A few weeks ago, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and his Head of Mission Control, Chris Stark wrote a public letter to Fintan Slye of the National Grid ESO asking for practical advice on how to deliver a clean power grid by 2030.
The letter asked Slye to set out a range of pathways to enable a decarbonised power system by 2030. For each pathway they asked for the forecast energy generation and demand mix and the underlying assumptions that need to be met for these to be deliverable. They also asked for the key requirements for the transmission network and interconnectors and for a high-level assessment of the costs, benefits, opportunities, challenges and risks as well as the key actions to be taken by Government, NESO, Ofgem and industry to enable delivery of the pathways.
Recently, Fintan Slye took to X to announce his initial response. Strangely Slye’s letter is not addressed to Miliband or Stark, but takes the form of an open letter to industry.
Last week @energygovuk asked the ESO to develop advice on how to achieve a decarbonised power system by 2030. Read my open letter to learn how we’ll develop our plan, how it will interact with other energy reforms and how we’ll engage with industry
— Fintan Slye (@FintanSlye_eso) September 3, 2024https://t.co/Vxo6TxI4aw
The letter starts off with warm words announcing the formation of a “cross-cutting delivery unit” that will report back to Government by the end of Autumn 2024, less than three months away. It says its plan will be:
A whole systems spatial view of what is required to deliver a clean, secure, operable electricity system by 2030. The plan will consider possible clean energy generation mixes and their associated network, market and operability requirements, referred to as pathways.
That sounds good as far as it goes. However, the letter then goes on to say that all pathways will “meet clean power in 2030 against a definition to be agreed with U.K. Government.” In other words, there is no agreed definition of what a zero-carbon grid by 2030 actually means. It does not know what the target is. It seems that Miliband and Labour have set the country on a journey without properly defining the destination. And the initial request from Miliband and Stark reveals they don’t know how to get there. It’s the blind leading the blind to an unknown destination.
Slye’s letter then states that ESO recognises that accelerating the decarbonisation of the electricity system presents a “significant opportunity”. To capture this opportunity, it will engage with “industry and those with wider expertise” through two stakeholder forums aimed at industry and societal delivery partners. Those societal delivery partners sound quite ominous – are they going to bring out the nudge unit to shame us all into compliance?
Even more worrying is what Slye’s letter misses out. He was asked to provide a high-level assessment of the costs, benefits, opportunities, challenges and risks of delivering a Net Zero grid by 2030. Slye’s letter makes no mention of costs, benefits or risks. He is only focused on the “opportunity”.
In other words, Fintan has slyly moved the goalposts. The work of NESO will not inform the Government or the public about the costs and risks of delivering the as-yet undefined Net Zero grid by 2030. This is now the blind leading the blind to an unknown destination without knowing the price of the ticket. Fintan Slye is ducking his responsibility and we are going to be short-changed again.
David Turver writes the Eigen Values Substack page, where this article first appeared. The podcast version of this article can be found on these links to Spotify, Apple and YouTube.
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“They also asked for the key requirements for the transmission network and interconnectors and for a high-level assessment of the costs, benefits, opportunities, challenges and risks as well as the key actions to be taken by Government”———-Eh are those not all of the questions that should have been asked first before Net Zero was waved through parliament into law without any debate of cost/benefit or even a vote? It is a bit like passing a law to say everyone must become a concert pianist by 2030, with no idea how that could ever be achieved, and knowing full well that 99% of the population simply do not have the natural ability to ever be able to do that. —–It is ideology trumping every bit of common sense that every human being ever had, and all for WHAT?
It’s the 21 century version of Pass the Parcel.
The difference between this (political) party game and the traditional party game is that with this game, the one handed a new, very well paid job now has to think up a speech to continue the scam, avoiding any confession of ignorance. And when the music never returns, there’s no more Electricity from the socket to power the music centre, or anything else.
Oh, it’s fun to be alive, and aware!
Pretty standard corporate ‘leadership’ strategy at play, hot air and feelings, not so much logic and thinking
Erm. Who has ‘wider expertise’ in the Grid than the ‘industry’? Perhaps he means Milliband’s and Stark’s JSO colleagues?
