When you are running a brainstorming session, you create an atmosphere where every idea is welcome and insist that nobody shoots down even the most hare-brained notion, because there might be the kernel of brilliance buried in there somewhere. The objective is to foster an environment of free-thinking to stimulate innovation. However, at the end of the session, or afterwards, someone goes through all the Post-it notes and applies a reality filter so only the best ideas get further investment of time and money.
Well, when producing the latest Future Energy Scenarios (FES) report, the National Grid ESO (NG ESO) seems to have come up with a way to shoehorn in every wacky energy idea but has failed to apply the economic and thermodynamic reality filters.
The report’s authors have subtly altered the report now to discuss “Pathways” instead of “Scenarios”, but confusingly the report is still called “Future Energy Scenarios” not “Future Energy Pathways.” These new pathways are supposed to provide a narrower strategic range of outcomes and instead of being “cost agnostic” they are supposed to bring in “additional economic modelling”. Said modelling is conspicuous by its absence. They are also supposed to have considered “whole system optimisation fundamental to finding the most efficient future energy system across all energy vectors”. Although this latter objective is reserved for future iterations, so we must assume that what they have produced is not the most efficient energy system.
Let us see how well they have done exploring “a narrower range of outcomes to drive more strategic, credible routes to Net Zero”.
Energy Demand
Despite brainstorming every single energy supply technology, they have not extended this thinking to their estimates of energy demand in 2050. They are still projecting per capita energy use to be halved by 2050 (see Figure 1).
As part of that, energy consumed by the residential and transport sectors falls by nearly two-thirds in two of their pathways. As I never tire of saying, halving energy use is extremely dangerous. According to Our World in Data, there are no rich countries with such low energy use (See Figure 2).
We are already using 61.8% less energy per capita than the USA and 16.8% less than the EU27. We are even using less energy per capita than China. Halving our per capita energy use would mean consuming less energy per capita than Mexico, Brazil, Algeria and Uzbekistan use today. All those countries have GDP per capita much less than half of the U.K., with Algeria less than a quarter of ours.
Surely, the first reality test of any energy plan should be that it delivers a growing and prosperous economy.
Deindustrialisation Built In
The economic decline inherent in their energy plan is further illustrated by the amount of energy they think will be used by the Industrial and Commercial (I&C) sector. The headline figures show a 14-17% reduction in energy use by the I&C sector, but the headline figures mask what is going on beneath the surface (see Figure 3).
In their Holistic Transition pathway, as overall I&C energy use falls from 390TWh to 331TWh, the energy consumption of data centres rises from 5TWh last year to almost 62TWh in 2050. So, by 2050, data centres will consume 19% of all I&C energy (and 24% of I&C electricity). This effectively means that the energy consumption of other industrial users like steel, automotive, fertilisers and chemicals will have to fall even more dramatically. However, with such expensive electricity, it is unlikely these data centres will arrive. They are more likely to locate in countries with low energy costs.
Hydrogen Bubble
We know that deindustrialisation will be the outcome because all the pathways utilise considerable amounts of hydrogen (see Figure 4).
The planned use of hydrogen is particularly evident in I&C and in power generation. They plan to make this hydrogen primarily from two sources: steam methane reformation (SMR) with carbon capture (CCUS), otherwise known as blue hydrogen, and electrolysis using otherwise curtailed electricity from renewables, also known as green hydrogen (see Figure 5).
There are many problems with this idea. First, SMR is only about 60-65% efficient. SMR with CCUS is unproven and is bound to be even less efficient because of the extra energy required to capture the CO2 emissions and pump them underground. If we are generous and say the overall process is 50% efficient, then hydrogen produced by this method must cost at least twice as much as the gas it is made from. At the time of writing, U.K. and continental European gas costs about 4.5 times more the gas in the U.S. (see Figure 6).
This means that blue hydrogen would be at least nine times more expensive than U.S. gas. No energy intensive industry will want to locate in the U.K. if their main input cost is nine times more expensive than in America.
