Wind power is too expensive at any price, you fool

This morning, CityAM published a spectacularly silly article by Ben Goldsmith on energy provision in the UK (which is, as we know, looking pretty dicey right now).

Upon reading the first part of Goldsmith's piece—which dwells on the mind-bendingly high energy price that the government has signed us up to for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant—you might find yourself nodding along in agreement. But then you will have read a little further...

It is not surprising that, instead of setting a new competitive low for nuclear generating costs, Hinkley Point has done the reverse at £92.50 MW/h.

The costs of coal and gas power are also rising. Recent Bloomberg research has shown that the price of UK coal and gas power rose by around 17 per cent to £74 MW/h in the past year, despite downward pressure from the advent of US shale gas. Now comes the surprise. Over the same period, the costs of energy from onshore wind fell from £70 MW/h to £55 MW/h–making it cheaper than gas.

Sigh.

Look, running an energy system is not an easy job: you need to be able to keep the energy in the grid at a fairly stable voltage, but demand ebbs and flows considerably—which means that you need to be able to control the supply to the grid too.

And this is where wind power fails spectacularly: not only because it is intermittent, but also because you have almost no control over the output. Even were wind power levels consistent, because the actual output is only a fraction of the theoretical installed capacity (around 29% on average), you would need to install around four times the required capacity to be certain of keeping the lights on.

All of this is made abundantly clear in a recent report by physicist and civil engineer, David Partington (and as reported by Not A Lot of People Know That.

Derek Partington, a former Chartered Engineer, has spent a lot of time in the last six years, researching the effectiveness of wind turbines. His findings are damning:

His report runs to thirteen pages, well worth a read. But some of his tables and charts tell the story.

For instance, how capacity utilisation can vary wildly from month to month.

It's well worth reading the whole thing—but, for now, I will just repeat the conclusions.

Over the period studied, January 2013 to December 2014 inclusive, wind turbine operational capacity connected to the UK Grid has increased from 5,894MW to 8,403MW. The operational capacity in January 2011 was 2,490MW; therefore there has been an increase of almost 3.4x over the four year period.
The conclusions to be drawn from the data analysis are:

1. An increase in the operational capacity does not improve average output. In fact the average monthly capacity factor has fallen over the periods studied, dropping from 33.2% in 2011 to 28.8% in 2014.
2. An increase in the operational capacity does not reduce the periods of low or very low output as measured by the number of hours per year when output was low (less than 10% of installed capacity) or very low (less than 5% of installed capacity). There is a variation from year to year but no pattern emerges. The mean low output over the four years was 1,617 hours/year with a standard deviation of 197 hours/year and the mean very low output was 599 hours with a standard deviation of 96 hours.
3. An increase in the operational capacity does not reduce intermittency. If taken as a measure of intermittency, the average monthly minimum expressed as a percentage of installed capacity was 1.9% with no significant variation from year to year.
4. Taking maximum rise and fall in output over one hour period as a further measure of intermittency, the National Grid is now having to cope with variations in output of over 1,100MW over one hour periods, with this variation increasing by about 250MW per year. This is very significant as it represents the changes in output which the Grid has to cope with and which has to be compensated by conventional fossil fuelled power stations.
5. An increase in the operational capacity does not indicate any possibility of closing any conventional, fossil-fuel power stations as there is no correlation between variations in output from wind turbines and demand on the Grid. Often the opposite is true – when demand rises, output from wind turbines falls and vice versa. This has a significant negative effect as back-up has to be provided from conventional, fossil-fuel power stations not only to cater for increase in demand on the Grid at peak times but also to cover for any possible fall in output from the UK wind turbine fleet at the same time.

Therefore, taking the four criteria above, there is no case for a continued increase in the number of wind turbines connected to the Grid.

As stated in my previous report, it is incumbent upon the Government to ensure that the British consumer is getting value for money from industrial wind turbine installations and that they are not just paying subsidies to developers and operators (through ROCs) whilst getting nothing back in return in terms of CO2 emission reductions through the supplanting of fossil-fuelled power generation.

Based on the results of this and my previous analysis I cannot see why any policy for the continued increase in the number of wind turbines connected to the Grid can be justified.

So, to return to Mr Goldsmith's article, and his lunatic assertion that onshore wind power is "cheaper than gas"... Well, this is clearly barking insanity of the very first order: wind power does not provide stable and controllable power outputs; as such, it does not provide what we require from a power generation source and, therefore, is too expensive at any price.

So, since you would have to be an idiot not to understand all of this, one has to pose the Polly conundrum—is Goldsmith ignorant or is he stupid?

Actually, that is unfair. Because there is a third option in the conundrum, and it is this—"or is he shilling something?" And it is, of course, this last option that explains the article.

Accompanying the piece, in typical (usually decent) CityAM style, is a short biography that coyly explains that Goldsmith is "the founder of Menhaden Capital and WHEB Group". These are investment firms, of course, but what is their speciality? Well, given that Goldsmith is brother to environmentalist nut-job Zac, I think you can guess.

And you'd be right.

Ben Goldsmith, brother of Conservative MP and environmental campaigner Zac Goldsmith, is floating an investment fund backed by high-profile business figures to invest in green businesses.

Menhaden Capital will target business opportunities that specialise in saving resources such as energy and water or cutting waste.
...

Goldsmith said investment in green projects was no longer an act of faith and that there were many opportunities to make good returns from backing environmental businesses.
...

Ben Goldsmith is the founder of WHEB, an investment firm focused on energy efficiency, clean technology and sustainable development.

Can it be that "investment in green projects" is, in fact, "an act of faith". And could it be, with the government steadily rowing back from subsidising these white elephants, that Mr Ben is having trouble persuading people to invest money into his fantasyland adventures?

You might say that: I couldn't possibly comment...

Your government: making you poorer

Over at Bishop Hill's place, I find that Gordon Hughes has submitted a report on the economics of wind power [PDF] to our lords and masters (on behalf of the GWPF).

The subject is wind power. It makes for horrifying reading.

His Ecclesiastical Eminence is not wrong: consider, for instance, this little snippet... [Emphasis mine.]

Meeting the UK Government’s target for renewable generation in 2020 will require total wind capacity of 36 GW backed up by 21 GW of open cycle gas plants plus large complementary investments in transmission capacity. Allowing for the shorter life of wind turbines, the investment outlay for this Wind scenario will be about £124 billion. The same electricity demand could be met from 21.5 GW of combined cycle gas plants with a capital cost of £13 billion.

Yes, alright, you'll have noted the qualifier of "capital cost" in that last sentence: however, if the government would stop fucking about and give the explicit go-ahead for unlimited exploitation of our shale gas reserves, the running costs could be considerably cheaper than otherwise.

After all, in just four years, shale gas has halved the price of electricity in the US.

But we, of course, are wedded to our ludicrous climate change targets, which Highes also comments on. [Emphasis mine, again.]

Under the most favourable assumptions for wind power, the Wind scenario will reduce emissions of CO2 relative to the Gas scenario by 21 million metric tons in 2020 - 2.6% of the 1990 baseline at an average cost of about £415 per metric ton at 2009 prices. The average cost is far higher than the average price under the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme or the floor carbon prices that have been proposed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. If this is typical of the cost of reducing carbon emissions to meet the UK’s 2020 target, then the total cost of meeting the target would be £120 billion in 2020, or about 6.8% of GDP.

This is utter insanity.

If the lights go out, as Nick Drew observes, the government goes out. The Coalition will be screwed, but they will not be as comprehensively buggered as our economy.

This isn't the 1970s: if the power goes, then so does our entire infrastructure. Banking grinds to a halt, the internet is unreachable (and half of it down anyway), the vast majority of people simply will not be able to work at all.

