http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...g-us-darkness/


Thanks largely to Ed Milliband's Climate Change Act, and EU policies. The CCA committing us to reducing our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.

That's very expensive gesture politics because the UK emissions are small in comparison to global, and using the best science might result in an unmeasurable temperature change. But at enormous cost. To achieve that target, the UK will need to get rid of fossil fuels in transportation, heating and cooking.

The government doesn't seem too concerned about the collosal cost because it's largely 'off balance sheet', so funded by levies on energy production and consumption, along with things like £15bn for 'smart meters' that don't do anything smart.. Other than making money for the companies involved in managing that project. Hello Capita.

But there's some good news. Trident replacement will cost less, and being nuclear, will be low carbon.

I'm not convinced that we're taking a logical approach to the issue of climate change either - but obviously our commitment to reduce carbon emissions has to be seen in the global picture that if all nations do the same that it will have a significant effect.

I'm not a scientist, I don't know what damage climate change will do to us - but I understand that the consensus is that it will be pretty bad. £10bn a year might be seen as peanuts compared to it.

The last thing this country needs is more wind generation, the grid can't handle anymore.

Consider this: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php the National Grid as it is today, what could possibly go wrong?

This country has a growing demand for power while at the same time has to deal with the replacement of a number key power producing plants. A lot of this money has to be spent anyway to increase power production. It is more of a question of were and how this money is spent. Logically creating more fossil fuel plants for the future would be a stupid move. We know fossil fuel supplys are limited and not ones we have a large supply of in this small country.

To my mind it make far more logical sense to look for other sources of power including renewable energy sources. Even if in the short term going down that route is more expensive in the long term it is more than likely to save money. If this also have the effects of reducing our own carbon levels that is even better.

Very few renewable techhnologies can be used for base load generation which, if you rule out fossil fuels leaves nuclear.

without storage systems.

If you have a range of generating systems then the size of storage systems is reduced.

Of course all this is based on the assumption you don't waste energy in poorly designed homes and other buildings

Achieving such targets was always going to cost consumers more money and without nuclear power it will never happen. The elephant in the room is what progress are other countries making such as China and the US which contribute over 40% of all emissions while the UK contributes just over 1%. Then you have the fact emission figures are growing more in developing countries but per capita figures there tend to be lower though China's per capita figure is not much different to the UK's but then many countries have in effect transferred their manufacturing there. Added to the problem is economic and population growth leads to increased demand for energy and more emissions.

There are some problems with this approach. Some are fundamental.

So solar works best during the day, for obvious reasons. It's further affected by weather, and climate, assuming there is climate change that affects weather patterns. There are also seasonal issues, so solar generates less energy during winter when insolation is lower, but demand is higher. So not very useful to meet evening peaks, especially as to meet CCA targets, we need to get rid of domestic gas heating/cooking and transportation.

Where it may be more beneficial is simply heating water. But thanks to John Prescott and some lobbying, many if not most use gas for that and don't have hot water storage. But solar thermal + PV + a cheap hot water cylinder and heating element is far less expensive than many alternative schemes. And on a large enough scale, can also act as energy storage.

Wind has the problem of intermittency, especially during severe weather. So that may be a winter blocking high where there's no wind, but high demand due to low temperatures, or strong winds where windmills have to shut down to avoid damage. Biggest problem is cost, and that they produce power when it's windy, not when power is required.

But those have been the two 'renewable' technologies that we've wasted so much money on. And to cope with the intermittency, and maintain grid stability, they need other power generation to back that up. So we've ended up with a situation where we need to build more gas power stations to act as backup for renewables, which simply adds costs to consumers.

Our problem is we're already operating with a very slim safety margin, and due to the way the energy market is rigged, there's not much incentive to build what should be cheaper, more reliable power.

And there's the issue of alleged 'peak oil'. Oil prices have fallen due to oversupply, and if worst comes to the worst, we can make gas.. Providing the energy cost is low enough.

Not really. In the absence of any revolutionary technology, trying to store say, 1GWh of energy takes a lot of space and a lot of money. So all it does is add cost, and reduce efficiency. Again a cheaper solution would be using 'smart meters' to turn on enough heating elements in people's hot water tanks to sink any surplus power.

Problem with that is the people flogging storage want to sell energy at inflated costs, not provide something that would benefit consumers and the grid.


You mean ones that have gas heating?

The reason oil price are cheaper at the moment is because OPEC inrease supply a few years ago to ensure other forms of energy costs when compared to oil become to expensive. OPEC control the oil supply and as such any investment in oil as a fuel source puts you in their pocket.

We all understand supply of Oil is limited the future long term is one in which the price of oil will rise. It is not a long term option to the energy problem.

So we have to replace it with something. In the short term nuclear power will have to provide some of that output but that is less than ideal so development of renewable engery makes sense.

Sure their are issues with solar, wind, wave etc but the technology is developing at a rapid pace. It may never fully replace our demand for energy but until another method for clean energy is found it is worth investiging in.

I accept the problems but if your suggestion to the energy issue is to build more oil and gas plants and increase fossil fuel use cannot you not see that longer it will cost us far more money ?

Unless we find a vast pool of oil under the Uk to last us the next 100 years reducing our demand for fossil fuel is the best option we have.

