10 years ago today I published my first blog post, and it’s interesting that I’m still talking about this exact topic – the physics of the gas and electricity markets. Last week I was in Parliament giving one of my training courses for MPs and Peers to a group of about half a dozen Peers and it’s the physics where their knowledge is most lacking (and which is why I am offering the training).
Each of these sessions has had a similar impact with the audience realising that some of the narratives around the energy transition may be naïve, particularly in the light of last year’s total power system outage in Iberia.
In its first year, my blog also morphed from a blog into a consulting business. In the past 10 years I have worked with suppliers, generators, trading companies, regulated utilities, small local businesses, large multi-nationals, think tanks, investment firms and regulators, across three continents. I have written a lot of reports, most of which have been for internal use but some of which have been made available to the public.
I remain a sole trader and my client work continues to come from word of mouth or people reading my blog, and more recently my reports, social media content and the many podcasts and YouTube videos in which I have appeared in the past year or so. While my blog remains my shop window, and a means of engaging with industry colleagues, last year I launched a YouTube channel aimed at the general public to help non-energy professionals better understand the industry.
I have received two death threats, one rather feeble attempt to silence me with litigation, and countless messages of support, both from industry insiders and ordinary people who take the trouble to fill out the contact form on my website in order to contact me. I have tens of thousands of followers and subscribers across various platforms and millions of people have seen my content. I have just returned from an amazing trip to speak at a conference in Namibia. Next month I’m off to Spain. In the past 10 years I have been invited to speak in Guernsey, the Netherlands, Canada and France as well as here in the UK.
I could not have imagined this when I hit publish on that first blog a decade ago. I was struggling with my health – a challenge which continues – and was expecting to take a 6 month sabbatical before finding a new job similar to the one I left. In many ways I’m an accidental consultant since I never intended to pursue this line of work, it just happened – about 4 months into my sabbatical my first client reached out having read my blog and offered me work, and it went from there. I ended up doing several projects for that client and have enjoyed repeat business with others as well.
I am very grateful for all the support I have received over the past 10 years: the clients who have put their faith in me, without any financial backing or administrative support behind me; the regular contributors to my blog whose thoughtful comments have raised it from being just another voice to a community of engineers debating issues of real importance to our evolving energy systems; and the many people who have given me their time to share ideas and information over the years. And to my family which has been with me all the way.
.
What is rather less uplifting is that many of the subjects I covered in the first year of my blog are still relevant today: the issues with intermittency, the risks of relying on interconnector imports, and the problems with the European Pressurised Water Reactor – Hinkley Point C was approved despite the litany of issues at Flamanville and Olkiluoto. I also wrote about wireless charging which has taken off and building-integrated PV which hasn’t.
My second ever blog addressed some of the challenges of the energy transition. Although in the early days I was still working through my thinking, the themes were there:
“Wind and solar power are by their nature intermittent, and while their production can be curtailed if the system is over-supplied, they are not able to deliver additional power in the absence of wind and sun. This means that not only are renewables largely unable to support grid stability, but the variations in output undermine the ability of the grid to be maintained in a narrow frequency band. Wind and solar are also not sited in the same way as traditional power stations. New grid infrastructure is required to bring offshore wind, and plant in remote locations, to the sources of demand.”
Across much of the West energy policy has been drifting away from first principles, driven by policymakers who naively think that a grid designed for alternating current will work just fine with direct current, often because they simply lack knowledge of underlying engineering challenges. The underlying physics of power systems: dispatchability, inertia, voltage control, energy density, and the simple requirement that supply must match demand at all times hasn’t changed. But policy frameworks increasingly behave as though these constraints are secondary, or can be engineered away through ambition and targets; that new technologies will provide endless get-out-of-jail-free cards.
Germany’s Energiewende is perhaps the clearest example. After two decades and hundreds of billions of euros of investment, it has delivered a system with some of the highest electricity prices in Europe, while emissions reductions have been slower than expected and heavily dependent on factors outside the core design such as coal displacement by gas, and more recently demand destruction through de-industrialisation. The decision to exit nuclear while expanding intermittent renewables created a structural reliance on fossil backup and imports, illustrating the core problem: you can build large volumes of low-carbon generation, but without firm capacity and system stability, you don’t necessarily achieve proportionate emissions reductions.
Similar tensions are visible elsewhere. In the UK, Ed Miliband’s rhetoric around “leading the world” on clean power prioritises symbolic leadership over system resilience and cost discipline, made worse by the fact that not only is nobody following us and we’re increasingly seen as a cautionary tale. Targets for rapid decarbonisation of the power sector sit alongside shrinking dispatchable capacity, increasing reliance on imports, and a growing need for balancing actions.
The electricity system still depends on gas for reliability, while oil and gas remain essential to many areas of the economy including industry, transport and heating. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband insists his Clean Power 2030 plan is the solution to “getting off gas” yet the only sector that has a clear electrification target – domestic heating – will still require gas for decades. It will take 47 years to fit heat pumps in every home at the target installation rate, and in any case, we’re falling far short of meeting the target. Miliband has no plan to secure the cheap, reliable supplies of gas we will need for those 47 years.
In Australia, the rapid expansion of renewables has exposed challenges around grid stability and transmission, while Canada’s Clean Electricity Strategy will require huge amounts of copper, yet its last remaining copper smelter faces closure due to local environmental regulations: copper is essential for Canada’s energy policy but it’s considered too dirty to produce in Canada. A rescue package is under consideration but the environmental regulations are being delayed rather than removed.
In the United States, the picture is more fragmented but reflects the same underlying divide. Under President Trump and his Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, the emphasis has been on energy abundance, security, and the continued role of hydrocarbons, explicitly pushing back against what they see as unrealistic decarbonisation timelines. That approach carries its own risks, particularly on pollution, but it is at least grounded in a recognition of physical constraints and economic trade-offs.
“Fifty years ago, correctly counting the data, 85% of the globe’s energy came from hydrocarbons, and in 2023, the last full year of data, counted correctly, 85% of global energy came from hydrocarbons. We’ve had over that 50-year period, a little over 1% compound annual growth rate from oil, 2% compound annual growth rate of coal and 3% compound annual growth rate of natural gas. The world simply runs on hydrocarbons, and for most of their uses we don’t have replacements. But we need to thoughtfully and reasonably look at what energy sources can add to what we get from hydrocarbons and make this pie even bigger,”
– Chris Wright speaking at the 2025 ARC conference
Unfortunately this pragmatic approach is not supported across the US. In California, the Benicia oil refinery will cease refining operations and become an import terminal for gasoline. The state is closing a major refinery that produces gasoline in the state with the highest petrol prices in the country, replacing it with a terminal that will act as a receiving base for imported gasoline. California has permanently and drastically reduced its critical domestic energy production capacity, making it more dependent on imports. California was once such a large oil producer that it did not expect to ever need imports, and so no oil pipelines connect it to any other oil-producing region of the US.
We’re seeing an increasing divide between those who stubbornly cling to unrealistic net zero ambitions and those that want a more pragmatic approach that prioritises affordability and energy security. The Iberian blackout cost 11 lives and another 165 excess deaths were associated with the incident, while deindustrialisation is accelerating across the same countries whose net zero policies have pushed energy prices to record highs.
Here in the UK the political battle lines have been drawn with Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens on one side, and the Conservatives and Reform on the other, both of which have committed to repealing the Climate Change Act and removing the obligation to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Conservatives argue that 2050 is simply the wrong date while Reform describes the entire concept as “stupid”.
Meanwhile the public is increasingly tired of expensive energy and the wider inflation that comes with it. It is also increasingly suspicious of policies that ignore obviously sensible solutions – Miliband is growing more isolated in his refusal to allow greater exploitation of the UK’s domestic oil and gas resources, favouring more expensive and more carbon-intensive emissions.
Unfortunately, things are likely to get worse before they get better. I can only hope that my work plays some part in bringing more sanity to energy policy and helps to avoid some of the risks heading our way if we don’t change course.
.
“Belief is a force. It is a force stronger than any other,”
– Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Kathryn, you are doing a fantastic job, the realisation of the absuditoes of current energy policies is spreading. Not least, thanks to you. Keep it up.
The whole concept of climate damage from “dirty” power is based on feeble, unproven predictive formulas.
Increasingly, the Western nations’wealth depends on what it can recover in terrestrial resources.
Therefore sensible energy policies depend on available nuclear power and additionally realistically gained renewables. Present wind an water dependent maens are near useless, except as income sources for their pushers.
The activities of Ed Miliband are a waste.
Charles, Good Evening.
“The whole concept of climate damage from “dirty” power is based on feeble, unproven predictive formulas.”
No. Climate change from fossil fuels is very real: it’s just basic physics.
UK’s current wind and solar have roughly halved our need for gas – which is pretty signifiant and protects us from fossil fuel “shocks” which seem increasingly less surprising.
Best wishes
Michael
Hi Michael
Currently only around 5% of UK total energy demand (See Digest of UK Energy Statistics – ONS) is met by wind and solar and that’s been the easy bit because we’ve been able to use most of it. Since 2023 we have been producing more and more excess electricity from these sources all of which has to be either ditched or stored, so every new wind-turbine and solar panel connected to the grid becomes less efficient and than the one before. Your ‘roughly halved’ is peanuts (and refers only to electricity). Even just the next 5% will be incredibly difficulty and expensive. THAT’S what Kathryn is talking about.
Regards
Steve
Kathryn, I couldn’t agree more! I am continually amazed by the number of people who actually believe that if a country reduces emissions of carbon dioxide, its climate will automatically improve. They don’t seem to understand that you first have to change the world climate. New Zealand is in a slightly bitter situation than the most countries because it has refused to directly subsidise wind and solar power. Nevertheless, it has an increasing capacity in wind and solar power and more and more batteries are being installed. But our big problem is dry years when hydro output drops by about 30% and the system is seriously under stress. Nobody seems to appreciate just how serious this could be and how we could finish up with rotating blackouts for a week or more while we wait for it to rain.