It is an even worse story with green hydrogen. Late last year, the Government announced the results of its Hydrogen Allocation Round and agreed contracts for green hydrogen at £241/MWh. This is more than nine times the cost of U.K. gas and some forty-two times the cost of gas in the U.S. Yet, NG ESO claim “a fast rollout of clean hydrogen production capacity and adequate network could catalyse industrial decarbonisation”. With such an energy cost differential, industries are going to dematerialise to cheaper locations rather than decarbonise here. Again, the economic reality filter has not been applied. Of course, this commitment to hydrogen was published just as billionaire Andrew Forrest scaled back his ambitions for green hydrogen with the loss of 700 jobs.
As can be seen from Figures 4 and 5, all three of the pathways that achieve Net Zero envisage significant power generation from hydrogen, and significant amounts of that hydrogen to be blue hydrogen made from methane. They are proposing to take methane, lose at least half the embedded energy to make hydrogen and then burn the hydrogen to make electricity. Of course, it is far more thermodynamically efficient to simply burn the methane to produce electricity. Clearly, the thermodynamic reality filter has not been applied either.
High Electricity Costs
We also know electricity costs are going to soar because of the vast amounts of curtailment they envisage. Curtailment means that wind farms are turned off, or curtailed, when the wind is blowing because there is insufficient demand for their output. Wind farm operators will either demand to be paid for this curtailed electricity or will adjust the prices they bid into auctions to take this curtailment into account.
Figure 7 shows that two of their Net Zero pathways envisage curtailing over 60TWh of electricity in the late 2030’s, or over 20% of generation last year.
These curtailment levels are presented after allowing for some of the surplus electricity is used to make hydrogen and capture CO2 from the atmosphere using Direct Air Capture.
Carbon Capture Unicorns
Despite all the spending, the carbon reduction measures set out in their pathways do not get us to Net Zero. There will be residual emissions in sectors such as aviation and agriculture. They are planning to offset these emissions by spending even more on unicorn technologies such as Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), BECCS enabled hydrogen and BECCS for biofuels. As discussed elsewhere, BECCS is the process of chopping down trees in North America, pulping and drying them into pellets, then shipping them to power stations like Drax to be burnt to produce electricity. It is enormously costly and the Royal Society of Chemistry produced a report that suggested BECCS using willow pellets from Louisiana in America would have an EROI of less than one, making the whole process a net energy sink. Moreover, the supposed negative emissions arise because the CO2 emitted by burning the trees is not included in the calculations. Both the economic and thermodynamic filters have not been applied again. They also plan to utilise Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) to capture CO2 from the air and pump it into permanent storage. They plan to use industrial waste heat and renewable electricity when the wind is blowing too hard and supply exceeds demand.
They also plan to use something called, LULUCF, which means Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry to sequester more CO2 out of the atmosphere. Basically, this means planting more trees and restoring peatlands. It is rather odd that they plan to chop down loads of trees for BECCS to produce negative emissions and also plant more trees under LULUCF for even more negative emissions.
Collision Course With Labour Policy
There are some clouds on the horizon for NG ESO now the new Labour Government is in place. First, Labour have committed to decarbonise the grid by 2030, however, all of the FES pathways show there will be significant CO2 emissions from the electricity system by 2030 (17-44 Mt, compared to 55Mt last year). Presumably, NG ESO does not believe Labour’s plan is a “credible route to Net Zero”.
Second, Ed Miliband is stopping further exploration of the North Sea, meaning our domestic gas supply will fall faster than anticipated. However, NG ESO forecast that we will still be using gas beyond 2050 on all Net Zero pathways and we will be importing almost all of it. Something must fuel those gas plants with CCS and make all that blue hydrogen. Figure 8 shows the annual supply and import dependency for the Hydrogen Evolution pathway.
The scale of the import dependency shows the stupidity of stopping new North Sea exploration and development and banning fracking.
