The man running Britain’s gas network has said the country will need fossil fuels to prevent blackouts for decades to come despite calls for the Government to begin shutting off the pipes. The Telegraph has more.
Jon Butterworth, Chief Executive of National Gas, said a growing reliance on intermittent power sources such as wind and solar meant Britain would be increasingly reliant on gas to make up for shortfalls when renewable energy sources are not generating power.
Mr. Butterworth said: “In 2022, the wind didn’t blow enough or at all for 262 days. And in those 262 days, we would have had rolling blackouts, or a full blackout across the UK if it wasn’t for gas.”
He believes Britain will still need gas to keep the lights on as far out as 2040.
“I actually think we’ll be moving more gas but we’ll be moving gas to power stations to make electricity rather than to homes.”
His conviction comes despite calls for the Government to begin shutting down the gas network as part of the shift to Net Zero.
The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), headed by Sir John Armitt, last week called for the U.K.’s domestic gas network to be decommissioned at a cost of £70bn to encourage people to switch to heat pumps and help the country meet its Net Zero targets.
The cost of decommissioning would most likely be added to consumer bills but the NIC argues the policy would help halve domestic energy costs by 2050.
The Government plans to replace the U.K.’s 25 million domestic gas boilers with heat pumps to end our dependence on both gas and global gas prices. That dependence is why energy bills have doubled since 2021.
However, heat pumps need electricity and in a country committing itself to generating most of its power from wind farms, there will be many low wind days when gas is still needed.
Mr. Butterworth foresees a time when millions of ‘green’ heat pumps will be whirring away – but using un-green power produced in gas-fired power stations.
He said: “That is actually far less efficient than burning gas in your house. Domestic gas boilers are about 90% efficient but the best power station is about 50% efficient.”
Worth reading in full.
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Fossil fuel energy generation can operate independently!
Renewables cannot operate without Fossil fuels! Fact
Nor can they manufactured and transported with fossil fuels.
Fuels from fossils don’t exist.
Hydrocarbons – abiotic energy – does exist.
It is clean, it is plentiful, it regenerates. Ergo, heretofore, it is renewable.
It’s just a bit easier to say and describe it as fossil fuel!
80% of the worlds energy comes from fossil fuels. This will not change as time goes on. Western countries getting rid of fossil fuels is politics and nothing to do with science or climate. We in the prosperous west have apparently, according to the eco socialists at the UN, used up more than our fair share of the finite resources in the ground and we are to STOP doing that. ——To impoverish their own voters with draconian climate policies western governments fully onboard with this Sustainable Development nonsense need a fairly plausible excuse.—That excuse is “climate change”——-The greatest pseudo scientific fraud ever.
Fossils don’t make fuels. Dead dinos don’t make fuel. Devonian algae and other darwinian claptrap don’t make fuel. It is abiotic and renewable – it is called hydrocarbon energy.
I think the term “fossil fuels” applies also to dead vegetation. I haven’t heard anyone argue that all fossil fuels are abiotic and none are formed from decaying plant and animal matter. Is that what you are saying?
Let’s not get bogged down in what we call coal oil and gas. That just lets the eco socialists off the hook.
It’s almost uncanny how politicians get the big intergenerational issues wrong – every time.
The climate change fiasco is one of many slow motion train crashes. Decisions made today by the Incompetent Class won’t be felt immediately and therefore there is no natural negative feedback loop. Because of this it only encourages further virtue signalling and appalling decision making.
Furthermore, even if CO2 was responsible for any very mild warming (it really isn’t) then the U.K. contribution vis-a-vis China etc is statistically negligible. So why would they punish their own populations? Also if they are against oil and choose not to use their own, why not openly criticise the world’s oil producers to prevent ‘a boiling planet’. Such double standards.
Then we have mass immigration and Covid. Not a single correct decision anywhere. Short term knee jerk reactions ahead of proper debate and planning.
The question we return to is; are most politicians really as thick’s as mince, or are they all devious gits trying to harm the country? Cock up vs Conspiracy. It’s probably a mix. What we can say with certainty: there are vanishingly few decent and intelligent MPs left in this country.