10 years and your still here. Congratulations and thank you for your hard work. Without people like you were are doomed. You hold the government to account.
Great article! Thank you for mentioning Australia, we’re in big trouble here. We live on a farm in regional New South Wales and are increasingly concerned at the direction our country is heading – about 90% of our population lives on, or within 50km of, the coast (despite the image of Australia as being a land of ‘country’ people) and have no clear understanding that a renewable grid is 1. unstable and 2. requires a whole other back up system for when there’s a lull. In effect we’ll be paying for two electricity grids, and we’re already in huge debit (about a trillion dollars, and counting if you add Federal debt to the states, especially Victoria).
And we who live inland are expected to live with wind turbines and solar panels en masse, plus bear the brunt of transmission lines taking power from regional Australia to the coast where most of the population live. People in the cities say things like ‘oh well, that’s the price we have to pay for net zero’, as if it’s nothing. There’s a huge disconnect between the country and the coast, and it’s getting bigger.
The ‘transition’ is already hellishly expensive, and given that there are only about 27 million of us in an incredibly massive country (if we had the same population density as the UK we’d have 2 billion people here, so with only 27 million you can see how few people we have in an unimaginably huge area), I can’t see how this is going to work – at all. In New South Wales the problem is compounded by the Great Dividing Range, which stretches up and down New South Wales and takes approximately 1 to 1.5 hours to drive across, through rugged sandstone escarpments covered in eucalyptus trees. This means that people who live on the coast don’t see or care what is happening inland, the destruction of farmland, and natural habitats to make way for vast wind turbines and massive solar ‘farms’, plus the dividing range is a massive barrier to actually getting the power from the countryside to coastal populations, and given our bushfire propensity, also a risk at certain times of the year and in certain conditions.
We are aware that one of the biggest issues, in addition to the above, will be storage, yet people (again mostly on the coast) are unaware of, or in denial that this is a problem. How do we store the electricity produced? We can’t – there’s literally no way to do it. So we have to rely on a back up system. Our current government’s backup plan is diesel – not even gas, as we’ve forward sold most of that to the international market. This is total and utter madness. Note we’re currently struggling to maintain our diesel supplies as most of our diesel is produced elsewhere and is shipped to us via countries such as Singapore and India (we closed all but two of our refineries due to them be ‘uneconomic’ and stopped producing petroleum because it’s ‘dirty’ and it seemed simpler to buy it from overseas – until there’s a war). Meanwhile we ship coal hand over fist to China, where the bulk of our solar panels are manufactured, by coal fired power stations! So we’re handing our future prosperity to a country that doesn’t actually have our best interests at heart, because when we need to replace our solar panels, will China be happy to sell them to us? Or will they twist our arm and demand things of us we’d rather not give?
I know your specialty is the UK, but it would be amazing if you could do a deep dive into Australia (if you have any spare time!) and see and write about what’s going on here. I think it’s even worse than the UK, because we have no back up countries to ‘borrow’ electricity from. And really it’s utter madness because most of our energy usage comes from long haul trucks and mining – not electricity usage at all. We’re not against reducing pollution, it just doesn’t seem that heading down the renewables path is the way to do it. Chris Uhlmann, an Australian journalist who used to work for the ABC (like your BBC) has done some brilliant reporting on this issue, meanwhile our own Professor, Ian Plimer, has many reasoned arguments as to why Net Zero is ridiculous (of course the left say he’s ‘discredited’, mainly because he doesn’t spout their views), but it’d be interesting to hear what you think too. Apparently our government’s aim is to get us to 82% renewables by 2030! It’s so stupid it’s breathtaking.
A thought provoking read, as usual for this blog. It goes to the poor quality of the debate when someone questions the ideology, slogan driven rhetoric and clearly blind-eye to reality that has driven the rush to “renewables” that they are attacked personally. I’m sorry that has been the case, Kathryn. You deserve better. It speaks volumes that they can’t argue based on facts, physics, morals, the broader environment or economics and that their only option is to invoke the inquisition and cancel us.
Stick it to them.
I admire your commitment in the face of irrational thinking on energy. Keep it up.
Here in Australia we are headed in the same direction as the UK and much lower economic growth as a result.
I can give you a good example of how much it is costing this country. Snowy 2, a giant battery using pumped water as a battery, original cost was around $2bn and has now blown out to $42bn and rising. No accountability as government wont issue any figures.
We are being led up the garden path by fanatics who are hell bent on destroying our livelihoods and standard of living.
At the same time our beautiful environment is becoming and industrial wasteland.
It is akin the the satanic mills in William Blake’s poem many years ago.
Good on you Colin, I just posted a long comment, so hopefully it will appear soon – a fellow Aussie and fully supportive of everything you’ve written. Absolutely spot on.
Some of the most interesting phenomena in reaction to Kathryn’s measured, informed and articulate commentary is the entire absence of any scientifically based push back (because there is none) combined with a pathologically stubborn refusal by those in power even to accept cold hard facts let alone act upon them. UKGov’s obduracy and policy depend entirely upon the perfect functioning of international markets, linked infrastructure and the political kindness of strangers. Our energy security is dangerously and helplessly exposed.
Keep up the good work!
You must have answered this a few times before, so do pint to the relevant blogs, but what I don’t get about ur two of your points is a) deaths due to power cuts is stark and scary. But excess deaths due to fossil fuel use is insanely big compared with those events. Is there not a wish to reduce these deaths by phasing out fossil fuel use? b) the desire to allow foreign owned companies to exploit our natural resources in the North Sea and then sell these back to the population or more likely somewhere else at globally set prices. This doesn’t reduce our UK energy costs. It creates a few jobs and some tax revenue but nothing tangible in the short or long term. Should we not leave the oil and gas there and in 20 or 50 years time when we do need them we might have enough political will to extract them for national interests. What is good about allowing private/foreign owned companies to extract them now?
Fossil fuels also save lives which people ignore when starting with the “whataboutery”. And hydrocarbons outside the energy sector save lives
The ownership of the oil and gas licences is irrelevant and they are not sold at “globally set prices”. We have marginal pricing in our oil and gas markets just like everyone else. Every bit of extra gas we produce displaces LNG – in the summer we could fully displace it, which would clearly lower NBP levels which in any case tend to trade at a discount to TTF
And it’s not “a few jobs” – it’s thousands of highly skilled, highly paid jobs.
“Every bit of extra gas we produce displaces LNG”
And every bit of wind and solar we produce displaces gas and LNG. Our dependence on gas is – thank heaven – massively reduced due to the growth of renewables. That’s a good thing for the country and a good thing for the Earth!
Best wishes
Michael
Unfortunately the renewables are more expensive than generating electricity with gas, so that’s a bad thing
If you look at the human body, or any animal for that matter, raw material (food) processing for energy is centralised, but then distributed for energy generation and use. It is the most economic way to do it. You get rid of all the loses due to transmission, you have the benefit of CHP in every cell to maintain temperature, within a narrow range. There is some waste heat that if considerable energy is being used, can be emitted fairly efficiently if needed, with a cooling system. We need to get away from centralised where possible.
Renewables installed by the end-user are far more efficient than centralised renewables. Losses of energy and financial losses are compounded by multiple stages of processing/accounting, where profit is extracted……compounded literally.
We live in a paradoxical world, where yes renewables can be the wrong thing, but can also be the right thing. It all depends on how they are done.
We need to structure the energy generation just like a body. Millions of years of evolution shows us how things can be done efficiently.
Substations need to be reconfigured to be able to switch between distribution mode from NG to stabilisation and redistribution onto NG, and everyone getting wholesale pricing whenever possible.
End-user installations, completely different economics, similar, but different structural functions depending on time. With solar PV it’s nearer to plants, with photosynthesis, but instead of glucose, oxygen etc being redistributed, it’s electricity.
KP said “Fossil fuels also save lives which people ignore when starting with the “whataboutery”. And hydrocarbons outside the energy sector save lives.”
Sure, fossil fuels are used to produce pharmaceuticals which save a lot of lives, and this may continue. But the quantities of fossil fuels used to do this are negligible. Think of the fraction of barrel of oil used to produce the drugs for a single person for 20 years, then the stack of oil barrels 22 stories high that are required to fuel his or her fossil fuel car for 20 years. In short, no environmentalist has a problem with using oil to produce pharmaceuticals, but burning them to produce heat is an entirely different matter on an entirely different scale.
KP said “The ownership of the oil and gas licences is irrelevant and they are not sold at “globally set prices”. We have marginal pricing in our oil and gas markets just like everyone else. ”
Sure global oil and gas markets are marginally priced – all producers effectively get the highest price bid for the last barrel required to completely satisfy demand. But the UK production sold to UK consumers is also going to be sold at that marginal price. Further, any foreseeable expansion of UK production is just not sufficient to reduce the global oil price or the European gas price. So UK consumers don’t benefit from it in any shape or form.
KP said ” Every bit of extra gas we produce displaces LNG.”
Very true. But it doesn’t change the cost of European and UK gas one iota.
KP said “And it’s not “a few jobs” [producing fossil fuels in the UK] – it’s thousands of highly skilled, highly paid jobs.”
According to the Google AI, there are over 300,000 UK low carbon and renewable energy jobs, which are similarly highly skilled and highly paid.
KP said “Unfortunately the renewables are more expensive than generating electricity with gas”
Except that isn’t true right now. UK gas is at 106 p/therm, which is £36/MWh (of heat). The average efficiency of UK gas plants is around 50%, so that is £72 in just gas plant fuel costs to produce electricity. Add maybe £6/MWh for variable O&M, £20/MWh of carbon costs and perhaps £8/MWh of “clean spark spread” (profit), and the total is around £106/MWh for power from the average gas plant.