Another source of friction may be what Miliband might see as a lack of ambition about the installed capacity of renewables. In their manifesto, Labour promised to double onshore wind, triple solar and quadruple offshore wind capacity by 2030. As Figure 9 shows, all the pathways miss Labour’s target except for onshore wind under the holistic transition pathway.
This further illustrates that Miliband’s targets are not credible.
Big Brother Controls
The report also recommends widespread use of time-of-use tariffs (TOUT) stating: “consumers need to be rewarded for turning down demand at peak times and turning up demand when there is excess generation”. In other words, consumers need to organise their lives around the grid rather than the grid being designed to meet the needs of their customers. They also call for appliances to be controlled automatically to “optimise” demand and coordinate with price signals in the TOUT tariffs.
Totalitarian control of energy use is bound to be a feature of an energy scarce environment, not a bug.
Demands for Even More Subsidies
The FES 2024 report claims they will “deliver a future where everybody has access to clean, reliable, affordable energy”. They also claim that solar, onshore and offshore wind “remain one of the lowest cost options to meet our energy needs”.
However, the document makes a direct call for subsidising the cost of hydrogen and makes further demands for policy support, financial support, incentives, price signals, business models and market mechanisms. These are all code words for subsidies. They also make the explicit demand for levies on electricity bills (another word for the renewables subsidies) to be “rebalanced” on to gas. In other words, most of the proposals they have put forward are not viable without subsidies and the true cost of those subsides must be shifted from electricity on to gas. We know that if any technology needs a subsidy, it is not cheaper than the alternative, now we have NG ESO implicitly acknowledging that reality.
It is clear our bills are going up, and NG ESO has not applied an economic reality check to its work.
Conclusions
Despite claiming their new pathway approach has created “credible” choices to propel us on the route to decarbonisation, it is clear the opposite is true. This is a report where all technologies must have prizes regardless of the technical or economic viability. Many of the technologies they are recommending are unproven at scale and woeful economics.
They have clearly simply brainstormed all the potential technologies and shoe-horned them into their pathways without applying any kind of economic or thermodynamic reality filters.
They are obviously somewhat concerned about energy scarcity and intermittency because of their emphasis on TOUTs and automatic control of appliances. Instead of re-thinking and coming up with a plan for energy abundance, they continue down the path of expensive, scarce energy and Big Brother controls.
If this were just another think-tank spouting nonsense it would not matter very much, but the National Grid Electricity System Operator (NG ESO) is transforming into the National Energy System Operator (NESO), where they are supposed to be planning the entire energy system. If this is the best they can do, we are in big trouble. And now Labour is in power, things can only get worse.
David Turver writes the Eigen Values Substack page, where this article first appeared.
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Scholz holds first call with Putin in two years in bid to ‘end Ukraine war
‘Putin said the current crisis is a direct result of NATO’s aggressive policies’
German armed forces are the same size as those of Britain, in other words the same size as the U.S. Marine Corps, on its own.
Today’s U.S. Marine Corps has recently been described as ‘useful only as an adjunct to the U.S. Army or for small, crisis-response missions like reinforcing an embassy.’
Dakota L. Wood (USMC ret’d.) Senior Research Fellow Defense Programs.
The German Army is 60,000 strong, enough to deploy one Brigade or three battalions in order to, say, patrol a ceasefire buffer zone of, maximum, one hundred kilometres….at a stretch. As for aggression……at best aggressive camping……maybe.
For perspective, Moldova, population and size roughly similar to Wales, has an army of one Brigade.
So Scholz talking to Putin is likely to have the same impact as Eluned Morgan(?) talking to Putin……Precisely……..
That is just how silly the idea of NATO aggression being of concern to Putin is.
Only a complete halfwit could think that would represent any kind of ‘casus belli’.
Oh! Hang on……….
Mind you, the way the Russian Army has performed, is performing, The Welsh Guards could probably give them a severe handling……possibly the Welsh Guards mascot on its own……
Given the incompetence of Western European political leadership, this bears endless repetition:
‘Modern strategy, is….concerned with war-prevention……Modern strategy deals with the use of military forces in peace as well as in war, and also in all those ambiguous conditions in between…..