But even if we do not have to start a series of rolling black-outs, the price of power has been climbing steadily. And power is required for everything these days: as such, as power becomes more expensive then so does everything else.

This government—and its predecessor—have been quite deliberately following a set of policies designed to impoverish everyone in the country. And, throughout all of the other insanities of this time, they have continued to prosecute this war against their own people.

Their aim is simple: to reduce power consumption—whether because of climate change or in order to avoid difficult decisions about building power stations, I do not know (although I have my suspicions).

The government's own report—you know, the one that showed that power would not be more expensive overall—relied on the country using half the electricity that it does now by 2020.

Reducing power consumption may be a laudable aim but it is, frankly, unrealistic in that timescale without a significant down-grading of our current life-style.

But I bet our lords and masters are going to be just fine and dandy, thanks. Even now, they are probably buying up portable generators and investing in every temporary power supplier in the country.

What a bunch of arseholes.

Fracking hell

Counting Cats has a good article up about the hysteria surrounding shale gas fracking. As an amusing diversion, I thought that I'd have a look at Frack Off—the campaign site for those with absolutely fuck all idea about science or economics.

These morons do not seem to be simply against fracking, mind you...

The UK is also threatened by a massive expansion in opencast coal mining, deep water oil drilling in the North Sea, Coal Bed Methane and a new generation of even more dangerous nuclear power stations.

So, essentially, these people are against any kind of reasonable power supply at all. So, please, when your granny freezes to death this winter—either because she can't pay the fuel bills, or because the super wind turbines have failed to actually deliver any power—do remember to send a Thank You card to Frack Off.

Personally, however, the most eloquent monument to the complete stupidity of those running Frack Off is the comment that they have let stand on their front page. It purports to be front a Gillian Craig and runs thusly: [Emphasis mine.]

From the first time I heard about this operation some months ago I was concerned, not having a scientific mind in any way whatsoever but quite a logical one, I started questioning about the void left by fracking and then finding out that the void is filled with water, which is not the natural substance to replace gas in the void created. Water is not a solid substance and will move and soak away, I am certainly not surprised that earth tremors have been associated with this practice. STOP IT NOW

There you go people—"water is not a solid substance". Whereas, of course, gas is. Er...

Still, Gillian Craig is right about one thing: she really doesn't have "a scientific mind in any way whatsoever"—although her claim to have "quite a logical one" is belied by the sheer, rampant stupidity of her remarks.

What's really funny, though, is that if you note the link, you'll see that Gillian's spouting is comment #11—but it is the only one that appears on that page. Which means that this was the best comment that they could find and that at least another 10 disappeared down the memory hole (presumably because the commenters disagreed with Frack Off).

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all that you need to know about the arseholes at Frack Off: that they don't tolerate free speech, they tout the stupidity of people like Gillian Craig, they are pig-ignorant about science and economics, and that they think that 2,700 people dying of cold every winter just isn't a big enough death toll.

What a lovely bunch they must be.

An interesting development

It will come as no surprise to regular readers to know that I believe Chris Huhne to be an extremely dangerous man—if, that is, you want to keep such trappings of our civilisation as electricity and heat.

A few days ago, he spelt out just why our energy bills have risen so massively, in his remarkably up-front comment on the increase in gas-driven power stations.

The UK's "dash for gas" will be halted by the government because if unchecked it would break legally binding targets for carbon dioxide emissions, Chris Huhne, energy and climate change secretary, said on Monday evening.

"We will not consent so much gas plant so as to endanger our carbon dioxide goals," he told a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrats party conference in Birmingham.

The number of gas-fuelled power plants is increasing rapidly because they are fast and cheap to build compared with alternatives. They also create about half the carbon emissions of coal-powered plants and have been seen as a "transition fuel", helping smooth the path to zero-carbon electricity.

In general, gas-fired stations are a good thing—especially if you are trying to adopt renewable energy in the form of the massively unreliable wind turbines—because the stations can be spun up and down relatively quickly.

Further, they are quicker and cheaper to build, relatively, than any other type, they emit less carbon dioxide than fuels such as coal (if you care about such things) and, as such, are the only things that are likely to keep the lights on.

And, presumably, any government would want to keep the lights on. After all, the Three Day Week didn't do much for the electoral prospects of that utter bastard Heath. And, given our far greater reliance on electricity for every aspect of our home and business lives than in the Seventies, any party who let rolling black-outs become a feature of their government would be unlikely to see power again for a very long time.

However, one of the downsides of gas—and this seems to exercise even those who do not give a shit about climate change—is the fact that we have to buy a lot of it from Russia. And that leads to otherwise sensible people starting to use phrases such as "energy security"...

So, Cuadrilla Resources's announcement (which came only two days after Huhne's "dash for gas" comments) must be seen as an amazing discovery.

A company backed by former BP chief Lord Browne claims to have found a gas field near Blackpool that could be the largest ever discovered in Britain.

Cuadrilla Resources believes there are 200 trillion cubic feet of "shale" gas in the Bowland basin, which could result in a Lancashire gas boom creating 5,600 jobs at peak production.

Shale is a type of onshore gas common in the US, which is extracted by blasting apart rock in a process called fracking.

More testing is needed, but the estimates suggest Britain could have more shale gas than Poland, which has been considered Europe's biggest holder of probable reserves.

As has been pointed out, not all of the 200 TCF will actually be recoverable but, even at 50%, this find could deal with all of our power needs—at peak usage—for 30 years.

If our supposedly sovereign government would now just turn around and tell the near-bankrupt EU to fuck off, we can keep the lights on and stick two fingers up at Russia. It's a win-win situation.

Not only that, but it is likely that Cuadrilla's find is not the only one likely.

It’s not just Blackpool you know:

Widespread in the Craven Basin, including the Lancaster, Garstang, Settle, Clitheroe and Harrogate districts, south Cumbria and the Isle of Man; also in North Wales, Staffordshire and the East Midlands.

It is, to use a technical term, friggin’ huge mate.

It's also interesting to note that most of the reserves seem to be in ex-industrial, Labour-supporting areas of the country. This could be a neat chance for the Coalition to try to pick up some support in these traditionally red-voting areas, might it not?

Of course, if the Coalition block these developments (and the lots of lovely jobs and prosperity that go with them), then they are going to find themselves really very unpopular.

And even more so when the black-outs start.

So, Chris: your move...

UPDATE: this discussion is becoming ever more urgent since the ten new nuclear power stations that Huhne was hoping for almost certainly will not materialise...

SSE pulls out of the nuclear game. Well of course they do. And it's a cert that neither E.on nor RWE will be up for it either any more, given the pounding they are getting in Germany and their well-publicised shortages of capital; Centrica have voiced their (very sensible) doubts: which just leaves EDF, and the depleted GdF/Iberdrola JV now that SSE have deserted them. I could just about imagine EDF approving one new UK nuke in the next 2-3 years, if Crapper Huhne's new Capacity Payments scheme (due to be published later this year) attracts them sufficiently.

Now Huhne was hoping for 10 new nukes. 'Perhaps one, maybe' looks a bit thin in that context. There comes a point, and it may not be long now, when the required 'run-rate' of new investment becomes plainly infeasible. Actually, it is already, but not quite obvious enough yet, it seems.

Every politicians wants to be remembered: but do Huhne and the Coalition really want to be remembered as the people who shut down the British economy...? It's time to get a grip, guys...

Spinning idly in the wind

One of the chief architects of our destruction: "I don't care about energy bills, because I don't pay mine—you do, you fuckin' mooks."