Meanwhile, here are a few sample costs of wind and solar in current pounds:-
– offshore wind, AR3 = £57/MWh, AR6 = £80/MWh, AR7 = 97/MWh
– onshore wind, AR5 = £78/MWh,AR6 = £76/MWh AR7 = £77/MWh
– solar, AR5 = £70/MWh ,AR6 = £75/MWh, AR7 = £69/MWh
These raw wind and solar costs are well below the cost of power from natural gas
And wouldn’t it have been great if there could have been some companies that needed cheap electricity to have been able to install wind turbines and get such electricity pricing, onshore wind AR5 = 7.8p/kWh, AR6 = 7.6p/kWh, AR7 = 7.7p/kWh, or solar AR5 = 7p/kWh, AR6 =7.5p/kWh, AR7 = 6.9p/kWh.
Isn’t the UK failing at just getting the maximum benefit from the installation of the new technology?
End-user installations = electricity @ wholesale pricing = financial efficiency = more profit for the companies.
Is greater profit for companies not wanted?
I cannot see why any rational person who wants lower CO2 emissions would not want companies, manufacturing companies, to be able to function with low CO2 output and greater profit, or even to be able to function and compete on a world market.
These figures work for any large organisation, where instead of importing gas, most of the capital expenditure could be used to create employment in this country. Wind turbines could be made about 99% recyclable. Solar panels may be 60% recyclable now, so some extra work is needed on the solar cells themselves, but the glass and aluminium frames are 100% recyclable.
We need employment, we need cheaper local electricity to compete with countries where production costs are lower. We either need local CHP burning gas, to get wholesale pricing at the end user, or end user renewables, which achieves exactly the same thing.
We need to rethink what a National Grid is good for. We need to have cheaper electricity.
Personally I can’t afford a nuclear power station in my garage, I don’t think I would get the permits, but Solar PV, or CHP, or wind are eminently doable.
We mustn’t allow naive politicians to push an uneconomic system, and the only way to resist is either to vote them out, or to install our own renewables, such that they are having to compete against the population in terms of who installs them first.
You don’t have to buy that much expensive National Grid supplied electricity, there are choices that everyone can make to prevent the government making further bad spending choices.
Free electricity at weekends?………it’ll come one day, if we get enough END-USER installations………..price inversion…………..electricity CHEAPER than GAS……….but what do governments know of any of this?
Thanks.
Content creator 27 April 2026 at 6:04 AM
Relating to UK:
1. “… deaths due to power cuts is stark and scary…..”
Power cuts are not the only cause of deaths from electricity.
“Every year, faulty electrics or electrical equipment cause around 70 deaths and 350,000 injuries in UK homes.”
https://www.peabody.org.uk/news/general-news/electrical-safety/
2. ” … But excess deaths due to fossil fuel use is insanely big compared with those events.”???
Again, relating to UK, what ‘excess’ deaths”? ‘Excess’ over what? Fossil fuels are net beneficial. Remember FFs provide multiples more energy than renewables provide electricity!
3. “Is there not a wish to reduce these deaths by phasing out fossil fuel use?”
What UK deaths? Give specifics, not theories and extrapolations. i.e. Following an inquest, a Conclusion of the Coroner as to *THE* cause death.
Exploiting all forms of energy incurs risk.
Will you be consistent and advocate for a ban on USING electricity?
Hi, re your comment that we’ll be able to access oil and gas in fifty years time or so fails to realise that the remaining reserves of hydrocarbons are in almost every case reliant on the availability of existing major infrastructure to be recovered economically. Once those major facilities cease to operate in essence the so called near field or tie back reserves are probably lost for ever. If they are going to be produced they need to be taken now or in the near future or they will be lost (proby) for ever
Mike
As always, an excellent analysis of the failure of energy policy in the west. Please keep going strongly Kathryn. The UK needs people like you.
Great post, Kathryn; thank you for always being there.
Well done. A lone voice but desperately needed.
MSc, Retired Chartered Engineer
Thanks for the work you do, Kathryn and congratulations on your great progress over the last decade.
The dangers of phase intermittency and phase synchronisation aren’t discussed enough elsewhere. Thank you.
But you never really discuss the dangers of NOT moving off hydrocarbons. You often mention the 11 lives lost in the Iberian blackout but never mention the hundreds of thousands of lives lost annually to climate change and to pollution from hydrocarbons.
What should we do?
I also tend not to discuss the millions of lives saved by hydrocarbons through reductions in poverty, improvement in agricultural yields and the development of modern medicine – apart from people almost everything in hospitals is made from oil including almost every drug licenced for use in the NHS.
What should we do? Have a proper, sober analysis of the costs and benefits of using hydrocarbons versus not using them, and decide whether we should adapt to climate change rather than try to seek to prevent it
Kathryn,
Your comments indicate your fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of climate change
“Have a proper, sober analysis of the costs and benefits of using hydrocarbons versus not using them, and decide whether we should adapt to climate change rather than try to seek to prevent it”
We can’t mitigate a world with 3 °C of global warming. It’s world in which London and New York and many other cities are underwater! Please make it clear in your communications that you are OK with that and think it’s worth the profits that oil and gas companies can make in the coming decades.
It’s hard to comprehend that someone should have such little regard for the natural world on which we depend so profoundly.
Best wishes
Michael
Back in 2000 the Guardian and others said by 2020 London etc would be under water. If you can point to some climate predictions that have actually come true, I’m sure we’d all be very interested.
I think my comments indicate I’m very concerned about the natural world. I just don;t view the threats as being driven by carbon dioxide above all else.
KP “the Guardian and others said by 2020 London etc would be under water”
Don’t confuse press (or politician) sensationalism with the mainstream body of climate science.
KP said “If you can point to some climate predictions that have actually come true, I’m sure we’d all be very interested.”
The main prediction of climate science, ever since the Arrhenius 1896 paper, is that the more CO2 you put in the atmosphere, the higher surface temperatures will rise. And that there is a lag of years between more CO2 and a new, higher, equilibrium surface temperature.
Forget the complexities. The experimental evidence based on measurement is that CO2 levels have gone up by around 50%, from 280 to 420 ppm, and surface temperatures have risen by something in the range of 1.2 to 1.6 degrees C, with more to come, due to the lag, even if humans stopped burning all fossil fuels immediately.
The clearest indications of global warming are the annual global OHC Ocean Heat Content figures, which have been rising steadily since the 1970s, and show no signs of topping off – if anything they are accelerating. See https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content.
Because 90% of global warming heat ends up in the oceans after a few years, the signal to noise ratio associated with the figures is highest (clearest) for OHC, rather than surface temperature measurements by whatever means.
KP said “I’m very concerned about the natural world. I just don’t view the threats as being driven by carbon dioxide above all else.”
There are plenty of other ways humans could do significant damage to the biosphere and themselves. But most of the others (nuclear war excepted), are relatively easy to address, and most have been addressed (acid rain, hole in the ozone layer etc. etc.). While CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning are embedded into the historic and current energy infrastructure, with a lot of vested interests in keeping it that way.
Hello again, Michael
I DO believe Climate Change is real and needs to be addressed urgently. Unfortunately intermittent renewables are part of the PROBLEM, distracting investment and attention away from more EFFECTIVE answers such as energy conservation and efficiency.
Regards
Steve
There is climate change, as there always has been. But it is not caused by burning fossil fuels and there is no climate catstrophe.
The Arrhenius 1896 paper predicted that surface temperatures would rise as atmospheric CO2 increased. Atmospheric CO2 has increased 50% from 280 to 420 ppm in that time, and surface temperatures have increased by 1.2 to 1.6 degrees C in that time. Thus we have basic theory and experimental evidence both saying the same thing, and anyone disputing it would have to come up with something convincing, which no one has.
Ocean heat content (OHC) shows clearly that heat energy in the oceans has increased steadily since around 1995, with zero sign of tailing off or being a cyclic process – if anything it is accelerating. OHC is an very clear measure of warming because 90% of global warming heat ends up in the oceans, so the signal to noise ratio for OHC measurements is far more obvious than for surface temperature measurements by whatever method. See https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content
“You often mention the 11 lives lost in the Iberian blackout but never mention the hundreds of thousands of lives lost annually to climate change and to pollution from hydrocarbons.”
What should we do? Accept that there are now more of us, generally living longer. Those are, after all, advantages not disadvantages, of two disparate factors you tried to conflate.
Pollution is created from numerous sources, including renewables-related. Heck, the products of combustion of natural gas are remarkably similar to the gases you exhale and fart. Only less malodorous.
It’s almost impossible to come up with a clean balance sheet for the risks and benefits of hydrocarbons. Renewables, particularly wind and solar are not environmentally benign either when the supply chains are factored in, as I explained in some detail in my series on the critical minerals needed for the energy transition.
What I think we should do is avoid creating new harms that should be preventable. We have chosen to make energy expensive, increasing fuel poverty and associated mortality. And we have chosen to make it less secure, which also poses a risk to life. These are more akin to unsafe storage of hydrocarbons risking leaks and explosions rather than pollution from use – as you say, a great many things cause pollution
I consistently talk about taking a more holistic approach to sustainability. This remains my view. We should start by reducing waste, re-using things / mending them / not throwing them away. Our approach to recycling is cumbersome…we should look at waste from an avoidance perspective before looking at recycling which requires time and energy and is rarely done well.
We should be mindful of digging things out of the ground, noting that everything we use is either grown or dug up….there’s no third option. In the space of just 2-3 generations we moved from a make-do and mend mentality to a disposable culture. We went from adding a jumper if we were cold to heating homes to a level where it’s comfortable to wear shorts and be in bare feet year round.
It’s essentially lazy to say fossil fuels = bad, renewables = good, and that’s the entire job of climate protection done and dusted. Wind and solar require huge amounts of capital and natural resources, and work at best a third of the time. This is deeply wasteful and why I oppose them. I support nuclear, I support hydro and geothermal. I do not support intermittent generation with low energy density that is expensive and consumes vast amounts of natural resources.
