it.
Attached shows the monthly highest temperature recorded globally using the GHCN database. Clear peak around 2010 then a step down from 2016. I am not giving any credit to Obama.
It is also interesting to see air temperature records above 60C. I have been in 54C but never experienced 60C other than on the top of a solar panel in direct sunlight.
Data straight from Climate Explorer:
https://climexp.knmi.nl/select.cgi?id=someone@somewhere&field=ghcn_cams_10
So my rerspopnse to the question of resilience is that Trump has fixed Climate Change™. If you disagree, check the maximum temperature record on GHCN. Don’t bother with anomalies, just focus on the highest temperature.
When 2080 rolls around, I wonder if anyone will check on the predicted impacts of these Framework reports. [electricity distribution price control (ED3) ] – is this the 3rd one?
From an early statement: ” As we accelerate to net zero and …”
Translation: As we depopulate Great Britain …
By 2080, Europe will be a Muslim caliphate. More likely by 2030.
I think 2030 is too soon but I agree that it might be around the time of the last chance to act against the muslims.
This is ridiculous, even the IPCC consider RCP8.5 to be a load of bollocks.
RCP8.5…sure, why not? As long as they’re using fantasy scenarios, how about 10 ⁰C warming and 10 meters of sea level rise by 2100? You have to be sure of any contingency, right? And 10 degrees is just as likely as 4 degrees. They’re both utterly ridiculous numbers with no connection to what’s actually happening. Then again, all the climate zealots are completely disconnected from the real world so it makes a perverse kind of sense that they would pick a fictional scenario.
I like “10 ⁰C warming and 10 meters of sea level rise“, it’ll make
selling the scamunderstanding the unprecedented existential emergency climb it crisis (& any maths involved) so much easier.The previous 1.5 or 2°C or 5.6°F = 3ft or was it 3m or 10ft, or it might be 3°C = 2ft or 2m rise is really confusing, much better to have simple figures that simple minds can remember & anyone who uses another figure is automatically a denier; simples.
I’ve already submitted my commentary on the proposals with copies to Badenoch and Farage.
Here’s the summary of a much, much longer commentary:
“Summary
Ofgem’s climate stress testing framework relies the Met Office which relies on RCP8.5 — a worst-case emissions scenario that leading climate scientists consider highly implausible. It assumes runaway fossil fuel use and no climate action, which contradicts current global trends.
Using RCP8.5 to guide UK energy policy risks overestimating threats and misallocating resources.
More realistic scenarios like RCP4.5 or SSP2-4.5 reflect moderate emissions with mitigation — and are better suited for planning resilient, cost-effective infrastructure.”
UK Met Office at COP24 in late 2018:
“Professor Peter Stott is a world-leading expert on climate attribution based at the Met Office and the University of Exeter in the UK. He said: “Our provisional study compared computer models based on today’s climate with those of the natural climate we would have had without human-induced emissions. We find that the intensity of this summer’s heatwave is around 30 times more likely than would have been the case without climate change.”
Met Office scientist Dr Nikolaos Christidis who was also involved in the study said: “Our models show that there is now about a 12% chance of summer average temperatures being as high as the UK experienced in summer 2018. This compares with a less than half per cent chance we’d expect in a natural climate.””
The greatest scientific fraud by the Met Office. The 2018 heat was discretely solar driven, it was the same type of event as the 2003 and 1976 heatwaves. They are a cause and not a product of climate variability, such events can never happen without their solar forcing. The same goes for extreme cold events in the mid latitudes, which the energy companies should be more concerned about.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQemMt_PNwwBKNOS7GSP7gbWDmcDBJ80UJzkqDIQ75_Sctjn89VoM5MIYHQWHkpn88cMQXkKjXznM-u/pub