Rishi Sunak’s recent announcement of new gas power generators to ensure reliable energy supply on the path to Net Zero is his King Canute moment.
The story of King Canute and the tide used to be much more often mentioned than it is nowadays. The earliest account of the event comes from Henry of Huntingdon writing in the 12th century, a hundred years after Canute (Cnut if one prefers). In Huntingdon’s account, Canute was deliberately demonstrating to his fawning courtiers the difference between two different types of law: laws of the land and natural laws – what today would be called scientific laws. It’s a distinction that’s still important.
Politicians are fond of laws, at least when they pass them, though one senses that a Conservative Government might, in retrospect, prefer not to have been stuck with the Equality Act and the Climate Change Act, both of which its MPs voted for. But it continues, with assistance from devolved assemblies, to legislate to promote the ‘good’ and prevent the ‘bad’, bent on ‘defeating Covid’, a disease largely untroubled by human intervention, and issuing ‘legally binding targets’ on biodiversity, air quality, waste efficiency, child poverty, hate speech, gender and racial discrimination.
Canute’s demonstration with the tide had one purpose only – to demonstrate the vanity, the uselessness, of human laws. Ordering his chair to be set on the shore, he commanded the incoming tide not to rise and wet his clothes or body – and of course his command had no effect. As he said: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws.”
Whether one thinks what Canute referred to as eternal laws are of divine origin or not, they are of quite a different nature from laws of the land. Natural laws are not things that tell the natural universe how to behave; rather they are simply descriptions of how the universe does behave. The job of us petty men is to observe and put up with the world. Tides go up and down twice a day and there is nothing we can do about it.
So why is Rishi’s recent announcement of new gas power generators a Canute moment?
The “legally binding target” of the 2008 Climate Act, modified by the 2019 Order, commands that: “It is the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net U.K. carbon account for the year 2050 is at least 100% lower than the 1990 baseline.”
The crucial concept, “ensure that the net U.K. carbon… for 2050… is at least 100% lower than 1990”, means that we must reduce by 100% the net amount of carbon dioxide we are producing: 100% lower than what it was is zero, hence the term Net Zero.
As is gradually becoming apparent, Net Zero is physically impossible to achieve. However much governments legislate, achieving Net Zero is as likely as the tide obeying a king’s command not to advance.
The scientific reasons for the impossibility of Net Zero are multifactorial. They start off with our need for energy. At 50th out of 200 countries, the U.K. is already very energy efficient, particularly considering how far north we are and how cold. We contain 70 million warm-blooded humans (23% more than in 1997) who need heated houses and food to be grown, imported, processed and distributed. We need places to work and transport to and from the workplace. We need manufactured goods, many of which are essential – houses, boilers (or heat pumps), lorries, buses and so on. Even if there was political support for energy austerity and we prohibited recreational transport, meat consumption and the keeping of pets, insulated every building and banned all consumer goods (from children’s toys to golf clubs), we would be unlikely to see a reduction in energy consumption by as much as a quarter.
As for our production of energy, for all the hype about renewables and all the obvious wind turbines and solar panels we see around us, renewables are actually still just hype. Of the 2,000 billion units of energy we consume each year, renewables provide only 100 billion units, a mere 5% of the total (4% wind, 0.6% solar and 0.4% hydroelectric). Forget the figures about renewables providing half our energy. That’s only the electricity from the grid, which is one seventh (14%) of our energy use. Nuclear power, along with renewables, provides 5% of our total energy used but the stark fact is that 90% of the U.K.’s energy comes from burning things – fossil fuels for the most part but also, shockingly, forests we are currently paying to have chopped down in the U.S. and Canada.
The fairytale plan was to increase our dependence on wind – to take it from 4% to 80% – 20 times as much. But there is an obvious problem with that: for half the time, on average, the wind isn’t blowing. What are we going to do about that?
The fairytale answer was to store surplus energy when the wind is blowing hard to give out when the wind stops blowing. But how does one store the energy in times of plenty?
Batteries were the obvious suggestion but that, it turns out, is another fairytale because they are environmentally terribly polluting to make, prone to bursting into flames, have a limited lifespan and need as much energy to make them as they store usefully over their lifetime.