Fundamentally we need a proper public debate on these issues to establish the true willingness of the public to make sacrifices for the environment. My guess is the appetite is not high because people will resist sacrificing the comfort and convenience they have got used to in the past few decades.
Keep up the logical work Kathryn
Great to read and watch truthful commentary on this subject which is over blown by the politicians and those with vested interests.
Well Done
Thank you for being a voice of sanity in this fog of political ignorance and vested interests.
I consider Ed Miliband to be the most dangerous person in the UK, while Keir Starmer is too weak to make the obvious change needed in his Cabinet, by replacing him.
All politicians should ideally have to pass an intelligence test (including some very basic science) before standing for election (at any level).
I hope that you are able to continue your good work.
Kind regards.
Another great paper which hopefully people will read and circulate. There is clearly still so much ignorance out there at all levels of Society. I noticed you didn’t mention Restore. Have you tried to make contact with Rupert Lowe. He may be a worthy advocate.
Best wishes and hope your training classes continue, reaching the “right” people who need to hear and understand the risks we are facing continuing on this path.
John
Excellelent summary of the Net Zero Problems.
Unfortunately Milliband and his ilk live in LALA LAND.
It would be ideal if you could enlighten all the Political Parties of what is required because they are indoctrinated by the loonies.
A mix of inputs is required to keep the Grid Stable.
At least Rolls Rotce has been given the go ahead with SMRs.
Please keep up your excellent work. Only 6 peers at your training course. All the Labour mps need your insight
Only two of the UK’s secretaries of state for energy have had relevant STEM degrees. The first was against nuclear energy and the last was Alok Sharma, who was “captured” by Net Zero zealots. The rest were arts graduates, or worse, PPE graduates (a “bluffers'” degree that should automatically bar such a graduate from parliament, let alone a cabinet seat).
I served in N Ireland in the 1970s and witnessed the four days of the Ulster Workers’ strike in 1974 when the power supplies were all but turned off. Civilisation regressed by a century per day. The NI government caved in to the workers’ demands on the fourth day. The effects of a sustained blackout would be much worse today in our digital world. I have written to our present SoS for Energy Security & Net Zero (a ludicrous contradiction in terms) to remind of this, doubtless to no effect.
I have challenged the BBC’s chief climate agitator, Justin Rowlatt (another arts graduate), to produce a programme about the Iberian blackout using you as a specialist, sending him links to your blog. I am not holding my breath!
Well done for your decade of blogging. As Churchill would have written; KBO
Excellelent summary of the Net Zero Problems.
Unfortunately Milliband and his ilk live in LALA LAND.
It would be ideal if you could enlighten all the Political Parties of what is required because they are indoctrinated by the loonies.
A mix of inputs is required to keep the Grid Stable.
At least Rolls Rotce has been given the go ahead with SMRs.
So glad you are there, Kathryn, doing what you do and speaking out against the madness. Please keep it up but also please take care of yourself too. You are very important to us all and we need you to stay well and happy.
Kathryn, I thank you for your hard work and tremendous efforts to combat the delusional ideology that renewables can provide us with the energy we need for a thriving civilised nation. As well as giving training courses to MPs and Peers I would hope you can also give training courses to GB News and Talk presenters who unfortunately so often lack the necessary knowledge when interviewing the renewables lobby groups.
Most of the world is stuck in a rut not just because of the energy woes that you describe, but because people are being led astray by luvvie media. Someone being a good actor, say, is regarded as being more important than being a good scientist, and to rub salt in the wounds, they are paid a lot more.
We are being led by people who are totally ignorant of all aspects of science. Bizarrely, this makes them feel superior. Well done, Kathryn in trying to educate them. An uphill stuggle because the media are more powerful.
I like to look forward to a time when we have either run out of fossil fuels or price instability as we run out leads to major global conflict. Will this be in 100 years or 10? Does anybody know?
Lets assume 50. We do need to be planning for that now. Each country has different weather and geographical conditions, but to use the UK as an example. We have lots of wind, we can build our own nuclear power stations but solar – pah. The missing element is storage. Just what is the “best” solution? In the UK, some scientists (The Royal Society) seem to have concluded that Hydrogen production by electrolysis being stored on salt caverns and burnt in 4 stroke engines is the answer, (which does avoid the DC issue you describe).Is it? If it is, job done. My guess though is that under the wind, nuclear, hydrogen storage scenario, energy will be more expensive than it is now. Double?
The other big problem you mention is domestic heating. Houses with better insulation are needed, heat pumps need to be installed and my old chestnut, domestic thermal storage for diurnal demand variation will also be part of the mix
An exciting next 50 years. Probably better run by market forces than politicians I would say.
I think you are right about thermal storage, where if you can reduce demand enough, the capital expenditure on high-tech becomes self-defeating and makes the energy more expensive. Unless you can create smaller units that with economy of scale of production, and robotic assembly, could compete if they are cheap enough to make the extra efficiency worthwhile.
If they could get the waste heat from the 4-stroke engines used, it doesn’t have to be more expensive. CCGT costs £750 per kw output installation, 4-stroke £250 per kw output……..a significant reduction in capital expenditure.
40GW of CCGT costs about £30 Billion. We could reduce that to £10 Billion with 4-stroke engines…….a £20 Billion saving, also saving £1 Billion per annum on finance costs. £1 Billion savings would buy 20TWh of gas @5p/kWh. The £20 Billion of savings would pay for 400TWh of gas, about 2 years’ supply that we now use, at 200TWh per annum to generate 100TWh of electricity. If the heat is being used, then someone somewhere won’t be spending £10’s of Billions on gas for heating………massive savings in terms of carbon output, and expense. If you are using the waste heat, not so much gas would need to be burnt to generate electricity for heating, when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining.
As a non scientist who wishes he had worked harder at school, I am immensely grateful for how much you have taught me.
Having to repeat all the well-rehearsed arguments against weather-dependent renewables is “like déjà vu all over again” (Yogi Berra). It’s all so obvious, like the unmanageable surplus of electricity generation from over-deployment of wind and solar in summer when it’s sunny and breezy and demand is low and the converse in prolonged cold dark anti-cyclonic midwinter when demand is high. And the Chris Wright statistics of the unchanging 85% (or thereabouts) global dependency on fossil fuels.
I’ve been at it for over thirty years. I remember in the 1990s a friend who had a science-based job in the civil service used to get quite uppity when I asserted that the hypothesis of man-made CO2 global warming was a hoax.
Why do these politicians and ideologues persist in flogging the same dead horse? Until about a decade ago I thought they were misinformed and could be persuaded to change course by reasoned argument. I now realise that they mere “useful idiots” to the deep state which really calls the (ulterior) shots. Their evil obsession calls to mind the robotic Terminator which “absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead”.
Thank you for all your excellent work. You explain everything so well. It’s a pity the green fraternity don’t understand.
An expression of support from one of your readers!
Physics over ideology! Keep up the good work.
Ah ah! I see we have a fellow Pratchett fan in our midst. Perhaps we should found a new religion based on the writings and wisdom of the late, great T.P.? It would certainly be an improvement on what came out of 7th cent. Arabia.
The fact that so many more people are aware of your work now speaks volumes to the impact you are having. I have long seen the folly of the net zero strategy but your work has educated me in the more technical aspects of electricity grid properties which has been very interesting. It does look as if the tide is now turning as reality really starts to bit on the politicians. But I like you think the damage will get worse and some of it is now irreversible. But we do what we can and have a clear conscience, that’s all anyone can ask.
One of the great problems that we face, not only in this country but worldwide, is that very few politicians and even fewer senior civil servants have any technical background whatsoever. Thus trying to explain the underlying problems to them is very much a waste of space. And when you do make it abundantly clear that they are heading towards disaster, their stock response is; ‘Well that is the Government’s policy’!
Great work Kathryn, I am glad someone is trying to educate our politicians on the physics of energy integration and how our crazy UK policy is so damaging for industry, the economy and our wellbeing. Let’s hope they listened, became informed and will now act on their enlightenment, instead of acting like puppets.
As a scientist, educator, and intervenor before the California Public Utilities Commission, I heartily endorse and appreciate your work during the past decade. Please keep up your good work. Wishful thinking by policy makers regarding power grids is dangerous, as the lethal mid-day Iberian Peninsula blackout on 28 April 2025 illustrated.
Californians for Green Nuclear Power, Inc. has emphasized the important role of synchronous grid inertia in maintaining grid frequency stability. See our 4 March 2024 GreenNUKE Substack article, “Why is Grid Inertia Important?
Without sufficient synchronous grid inertia, the grid becomes unstable and a blackout occurs.” Please search for the phrase following the question mark and the word GreenNUKE to locate this article.
Thanks for your output. I suspect your training courses in Parliament may be a significant force for change. Keep up the great work. Low adoption of Integrated PV is probably more of a sales/marketing issue than anything else. Good luck with your health – There are too few sane and rational voices out here.
Excellent work! Keep on going.
Congratulations on the 10 years.
Always enjoy reading your blog, with useful insights.
The main problem as I see it is that we have technically illiterate politicians who can latch onto an idea, but, unfortunately for us as tax payers, can’t work through the economics, and resort to subsidies to push through uneconomic things.
With HS2, as with any large scale project, you cannot afford wishful thinking because the cost of being wrong at any point is so horrendously expensive.
The country is facing a crisis of lack of appropriate management. HS2 specified for 240mph, instead of sticking with HS1 specs: 186mph and HS1 costs.
One wonders if the politicians would listen if a comparison were to be presented of how certain things could be done economically?
With expensive electricity many people are asking for a reset, to get costs out of the system, but politicians don’t understand that to get costs out of a system, you have to find a way to spend less money, i.e. you are not going for GDP growth, in fact it is the opposite.
To make electricity, or even heating for that matter, cheaper, less money has to be spent either on the fuel, or on the technology that is replacing it.
There is a complete lack of basic understanding of economics. For a company to be more profitable, with processes that I have worked with, you increase yield by making more from less. Capital investment to reduce staff costs, or energy costs.
