Things could not get any worse for Ed Miliband. No sooner than he had recycled his 2009 promise to create “400,000 green jobs” to distract us from his earlier promise of “lower bills” being trashed by energy CEOs, the unflushable face of Tony Blair came rearing over the ailing policy agenda. In a wordy, nerdy, disoriented and conflicted (if not wholly inaccurate) report, Blair’s underlings in his Institute for Global Change poured a lot of cold water over Miliband’s ambition to secure 'Clean Power by 2030'.
There was a brief signal from the news media in the hours ahead of the report’s publication (clearly under embargo) on Thursday morning. At 9pm on Wednesday, the Guardian reported that 'Keir Starmer prepares to miss key green target in effort to keep energy bills down', and that the 'Promise to remove almost all fossil fuels from UK’s electricity supply by 2030 may be quietly abandoned over cost'. How odd, a few sceptic murmured in our caves: the Graun is extremely reluctant to give any credence to the claim that the green agenda is in any way related to high prices, preferring instead claims such as “wind is nine times cheaper than gas” and that anyone who says otherwise is a Putin shill.
And there it was in the morning: 'Cheaper Power 2030, Net Zero 2050: Resetting the UK’s Electricity Strategy for the Future.' “The future of Britain relies on access to plentiful, low-cost energy,” it explains, as if music to our
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Actually, I’m hoping things can get an awful lot worse for the lunatic Miliband.
And if they do, with a bit of luck they’ll get a great deal better for the rest of us.
Catherine Watts on watt-logic.com has two articles on power generation and grid stability of voltage, current, frequency and power factor. She explains it all very clearly, but it’s inevitably quite technical. Probably way over the head of most mid-wit PPE graduates. She is exactly the sort of person who should be planning power generation, and will doubtless be totally ignored.
The Net Zero bunch are not interested in proven science or technology, it’s the ideology that interests them.
Blair whatever else, has a well tuned political antenna, unlike the Starmer and Miliband creatures. He knows Net Zero is political disaster so the issue must be obfuscated to deceive the voters.
Cheaper power.
Wind and solar enterprises can ONLY attract shareholders and are ONLY profitable if Government guarantees substantially above wholesale market rates for their output (Contract for Difference – CfD) and guarantees compensation when they are over-producing and required to leave the grid (Constraint payments.)
CfD is currently nearly double the market price in the UK than gas (even with its carbon tax) and nuclear, and Constraint payments cost £billions annually – all of which increase consumer bills.
CfD prices and Constraint Payments, have increased and will continue to do so as more and more wind and solar installations are commissioned, in an attempt to create an over-supply to tackle the problem,of intermittency.
Since it now admitted by those not in a lunatic asylum, that gas will be required as back-up for the foreseeable future, these enterprises will need subsidising too as they will not get enough revenue to meet costs and return a profit, since they must always leave the grid, but stay on stand-by to… Read more »
They are not antennae but horns!
Agreed.
Your last sentence explains exactly why these tits don’t want, or have capability, to understand. They’ve never run anything more complex than a bath and have zero common sense
A superb post. Ta very much.👍
It’s what I enjoy so much about btl comments, we can hear from a person who really knows how things work.
Excellent piece by Ben.
But the problem is this: Miliband doesn’t care, and no words from anyone will convince him he’s wrong.
Words from the people that ultimately ‘fund’ you, and your future might have more effect though
Miliband is buying his highly lucrative post-Parliamentary career in the Globalist Eco Quangocracy with our money.
Just like Alok Sharma did.
There are means other than using words.
One of the main reasons we need more roads, tunnels, bridges and airport runways is population increase. At the moment we have sufficient of these had the population stabilised some 30 years ago. But it’s continued to increase at an alarming rate, so we need more of these as a matter of urgency.
Or we could get rid of the excess population back to where they came from.
Maybe he is worried that Trump will publicise the green scam of buying oil, gas, grain and chemicals from Russia via 3rd parties because you have destroyed your own supplies, whilst also blaming Putin.
I suspect I may have accidentally prolonged the race to develop the carbon-free energy infrastructure by at least 75 years, purely through following my laboratory manager’s instructions.
In 1954, fresh from school as a lowly Assistant (Scientific) at the National Physical Laboratory, I was asked to clean out the Metallurgy Division’s chemical store. The little room contained an accumulation of strange and inexplicable substances. Many were in miscellaneous containers of uncertain origin, some being firmly sealed against casual examination. The labels, where they were present at all, were sometimes printed in Latin, in the manner of the apothecaries and alchemists of the distant past.
One small glass bottle in particularly drew my attention. It contained a dull grey, slightly metallic-looking powder. I asked my laboratory manager if I should put it aside for future use, but he said, “No. Chuck it out with the rest!”. So I did. With the benefit of hindsight, I fear that I may have unwittingly discarded the Holy Grail of what we now call the ‘Alternative Energy’ sector. A single word had been shakily scrawled across the now fading label.