Christopher Booker's latest piece in the Telegraph should have every person in Britain gnashing their teeth at the rampant stupidity of this Coalition's energy policy—specifically the utter lunacy that is embodied in off-shore wind farms.

Last week, the BBC ran a series of reports by its science correspondent, David Shukman, on the Government’s plan to ring our coasts with vast offshore wind farms.
The nearest thing allowed to criticism of this policy came in an interview with the Oxford academic Dieter Helm, who we were told had “done the sums”. What, Shukman asked, had he come up with? The only figures Helm gave were that the Government’s offshore wind farm plans would, by 2020, cost £100 billion—scarcely a state secret, since the Government itself announced this three years ago—plus £40 billion more to connect these windmills to the grid, a figure given us by the National Grid last year.
Helm did not tell us that this £140 billion equates to £5,600 for every household in the country. But he did admit that the plan was “staggeringly expensive”, and that, given the current extent of “fuel poverty” and the state of our economy, he doubted “if it can in fact be afforded”.

Even shorter on hard facts, however, was Shukman’s report on a monster new wind farm off the coast of Cumbria, where a Swedish firm, Vattenfall, has spent £500 million on building 30 five‑megawatt turbines with a total “capacity” of 150MW. What Shukman did not tell us, because the BBC never does, is that, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, these machines will only produce a fraction of their capacity (30 per cent was the offshore average in the past two years). So their actual output is only likely to average 45MW, or £11 million per MW.

Compare this with the figures for Britain’s newest gas-fired power station, recently opened in Plymouth. This is capable of generating 882MW at a capital cost of £400 million—just £500,000 for each megawatt. Thus the wind farm is 22 times more expensive, and could only be built because its owners will receive a 200 per cent subsidy: £40 million a year, on top of the £20 million they will get for the electricity itself. This we will all have to pay for through our electricity bills, whereas the unsubsidised cost of power from the gas plant, even including the price of the gas, will be a third as much.

Booker also points out—reinforcing what your humble Devil has been saying for years—that wind power is inherently unreliable and, as such, we would need to build a MW of conventional power for every MW of installed wind power.

Or, of course, the lights go out.

This would be stupid enough were we forced to duplicate our power capacity at gas- or coal-fired prices; that we must build wind farms at 22 times the cost of conventional power plus the gas- or coal-fired power stations is nothing short of insane.

And, ultimately, we are going to have to pay for all of this. And we are going to pay through the fucking nose.

The trouble is that the government knows damn well that people will not stand for massive rises on energy taxes; as such, the government and the EU have forced the power companies to carry much of the cost—thus making the energy companies out to be total fucking demons*.

As Matthew Sinclair points out in this superb rant to the Freedom Society (whilst promoting his book, Let Them Eat Carbon), most people are simply not aware of the vast costs being imposed on the power companies by our Lords and Masters in the name of the discredited Climate Change scam.



It does appear that the energy companies are, however, protesting somewhat. Bishop Hill recently submitted a Freedom of Information request on a meeting between the government and the Electricity Retailers Association (ERA).

Here's an odd thing. Some weeks back I noticed that Gregory Barker, the Climate Change minister, had met with representatives of the Electricity Retailers Association to discuss "information on consumers' bills".

To me this seemed rather odd - why would electricity retailers need to discuss the information on bills with ministers? Perhaps Mr Barker wanted to insist that some information was passed on to consumers?

An FOI request later, I discover that the meeting was at the request of ERA itself—it appears that they asked to speak to ministers about a number of issues—Fuel Poverty, the Green Deal, the Community Energy Saving Programme and the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target. Putting this together with DECC's record that "information on consumers' bills" was discussed, I conclude that ERA wanted to make the costs of these government programmes transparent.

Unfortunately, I can only infer this because according to DECC, no record was kept of the meeting.

The Grauniad recently ran a fucking ludicrous story about how climate change might lead aliens to eliminate us because our carbon emissions would lead them to assume that the human race was "out of control".

Personally, I think that these self-same aliens might well kill us all.

But only because they would look at the fucking colossal idiocy enacted by our governments (and the rampant apathy of their citizens) and decide that the human race is too fucking stupid to be allowed to live.

* Alright—worse demons than they actually are.

Energy generation begins at home

A few days ago, this excellent article by Charles Moore contained a rather significant anecdote...

The other day, I heard that a top executive of one of our biggest power companies has had an emergency generator installed in his large house. One must assume that he knows something we don't.

Well, yes: he knows that this country is facing an energy shortfall from about 2014 onwards and we are, in fact, facing the prospect of rolling back-outs.

It is less a case of vote Blue, go Green than a case of vote how you like, the lights are still going to go out.

And all because our politicians are in thrall to an insane Green religion and they give more of a shit about some unproven Doomsday phantasm than they do about grannies freezing to death in their homes.

God, but I hate these bastards.

A "horrifying figure"

Neil Clark's bullshit encomium to a "less greedy" Britain is ripped to shreds by Timmy in typically terse fashion.

What interested me—in the context of Scottish Power raising their prices by 19% for gas and 10% for electricity—was the figure for the rise in electricity prices under the nationalised company, as recorded in Hansard.

Gas and Electricity Prices

HC Deb 22 March 1976 vol 908 cc11-3

Mr. Peter Morrison asked the Secretary of State for Energy what is the percentage increase in the cost of electricity since 28th February 1974.

Mr. Eadie: I am informed by the Electricity Council that it is about 86 per cent. overall in England and Wales.

Mr. Morrison: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that that is a horrifying figure? Perhaps he will explain why the prices of the goods and services supplied by nationalised industries seem to rise much faster than the prices of those supplied by the private sector.

Yes, that figure is correct: under the benign state management of the national electricity company, over two years the price of electricity rose by 86%! Eighty-six percent!

No doubt that arsehole Huhne would say that this was because people just weren't shopping around enough.

As concern grows that the other five major energy companies are preparing to follow Scottish Power and announce big rises within weeks, the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, told the Observer that consumers should not accept the increases "lying down" but "hurt" their supplier by finding cheaper alternatives.

"Consumers don't have to take price increases lying down," he said. "If an energy company hits you with a price increase, you can hit them back where it hurts—by shopping around and voting with your feet."

Given that a great part of these price rises are caused by the fucking government—both the EU and our pretendy local government in Westminster—slapping taxes and alternative fuel contributions onto the energy companies, I think that Chris Huhne's witterings are somewhat cunting cheeky, frankly.

"Right now, only one in five people switch suppliers. I want to see more switching, more competition and more companies in the market," Huhne said. "The big six only have a few minnows snapping at them, who are kept artificially small. By scrapping red tape for small players they can become serious challengers and help keep bills down."

Yeah? And what will happen when those companies start getting big? We all know—you'll slap a massive fucking windfall tax on them, or just put more taxes onto their suppliers* so that the "minnows" cannot even compete on price.

Seriously, why don't you fuck off, you total fucking Huhne.

* In fact, they'll probably do something really fucking stupid like linking both gas and oil taxes to the oil price. Oh, wait, that's precisely what Osborne did, the stupid fucknuts.

More Polywell news

Plasma shines within EMC2's WB-7 device...

Via the IEC Fusion Technology blog, after the recent coy confirmation of continuance, there has been some more positive news on the Polywell fusion reaction front. [Emphasis mine.]

A Navy-funded effort to harness nuclear fusion power reports that its unconventional plasma device is operating as designed and generating "positive results" more than halfway through the project.
...

So how far along is EMC2? The current experiment is known as WB-8, which follows up on WB-5, 6 and 7. "WB" stands for "Wiffle Ball," which describes the spherical swiss-cheese look of the plasma containment cage. The $7.9 million contract covers work to see whether Bussard's fusion concept can be scaled up to a size capable of putting out more power than it consumes.
...