It is alright to have end-users installing high-tech stuff if it reduces the cost of importing electricity. Battery systems to only import cheap-rate electricity, or thermal stores to charge up on cheap-rate electricity. Solar panels, either PV or thermal to reduce gas burn or electricity imports. Cheap insulation to reduce heating demands. Energy and economic efficiency. CHP to get wholesale electricity pricing integrated with cheap heat pumps to multiply the heat output, so that when electricity is cheap, the CHP part doesn’t need to run. Wind turbines installed by end-users to get wholesale pricing.
Anything to reduce the cost per unit of energy, including the capital expenditure.
But, overall, the customer spends LESS. A basic economic factor of which the government has lost sight. Do governments do such economic calculations? Companies do. If the government were to ONLY look for efficiency savings, cost savings for its own functions, and NO SUBSIDIES perhaps the country would be run in a better way.
As someone who trained in Physics I appreciate the outreach to our Parliamentarians. They seriously need both physics and economics education.
I was delighted to read of your efforts to attempt to educate our elected members of Parliament as it is continually apparent that a very high percentage of them including ministers have very little knowledge or understanding of the basic scientific theories on which they blindly vote.
I would hope that any future,more enlightened Government,will take full advantage of your expertise to create an energy policy more in line with knowledge than ideology.
Eddy Barrows
Thanks Kathryn for another excellent common sense blog. I have watched many interviews with you on YouTube and really admire the way you explain things, I just hope our leaders will one day get the message that they are leading us on the road to nowhere.
KP said “[Germany] can build large volumes of low-carbon generation, but without firm capacity and system stability, you don’t necessarily achieve proportionate emissions reductions.”
Germany has a far more inherently stable grid than the USA. Normal German outages are measured in minutes per year, whereas US outages are measured in hours per year. There have been some significant outages in the German grid caused by deliberate arson attacks, likely by internal terrorists, but this is entirely political and nothing to do with grid design or the transition to renewables.
Incidentally Katharine, could you somehow fix the fact the web site fills in someone else’s details in the boxes at the bottom of a post. This is going to lead to posting under the wrong name from time to time, when someone forgets to correct the information.
I have a developer working on the website issues. Unfortunately there’s a plugin that is pretty important to the site architecture that is causing problems, so it’s quite a significant piece of work to correct it
Thank you.
KP said “We’re seeing an increasing divide between those who stubbornly cling to unrealistic net zero ambitions and those that want a more pragmatic approach that prioritises affordability and energy security.”
Does the fossil fuel lobby not learn from events? We are now in the middle of the second recent huge hike in fossil fuel prices caused by geopolitical events. And something like 3 global recessions which have affected the UK which were entirely due to OPEC putting up oil prices in the past.
Surely it is now obvious that the best way to avoid financial shocks to the UK is to get off fossil fuels as fast as possible. Renewables firmed up by grid batteries and backup gas generation (eventually migrating from natural gas fuel to green hydrogen fuel), is the blatantly obvious way to insulate the UK from the issues connected with fossil fuel price hikes.
KP said “Miliband is growing more isolated in his refusal to allow greater exploitation of the UK’s domestic oil and gas resources”
The IEA (well known in previous times for its fossil fuel bias) has just come out in support of Miliband’s policy of not allowing untrammelled development of the very limited remaining North Sea oil and gas resources.
Anyone who thinks “getting off gas” will reduce energy costs doesn’t understand how bills are structured. In electricity it’s irrelevant since renewables are guaranteed higher price than the typical cost of generating electricity with gas – only briefly in 2022 was the wholesale cost of electricity higher than the subsidies and it was marginal. When the full system costs were factored in, gas was still cheaper.
Whether the IEA agrees with Miliband or not is irrelevant. Our politicians should do what benefits us and not faceless overseas entities
KP said ” renewables are guaranteed higher price than the typical cost of generating electricity with gas – only briefly in 2022 was the wholesale cost of electricity higher than the subsidies ”
Plenty of renewable output at any one point in time reduces wholesale costs, because the marginal bid (usually from a gas plant) is lower than normal. Thus renewables reduce wholesale costs. It follows that you can’t compare the typical (average) cost of generating electricity with gas with the cost of renewable power in any one year. So you are comparing oranges with pears.
For an apples to apples comparison, you would need to work out what gas generation costs would have been had renewable generation not eliminated the need for the lower efficiency, higher cost gas plants to be active so much.
The analyses seem to indicate that wind and solar reduces typical UK wholesale prices by 25% to 33% compared to the same grid with no wind and solar generation. So there is a huge difference between the valid counter factual and your statement.
PD “Plenty of renewable output at any one point in time reduces wholesale costs, because the marginal bid (usually from a gas plant) is lower than normal. Thus renewables reduce wholesale costs.”
A quick easy-to-answer Q: Without (fully dispatchable) gas-fired generation, will electricity prices RISE or FALL. One word answer please.
There isn’t a one word answer, because it depends what you do and how you do it. It depends on how you create the market, it depends on what contracts are written, terms and conditions, it depends on what risk you price in, it depends on efficiency of the different parts of the system and if you’re obsessed with centralised Soviet Russia type control systems, depends if you’re using the electricity industry as a means to gather more tax by going for GDP growth, or actually doing an efficiency drive instead, and obtaining significant productivity gains (unrealised at present). You would always design a system with fully dispatchable generation from one fuel or another as back-up, until it becomes economic to do it by another means.
If you are able to get other efficiency gains i.e. use less electricity, you get a buffer, where you can tolerate higher electricity prices, without making yourself worse off overall.
Some people buy cars that do 15 mpg, but those with an intolerance to such inefficiency tend to choose cars that can do 40mpg or more, or use other more economically efficient forms of transport.
At present, it also depends on the time of day. If everything was done in the best way, prices would FALL at certain times of the day and depending on weather conditions, but at other times would RISE. Yes, without fully dispatchable gas-fired generation.
Why the system isn’t designed as accepting supply offers as they are posted, and paid at that individual offer price, I don’t know, except the government does like to get as much tax out of people as possible, where if you price the whole market at the highest offer (cartel pricing methodology), it does increase the profit of all the low offering generators (except when on CFD system). Of course, we wouldn’t need CFDs if renewables could get paid at their offer price.
It’s the ridiculous market design that creates market risks (potential losses) and excess profits for different companies, at different times, and the inability to do a one word answer for your question.
I would rather be relying upon the petrostates of the UKCS, USA and Norway than relying upon China for all my renewable infrastructure. Renewables only appear cheap because they are supplied by China who use coal power, often slave labour and ignore all the environmental damage caused by the mining of minerals and the enormous production tailing lakes. Also the devious way that DESNZ etc. calculate the costs of electricity generation means that all the additional costs of grid upgrades. grid stability, back-up and storage are ignored. The Royal; Society’s Large Scale Electricity Storage report using stored hydrogen found that the cost of dispatchable electricity from renewables doubled even when doubling the wind capacity factor and the electrolyser efficiency over today’s values.
But if you get the renewables installed by the end-user, you have wholesale pricing at the end-user, OK not quite so much for small residential, at least not initially, but you do for large scale industrial installations. Grid upgrades not required, except stabilisation and redistribution equipment costs, which, if you are on cheap wholesale pricing are actually very affordable. Back-up and storage depends on how you do it, and the pricing from excess end-user electricity. Can actually be cheaper than grid electricity now if it is done as CHP. But if you do it all as centralised as you suggest, yes, it gets very expensive. Is there a scientist in DESNZ with years/decades of process and product efficiency improvement experience? Is it devious or is it just naive, with very little wit as to know how to do things? There is no difference in deliberate/malicious/criminal poor work and inexperienced/naive poor work, the outcome is the same. If you are saying devious, that implies a high level of understanding and ability, which if they possessed that level of ability, would surely do things in an economic way. To me it appears as though they can’t think everything through, because they would automatically publish a fully optimized scheme, with lower costs for users if they had the ability………surely?
If you have a government that is pushing an uneconomic scheme, is it a fault of the civil servants, whether they are direct government or quango tasked to do something in a certain way, or the government, or the infiltration of those functions by zealots who are themselves naive of how to do things economically?
If the electricity cost doubles, then that is precisely why getting the use out of every bit of energy, such that losses are paid for by other income, such as income for the heat output is essential.
Did the Royal Society’s report actually include a reasonable attempt to mitigate and gain extra income from losses/waste heat? Did they model end-user installations for all renewables? If not, it is worrying that such supposedly highly qualified/experienced/knowledgeable organisations are not able to take such fundamental aspects into account.
Electrolyser efficiencies should be >90% if you use the right design, but as always, capital costs are a factor to consider.
From all that I have seen there is a governmental obsession with centralization, as bad as Soviet Russia, that has continued throughout both Labour and Conservative governments. If they could just get off the merry-go-round of centralisation and subsidies, and just let the end-users get cheap electricity from installing renewables, and just deal with the excess when it comes, and not paying curtailment fees etc etc. Forcing fitment of centralised renewables is embedding higher costs.
I’m getting off that merry-go-round, I can do things much cheaper myself.
If I can get my 3,000 kwh electricity (NG pricing £900 – £1000) for (£180 per annum) from the gas I burn for heating at 6p/kwh, with a £4,000 investment in a CHP system, OR from a £4,000 investment in solar PV (self-install Off-Grid), does it really matter? Either way it’ll save around £500 to £700 per annum……..then what should I invest that saving in, once the capital has been returned to me with interest?
Thank you for your great blogs,
I only wish that our politicians would read them and act on them. Unfortunately they have buried their heads in the sand and genuflect to their perverse belief that solar and wind are the answer to all of our problems.