‘Hydrogen’
I’m confused.
Hydrogen is a gas.
If it was turned into a dull grey, slightly metallic-looking powder, then you must have been near absolute zero temperatures.
The NPL was a very unconventional establishment, back in the days. just after the War. The bouncing bomb, tested in the Ship Tank, just across from our windows. Lasers. The Trimerang (a 3-armed boomerang that stayed up in flight for ages), Little Green Men, pulling high voltage sparks off each other in the high voltage lab. Exploding compost heaps – I’ll say no more! Metallic hydrogen may have been just one of those three impossible things invented before breakfast! Those were the days when real science was a free-for-all joyous exploration of the possible, unconfined, a delightful exploration of reality, in which almost anything might be possible, just try and see what happens!
Ah those unlabelled bottles in chemistry labs! I remember at school a kid called Hibbert upsetting a long-forgotten bottle from the fume cupboard, and having to hastily remove his shoe as the leather curled up, smoking. No doubt the lost answer to all our energy problems.
Even in the 80’s / early 90’s there was some fun stuff to play with. Chatting to a young chap the other day who’s just started secondary school, in science they were allowed to dissect a chicken leg… that’s not biology, that’s cooking!
we did bulls eyes and frogs back in the day – pretty gross to be fair. I don’t imagine they too many fun chemicals to play with now.
The Green Agenda is Geopolitics – Internationalism. Period.
Tony Blair is the demon player in this game
Whilst we need to remove this insane level con job from the human consciousness we also need to put Blair in a box and never hear from him again. He isn’t good for mankind, he isn’t a force for good in any way.
“AI can help unlock new efficiencies and smarter ways of managing existing assets,”
Just a fancy way of rationing energy because there won’t be enough to go round.
Exactly – the corporate hope for AI being the saviour of all things is off the scale… generally 99% bullshit. It is useful for research or helping write a letter etc, cos it’s got access to millions of other examples to ‘harvest’. It hasn’t got access to millions of other power grids, or I hope to god it hasn’t….
Er, n, not exactly. It’s not just “rationing energy” it’s actual power cuts when it suits them rather than us.
If you must discuss that creep why do we have to see his image.
And why should the words of a has-been former PM carry more weight than all the words of GWPF, Net Zero Watch and Reform UK and their respective supporters. Our democracy is distorted.
Because in his mind, when Euan’s digital ID app is forced upon everyone it won’t matter as they’ll be controlling your ‘carbon footprint’ individually.
Don’t be so disparaging of Sir Tony and The Guardian.
I follow and believe everything they say. After all please remember that The Guardian is a bastion of fearless investigative journalism totally independent from any and all oligarchs (including Gates) and that Sir Tony has rightly been knighted.
The reason for the apparent volta face?
When ideology begins to meet reality, like the article says it’s only taken 20 years.
Someone please tell me what happens in winter when demand is at its highest when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow
Confucius say, “Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” I have a spare candle if you need one.
Your ‘smart’ meter will shut your supply off until it is your turn to receive some power.
E-On keep BOMBARDING me with emails, texts, etc. trying to get me to change my “expired meter”… straight to recycle bin.
The power goes off… we actually need this to happen, internet data will cease to flow and the torrent of eyeball fixating crap flowing to 95% of the populations smartphones, keep them amused and distracted, will cease. Hopefully at least some of them will look up and see reality for a change, and decide they need to take some action…
Let’s hope so.
The sooner the better.
Reality is jusr an ultra-right construct intended to discredit our Marxist ideology.
Another Tony Blair triangulation perhaps? Seeking the third way between Net Zero lunacy and common sense?
Neither fish nor fowl – in the end disappointing all concerned.
Blair does lies not common sense.
Nowhere near.
Bliar does NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING unless at least one of the primary beneficiaries is Tony Bliar.
Er, no. They’ve realised it’s a political liability for them, not for the country.
Anyone who thinks that any apparent step back from NetZero policy is anything but a temporary tactical move is just a sucker for being a sucker.
And at this stage, anyone who thinks anything Tony Blair does is in good faith needs to be committed.
The green agenda IS Politics – Geopolitics
Agreed – as with anything political, and especially when Bliar is mentioned, we have to ask ‘why now’ for a reverse ferret?
the article got to it I’d say – big money sponsors need reliable power for AI data centres, so they can keep on with their plans for world domination… hence the flip
I’ve been watching this slow motion train wreck for the last thirty of my forty-four years. Yes, I was a weird school kid.
Similar to you. My interest in how the climate changes started over 45 years ago whilst studying O’ Level and A’ Level Geography. Of course in those days, all the scientific data showed conclusively that the planet was cooling and we were heading for an imminent ice age.
A few years later – having studied climatology as part of my course at university – all the data now showed conclusively that we were actually experiencing global warming caused by man’s C02 emissions. Presumably, they just either abandoned the original data or created some new stuff. This seemed bollox to me at the time and I’ve never found any compelling evidence to change my mind since.