It’s actually quite simple to achieve a zero carbon (dioxide) grid by 2030. Just turn it off on 31 Dec 2029.
He’s clearly looking for other ‘partners’ to share the blame
Good idea! It might well go off a few times before then, and at the first instance the Dept. of energy security will be looking for someone to blame, so they now have a fall guy. Of course Millibrain will have to explain why NG haven’t followed his plan, which will be much more interesting as he hasn’t a clue. I am waiting for the plan, and if it turns up I will write about it everywhere as will many other Engineers. Then we will see the fireworks. “Net Zero” means Britain will be switched off, permanently. It is already quite close with the loss of all our heavy industry such as steel, coal, and oil (both production and refining).
Because it simply cannot be achieved. It’s just a few years away. They all know that. It’s all theatre. None of them are that stupid. No scientific knowledge required. There is simply not enough time. If they had more time they could cover the country in windmills and solar panels and probably at times it would generate 100% of the requirement, but as we’ve all said before, where is the backup to intermittent (sometimes can operate close to zero %) supply? Only nuclear if they want it to be “clean” – nuclear is currently operating at maybe 80% of capacity and it is providing 13% as we speak, so for peak winter demand we would need to install maybe FIVE OR SIX TIMES the amount of nuclear capacity we have at present (and that’s assuming we don’t lose any of the current capacity).
If we had 5 or 6 times the present nuclear capacity we wouldn’t need the solar and windmills.
Win/win.
Yup. The only thing that makes ANY sense as a backup is gas because it’s easier to ramp up and down and you are making some savings on buying gas when the wind blows. You’re still looking at having capacity that is more or less 200% of your max requirement, capital cost, maintaining it. They know this is folly.
With nuclear and without solar or wind we wouldn’t need to muck about with balancing trickles of energy into the grid from all over the place. A number of big, robust generating stations with big, robust connections into the grid.
The country’s farmland could continue to grow food instead of being covered in solar panels and fewer bird choppers would be a bonus.
France managed it
They have built wind capacity so they now seem to have sell us electricity all year round as they have too much
France gets >70% of its electricity from nuclear power, the highest percentage in the world. When the wind isn’t blowing, their turbines stop working just like ours.
True though the wind is probably always blowing somewhere at the world at any given time
Somewhere? No doubt, but it’s perfectly possible for the UK and France to be windless at the same time. A dunkelflaute could easily cover the whole of Europe. The supplies we get from France are only dependable because they have 56 nuclear reactors.
My point was really that the French didn’t really need to build windmills, and now that they have them they presumably try and sell us their spare capacity
And a large slice of the other 30% is hydro, on account of the south eastern mountains. No shortage of hydroelectric stations east of the river Rhône. Historically, when the old Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée part of the railway was electrified, most of the power came from the mountains.
Nonsense. France produces only snout 1% from wind. 80% is from nuclear.
I think it’s more like 10% from wind.
Just like we used to when the CEGB managed the system properly, with Engineers not politicians, making long term plans. Long term being 30-60 years, vs ‘next weeks Twitter storm’ for politicians
They probably assumed that because carbon capture and storage works at very small scales it would be easy to ramp it up so gas could be burnt without emissions as a back up for wind and solar. Similarly everyone knows you can charge up your phone and store energy in the battery for when it’s needed so are clueless leaders probably assumed it would be easy to produce grid scale battery storage.
If only there were a few cabinet members with a degree in science or engineering the fact that a lot of technology is very hard to scale up to the extent needed would of been pointed out years ago.
Maybe they were considering CCS on a large scale. I don’t have a degree in anything and my science qualifications don’t beyond Maths O Level, but I would have known to ask “does it scale”? Basic question. Not clueless, just dishonest.
They either asked and didn’t like the answer, so they ignored it, or they didn’t ask as they knew the answer was no – either way, they should be fired
The amount of gas saved when the wind is blowing us marginal, and any saving wiped out by gas burnt but wasted when the gas-station is ordered to withdraw, then the extra gas needed to spin back up when ordered to reconnect.