Ten years of pushing back on Net Zero, Kathryn, well done, but look after yourself, I sometimes despair at the incompetence and lies that spout forth from the government and the green loonies. After my wife died some 17 years ago, I joined a fair few groups, including a male walking group, they thought I was mad with my anti green statements, now they are all converted to the madness of net zero. I am still considered right wing due to my defence of Trump but you cannot win them all. I put this comment on David Turver’s substack the other day, it got quite a few likes.,
Eigen Values
Someone liked your comment on Now There’s £585bn of Subsidies Galore.
Follow the money. This astronomic amount of money, will almost certainly find its way back into the back pockets of the Net Zero zeolots in government and the quangos advising them. Trump had the same problem with US aid, so closed it down and sacked everyone. If only we could get rid of OFGEM, CCC and the rest.
Yesterday, a local Labour canvasser came to the door ahead of the Scottish election. I asked him about electricity prices. As expected, he attributed the issue to gas prices.
I acknowledged that fossil fuels, particularly gas, do typically set the marginal market price. However, I pointed out that there’s an important caveat: renewable generators are paid under the Contract for Difference (CfD) scheme, which operates independently of the wholesale market in key respects.
To illustrate this, I shared the net CfD generator payments by calendar year:
2017: +£420m
2018: +£903m
2019: +£1.49bn
2020: +£2.08bn
2021: +£919m
2022: –£260m
2023: +£1.18bn
2024: +£2.13bn
2025: +£2.36bn
This shows that the only year in which renewables returned money to the system was 2022; in all other years, net payments flowed to generators.
I then asked whether he had heard of the Low Carbon Contracts Company, the government-owned body responsible for administering CfDs and managing strike price payments. He had not, although he was familiar with the concept of a strike price.
I explained that the Low Carbon Contracts Company is funded via a levy on electricity suppliers—costs which are ultimately passed on to consumers.
This is an area that deserves far greater public, media, and political scrutiny.
All mistooks including spelin are my very own as a founder memeber o the wurlds wurst spelin club
JM said “This shows that the only year in which renewables returned money to the system was 2022; in all other years, net payments flowed to generators.”
Additional payments from the LCC to renewable generation plants on CfD contracts are not the same thing as additional costs to consumers.
The obvious reason is that, if more renewables on the grid reduces the wholesale prices, then the LCC top up to CfD generators also goes up. But the CfD generators only ever receive a fixed price for power, whatever the wholesale price. The balance between wholesale price and CfD top up might change, but the total of the two always comes to the CfD strike price for that contract (which rises in line with CPI inflation each year).
The obvious reason why more renewables reduces wholesale prices is that the less efficient gas plants are required less of the time. More efficient plants can afford to bid lower, and one of these bids will then become the marginal price setting the wholesale price, which will thus reduce.
According to the ECIU, in 2025 wind power reduced average wholesale prices by one third compared to what they would have been with no wind power installed. Great you might (or might not) say! But you should understand that the implication of this is that the same effect would thus cause CfD top up payouts to wind and solar farms to rise.
David Turver was highlighting the days with maximum CfD payouts a few months ago (mostly low demand days such as weekends with high wind output). I produced an analysis spreadsheet which showed that these same days had a lower average cost to consumers of power than equivalent weekends with much lower wind and higher gas output.
See my spreadsheet at https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/78bts5gkic7af0huy4a6t/Record_CFD_payments_analysis.xlsx?rlkey=5dcnk5gsgbegcolo9x9op3vv2&st=4lbwicm6&dl=0.
While the days selected are not a full set of all days, the spreadsheet does demonstrate well that high CfD payments on a particular day can (and probably usually are) negatively correlated with high costs of power to consumer. In other words more wind as a fraction of supply lowers wholesale prices and causes rather more CfD top up payments because of a) more wind power and b) a lower wholesale price, with both effectively multiplied together. But total costs to consumers can still be lower.
So high total CfD top up payments in a year could well be a good thing and not a bad thing for electricity consumers. The devil is in the detail.
Well done on a blog that highlights issues with the energy transition, especially phase synchronisation and stability, which isn’t much discussed elsewhere.
But what’s your answer? More than once you’ve highlighted the 11 deaths in the Iberian blackout, and the iniquities of the PV and wind machine supply chain. If you mention those, then you must also acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of deaths due to fossil fuels – catastrophic weather because of climate change that’s happening now; pollution from combustion; human rights and environmental abuses from the oil industry.
I’d be really interested to read about the energy system you’d devise if starting from scratch, and how we might move towards that idea, even if the steps would doubtless be imperfect.
And what about the millions of lives saved by fossil fuels? The poverty reductions alone have saved vast numbers of people and extended their lives. It’s interesting how fast that’s ignored when people start on about the “externalities” of fossil fuels when what they mean is account for the harms but not the benefits.
From scratch I would base the grid on nuclear
Dear Kathryn: Thank you for your endorsement of nuclear power. You arrived at the same conclusion as the eminent scientists, engineers, and economists of the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) in a pair of 2011 reports requested by the California Energy Commission. Here’s Nobel Laureate Burton Richter’s 4-page summary of the pair of reports. “CCST Report on Nuclear Power in California’s 2050 Energy Mix,” Burton Richter, Ph.D., July 15, 2011,
Please search for the title of the report.
Californians for Green Nuclear Power also agrees with you.
Death threats? Hell: confirmation of what I and others knew already – that some prefer their notion of environmental preservation to the lives of actual living people. Utilitarianism is nasty. Thank you for your work.
10 years – congratulations. I saw your Inst Econ Affairs talk. We didn’t meet, but it would be a pleasure to get you in front of some of my clients. I have re-done my research over recent years to ensure I am aware of emerging science, policy and practices on sustaianbility etc. I work in sustainability strategy (er, risk-based strategy, looking for cost savings, and other ‘efficiencies’). I am looking to put together a 5 slide deck to show clients how to, well, think differently and stop drinking the kool-aid. This is a great little potted list of evidnece. I like The Honest Broker and also David Turver’s work. Thanks! (And, oh my god – two death threats? You infomred the authorities, right? Do we know the senders?)
Thanks – feel free to drop me a line: kathryn.porter@watt-logic.com
Yes, I informed the police. Nothing came of it, but it’s on the record in case of any escalation.
KP said “deindustrialisation is accelerating across the same countries whose net zero policies have pushed energy prices to record highs.”
What has happened recently gives the lie to that statement. Fossil fuel prices are rising and this is pushing up UK energy prices. This mechanism is very clear to everyone. There is no way of claiming the current significant rises are due to anything other than the unnecessary dependence on fossil fuels.
And that is in addition to the 2021 to current UK energy price rises, which clearly came about because of the rise in fossil fuel prices as a result of Putin’s 2021 energy war in Europe followed by his invasion of Ukraine and Europe’s subsequent inevitable policy of reducing fossil fuel energy imports from Russia.
Further, even before Trump started bombing Iran, UK gas prices were still twice as high at 82 GBp/therm as the average of the period 2016 to 2020 (38 GBp/therm) before Putin starting his hybrid war on the west. See the 10 year view at https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/uk-natural-gas.
You should go back and read my cost of net zero report from last year. Particularly the chart which shows wholesale gas and electricity prices since the 1990s and retail electricity prices. From 2006 onwards there is a marked divergence of retail electricity prices from wholesale prices due to net zero policies. Only briefly in 2022 was the wholesale cost of electricity from gas more expensive than renewables subsidies, but the all in costs to consumers remained lower.
It’s not al lie, it’s a fact that wind and solar are more expensive than electricity generated from gas. The only way to lower bills is to stop building them and move to non-intermittent generation with high energy density
KP said “From 2006 onwards there is a marked divergence of retail electricity prices from wholesale prices due to net zero policies.”
That is true.
What you don’t take account of is that wholesale prices are that much lower today because wind and solar displace grid gas use, ensuring the marginal cost of gas generation is lower because only the more efficient gas plants have to be active at any one point in time. So wind and solar bring down wholesale prices compared to a mainly gas grid with no wind and solar.
Just to help understand, ASSUME the average cost of gas power per MWh in a 100% gas grid is the same as for renewables (same cost per MWh, now on a CfD contract).
Start with the 100% gas grid. Now add the a partial supply of grid power from renewables to the previous all gas grid. The renewables per MWh cost the same as the average per MWh cost in the all gas grid Some things now happen:-
1. Wholesale prices reduce because the marginal bid from a gas plant setting the wholesale price is from a more efficient gas plant (because the lower efficiency ones are no longer needed – displaced by renewables).
2. Because wholesale prices go down, the fixed price CfDs require the wholesale price to be topped up to the CfD contract price (which is the same as the average cost of gas power in a 100% gas grid because that is the assumption).
3. So the renewables fraction of supply (say 50%) per MWh costs the same as the average per MWh cost of power would be in an all gas grid.
4. However, the grid gas fraction of supply now costs less than it did before, because the less efficient gas plants have dropped out.
5. Thus adding renewables has resulted in cheaper average electricity prices for consumers (because the power from gas is now cheaper per MWh, even though the renewables cost the same as gas on a 100% gas grid).
It follows that you cannot infer that positive CfD per MWh top up payments for renewables mean they are pushing up consumer electricity prices – they certainly don’t do this in the example above. In fact renewables lower wholesale costs, lower consumer costs, lower gas generation costs, and cause positive per MWh CfD top up payments because of the lower wholesale costs.
This sounds OK, Peter, but you don’t mention that, as the share of renewables in generating electricity increases, the costs of dealing with intermittency increase by at least just as much, and this is bound to result, ceteris paribus, in increased electricity prices.
If you get the end-user installing the renewables, you get wholesale pricing at the end-user, any additional costs of balancing or indeed to cover intermittency may increase the charge to the end-user, but if you are paying 8p/kwh for most of your electricity, you’ve got a cushion of 12-15p/kwh to play with, that will still make it cheaper than centralised installations. Also if you are getting 8p/kwh for 80% of the time, you can go higher than £1/kwh for the other 20% of use, without the costs increasing overall, but you have to get the majority of the electricity price down with end-user installations.