The second suggestion for storage has been to use surplus wind to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then we can burn hydrogen when the wind stops blowing, use compressed hydrogen to power lorries and even pump hydrogen round the country in gas mains to power clean gas boilers. The hydrogen fairytale collapses because hydrogen doesn’t liquefy under pressure, so storage for vehicles is very difficult, plus the process of splitting water then compressing and storing the hydrogen wastes about three quarters of the energy from the wind. This means that we would need 80 times as many wind turbines as we have at the moment – prohibitively expensive even for a spendthrift Climate Change Committee.
So we come to the reason behind Rishi’s recent dash for gas, something that outrages advocates of Net Zero. The logic is simple and irrefutable. The only real renewable available in quantity is wind. Since our total energy needs are 2,000 billion units per year, let’s increase the number of wind turbines so that, at peak, they have a capacity of 2,000 billion units per year. Let’s also build gas turbine power plants which will generate 2,000 billion units per year. So when the wind is blowing at full strength, we use wind. When it is blowing at half strength, we use half wind and half gas, and when it is not blowing at all we use all gas. On average we will then be half wind and half fossil fuel – and paying a fortune for the privilege.
It’s simple arithmetic to see that this kicks out all notions of Net Zero. At best it’s Net 50%. As the Green Alliance think tank says, it “flies in the face” of Net Zero. It’s like Canute commanding the tides to hold back, while gradually backing up the beach so that his feet only get half wet. It’s a climb down. But that’s what happens when laws of the land conflict with natural law. It’s the former that have to give way.
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There are going to be many more “Canute” moments ahead. Net Zero was never discussed. No one questioned it. Not the cost, not the practicality, not even if the technologies required could even be invented, especially in the daft time scales proposed. ——-Who in their right mind enters into something not knowing the cost or even if it is in the least bit feasible? —–Only one bunch of silly people do stuff like this. Ideologically motivated brown envelope politicians pandering to United Nations phony environmental politics that pretends to be about the climate. ——–Reality has a habit of coming up and biting people. Todays political class are going to feel they have just been mauled by a pack of rabid hyenas when the real world starts to not just bite them but tear off their arms and rip out their guts. They are living in cloud cuckoo land and the hyenas are coming for them.
Using hydrogen as a method of storage is grossly inefficient, and can only be justified as a fairly local mode of transmission to avoid urban air pollution, or to avoid other expenditure in some operations – e.g. certain branches of railways where conventional electrification does not look viable financially.
What isn’t mentioned, and appears to be on the back burner in the renewable culture, is tidal power. The proposed schemes that are rarely mentioned now that I can remember are the massive Severn Barrage project, and a couple of smaller ones on the Bristol Channel – Swansea lagoon, and the Cardiff equitvalent. https://www.greatwesternpowerbarrage.com/ , https://www.swansea.gov.uk/BlueEden , https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/922364-cardiff-tidal-lagoon-could-power-every-home-in-wales,-says-chief-executive.
Perhaps some environmental opponents prefer to keep quiet about them all.
Something that’s never mentioned in connection with tidal power is the fact that the tide doesn’t rise and fall at a constant rate. Sailors talk about slack water, a period one hour either side of high and low tide when there’s hardly any tidal flow. Presumably this means they’d be periods every day when tidal barrages produce very little energy and some form of storage or backup would be required. It also seems likely that if tidal was cheaper than wind or solar more schemes would of been built so it’s either going to lead to even greater increases in bills or it’s yet another case of the government using subsidies to back the wrong horse.
True, but more predictable than the wind or the amount of cloud cover during daylight hours.
Predictable but cannot be synchronised to demand. Then there are issues with sea creatures just as wind creates problems for birds and bats. Infact in Germany the Red Kite has virtually been wiped out because of all the turbines. ——There is something pretty insane about trying to use these unreliable technologies when small modular reactors dotted here and there could supply vast amounts of reliable electricity at pretty reasonable cost and 24 hours a day since these plants can last for 70 years.
Periods of slack water happen, but not all at the same time around the UK.
The twelfths rule generally applies to tidal flow – 1/12 flows in first and last hour (out of 6), 2/12 in second and fifth, 3/12 in third and fourth, so the flow is constantly changing. I imagine this has been factored in to tidal power proposals.