But based on the experiments so far, Park thinks there's a chance that it could be done in a sufficiently large Wiffleball reactor, costing on the order of $100 million to $200 million. That sounds like a pretty good deal, especially in comparison with the $3.5 billion that's been spent so far on fusion research at the National Ignition Facility and the $20 billion expected to be spent on the international ITER fusion project.
...

"It's a very nice machine," he said. "I like what we have so far. It's quite well-built, relatively flexible to actually explore a lot of areas and find what's best. Achieving the plasma for fusion is obviously a tall order. ... You don't just push the pedal on a Ferrari and drive the car. Like an F-18 or a stealth bomber, you have to learn how to operate it properly."
...

Park figures that the money provided under the WB-8 contract should last until the end of the year, depending on how efficiently the EMC2 team is able to stretch the money out. By then, the engineers in New Mexico and their backers in the Navy should know whether it's worth going ahead with the next step, perhaps even with the big demonstration reactor. Park hopes that WB-8 will be the last small-scale experimental machine EMC2 will have to build.

"This machine should be able to generate 1,000 times more nuclear activity than WB-7, with about eight times more magnetic field," said Park, quoting the publicly available information about WB-8. "We'll call that a good success. That means we're on track with the scaling law."

As Park points out, EMC2 cannot be too open about their work since their customer—the US Navy—has stipulated some degree of secrecy. However, all parties seem to be quietly confident...

So, onwards and upwards!

Polywell fusion news

As Samizdata's Dale Amon has reported, there has been some news on the Polywell Fusion reactor: well, it is not so much news of progress, but news that progress is continuing.

The Polywell experiment—conducted by EMC2—is currently running at WB8–8.1, with the awarding contract details shown here.

RECOVERY-- Research Development Test Evaluation (RDT&E;) Plan Plasma Fusion (Polywell) project. The Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake has awarded a Cost Plus Fixed Fee contract for research, analysis,
development, and testing to validate the basic physics of the plasma fusion (polywell) concept as well as requirements to provide the Navy with data for potential applications of polywell fusion with a delivered item, wiffleball 8 (WB8) and options for a modified wiffleball 8 (WB8.1) and modified ion gun.

The progress is reported on the US contracts progress page (for all its problems, the US government makes Cameron's promises of transparency look like the obfuscating arse-wibble that it is), which reports that the project is "More than 50% Completed". So, no research continues and no massive barriers have yet been found.

It's also worth reading some of the comments at the Talk Polywell boards—a forum on which R Nabel, currently heading the EMC2 experiments, often posts.

Related posts on Polywell can be found here: Polywell reactor

Budget for Growth: not oiling the wheels of business

A few days ago, in my comment on the Budget, your humble Devil pointed out that raising the tax on the oil companies was completely fucking stupid.

Quite simply, with fuel prices lowered, people will buy more of it—demand increases. But Osborne is going to tax the suppliers of this good, so that they produce less of it. Is the man a complete moron?

Well, that didn't take long, did it?

One of the world's biggest oil companies, Norway's Statoil, has halted work on two North Sea projects because of the huge tax hit on oil fields in the Budget.

It comes after smaller companies such as Valiant Petroleum warned that they are re-evaluating new projects, since the Chancellor increased tax by 12 percentage points to more than 62pc.

There have also been reports that oil majors have withdrawn plans to sell billions of pounds in North Sea fields nearing the end of their lives, leading to fears they will be abandoned with oil still in the ground.

Statoil, the Norwegian state-controlled company, said on Tuesday it will "pause and reflect" on the future of its Mariner and Bressay fields to the south east of Shetland.

So, what we are faced with is a decrease (however small it may be in the grand scheme of things) in the supply of oil just as the Chancellor has dropped the price of petrol.

And that drop in price is supposed to be paid for by this increased tax on North Sea oil producers. Only the tax increase will see said producers actually producing less. As Timmy says, this is a very neat demonstration of the Laffer Curve in action...

Whether this will actually lead to a decline in tax revenues overall is moot at this point: it certainly won’t lead to a reduction in short term revenues. But it will definitely lead to a reduction in the amount of oil pumped up over the decades and so is quite likely to lead to a reduction in the long term tax take.

And do note that no one is trying to dodge a tax, no one is trying to pass it on. It’s simply that the imposition of a tax has made previously viable activity now non-viable. We’re, in that long term, poorer because of the tax.

Leading to the conclusion that George Osborne is a total fuckwit because he won't raise the revenue that he expects from the producers.

On the other hand, it might be that George Osborne is, in fact, possessed of a near-fiendish Machiavellian cunning...

Because what may happen—especially with the current uncertainty in the other areas of the oil-producing world—is that these announcements are enough to put an upward pressure on the price of oil. This will then raise the price of petrol at the pump, enabling Osborne to wibble on about "greedy oil companies raping the British consumer".

Then, as the price of oil goes up, the Treasury—collecting fuel duty and VAT (a percentage of the price)—gets even more cash than they would have raked in from the 1p duty anyway. In this way, the government can rim its citizens for more cash whilst looking like the good guy.

Actually, of course, I don't think that Osborne has the intellectual nouse to pull that kind of cunning stunt—it's just that he's a stunning cunt.

It warm the cockles of my heart

There are times when George "Moonbat" Monbiot almost engenders my respect: not only was he one of the few journalists to admit that he was "dismayed and deeply shaken" by the Climategate emails showed that maybe he had overstated the certainty of climate change, he has now written a vaguely sensible article about nuclear power.

You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.

Whoever heard of a loony Green embracing anything so inconvenient as "facts" or advocating anything so radical as "perspective"?

The thing is that Moonbat does not simply endorse nuclear power (with caveats): he actually rips apart the whole concept of powering our economy through "renewable energy".

Like others, I have called for renewable power to be used both to replace the electricity produced by fossil fuel and to expand the total supply, displacing the oil used for transport and the gas used for heating fuel. Are we also to demand that it replaces current nuclear capacity? The more work we expect renewables to do, the greater the impact on the landscape will be, and the tougher the task of public persuasion.

But expanding the grid to connect people and industry to rich, distant sources of ambient energy is also rejected by most of the greens who complained about the blog post I wrote last week in which I argued that nuclear remains safer than coal. What they want, they tell me, is something quite different: we should power down and produce our energy locally. Some have even called for the abandonment of the grid. Their bucolic vision sounds lovely, until you read the small print.

At high latitudes like ours, most small-scale ambient power production is a dead loss. Generating solar power in the UK involves a spectacular waste of scarce resources. It's hopelessly inefficient and poorly matched to the pattern of demand. Wind power in populated areas is largely worthless. This is partly because we have built our settlements in sheltered places; partly because turbulence caused by the buildings interferes with the airflow and chews up the mechanism. Micro-hydropower might work for a farmhouse in Wales, but it's not much use in Birmingham.

And how do we drive our textile mills, brick kilns, blast furnaces and electric railways – not to mention advanced industrial processes? Rooftop solar panels? The moment you consider the demands of the whole economy is the moment at which you fall out of love with local energy production. A national (or, better still, international) grid is the essential prerequisite for a largely renewable energy supply.

Some greens go even further: why waste renewable resources by turning them into electricity? Why not use them to provide energy directly? To answer this question, look at what happened in Britain before the industrial revolution.

It's an extraordinary screed; although Moonbat is very far from declaring himself "not a Green", he does at least seem to be considering the facts and evidence. In fact, he remains one of the more interesting journalists simply because, over the years, there has been some development in his views.