When did you start getting interested in the "best science"? Everything you have ever claimed to be true about climate change has come from crackpot websites, usually run by and for conspiracy theorists.

At present no grid sized storage system exists.

However. the point I was making is that the grid, as we speak, is red lining and wind is only producing 0.9GW whereas last Thursday wind was producing about 4GW.
So, last Thursday the grid could have withstood a major outage of one of the other generators whils a similar outage today could trigger power cuts.
In short the grid is over reliant on wind.
Some of the wind capacity needs to be replaced, or backed up with conventional base load generation technology.

Sure it is. So firstly we use virtually no oil for power generation in the UK. And assuming we try to meet our CCA targets, we'll be using virtually no oil for transportation. Everyone will be driving electric cars, buses, lorries and trains. Along with heating their homes, offices and cooking with electricity, not gas.

Problem with that is it means we'll need a lot more generating capacity to decarbonise by 2050. By some estimates, around triple what we have at the moment.


Not really, and a GCSE economics student should have spotted the problem. So currently we have the renewables lobby telling us to build windmills. Their energy cost is more expensive than competing solutions, and when supply exceeds demand, the wind companies are paid a premium not to deliver anything. And when supply is lower than demand, we need some form of stand-by generator that can spin up to keep the lights on.

And to add insult to injurious pricing, we're told we should spend more billions so when there's surplus power, it can be stored somehow, and then sold on when there's demand.

Which makes no sense whatsoever, but has sadly been official government policy for the last 15 years or more.

Nuclear on the other hand has a much lower environmental impact and happily runs at peak power 24x7x365 give or take maintenance or refuelling. It can also burn radioactive waste to recyle it, and produce medical isotopes to treat patients.. Something that's very expensive to try and do with a windmill or solar panel.


No it isn't. We've been forced to pay for ever larger windmills, but they're not really getting any cheaper, or able to solve the problems of not producing reliable power.

Always. I'm still interested in your energy budget, but failing that, I'll settle for an estimate of how much global warming that £65bn+ buys us.

It might keep people like Dale Vince of Econtricity fame cosy & warm, but it also contributes to energy poverty and excess winter mortality.

There's no real 'could' about it, it's more a case of 'when'. And we've been lucky with some mild winters.


Yup. There's also the problem of maintaining grid frequency & stability, which is more challenging the more gucci generators are added. I'm sure the insurers will be happy to cover losses caused by stuff tripping or blowing though.

Since you continue to deny even the basic physics of the greenhouse effect, attempting to persuade you of the need for any decarbonising of the economy is obviously an exercise in futility.

As a person who claims to be the appliance of science, you're really not very good at quantifying anything, are you? You don't know CO2's energy budget. You don't know how much warming we'll save by cutting carbon either.

Sadly the cost of tilting at windmills is £65bn+ And of course you're not alone in your ignorance-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38158541

The European Commission says that it plans to cut energy use across the bloc by 30% by 2030.

That's actually something the EU may achieve. After all, we used less energy across the EU during the recession, and once the UK, Italy, Netherlands, Austria have left, it'll be fine. Or as industry leaves the EU due to high costs and regulatory interference. Shame the Bbc didn't consult any experts on the subject, only lobbyists..

I'm not the one whose rejection of mainstream science is so complete that he claims "CO2 prevents warming during the day" - a claim so bizarre that not even other crackpots make it.

Who's contributing anything useful to this topic. So..

£65bn buys us how much global warming?

If it's less than can be measured via a standard Met Office thermometer, do you think the price is worth it?

£36bn to wind farmers almost makes CAP look cheap.

As a matter of interest, I understand the current Co2 levels in the Atmosphere are around 0.04%.

What would the global temperature be like now if that was 0.2% ?

I assume you don't expect me to run that emission scenario through an ensemble of coupled atmospheric-ocean general circulation models for you? And of course what the global temperature would be like now if you miraculously imposed an instantaneous five-fold increase in atmospheric CO2 is exactly the same as the temperature was before you started. These things take time to equilibrate, and we haven't even achieved equilibrium at 400 ppmv yet. There is more committed warming in the pipeline, even without any further CO2 increase.

So I'll assume your question was sloppily worded, and that you are happy with a first-order approximation of the equilibrium temperature rise to be expected from a five-fold increase in atmospheric CO2. So if we assume a climate sensitivity of 3C, a simple calculation suggests that we would expect the global mean temperature rise to be ~7C.

What do you think would happen?

I don't know but that was the levels during the age of the Dinosaurs.

The reason I ask is because 0.2% is the optimum for photosyntheses, the amount of CO2 that plants can convert for the levels of isolation on them. It doubles plant growth with all other inputs like fertilizer available.

Its the levels we would probably need to get the amount of plant growth needed to feed the expected rise in human global population to 10bn+.

...and not by chance, its the levels that cannabis growers feed to their plants.

Er, and what were sea levels at that time?

1) What relevance does the temperature "during the age of the dinosaurs" have?

2) CO2 fertilisation in a greenhouse is accompanied by fine control of all the other requirements for plant growth. Having plenty of CO2 in the air isn't much help if you are trying to grow crops in a perpetual drought, for example.

Yes I think that is a correct analysis and things are worse today.
CCGT is red lining and there as only been a marginal in wind power.
If a coal, CCGT or Nuclear plant goes off line we will be looking at power cuts unless of course the wing starts blowing.