Making a distinction between an “air” battle and a “land” battle is not possible except at the lower tactical or procedural levels, certainly not at a strategic level……
Military forces, including land forces, have two important effects on an adversary. One is the physical, the other is psychological…..
Modem strategy includes preventing the outbreak of conflict, (so) the psychological effect of military force during periods of nonactive conflict becomes all-important.
In a modern strategy the (NATO European) army must provide for the West a sense of security to a degree that will encourage it to act and react in respect to global events with confidence.
That forecloses to (Russia) the options of intimidation, blackmail, and political leverage.’
LAND FORCES IN MODERN STRATEGY, LIEUTENANT GENERAL DE WITT C. SMITH, JR. US ARMY
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-42919144
‘Russian military reporter Sladkov: “And how sad it is that many [of our soldiers] hide [their faces] behind pieces of cloth, as if they are doing something shameful…ordinary guys… They will tell their grandchildren: look, this is me, your grandfather. And the grandchildren will wonder: this is someone hiding their face, denying their involvement in the events…”
Russian soldiers, on some subconscious level, know that they are participating in a mass crime. That’s why they hide their faces.’
“Modern strategy, is….concerned with war-prevention…”
What, like not interfering in other countries’ elections? That sort of thing?
Asking for my friend Victoria.
Nuland was/is not a strategist. She acted contrary to U.S. strategy. Her blunders have contributed in no small measure to where we find ourselves today.
‘What was remarkable about the episode was the utter confidence with which Nuland seemed to speak for the United States and its policy. From the start of his administration, President Barack Obama had tried to lower tensions with Russia and refocus American attention on a rising China; he had made clear he wanted no part in the problems of the post-Soviet periphery. Yet in the middle of the uprising in Kiev, there was Nuland, encouraging protesters and insulting European allies.’
The U.S. Defense Secretary is the President’s senior adviser on Military Strategy. Nuland had nothing to do with defence.
If you want a concise guide to Western Military Strategy in Europe, have a look at General DeWitt Smith’s excellent presentation that I reference above.
So speaks the militarist. The alternative is called diplomacy. It would have been so easy to prevent the war in Ukraine but the militarists always want war.
I was missing your referneces to Smith, but you seem to be back on that same old track again.
I wonder if he is talking to me. You never know if he addressed me directly I might read what he said.
“If you want a new idea, read an old book.”
Deterrence has been central to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) strategic concepts since the beginning. The first such concept, “Strategic Concept for the Defense of the North Atlantic Area,” known as DC 6/1 and approved in December 1949, declared as its main objective: “To coordinate, in time of peace, our military and economic strength with a view to creating a powerful deterrent to any nation or group of nations threatening the peace, independence and stability of the North Atlantic family of nations.”
NATO’s foremost task is to ensure the military protection of its geographically most exposed members. The Alliance’s new “Readiness Action Plan” (RAP) foresees increasing the readiness-level of NATO’s reaction forces, and holding increasingly complex exercises in Central and Eastern Europe. The RAP includes a “spearhead” force capable of deploying within a matter of days, the establishment of a multinational NATO command and control and reception facilities on the territories of several eastern Allies, and the updating of defence plans. Although NATO’s emphasis remains on the rapid projection of reinforcements rather than on the permanent stationing of substantial combat forces in Central and Eastern Europe, the RAP reflects the reaffirmation of a principle that for some time had been receiving short shrift: in order to communicate deterrence through credible defence one needs to match one’s rhetoric with the appropriate military posture.
A photo of an American armoured vehicle on a highway in Lithuania in 2015 was shared by many Lithuanians on their mobile phones. The caption: ‘Awesome….’
Lithuania is similar in population to Wales. The idea that Lithuania might be about to invade Russia, or be party to an invasion of Russia sums up so much of the silliness to be found on here.
The latest bleak figures regarding the UK and immigration;
”The U.K. saw the sharpest increase in immigration among developed countries last year, as new data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows 746,900 individuals moved to Britain in 2023 — a 52.9 percent surge from the previous year’s total of 488,400.