The state is incapable of doing much well and the size and scope of the state he ought to be minimised. Politicians seldom recognise the depths of their ignorance and are consumed by personal ambition and the desire to leave a legacy.
My view is it’s a conspiracy concocted by relatively few influential people at the top, but followed unswervingly by a very large flock of sheep, consisting of those who are either as thick as mince, or those whose social status/financial well-being depend on not acknowledging the lies.
Heather Mills comes to mind. This whole shit show seemed to accelerate since 2008.
“Decisions made today by the incompetent class won’t be felt immediately” ——I know what you mean but these decisions are actually being felt. Millions are now in fuel poverty because of the huge cost of renewables paid for on people’s bills. This expensive energy that has replaced affordable energy affects the cost of everything people buy causing them more misery, since everything requires energy to manufacture. ——Yet politicians and mainstream news who have simply become climate activists tell us “Renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels”. ——This is preposterous.
I saw an analysis some weeks ago which described the rapid succession of calamities which would follow a collapse of the National Grid. I recall that water supplies would be affected quite quickly.
I would be glad if someone could give me a reference to the report.
it would be interesting to see an analysis if how the political class will respond to significant power cuts and eventual grid collapse. Presumably we will be invited to live cold so Whitehall and the glorious NHS (oh, and the BBC) can continue to operate. But a protracted period of dull, windless weather would quickly lead to permanent damage with technical difficulties in restarting all sorts of services.
public violence would likely result as water and food become scarce. The police would be incapable of controlling crowds. What would happen thereafter.
If we were lucky enough to have thrown out the political class I wonder how a rational government could replace the destroyed reliable generating capacity. Would they need to or would we, by then, have long since become an openly fascist colony of, who?
I think it will be more insidious with energy rationing, so all but the older generations remember a time when you just pressed the switch and it worked.
However, the people at the top need mass consumption to feed their coffers and mass communication to boast of their power and I am not sure how that ties in with limited supplies.
It does seem counter productive. Why would government and energy companies want you to use less of a product —“energy”. That is where the politics comes in. The politics of Sustainable Development which takes the view that affordable energy drives Industrial Capitalism, and the Liberal Progressive UN are anti capitalist. They don’t want “Free Markets” which comes from this idea that there are too many people in the world with diminishing resources (coal oil and gas)
The same people who took us into lockdown without even considering that it would have a severe economic effect, never mind calculating what that would be, cannot be expected to apply any rigour in thinking about the economic effects of the Net Zero lunacy.
Yet the British people will go out and vote for one or the other of the same bunch of evil clowns they’ve been voting for since the Idiot Blair.
I am voting for the Reform Party. It is probably our last hope. There is now a horrible personal attack on Reform from both members of the Uni-Party, but particularly the Tories. Appauling!
When I wad a youngster the UK economy was always severely constrained by “balance of payment” crises. Strangley, it seems we can now offshore whole industries and import the goods instead with no economic repercussions.
We’ve long since discarded the idea of balancing the economy. Printing money by the creation of massive debt is all the rage nowadays.
If we scaled this down to a single household the profligacy would be self evident. Fifty thousand credit cards all maxed out by the ‘adults’ with no thought for how the kids can ever handle the debts. The house would be repossessed and the house contents sold for pennies.
It’s still a problem. A massive one. But no mainstream media wish to discuss. Because dealing with it means end to Net Zero, forever wars.
They are simply ignoring the balance of payments now, and covering it up by simply printing cash. But this cash is not real, in reality it is theft of our money by means of inflation and super-high taxes. One day the pound will collapse and guess who is bankrupted? It certainly will not be politicians, but the good solid Brits who are not on welfare! Politicians keep all their takings in forign tax havens, which needs serious investigation. Where exactly did Blairs money come from, and how much tax has he paid, for example?
Why does the Climate Party get a free pass, that smooth talking charlatan who is sometimes on GB News is a pound shop Tony Blair. For him, Net 0 (Agenda 2030) is such a great opportunity, But for who!
Vote for Reform UK
. Labour got in 100 years ago so change can happen.