Don't get me wrong—the man is still deeply wrong, massively hypocritical and mildly terrifying on questions of private property rights and other civil liberties matters. But it is nice to see that Moonbat can not only actually grasp and assimilate some actual evidence but also modify his views based on said evidence.

If only he could teach Polly to do the same, we might make some progress. And, of course, Polly could stop writing the same column every week...

Japanese nuclear power-plants: an accurate assessment

A nuclear reactor: now you can build your own...

Via EUReferendum, I have read—with great interest—this article on the situation surrounding the Fukushima nuclear incident.

Whilst media outlets, such as the BBC, have been amplifying the dangers (whilst simultaneously appearing to downplay them) the simple fact is that, according to the linked article, there really is no risk.

The article is written by Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, in Boston: he is a PhD Scientist, whose father has extensive experience in Germany’s nuclear industry. As such, Oehmen can be taken as a rather more authoritative source than, for instance, the BBC's Roger Black; I have been unable to find a biography for the latter but, given the lack of scientific qualifications in the rest of the BBC's environmental team, I think that we can assume that Oehmen is rather more believable than Black.

Anyway, the whole article is utterly fascinating—laying out, as it does, not only what happened in Japan but also describing, in detail, exactly how a nuclear plant of the light water design actually operates.

So, I recommend that you read it all—I will simply leave you with Oehmen's conclusions:

• The plant is safe now and will stay safe.


• Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.


• Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.


• There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.


• The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.


• The seawater will then be replaced over time with the “normal” cooling water


• The reactor core will then be dismantled and transported to a processing facility, just like during a regular fuel change.


• Fuel rods and the entire plant will be checked for potential damage. This will take about 4-5 years.


• The safety systems on all Japanese plants will be upgraded to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami (or worse)


• I believe the most significant problem will be a prolonged power shortage. About half of Japan’s nuclear reactors will probably have to be inspected, reducing the nation’s power generating capacity by 15%. This will probably be covered by running gas power plants that are usually only used for peak loads to cover some of the base load as well. That will increase your electricity bill, as well as lead to potential power shortages during peak demand, in Japan.

If you want to stay informed, please forget the usual media outlets and consult the following websites:

• http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Battle_to_stabilise_earthquake_reactors_1203111.html


• http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/12/japan-nuclear-earthquake/


• http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2011/03/11/media-updates-on-nuclear-power-stations-in-japan/

As Oehmen points out, he has published this in order to provide an accurate portrayal of the situation—something that he has not seen, and you will not see, in the hysterical articles written by the under-qualified hacks of the MSM.

Why governments shouldn't invest

Wind turbines: still expensive, still pointless, still costing us billions of pounds.

The main reason that governments shouldn't invest is because they are utterly shit at picking winners—after all, their investments are made with magic money, which falls from the sky more of which can easily be extorted from taxpayers with the stroke of a pen—so who cares if they lose money, eh?

As another glaring example of just how utterly useless the state is at working out good investments, it's worth remembering that Our New Coalition Overlords™ are merrily spunking our cash up the wall on wind farms.

It's also worth reminding ourselves that, owing to the vagaries of the wind, these monstrosities currently are only providing some 25% of their rated power, and require 90% back-up from conventional power stations—if we rely solely on wind, the lights will go out. Fact.

Nonetheless, the government is investing in factories... Or, rather, they are pushing our money at massive corporations that are going to build factories.

... Britain celebrated more than £300m of investment in new manufacturing centres by rival manufacturers GE, Siemens and Gamesa. Following a boost from the government's Infrastructure Plan on Monday, GE said it would invest £100m in a manufacturing plant. Spanish firm Gamesa said it would spend €150m (£131m) setting up a worldwide centre for offshore wind, including a turbine factory; and Siemens said it would build an £80m wind turbine factory.

Hmmm. I'm not sure about "celebrated", but the Grauniad likes to put a positive spin on these things. Anyway, these companies are investing in new wind farms, and the government is providing "a boost", i.e. cash, in the form of capital, loans and, of course, the colossal subsidies that are the only things that make windmills in any way profitable.

How lovely.

But wait! What is this article actually about...?

Vestas, the Danish wind turbine manufacturer, said today it would close five production plants across Scandinavia and cut 3,000 jobs.

The group said the surge in demand for wind power it had hoped for in Europe had not materialised and it would have to shift production away from Denmark and Sweden towards Spain to protect profits.

It is closing four plants in Denmark and one in Sweden, including one in Viborg where it has been manufacturing since 1989. The factory moves follow Vestas' decision to move production of turbines away from the UK last year, when it closed its Isle of Wight facility.

It still employs 500 people in the UK, who are unlikely to be hit by the company's latest round of job cuts, but a spokesman could not it rule out. The company employs 250 research and development specialists on the Isle of Wight, and 250 other staff primarily at a sales centre in Warrington and a spare parts and repair plant in Bristol.

Right. So, a massive enthusiasm for building useless bloody windmills has not materialised because, presumably, everyone has realised that they are bloody useless.

So, just as Vestas is closing factories and shedding jobs, our government is providing "a boost" for other companies to set up windmill factories in this country.

Nice going, you morons.

A tip of the horns to The Englishman.

UPDATE: an interesting comment from Adam Bell...

... you've got this entirely wrong. Vestas make onshore turbines; notably 1.5MW and 3MW models. Siemens, GE and Gamesa are coming to the UK to build offshore turbines, which range from 6-10MW. Vestas doesn't yet have a player in this market, so isn't coming on board.

Demand for onshore has dropped in Denmark and Germany as all the good sites are taken up. Vestas is responding to the market by relocating its production facilities to places where onshore demand is strong, notably Spain and to a lesser extent the US. This is the market doing what it should.

Demand for wind and other renewables is still being driven less by environmental concerns than the very hard-headed realisation that it constitutes a useful hedge against rising gas prices. You know, as happens whenever Russia feels like Europe isn't paying it enough attention. As such, the economic downturn and the resultant lower commodity prices have decreased demand for renewables—but as soon as the economy picks up again that demand will return, most likely in 2013-4.

Food for thought?

Now, everyone be cool

Once again, the redoubtable Christopher Booker once more laid into the stupidity of wind farms, this time concentrating on how uneconomical they are.

In all the publicity given to the opening of "the world's largest wind farm" off the Kent coast last week, by far the most important and shocking aspect of this vast project was completely overlooked. Over the coming years we will be giving the wind farm's Swedish owners a total of £1.2 billion in subsidies. That same sum, invested now in a single nuclear power station, could yield a staggering 13 times more electricity, with much greater reliability.

Indeed. And whilst Chris "most dangerous man in Britain" Huhne plays at being an energy guru, James Delingpole has discovered that those who pull Huhne's strings may have moved on from the carbon issue somewhat.

Bilderberg. Whether you believe it’s part of a sinister conspiracy which will lead inexorably to one world government or whether you think it’s just an innocent high-level talking shop, there’s one thing that can’t be denied: it knows which way the wind is blowing.

And which way is it blowing? Well, as that nice Mr Delingpole points out, the Bilderberg Group held a conference in Spain recently...

At its June meeting in Sitges, Spain (unreported and held in camera, as is Bilderberg’s way), some of the world’s most powerful CEOs rubbed shoulders with notable academics and leading politicians. They included: the chairman of Fiat, the Irish Attorney General Paul Gallagher, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Bill Gates, Dick Perle, the Queen of the Netherlands, the editor of the Economist…. Definitely not Z-list, in other words.

Which is what makes one particular item on the group’s discussion agenda so tremendously significant. See if you can spot the one I mean:

The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations.

Did you spot it?

Yep, that’s right. Global Cooling.

Which means one of two things.

Either it was a printing error.