There is at least one live tidal scheme, in northern Scotland, generating power where there is limited demand for it!
The main objection to tidal schemes was cost – about 3 times the price of conventional generation last time I looked. The cost of electricity soared in 2022/2 but is now back down, although consumers are still held to higher prices because of the useless Ofgem creating artificial market conditions. Our electricity bills won’t be “£200 lower this year”, they’ll be £500 higher than the market price. That’s not the headline they want you to see.
Finally, if tidal lagoons were to be considered there would no doubt be plenty of eco mutters and newt fanciers who would tie up the planning process in knots on environmental grounds, as happens with most renewables (certainly onshore).
Building renewable schemes – except maybe some hydropower, see Norway – has required us to double our national generating capacity. It has been great for the investors, but very bad for consumers, who are paying for the virtue signalling.
Why has there been no coherent UK energy policy for decades – was that deliberate?
Was that deliberate? —YES Totally deliberate and planned. This country is fully signed up the UN Sustainable Development agenda, but whatever it is we do here to reduce emissions will have no effect whatsoever on global climate.
Tidal and all those niche technologies are only any good if energy can be stored. ——But it CAN’T
One of the attractions of huge tidal lagoons – and one way of getting around the slack wster issue – is that a tidal lagoon (or part thereof) can be filled and then shut, in which case the water is stored and can be released into the generators when electricity is needed. So, energy has been stored, albeit usually for a limited period.
This already happens on a fairly large scale at Dinorwic, (a fresh water reservoir located up a Welsh mountain). Also, I suspect, on a much larger scale in Norway. Despite vast reserves of oil and gas (and cash!), Norway generates a lot of its electricity from hydropower
Any country can generate energy from Hydro as long as they have the geography for it with lots of water falling down mountains. I had a discussion with a German guy from Siemens who was here in Scotland working on turbines at the Energy Park Fife. He was obviously fully onboard with wind and ofcourse I wasn’t. At the end of our discussion I asked him “Can Industrial Society be run on renewables”? —–He pondered a moment and said “I don’t know”. ——-This was as close to “No” as I was going to get. Fossil fuels give the world 80% of its energy and that is going to continue for a very long time. Western countries are phasing down fossil fuels in compliance with the UN Sustainable Development agenda but that is really all about the politics of the worlds wealth and resources and has little to do with the climate, which is simply the excuse given to the public so they accept the politics, and therefore their impoverishment.
We hear a lot about the emissions side of the net zero ledger, but never about the credit. If we emit 200m tonnes of carbon in the uk but also 200m tonnes is absorbed by our plant life then we have already achieved net zero.
So what are the two figures for the credit and debit sides of the ledger – the department for net zero or whatever it’s called should have these two figures??
From the BBC article:
“The only route to a low-cost, secure and clean energy system is through attracting massive private investment to develop renewables and upgrade our aging grid,” said Doug Parr, policy director at the campaign group¹.
That is, the only road to the kind of energy system Greenpeace would like to see in the UK is massively expanding state subsidies for so-called renewables. If this was profitable on its own, private investors wouldn’t need to be attracted as they would come on their own.
And that’s basically how all groups on this side, including Labour, are arguing: In their universe, it only needs a massive public investment in so-called private companies and then, the wind will magically start to blow round the clock and the sun will never sink again. The tide would have stopped, if only Canute hadn’t secretly been a Tory.
And supposedly grown-up people are listening to this total nonsense and claim to believe it.
¹ Greenpeace.
“We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available” —Steve Holliday (Head of the National Grid about 10 years ago). ——Welcome to the 21st century of pretending to save the planet.
If he really said that, he’s a dumbass or not honest. For the forseeable future, people will need heating in winter in our latitudes and if heating is supposed to be electric, as it is, then, power needs to be available when it’s so cold that its needed, ie, from September/ early October until May. Virtue-signalling in a warm room is easy. But people who are cold and hungry (electricity also needed for domestic food storage and processing) are going to become pretty pissed-off with their present circumstances and will postpone more abstract considerations until later, see also “Sri Lanka”.