It doesn’t have to be 8p/kwh, but much lower than the usual electricity pricing we are now getting.
It is the centralised installation of renewables that increases the costs, and the back-up needs to be decentralised as well, where possible (except nuclear or tidal or hydro, but small scale hydro can be end-user installed as well.)
Dealing with intermittency as CHP, especially in winter substantially reduces the effective cost if you are burning methane or hydrogen, because you are wasting far less of the energy, where use of the waste heat is avoiding other costs to just generate heat on its own.
Yes, the back-up and grid stabilization costs more than just having renewables, but there are ways to adjust the economics to make it worthwhile.
The whole concept of the National Grid needs to be rethought, redesigned, away from centralised as much as possible, where every substation could be a grid stabilisation and redistribution point or even storage, or like now a distribution node, where switching between the two modes occurs over the 24hrs of a day.
But, you have to get the renewables installed by the end-user, to give the cheap electricity foundation on which a few extra costs can be borne.
TS said “you don’t mention that, as the share of renewables in generating electricity increases, the costs of dealing with intermittency increase by at least just as much”
By just as much as what?
The costs of firming up (and stabilising) renewables on a mainly UK renewables grid are small.
Typically you would expect maybe 8 hours of grid batteries (x 35 GW average load = 280 GWh) to fill the shorter gaps in renewables. Plus, keeping (and maybe expanding) the existing CCGT/OCGT plants.
So how much does this cost?
The non-US, non-Chinese typical cost of 4 or 8 hour BESS systems is now around $125/kWh of storage capacity. In China, the lowest bids are of the order of $66/kWh, which is half that. At $125/kWh then 280 GW costs $35bn = £26bn. Annualise that, and the yearly cost is around £2.6bn maybe. In other words, for just over half the cost of the new 3.2 GW HPC nuclear plant, you get enough grid battery storage to store 87 hours of its output.
Note that the 8 hour estimate is mine, based on modelling of the Texas ERCOT grid. The 2030 CPP documentation, based on UK grid modelling, is for a lot less BESS capacity. So treat my numbers as conservative ballparks.
What about, say 35 GW of CCGT/OCGT. Last year’s T-4 capacity contract for 2029 backup for 27 GW cost £60/kW-year. So the existing CCGT/OCGT cost will be around £1.6bn per year. Add another 8 GW of new CCGT/OCGT at maybe 60% high cost than this (say £100/kW-year) for another £0.8bn/year. Total £2.4bn/year.
Thus the total firming cost is of the order of £5bn/year. At the moment the cost of ROC + FIT subsidies is in the region of £7-9bn per year. So there will be a significant annual saving once all these 20 year contracts have finished. They start dropping out next year, 2027, and will all be gone by 2037.
Further, when you spend this £5bn per year, there will be some savings on existing balancing and system stability services costs.
PS said “this is bound to result, ceteris paribus, in increased electricity prices.”
Although there are significant additional firming costs for an almost completely renewables grid, these are low enough to push prices down in conjunction with ROC subsidies expiring. All other things are not equal in this case.
But the huge benefit is that the UK grid won’t be subject to any more geopolitically-induced, huge fossil fuel price spikes which have brought UK to its knees at least 3 times before Putin kicked off, and you can now add another two occasions since then. Advocating that the UK grid should remain dependent on fossil fuels has already cost UK an additional £90bn this decade, and no one has added in the costs of Iran to that yet.
Superb, logical blog, based on the laws of physics, which do not care what one believes.
If you have time, read Ian Plimmer, an Aussie Geologist, who postulates that the earth has been much hotter and colder through geologic eras, developed our current atmosphere over eons and undergone countless changes in land mass through plate tectonics, which continues to this day. Combine this with the natural cycles the earth undergoes in the solar system, the suns impact and its ever changing position in the galaxy. I could go on, but that’s my opinion (belief?) 😉
Thanks so much for all your analysis.
Here is my summary of your post with an intro: https://energysecurityfreedom.substack.com/p/physics-vs-ideology-and-reason-vs
Thank you for your articles and videos and your clear thinking. So many idiots in politics do not think rationally or perhaps are paid to support the ideological nonsense that lines their pockets and that of the renewable energy loby – expensive and over subsidised. The Irish media sources are also bought and controlled by the government and the RE loby, as are government funded environmental NGOs. The Irish Academy of Engineers are one of the very few organisations who call a spade a spade and published a Report (November 2025) that is scathing of RE ideology and Net Zero Targets.
I am sorry to hear you have health issues, you are making such positive steps with your case against net zero. Physics is the law, you will overcome.
Secretary Wright brings strong data points: the hydrocarbon-fueled world has not changed in half a century, despite 30 years of green subsidies, but the dam is starting to give way. Mr Miliband looks increasingly like King Canute, commanding the tide to turn.
Will the lifespan of a wind turbine or solar panels set an earlier turning point when replacement funding is required? Some equipment in the sea is looking encouragingly rusty now. The Small Modular Reactors(SMR) from Rolls-Royce appear to be funded and planned to be available 2030, so Britain’s finest engineers experienced in Nuclear Steam Raising plant in Royal Navy submarines are engaged.
And the greatest value of democracy is regular elections. There is hope, thank you for your efforts.
Thank you for your 10 years work, I’ve only recently come across you on youtube etc, but it is so good to see the matter of power generation and distribution explained so clearly.
Keep up the good work.
Hi Kathryn
Your work is great and you truly are providing a public service. I read most of your blogs and I like the way you try to simplify quite difficult concepts fir thise with no physics education. I’m a degree qualified Mechanical Engineer who worked in the Oil and Gas sector for 30+ years,
so I don’t need to be persuaded that Government policy is illogical and also very destructive.
I admire that you’ve put your head above the parapet in spite of the threats, so keep up the good work. I sincerely hope that you’ll get a chance to appear in front of the Climate Change Committee to put them straight because the lines of questioning at these meetings are appalling which just frustrates me. Someone needs to tell the Emperor they’re not wearing any clothes.! There are others like you such as Net Zero Watch. Unfortunately I fear people will only take notice once the industrial base is destroyed and we start to get energy black outs, which are bound to come if Milliband continues on this absurd path. So good luck, you deserve it for all the great work you’ve been doing the last 10 years. Regards Brian Burke
You never seem to include batteries in your analysis…grid forming inverter are no longer science projects. Might be worth a second look.
As an ordinary citizen,without a scientific background to inform.me, I must listen to the arguments from both sides of the debate, and try to form an opinion. You are convinced that you are correct in your analysis.; but so are the many scientists who warn us that an impending climate crisis makes renewabls an urgent priority. They don’t appear to mention the technical challenges with the grid that you talk about. Who should we believe?
Just keep going Kathryn, there are many of us right behind you.
Everything you say is so obvious to anyone that understands how electricity and grids actually work, which unfortunately doesn’t include the naive, idealistic idiots we keep voting into power. Keep up the good work Kathryn, especially educating people in parliament.
Thank you for your hard work and perseverance in speaking out the truth. Maybe one day those in power will start to listen.
You are pretty bloody awesome. You seem to have actually investigated and learnt about the fundamental physics of electricity, the mechanics of its generation and supply and the finances of energy on all levels. Something that few if any of those we vote to govern us seem capable of doing, and sadly something that many within the energy business have put to one side because I suspect it’s easier to agree with Government and Regulatory policies which they must know are innately wrong. Thank you for all your hard work.
Kathryn,
As Winston Churchill once said, “Keep buggering on”. 🙂
Good article.
I might add that it is odd that hydrocarbons never seem to run out. Emptied oil fields often recharge. Oh! There must have been another deeper oil field! End of investigation.
Thomas Gold shows how the Earth makes hydrocarbons with the useful by-products of fresh water and deposits of metal sulfides.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Deep-Hot-Biosphere-Fossil-Fuels/dp/0387952535
Meanwhile the modest increase in CO2 has produced a 10% increase in green vegetation for the planet. Does this mean the food will get cheaper?
Electricity is a motive force that can manipulate materials. Hydrocarbons represent materials and the means of manipulating them. The number of products furnished by hydrocarbons is legion, those produced by electricity? I struggle to name any.
Kathryn, I want to thank you for your brilliant Blogs which have contributed immensely to my education in the field of ‘renewable energy’.
My interest in this field began over twenty years ago and arose from my love of the British countryside and nature which I saw were under threat from massive developments.
However, I differ from you in that I am worried about the rapid increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in recent years. Whether this is man-made or dangerous I cannot say for certain, but I think we should certainly take a precautionary stance. There is a lot at stake for my children and grandchildren.
Where I agree with you is that intermittent electricity generation is NOT the answer. My studies have led me to the knowledge that much of the output from and investment into wind turbines and solar panels is wasted, and a greater proportion will be wasted with every new turbine and panel added to the system from now on. Unfortunately, intermittent generation actually ADDS to the problem because – 1. it diverts investment and attention away from better answers (firstly, energy efficiency and conservation and, secondly, nuclear both fusion and fission), and 2. the true carbon and financial costs are easily concealed.
Great work, thank you.
If you look at Ukraine, you can see the risks of centralised power generation, and dependency on a countrywide system. With hybrid warfare, even sub-frontline contact warfare, but also for all-out war, any exposed utilities make a risky target. With any investment in self-generation at whatever cost is economic, if you look at the insurance that it provides in uncertain times, there is a value that isn’t explicitly stated in the price/specification, but it comes with that extra functionality if you do it in the right way.
There is dependency on importing energy from foreign countries, which carries a risk, but also the transport and network within a country also carries a similar risk, but whilst that risk doesn’t always manifest as an event/occurence normally, it is a risk, which means that it could happen. If you are reconfiguring a National Grid, to build it with the ability for every user to be able to go Off-Grid should the need arise, and still be able to function at a basic level, even if severely curtailed power is available, surely represents a sensible ability to design into the system.
Some improvements aren’t widely promoted, but renewables and self-generation of electricity provides significant improvements not only in efficiency, but also resilience.