Or the global elite is perfectly well aware that global cooling represents a far more serious and imminent threat to the world than global warming, but is so far unwilling to admit it except behind closed doors.

As James points out, if people realise that their energy bills have gone through the roof, that their rights and freedoms have been curtailed and that the creeping extensions of government control have all been in the name of a total myth, then they are not going to be tremendously happy.

If man-made global warming was really happening and really a problem we might possibly have carried on putting up with all these constraints on our liberty and assaults on our income. But if it turns out to have been a myth…

Well then, all bets are off.

The next few years are going to be very interesting. Watch the global power elite squirming to reposition itself as it slowly distances itself from Anthropogenic Global Warming (”Who? Us? No. We never thought of it as more than a quaint theory…”), and tries to find new ways of justifying green taxation and control. (Ocean acidification; biodiversity; et al). You’ll notice sly shifts in policy spin. In Britain, for example, Chris “Chicken Little” Huhne’s suicidal “dash for wind” will be re-invented as a vital step towards “energy security.” There will be less talk of “combatting climate change” and more talk of “mitigation”. You’ll hear enviro-Nazis like Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren avoid reference to “global warming” like the plague, preferring the more reliably vague phrase “global climate disruption.”

And you know what the worst thing is? If we allow them to, they’re going to get away with it.

Our duty as free citizens over the next few years is to make sure that they don’t.

What might be very amusing (in a rather dark way) is when—in a few years time and the cold has really started to bite—we are all being urged to pump as much CO₂ into the atmosphere as possible in order to try to warm the planet up.

Me? Oh, in the meantime, I'm going to invest in ski-wear manufacturers...

The most dangerous man in the country

Chris Huhne: The Most Dangerous Man In Britain

(and, of course, a lying, adulterous bastard)

Chris Huhne is a total moron. Well, either that or he really does wish to bring the British economy to its knees—perhaps he is a Russian spy?

In any case, I have dealt with this man's particular brand of insanity before, and he is no less insane now.

Chris Huhne really seems to think that we can somehow power the entirety of this island on wind power. We cannot.

Chris Huhne really seems to think that his precious windmills are 'intensely competitive' in terms of cash. They are not. And this one really grates because he must know that they are not.

Chris Huhne must know that, without new and reliable generating capacity, this country is heading for a series of rolling blackouts by 2014. Huhne must know that, if this happens, the government is finished.

Even more worryingly, Cameron must know this too—and yet Huhne is still Energy Minister.

I have rehearsed the arguments many times before, and luckily Christopher Booker is on hand to remind us all of the insane energy "strategy" that this country is currently pursuing.

Here are just a few of the highlights...

As was only too predictable, the overall theme of Mr Huhne's message was that 'climate change is the greatest global challenge we face'.

We must do everything we can and more to cut down very drastically on our 'carbon emissions', as we are now legally committed to do by the Climate Change Act - at a cost of £18 billion a year.

But in the real world, the £100 billion-plus energy question that confronts us all in Britain today is how we are going to fill that massive, fast-looming gap in our electricity supplies when the antiquated power stations which currently supply us with two-fifths of the power needed to keep our economy running are forced to close.

The headline answer given by Mr Huhne is that we must build thousands more giant wind turbines.
...

The target set by the last government would require us, at a cost of £100 billion, to erect nearly two of these monster turbines, each the size of Blackpool Tower, every day of every week for the next ten years - when each takes weeks to manufacture and sink into the seabed.

But even if Mr Huhne could make his dream come true, that would still supply on average only five more gigawatts of electricity, less than a tenth of our needs.
...

Meanwhile, to keep the lights on, a whole lot more gas-fired power stations would have to be built - and kept running, pumping out CO2 - simply to be ready to be ramped up to fill the gap when the wind stops blowing.

The Huhne solution to producing Britain's energy is naivete verging on madness.

It is barking fucking insanity.

But surely the actual energy that we do get from the wind is free, is it not? Well, the actual energy is, but the means to convert and transmit that energy more certainly is not.

Allowing for the cost of those vital back-up plants, [wind power] is twice as expensive as gas, coal or nuclear—while the power from those colossally expensive offshore turbines, costing anything up to £10 million each, is up to three times as costly as that produced by conventional power stations.

If it wasn't for the 100 per cent subsidy we all unwittingly pay to the developers of wind turbines - through a compulsory levy in our electricity bills - no one would dream of building these ludicrously inefficient machines at all.
Yet Mr Huhne tries to kid us into thinking that they are 'intensely competitive'.

So, if there isn't the faintest chance that our electricity needs can be met with windmills, how does our energy minister hope to keep his promise that 'the lights will not go out on my watch'?

If wind turbines—or renewable energy sources of any other sort, actually—are Huhne's response to this crisis, then the answer is very simple: Huhne cannot keep that promise about the lights not going out.

And, as I have pointed out before, if the lights do go out, we're in real fucking trouble.

It isn't just the babies and the pensioners killed by the cold, although many would deplore that; it isn't even the fact that electricity for recreational pursuits is going to have to be severely rationed.

No. It's the fact that our entire economy relies on computers and computers rely on electricity.

If the lights go out, the economy will crash—and a crashed economy means poverty and a lot of dead people. It's that simple.

With Huhne at the helm, the future's not bright—although the future might be orange. What with those rioters setting fire to things.

And that is why Chris Huhne is, currently, the most dangerous man in the country.

Plus, of course, he is a total cunt.

A taste of one future

Via EU Referendum, I see that the Isle of Eigg has run into some problems.

So what?

Well, as The Telegraph explains...

It was hailed as Britain’s first “green” island and a glimpse of the what the future could hold for the rest of the country.

And it seems that Eigg has indeed given us "a glimpse of what the future could hold for the rest of the country"—and it's not pretty.

But when the inhabitants of the remote Scottish island of Eigg put their faith in the wind and rain to provide all their electricity they did not reckon for one thing – mild weather.

Now the 95 residents are being asked not to use kettles, toasters or other kitchen appliances after uncharacteristically mild weather caused a critical shortage of power.
...

Weeks of what passes for heatwave conditions in the Inner Hebrides have caused water levels on the island’s three main burns to drop uncharacteristically low, cutting off the island’s hydroelectricity supply.

The normally powerful Atlantic gusts in the tiny island south of Skye have also reduced to a pleasant breeze leaving the island’s wind turbines idle for hours on end.

As a result, the community owned power company has placed the island on “red alert” and issued notices effectively rationing electricity.

It has had to revert to using old-fashioned diesel power to run a backup generator to keep the lights on.

Eigg is a tiny island, with a population of 95 people.

Britain is a large island with a population of nearer 65 million people.

Unlike the last time that we had severe electricity shortages—during the Three Day Week—almost all businesses rely heavily on computers.

If the lights go off for any sustained amount of time, the economy will collapse. If there is no electricity—especially in winter—people will die: after all, even hospitals with back-up generators can only run them for so long.

Now, this is probably seen as a bonus by the idiots who subscribe to the utterly discredited prognostications of Malthus or Ehrlich but most of the rest of us would view it as a very bad thing.

Eigg is indeed "a glimpse of what the future could hold for the rest of the country" except that its population consists of many thousand of times fewer people than would die if these insane policies are allowed to pertain across Britain.

The Coalition: Energy

One of the most pressing problems for the New Change Coalition Of Some Of The Talents™—apart, of course, from the desperate state of our economy—is the looming threat of rolling power-cuts (see ressurected post below: Dim bulbs become a moot point).

None of the Big Three have ever had a decent strategy for dealing with this issue but, rest assured, any government that presides over the kind of structured black-outs that are being predicted is not going to get re-elected in a long time. The last time the lights went out was in the 70s, and people survived, of course: the trouble is that, unlike the 1970s, everything—everything—is now run by computers. If the power starts going off, business will grind to a halt and we might as well wave goodbye to any thoughts of prosperity.

