Renewable Energy
Below is the transcript of a speech I gave at a Net Zero Watch event in Edinburgh on 9 March 2026: . Good evening, and thank you for inviting me to speak today. Scotland is often described as an electricity superpower. Not only is [...]
Last week, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband announced the Administrative Strike Prices for the upcoming 7th auction round for the Contracts for Difference subsidy scheme. These represent the maximum prices he is willing to pay for each technology type. Or I should say, the maximum [...]
Yesterday demonstrated some of the challenges of high wind generation on the GB system, with lots of activity in the Balancing Mechanism, particularly to curtail wind and CCGTs, as well as bringing up CCGTs, and some counter-intuitive interconnector activity. It also exposed issues with [...]
This evening my latest report: The true affordability of net zero, was launched at an event hosted by The Lord Offord of Garvel, Shadow Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero in the House of Lords. The event was attended by MPs, Peers and [...]
Writing my review of 2024 got me thinking about the link between energy and economy. Cheap energy is positive for economies while expensive energy is negative – that is not in question, and is why policy-makers are at pains to claim that renewables are [...]
In the past few years, we have been repeatedly told by the system operator, now known as NESO (National Energy System Operator) that the GB power grid can be underpinned by a combination of renewables (wind and solar) and imports from other countries. NESO [...]
My blog is 8 years old today! The past year has seen my business develop in ways I did not expect even a year ago when I was celebrating my higher profile. I am still regularly quoted in the press and have written regularly [...]
In this final post in my series on minerals critical to the energy transition I look at rare earth metals. The name "rare earths" is often used to describe all 15 elements comprising the lanthanide series on the periodic table along with scandium and [...]
In this next post in my series on the critical minerals required for the energy transition, I look at more of the essential components of batteries: graphite and manganese. Graphite is an often over-looked part of the battery supply chain Carbon is one of [...]
Continuing my series on critical minerals, in this post I will look at some of the main metals required for lithium-ion batteries, the core component in electric cars and current battery-based grid-scale electricity storage solutions, lithium, cobalt and nickel. In a lithium-ion battery, the [...]