Yes you need efficiency, e.g. LED lights, and insulation to the highest standard, but why not reinvest those gains, those savings, into that self-generation that gives resilience in so many ways.
There are different answers for different questions, but it really does depend which question or risk you are addressing, as to what is the best answer. No one answer is correct or the best in all situations, but one answer could make all the difference in the most challenging of situations.
So, instead of just grid-tied inverters, don’t we need batteries and hybrid inverters or off-grid inverters to also be installed.
But aren’t the politicians just missing the whole point of this change, where fortuitously, there is a confluence of many important issues coming together all at once. AI risks to anything networked, terrorism and hybrid warfare, CO2 increasing, high costs of fossil fuels with limited supply caused by previous issues. End-user renewables provides answers to many of these risks and problems that exist now, not next week, or next year, or next decade or next century, but now.
I have no problem with your physics but you lose me when you slide into politics, as in your last few paragraphs. I also note that some of your supporting commentators are climate-change deniers but you do not attempt to correct them. I accept that we will be dependent on gas and oil for some time to come but that is not a reason to stop trying to reduce that dependency. In my opinion it is little short of a tragedy that the problem of climate change has become politicised.
Lots of people say things in the comments I disagree with I try not to intervene in discussions between posters unless lines are crossed – I don;t have the time and they are entitled to free speech. We’re spending $billions based on certain theories of climate change which is leading to increased levels of energy poverty and energy insecurity. It’s not only legitimate but desirable to debate the foundational assumptions and to keep doing so to ensure we’re satisfied of being on the right track. In order to properly engage in the discussion about climate science I would need a level of knowledge I lack, which is another reason I don’t enter into those discussions.
Prior to the last General Election I avoided political comment. Unfortunately this Government is so beyond the Pale that I cannot let it go without challenge.However, I would work with Labour if they showed some interest in correcting their course,
“I also note that some of your supporting commentators are climate-change deniers …”
Since climate is merely weather averaged over (generally) 30 years, how is it even possible to deny climate changes?
No doubt some commentators are climate scaremongers.
Only today, the EU has posted an image designed to appear alarming by choosing scary shades of red to represent a 1.5K temperature increase (to maybe 16.5℃) under the clickbait headline “Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent.”
https://x.com/EU_Commission/status/2049441729669984594?s=20
Read the comments pointing out that claims have already been made that numerous other locations claim that accolade. Simultaneously.
BTW, do you believe that the “era of global boiling has arrived”, or are you a climate change denier – after all, the UN Sec General Guterres would never lie, eh?
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/07/1139162
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here, Ron. It is now well established that the world is warming at a rate that will result (and is already resulting) in substantial changes in our weather systems. The science is now clearer than ever even though uncertainties remain about the rate of change and the timing of future tipping points. It has also been known for decades that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for this global warming by producing CO2 emissions that facilitate the retention of solar radiation in the atmosphere.
Again such obvious common sense!
Is there any danger of our insane Energy Secretary getting into a debate with you? Would love to see him get shown to be the fool he is
You can have 40GW of 4-stroke methane burning engines (able to switch to hydrogen), linked up to clutched generators that can act as synchronous condensers, when the actual power is not needed with surplus wind/solar……..2-3x cheaper than CCGT. Embed it in large organisations who need the heat, so nothing goes to waste.
The physics and economics can work……if you do it in the right way.
It’s a paradigm shift, a mentality shift, a redesign of a significant aspect of the grid to remove the aspect of wasting the heat, except if there is no demand for that heat, when there may, on occasions be a need to just let it go straight into the atmosphere.
A few years ago, private companies got rid of the turbine halls to reduce costs. Now we need to get rid of the CCGT as separate generators, again to reduce the costs.
Digital control of Grid frequency, Digital Grid Control……how can you divide the 40GW of 4-stroke methane burning generators into small enough units, such that say 250MW change or would a 100MW change correspond to a 0.05Hz change?
If grid frequency goes too high, switch off a generator, but leave the synchronous condenser aspect working. If grid frequency goes too low, switch on a generator. Digital Grid Control.
Getting things to work can be a challenge, but isn’t that the fun aspect of it all!!
So what if hydrogen is generated and only 50% is turned into electricity? It doesn’t matter if it’s a bit less efficient, if you’re not wasting the heat.
System economics matter, as well as each individual component. But does it really matter going from 60% efficient CCGT to 50% efficient 4-stroke reciprocating engined generators?……..especially if you only need them for 20% of the time and not 80-100% of the time. Someone in DESNZ needs to do some serious thinking and calculations.
The savings on installation costs are huge……..£10 Billion for all back-up, not £30 Billion. If we are using CCGT for 30% of power generation, 100TWh of electricity, at what point does electricity get so ridiculously expensive when the CCGT/back-up is required but is used less and less? But hey, why not hide this cost with Capacity Market payments?
If the £10 Billion were spent by organisations who could then get extra income, and cheaper heating, why would Capacity Market Payments be needed?……….Just make it tax deductable.
Sometimes spending less is the only way to increase efficiency and to make things cheaper.
Why is the government obsessed with SUBSIDIES?…….an admission of inability to design things to run economically?
Why not have a cheaper subsidy for companies/organisations who join in a programme to distribute the back-up and house it for central control by the National Grid?
When is the government going to get serious about efficiency and economics?
Dear Kathryn,
is that the sort of numbers that attend your training courses?
Even if those attendees pass on what they learn to associates it is a very small number relative to the number of M.P.s and Lords.
There will those who do not want to learn the realities and I can’t see a change in policy any time soon, much as that pains me.
I also notice that recently CCGT generation is being run at very low levels of output, presumably from policy, as interconnectors exceed gas output very often. Neso pushing the boundaries?
Thank you Kathryn, I love reading your blogs and speeches, and have gained a lot of knowledge and information regarding our national grid and energy system. I was an electrical engineer until I changed career course and have still learnt much from you and hopefully will continue to do so
The end of oil was announced about 1902. Still waiting,. Consumption is now vastly greater and, in absence of war, oil producers agree production limits to keep the price up.
Does no one notice?
Thanks, Tim, for your comment on 3rd May. I agree with everything you say but the problem lies in your first phrase: ‘If your get the end-user installing the renewables’. The reality is that most end-users of energy will never be installing the renewables (except perhaps for solar PV, which supplies only a fraction of the energy they use), so will be reliant on the grid. The few who go off-grid may get cheaper energy (though they may also have higher capital costs), but the costs for those who remain on-grid will rise proportionately. This has already happened in areas such as Arizona in the US.
Now the Texan Natural Gas prices are negative, because they have got too much of it to deal with, renders all economic arguments as redundant. When hydrocarbon fuel suppliers are paying customers to take it away, because it’s a problem that they need the oil, and they can’t get rid of the gas fast enough.
Can the installation of renewables compete with negative gas prices?
Congratulations on 10 years of being a constant force for common sense and building a platform that is informing at least those with the intelligence to listen, and embarrassing those without.
Thank you for all your hard work and kudos for being a Pratchett fan.
To Peter Davies: I’m not sure I fully understand your argument but here are a few quick comments: 1) You don’t take account of the cost of increased investment in the grid required to accommodate renewable electricity generation; 2) 8-hour storage is not sufficient to prevent blackouts in the event of dunkelflaute – which is why gas-fired backup is required; 3) I don’t see why, with renewables having an increasing share of electricity generation, the cost of elecricity would go down rather than up, once account is taken of all the relevant factors.
1) The way renewables shouldn’t be done, is by putting the renewables on new parts of the grid, which of course requires grid upgrades and extensions. If they are installed by the end-user, you have the capability of giving just as much maximum current as an export, as there was as an import for previous use. This would make the only grid upgrades required as stabilization and redistribution. Much cheaper. Think Beeching cuts in future if they go overboard on new grid extensions.
Renewables installed by the end user means that with wholesale pricing at the end-user, there is some room with costs to increase due to other expenses with making the grid more functionally complex.
2) 8-hour storage may be all that is required for many occasions when there is a lull overnight, or in the evening, when the solar peak has past, thus preventing the need to fire up gas-fuelled back-up. We don’t need more heat generated in summer. If we get onto systems that are cheap back-up in terms of capital expenditure, but maintenance costs might be higher, cheap battery back-up may be sufficient in 80% of the back-up required, but it has to be cheap.
3) If the back-up can be made to last 100 years with less maintenance, and a way to minimise the costs incurred with it sitting there doing nothing, e.g. embedded in other organisations, where it gets used as a heat source, reducing other costs when it is running, I don’t see why the cost of electricity has to go up.
It is the complete and extensive reorganisation of the grid that is required, and finding a way to stop putting more and more companies in and profit taking stages, compounding up the costs.
The grid needs to be seen as a peer-to-peer generation structure, i.e. customer to customer, with self-generation being an integral part of it.
Just ask yourself one question, would you want free or very cheap heat and cheap electricity from housing a back-up generator?
The problem is we have the governments (Conservative and Labour) treating the electricity supply as a means to increase GDP. It should increase employment, but that should be replacing the cost of fossil fuels. They should be promoting the cheapest renewable sources of electricity, solar PV and onshore wind. If they made it more efficient, tax receipts from employment should increase, but tax receipts from electricity generators should decrease, but allows profits from manufacturing and other companies to increase, increasing the tax receipts from them. It’s non-linear dynamics, where there are several different knock-on effects.
To Tim Stone
1) End-user installation is not practicable for most people, particularly given the situation in the UK, where most renewable electricity is generated far away from where the end-users live.
2) I agree that battery back-up can be cheap, but only, as you say, for 80% of what is required. It’s the remaining 20% that poses the problem, and currently this is solved by gas-fied back-up. Of course, the cost of electricity doesn’t HAVE to go up, but it probably will, especially if demand goes up, which also looks very probable.
3) Peer-to-peer generation sounds fine, but it’s a long way from the grid we have today and it’s not clear to me how we get there from here.