Which is why certain sections of the Conservative/LibDem Agreement have got me slightly worried.

Environment

The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy, including:

• The establishment of a smart grid and the roll-out of smart meters.


• The full establishment of feed-in tariff systems in electricity – as well as the maintenance of banded ROCs.


• Measures to promote a huge increase in energy from waste through anaerobic digestion.


• The creation of a green investment bank.


• The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills.


• Retention of energy performance certificates while scrapping HIPs.


• Measures to encourage marine energy.


• The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient CCS to meet the emissions performance standard.


• The establishment of a high-speed rail network.


• The cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow.


• The refusal of additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted.


• The replacement of the Air Passenger Duty with a per flight duty.


• The provision of a floor price for carbon, as well as efforts to persuade the EU to move towards full auctioning of ETS permits.


• Measures to make the import or possession of illegal timber a criminal offence.


• Measures to promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats and restore biodiversity.


• Mandating a national recharging network for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.


• Continuation of the present Government’s proposals for public sector investment in CCS technology for four coal-fired power stations; and a specific commitment to reduce central government carbon emissions by 10 per cent within 12 months.


• We are agreed that we would seek to increase the target for energy from renewable sources, subject to the advice of the Climate Change Committee.

Liberal Democrats have long opposed any new nuclear construction. Conservatives, by contrast, are committed to allowing the replacement of existing nuclear power stations provided they are subject to the normal planning process for major projects (under a new national planning statement) and provided also that they receive no public subsidy.
We have agreed a process that will allow Liberal Democrats to maintain their opposition to nuclear power while permitting the government to bring forward the national planning statement for ratification by Parliament so that new nuclear construction becomes possible.

This process will involve:

• the government completing the drafting of a national planning statement and putting it before Parliament;


• specific agreement that a Liberal Democrat spokesman will speak against the planning statement, but that Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain; and


• clarity that this will not be regarded as an issue of confidence.

None of this is very encouraging. CCS (carbon capture and storage) has never actually been implemented properly, and one of the biggest tests—that in Norway—has now been delayed (probably indefinitely).

As we all know, renewables simply won't generate enough consistent electricity and the concept of micro-generation feed-in is total pie-in-the-sky without a substantial re-engineering of the entire National Grid.

At the moment, there are only three options if you want to keep the lights on in this country*—coal, gas or nuclear power stations.

So, the agreement above would be worrying enough, even had Chris Huhne not now been appointed Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. And Professor Philip Stott regards this not as a problem but a disaster.

The lamentable fact that David Cameron has appointed Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh, Hampshire, as the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, underscores one’s profoundest fears that our leading politicians have still still not grasped, despite all the red flag warnings, the depth and urgency of the UK energy crisis. This, after all, is the man who is avowedly opposed to the development of a new generation of nuclear powers stations, who believes that we can fill our looming energy gap with wave, wind, and waffle, and who is totally uncritical of the ‘global warming’ message.
...

But the whole point is that we, as a country, have long run out of time on energy regeneration, and our energy security is already seriously compromised and under threat.

In The Ultimate Resource II, Julian Simon, Professor of Business Administration at the University of Maryland, described energy as the “master resource”, arguing that, “if the cost of usable energy is low enough, all other important resources can be made plentiful.”

Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford, concluded recently that the UK is only six years away from an energy crisis. Indeed, for over twenty years, politicians of all hues have failed drastically to confront our declining energy security, blinded by the flow of North Sea oil and gas.

Under the three post-1997 Labour Governments, the situation was willfully allowed to deteriorate. The turnover in Energy Ministers was criminal, involving eleven in all. Likewise, responsibility for energy policy has been regularly shifted since 1992, from the Department of Energy to the Department of Trade and Industry, then to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and, finally to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, created in 2008, a title which, sadly, David Cameron has allowed to stand. Inexorably, there has been one wishy-washy energy ‘White Paper’ after another, each trying to pick an ‘energy winner’, coupled with dithering over what to do about coal-fired plants and the replacement of ageing nuclear facilities, all debilitated by hand-wringing over the need for ‘renewables’, such as wind, to meet politically-set climate-change targets.

It can only get much worse under Chris Huhne. I can’t believe we have ended up in his hands on this crucial issue.

What Must Be Done, Now

The result of all this has been a near-fatal undermining of future electricity-generating capacity so that we are facing a disastrous energy gap. We used to be able to survive on 65 GW; to meet peak demand safely, this must rise from 70 GW to 90-100 GW by 2020.

There is no further leeway for delay. Unfortunately, as Helm has noted: “Unless reform is quick, the best hope for Britain's energy supply from a security perspective is that the economy does not recover quickly - a long hard Japanese-style recession would keep demand (and carbon emissions) low. But that's hardly a sound energy policy.”

Just so. Yet, the real, hard policies required are clear, and unavoidable, even if they might prove compromising for politicians hemmed in with utopian, ‘Through The Looking Glass’, climate-change rhetoric.

The Professor has a number of other sensible prescriptions, many of which regular readers will have heard before; if you haven't, I suggest that you head over there. And whatever your opinion on what should be done, it is difficult to argue with Stott's conclusion of what has been done.

Huhne’s appointment is absolutely extraordinary at the very moment when energy security and food security are the new politics across the world.

This appointment could prove disastrous for Britain. It is surely Cameron’s first major blunder.

Like coal, my anger is unabated. Time for tea, while I can still boil a kettle.

Quite.

* Obviously, if you are a member of the Green Party, you can stop reading since we all know that you couldn't care less whether the lights stay on or not.

Dim bulbs become a moot point

Quite apart from Charlotte Gore's discussion around the quality of compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) light, we get confirmation that they simply aren't as bright as their incandescent cousins.

The Sunday Telegraph has conducted its own tests on level of illuminance provided by light bulbs from different manufacturers to see whether their claims stand up to scrutiny.

We found that under normal household conditions, using a single lamp to light a room, an 11W low-energy CFL produced only 58 per cent of the illumination of an "equivalent" 60W bulb – even after a 10-minute "warm-up".

Mind you, The Sunday Telegraph is a filthy capitalist venture and not to be trusted—especially when the good old BBC and their puppetmasters (Defra, in this case) both reassure us that this simply isn't the case.

However, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs denies they are a risk...
...

"The light is bright and clear and tests conducted by the Energy Saving Trust suggest that the majority of people cannot tell the difference between the light of a new CFL and an incandescent bulb."

There! The Beeb said it so it must be true.

Um, except that—according to The Sunday Telegraph—the European Union appears to disagree.

On a website intended to answer consumers' questions about the switch to energy saving bulbs, the European Commission states: "Currently, exaggerated claims are often made on the packaging about the light output of compact fluorescent lamps.

"For example, a 11-12 Watt compact fluorescent lamp would be the equivalent of a 60 Watt incandescent, which is not true. The light output of 15W compact fluorescent lamp is slightly more than the light output from a 60W incandescent."

So, there you have it: make of it what you will.

Let us also not forget that CFLs contain mercury and so you cannot just throw them away—and nor can councils simply landfill them. Under EU law (yes, it's the EU again) CFLs need to be properly disposed of.

But all of this is shortly going to become moot because these light-bulbs are low-energy but they cannot run on no energy at all.

Because, via Burning Our Money, it appears that we should all start bracing ourselves for blackouts over the next decade.

Britain is facing the prospect of widespread power cuts for the first time since the 1970s, government projections show.