It’s like constantly accelerating, braking, accelerating, braking, etc a car rather than accelerating up to and keeping a constant speed.
Yes I doubt it makes sense economically
It sort of works, but only due to massive subsidy support… it’s a commercial construct, not a physical one. pull that and it collapses tomorrow
Or had we kept the coal-fired power stations supplying over 50% of our electricity.
Why the insistence nuclear is the best? It’s expensive, requires more land, less easy to build near to point of consumption. People really need to get the CO2 causing climate change worm out of their brains.
The developing World is developing by building cost-fired power stations, not nuclear. I wonder why?
From a general emissions point of view nuclear is cleanest long term solution, like France. I agree coal has a place, however it’s more involved on ongoing basis, dig coal, store coal, transport coal etc… you are correct the build is far simpler, therefore cheaper and quicker.
we need a mix, like we always used to have
Some of the “backups” may be variable pricing to discourage the consumer end. Some utility firms are already playing with that idea, via smart metering, such as Octopus or OVO. Not absolutely new though; decades ago there were schemes like “interruptible” deals that offered lower pricing for intermittent supplies.
I have no problem with variable pricing in principle, but in a normal market supply will grow to meet demand. In this case supply is being throttled by evil socialists who want to control us and ruin our lives
And British Gas advertises the sheer thrill and delight of putting your ‘smart’ meter in charge of your Sundays, when cheaper electricity will encourage you to to do a week’s chores at a discount.
If we remember back to Economy 7, cheap rate nighttime electricity, enabled by lower nighttime requirements and lots of nuclear we couldn’t shutdown quickly, base load plants. Now we are/have removed much of that supply, no reason why nighttime electricity should be vastly cheaper, especially with EV’s pulling vast amounts overnight, if anything it could become more expensive, as no solar at night!
On the same topic, this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tofYY8kResE&t=869s came out of the woodwork the other day.
Midwits and incompetent fools are in charge, everywhere. Where are the engineers that ran our electricity system when it was designed and built? Nowhere to be seen. They should be in charge of the system and telling the brain dead, eco zombie, Moribund, that it is all fantasy. Britain is doomed. Brown outs and energy shortages are coming. Prepare to protest, citizens, foe these green communist stuipditarians, are running your lives.
I don’t think protests will bring back a reliable Electricity supply.
It’s not only that we don’t have the Engineers like we used to, but the public are so unaware of what Engineers do, what skill set they need to acquire, what responsibilities they knowingly undertake, that it going to take many, many years before the country will even show signs of recovering.
It takes years to get planning permission to build a large power station, and those involved need to know what they are doing, and will those capable be allowed anywhere near the process?
And we haven’t even started on the Planning itself, the Supply Chain Management, the Quality Control, the Construction, and launching it into Production.
And a PPE, Law or History degree, with no industrial experience, let alone a degree in Politics, will not be good enough.
How do I know?
Because it’s how we got into this mess.
100%. Christ its depressing isn’t it
The greatest and most dangerous conspiracy theory is the notion of a climate emergency. This is damaging to everyone except those in receipt of giant subsidies for useless unreliable energy.
quite right
Ed Miliband and Chris Stark are looking for a scape goat in Fintan Slye of the National Grid.
Pathways?
The only pathway is to replace and extend the grid – high tension long distance, low voltage local – to carry and distribute the huge increase in load needed, and balance the grid fed by intermittent, non-dispatchable supply, for an all-electric, non-fossil fuel energy supply economy/society.
Since that is physically and financially impossible by 2030, or even 2130, that explains why there is no work under way, nor plans to do it.
The only pathway left is to economic ruin and societal collapse. It’s a toss-up which will bring that first, immigration or Net Zero.
I read years ago, that when Tony Blair was locked in negotiations with other EU ‘leaders’ about replacing fossil fuel energy supply with “renewables”, and then signed the agreement, he had not understood it meant ALL energy supply – he apparently thought it was only electricity supply.
I wonder if he was the only one?
And electricity is only about 28% of the energy supply.
It is clear that bacon & sausage hounds Minibrain and Starmwurst don’t understand the enormity of Net Zero… it’s not just electric.