The dramatic rise, which outpaces every other OECD member nation, occurred under the Conservative government, though the trend is expected to persist with Labour’s Keir Starmer now in office.
The figures highlight that the U.K. experienced the second-highest raw number of arrivals, trailing only the United States, which recorded 1.2 million migrants. In comparison, South Korea’s growth, at 50.9 percent, saw just 87,100 arrivals. This significant influx follows a 110 percent rise in U.K. immigration since 2019, reflecting a growing trend in family-linked migration and work visas.
A key driver of the U.K.’s immigration spike was family reunification, which climbed by 60 percent in 2023 to 373,000. This accounted for 70 percent of the rise in family-linked permits, largely tied to health and care worker visas. Policy shifts this year now prevent new care workers from bringing relatives, a move intended to curb numbers, but Brits are skeptical after experiencing all-time highs for consecutive years.
The U.K. also issued more student visas than any other OECD country, with nearly 450,000 granted in 2023.”
https://rmx.news/uk/immigration-into-britain-growing-more-rapidly-than-any-other-developed-nation-says-oecd/
”One swallow does not make a summer”, springs to mind, although this single arrest doesn’t stop Starmer from milking it for all that it’s worth;
”Labour prime minister Keir Starmer is wrong to suggest that the arrest of an alleged “significant supplier” of small boat equipment used for illegal Channel crossings shows “our approach to smashing criminal gangs is already having an impact.”
With close to 20,000 migrants having made this perilous journey since Starmer entered office just four months ago, SDP leader William Clouston dismissed the one-off arrest as “a trifling matter compared with the colossal incentives Starmer’s Labour offers illegals,” including “the British social wage and welfare system for life.”
Indeed, reports suggest that for every pound the British state spends on immigration enforcement, it spends £9 (€11.78) on supporting and accommodating asylum seekers.
Dominic Cummings, who was chief advisor to former Tory PM Boris Johnson, went further, describing Starmer as a “clown” for claiming that the nabbing of “one irrelevant middleman” will make a difference while “the government is [also] handing out private medical care to illegal immigrants.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/labours-plan-to-halt-illegal-migration-is-not-working/
We are truly screwed
The boilers will be going out all across Europe!
The international energy situation seems to be getting more edgy with Gazprom looking to end Gas supplies to Austria;
https://www.energyintel.com/00000193-30b0-de51-a19b-7ab22d310000
Will Trump still be willing to ship out the USA’s Natural Gas? Europe and the UK do start to look rather vulnerable as far as energy is concerned. Just recently dull windless days have seen a poor generation of so called renewable energy. It is going to be galling in the UK if we end up sitting shivering with energy restrictions knowing that we are sitting on huge reserves of coal, gas etc.
There’s no cure for stupidity …
A dose of reality helps but it takes time and total emiseration for it to sink in with too many people.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c206dyxkg01o.amp
‘News from Abkhazia, the protesters have not dispersed. Earlier, the opposition gave President Aslan Bzhania an hour to resign, but he refused and then allegedly fled to a Russian military base. Video from a few hours ago.
Officially, the president’s press service reported that he left Sukhumi after the opposition’s ultimatum for his resignation.’
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1857553697338765647?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
And your point is?
To search the internet high and low for any possibility to slag Russians.
David Miller is correct..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/15/essex-police-allison-pearson-antisemitism-israel/
Police refused to investigate academic who said Starmer works for ‘genocidal Jewish supremacists’
So we can guess that it was the police themselves that were upset by the hurty words. This is beyond disturbing.
So could the other two police forces that are cooperating with Essex be Greater Manchester and the Met?
In what mad world does the opinion of a city mayor on the US President matter or deserve attention? Jumped up prat. He’s just there to make the bloody trains run on time. Talk about delusions of grandeur.
“U.K. must treat Trump like a ‘best mate’ who needs correcting, says Sadiq Khan”
‘Maaaaate…!’