And reality is worse: The sizable Muslim, Hindu, African (and even Polish) population of the country likely don’t even know yet that there’s supposedly a climate emergency which needs to be adressed by cutting everyone’s left hand off and they’re unreachable to the blathering of establishment functionaries secretly profiting from these inane subsidy schemes. They will, however, quickly notice when their living conditions get dramatically worse and have little patience with the people who are responsible for that.
Net zero is urban white middle-class planet saviour larping and will never get beyond that because the planet doesn’t really care.
The unwillingness (or inability) of the socio-political establishment to run the coal mines sensibly didn’t cause water to run uphill but the end of the mining industry in Britain, not quite what the proponents of We have them by the balls, let’s squeeze them! meant to achieve.
Great framing of the issue in the article. The reality is we are reducing our emissions by exporting them to China along with what’s left of our manufacturing. When all this started I remember it had the slogan, Think Global, Act Local. That has been reversed and with Western Countries focusing on local emissions while Global emissions have remained the same or risen. I personally don’t think we are headed for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change, but if you did think that, surely you can see that unless global emission reduced you are wasting your time?
It’s beyond me as to why there is any discussion at all about the economic fallacies of net zero. It’s blindingly obvious that there is no economic case for it.
So why do articles such as this one, whilst doing an excellent job of criticising net zero on the grounds of the gazillion financial cost, not also question the pseudo scientific basis upon which this whole manmade global warming farce is based on?
The whole climate alarmism industry would collapse if people were made to understand that the whole circus has no real scientific basis. The unproven hypothesis that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are driving global warming is a fallacy. It’s pure groupthink.
The only cure is knowledge, information. Journalists need to get the message out there. Pointing out the economic weaknesses alone won’t do it.
Apart from some little bits and pieces on GB news and Hartley Brewer on Talk TV there is no Investigative Journalism being done by the bought and paid for climate alarmist media. —–BBC and SKY are simply Climate advocacy channels that refuse to ask questions or investigate any of the “official science” used to brainwash the public into accepting a lower standard of living.
Once the number of people who wake up to the whole scam of ‘Man-made Climate Change’ passes 50%, then this will disappear as though it never existed. It satisfies our need to pay penance for our sins, and at the same time, it allows us personally to be the saviour of the human race, and the world we live on. It is an expensive fantasy, an ego trip…
It’s a very sad state of affairs when probably the only things which will “turn” the electorate against the Eco Nutters are:
a) being told they can’t fly off on holiday once or twice a year
b) being told that Fido and Kitty are going to be euthanised ….. to “save the planet.”
In the impending General Election, I hope the Reform Party highlight that the Eco Nutters in the Westminster Uni Party are both going to need a “Euthanise Fido and Kitty Policy” in order to meet their Nut Zero targets.
It might wake the apathetic majority up.
Ditch the ‘renewables’, and accelerate nuclear. Once we have sufficient nuclear, ‘renewables’ become redundant anyway. If, government want to reduce emission, and I’m not convinced of the need, nuclear and gas is the only way forward.
New gas and coal plants are more energy efficient and cleaner, improvements in tech will reduce emissions further still.
As net zero is a target, there’s no need to aim for the bullseye, go for a double 2 instead.
Saying that Cnut couldn’t stop the waves and turn the tide is misinformation. BBC VERIFY FACT CHECKED
“On average we will then be half wind and half fossil fuel – and paying a fortune for the privilege.”
This is incorrect. Gas will be a 100% operating parallel system, but only using its output when the wind fails.
First, irrespective of the number of windmills, in terms of Wh (the unit of consumption… kWh, MWh, GWh, TWh – take your pick) wind can only supply 25% to 30% and intermittently.
Gas power stations have to be kept in spinning reserve continuously whether wind is supplying the grid or not, to be able to take over at short notice which means they have to burn gas to keep their turbines turning, so they can be quickly spooled up, and keep mechanical batteries spinning which also are necessary to keep grid frequency stable which wind power cannot.
Gas turbines cannot be switched off and on repeatedly as this causes damage to them. (Another reason why nuclear cannot be used as back-up). Starting from cold would take too long to support failing wind power input.
So gas will be burnt in the most inefficient way. In other words, the more wind power is used, the more CO2 is emitted than if gas or coal or gas/coal mix only.
No cure for stupid.