Demand for power from homes and businesses will exceed supply from the national grid within eight years, according to official figures.

The shortage of supplies will hit the equivalent of many as 16 million families for at least one hour during the year, it is forecast.

Not since the early 1970s when the three-day week was introduced to preserve coal has Britain faced the prospect of reationing energy use.

One of the defining traits of both the Blair and Brown governments is total cowardice—a willingness to defer the important decisions in favour of ensuring that crucial next-election win.

NuLabour has dithered and prevaricated about the building of new power stations, and has finally approved (some) new generation stations. But it is too little, too late.

Most stations will take some ten years to come onstream and many of our powerstations—coal, gas and nuclear—are already operating past their recommended lifespan. This is, to put it mildly, not good—especially as regards the nuclear reactors.

The gap between Britain’s energy needs and demand throws fresh doubt on the Government’s assertion that renewable energy can make up for dwindling nuclear and coal capabilities.

Anyone who thinks—regardless of what future technologies might bring—that we can provide for Britain's current power needs through renewable power is a fucking moron.

The admission that Britain will face power-cuts is contained in a document that accompanied the Government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan, which was launched in July.

Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, outlined the plan amid much fanfare.

Under the plan, 40 per cent of the UK’s electricity will need to come from low-carbon energy sources including clean coal, nuclear and renewables.

Ed Miliband is, along with his half-wit brother, one of the single stupidest people alive in Britain today. Not only is he a creepy little shit with the kind of bulging eyes that makes one suspect that he has some sort of unpleasant thyroid problem, but he is utterly pig-ignorant of any kind of science.

Given the fact that Miliband is mentally sub-normal, I shall spell out a simple message to Ed: "renewables are simply not going to cut it, you cunt."

As a case in point, the current darling of the renewable-energy twats is wind power: as regular readers of The Kitchen will know, wind power is not only vastly expensive in and of itself—the only reason that any windfarms have been build is because they are massively subsidised by the taxpayer—but the industry rule of thumb is that wind power requires 90% back-up capacity (that means conventional powerstations). NINETY PERCENT!

[Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary Greg Clark] also pointed out that the scale of the blackouts could in fact be three times worse than the Government predictions. He said some of the modelling used was “optimistic” as it assumes little or no change in electricity demand up until to 2020.

It also assumes a rapid increase in wind farm capacity. There is also the assumption that existing nuclear power stations will be granted extensions to their “lifetimes".

The last time Britain experienced regular power cuts because of shortages of supply was in the early 1970s, when a miners' strike caused coal restrictions. The country was forced to do everyday tasks by candlelight and a three-day week was imposed on all but essential services to try and conserve electricity.

Needless to say, an awful lot of this gargantuan fuck-up can be traced back to the EU. Again.

The looming problem in Britain is caused by the scheduled closure by 2015 of nine oil and coal-fired power plants. They are the victim of an EU directive designed to cut pollution.

In addition, four existing nuclear power plants are set to be shut, adding to the need for new sources of energy.

We are already fucked: we simply don't have the time to bring new powerstations online, and nor do we have the infrastructure to import massive amounts of electricity from the Continent—even if they had the surplus to sell.

We simply cannot afford to let the lights go out because the situation now is far more crucial than in the 70s—if only because a far higher number of people use computers to do their jobs. If we have blackouts, almost every single business will grind to a halt: the entire banking sector would be (even more) screwed. Britain would be destroyed as any kind of economic force.

You think I exaggerate? These blackouts are not predicted to be for a couple of months: we are talking about a shortfall in power generation—even assuming no growth in usage requirements—lasting for nearly two decades.

The official figures are taken from the government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan, and here's their chart showing the projected energy gap (Expected Energy Unserved):

Ed Miliband has been poncing around Twitter recently—as well as getting short shrift from people he's spammed—encouraging people to sign up to his piss-poor campaign website, EdsPledge.com.

I'll be pushing for clear action to get a global climate deal that's ambitious, effective and fair. This means ambitious cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, keeping countries to their word and supporting poorer countries in adapting to climate change.

Really, Ed? I'll tell you what: here's a pledge I'd happily sign up to:

I, Ed Miliband, pledge that my ludicrous climate change posturing will not cause any power shortages from now until 2030. I, Ed Miliband, am so confident of this that I pledge—for every blackout that occurs—I will allow 100 people to kick the living shit out of me for an hour per minute of blackout.

There, that's a pledge that I would sign up for—so how about it, Ed? Want to put your shortly to be crackered knackers where you horrible, writhing mouth is?

Ed? Ed? Hello...?

Why won't Ed Miliband shut the fuck up?

Ed Miliband: bug-eyed twat refuses to sort out obvious thyroid problem—looks to kill millions instead.

Seriously, Ed, you bug-eyed moron, when you're in a hole, the generally accepted advice is to stop digging—especially when you don't seem to understand practical philosophy.

"Every­thing we know about life is that we should obey the precautionary principle; to take what the sceptics say seriously would be a profound risk."

Thus spake Ed Miliband, and it's bollocks. Look, Eddie-baby, the point of the precautionary principle is that actually doing something about the posited risk has little or no cost.

As I have pointed out innumerable times, that is simply not the case in this instance.

Counting Cats has pretty much filleted most of the rest of the article and, as always, is worth a read. However, there's another little point that I want to make—and it concerns these lines.

If the UK did not invest in renewable, clean energy, it would lose jobs and investment to other countries, have less energy security because of the dependence on oil and gas imports and contribute to damaging temperature rises for future generations.

It's this whole energy security thing, you see: I've seen it elsewhere. Now, where was it...? Oh yes—it was in this reply to a constituent by David Cameron.

Whatever your views are, we cannot afford not to go green. The UK economy is still dependent for more than 90 per cent of its energy needs on fossil fuels, which increasingly come from imports. With the era of cheap oil now well and truly over, our fossil fuel dependency is making us uncompetitive and vulnerable to geopolitical shocks.

We can build a secure, prosperous future, but only if we start the work of transforming our national energy infrastructure now, by increasing energy efficiency and reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels.

Being at the cutting edge of new technologies in the energy industry is precisely the action that is needed to prevent the power cuts the Government is predicting by 2017, and it ensures that Britain’s consumers and businesses are protected against the consequences of volatile and rising oil prices into the future.

We need to make the transition to a low carbon economy urgently, and I hope you’ll agree that our plans for a Low Carbon Economy will help create hundreds of thousands of jobs, raise skills and improve Britain’s competitiveness.

This is what the politicians are really aiming for—some kind of energy security. The trouble is that over the last few decades, successive governments have dodged the concerns about energy generation in this country.

We are in a bind: our nuclear stations are reaching the end of their lives (some have already passed their recommended limits) and energy blackouts are being predicted by 2014: any new nuclear station will take about ten years to come online—and we haven't even started building any new ones yet.

Any government that lets the lights go out is dead—and, right now, it looks like the Tories are going to be left with that particular turd.

Fossil fuel stations can be brought on-stream much more quickly, but Britain is severely hampered by the European Union's zealotry as regards climate change. In short, more fossil-fuelled power stations will earn us large fines.

As such, our politics are desperately casting around for some ideas. They must know that wind turbines are useless—they require some 90% conventional power back-up—and vastly expensive, but they are "green".

My guess is that a certain amount of investment in such pointless and expensive white elephants are necessary in order to earn some Carbon Credits—cash that might offset the fact that we are going to have to build more fossil-fuel power stations.

Whatever is the case, it is not good news that both Labour and the Tories are determined to pursue exactly the same doomed policies; it is even more suspicious that they are hanging their prognostications on precisely the same "energy security" hooks.

Meanwhile, the US keeps on funding research into sensible alternatives...