How very presumptuous of our mayor to imagine that they are the moral check and balance on The Don.
“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind“ Hos. 8.7
He is entitled to his opinion as a private citizen but why is his opinion being quoted as if he had any authority on the subject in his role as Mayor of London? Unless he’s in training for Foreign Secretary…
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a London radio station to report what the Mayor of London has said about a President of the United States who is likely to visit London (again), especially given the history between them, including Khan calling Trump a “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobic”, “Islamophobic”, and giving permission to anti-Trump protestors to fly a giant inflatable “Trump baby” blimp when Trump visited London, and Trump accusing Khan of doing “a terrible job”, “a very bad job on crime” and “a very bad job on terrorism”, and called Khan “very dumb”, “pathetic”, “incompetent”, “a disaster”, “a national disgrace who is destroying the City of London”, “a terrible mayor who should stay out of our business” and a “stone-cold loser who should focus on crime in London”.
If nobody reported what Khan said about Trump, how would Trump know what Khan said about him, and how would we know that Khan suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome?
I think we could all have guessed what they think of each other.
I don’t care what Trump thinks of Khan and what he says about him- he really ought to just say he has much more important things to worry about
I think public political discourse would be better served by a focus on policies and actions rather than sound bites, and expecting people in the public eye to state their opinion on everything and anything
He is not just a city mayor, he is Co-Chair of C40 Cities (https://www.c40.org/) leading the “Global climate fight”: a very important person of international repute.
I’m sure he thinks he is of international importance
JFK’s labelling as a dreaded ‘anti-vaxxers’ over his concern about the linking of autism with vaccines is entirely misplaced, but is no coincidence whatsoever. The evidence that there is indeed a clear link between the use of an apparently insignificant but crucial substance in some (but nor all) older vaccines, it is now impossible to dismiss.
Many older vaccines (but not the new mRNA pseudo-vaccines) use aluminium-based chemical ‘adjuvants’ to stimulate a strong response by the immune system. Invariably dismissed by the industry as harmless, these chemicals have now been shown to precipitate severe reactions in brain tissues, indicating that these vaccines are a likely cause in the recent explosion in the rates of infant autism.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0946672X17308763
Chris Exley and his colleagues at Keele University found irrefutable evidence of the direct linkage between the environmental toxin, aluminium, and autism. This linkage is also apparent in Alzheimer’s Disease and some other apparently unpreventable neurological conditions. Yet, for the management at Keele, having a prominent ‘anti-vaxxers’ on the staff was just too embarrassing, so they manufactured an excuse to get rid of him. Entirely consistent with efforts to discredit JFK as a vaccine denier, Exley was forced out of his post, his research team disbanded, and his world-class lab closed down. Yet their research is recognized as world-leading, and their reports cited many thousands of times in the scientific literature.
Effectively, at a stroke, Big Pharma influenced the eliminated one of the most powerful obstacles to its potentially lucrative market expansion in the neuromedical field. If there is indeed a probable environmental cause of autism, Alzheimer’s Disease, and some other apparently recalcitrant neurological conditions, then lucrative pharmacological products could be irrelevant.
So stop branding those who are sceptical about some vaccines as ‘anti-vaxxers’. Scepticism is the very essence of science: without sceptics, there can be no science. They deserve our respect, not ignorant (or worse, deliberate) condemnation.
Chris Exley’s book “Imagine you are an aluminium atom” is well worth reading and not too technical. The use of adjuvants is just one of the many questions I now have about vaccines and their impacts. I have learned a lot from presentations on The Highwire and testimonies by Aaron Siri in particular. And, as the great Charles Kovess says, I’m “proud to be an anti-vaxxer” because we need to have a grown up discussion about them and the monstrous vaccine industry that cares nothing for the children it harms.
Getting a good press again, perhaps? https://www.gbnews.com/news/essex-body-woman-found-car-boot-border-police-probe However, we’re three days on from the supposed real crime; a cynic might ask, why publish it now, by Essex Police, no less?