Net zero is clearly not able to provide planetary cooling. At the most it would achieve is stabilising the temperature - in around 300 years time! Due to the vast storage of CO2 in the oceans, the time constant of the oceans being about 600 years according to ice core measurements.
We are inevitably going to do solar geoengineering. Maybe the West will not but China and India and Arabic countres will just do it when the economic argument is made. They suffer from extreme heat waves, they will experience considerable political pressure to just do it.
Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is the most cost effective. For the UK costing around £10 million per annum, to completely cancel out the whole UK greenhouse gas emissions. And it would actually work. And with results almost immediately - within a few months of starting. The technology to do it already exists or very easily implemented at minimal time and cost. In cotrast, net zero cannot work in any sensible timeframe and is vastly expensive and will not work anyway. We are going to have to pay something, would you prefer £10 million per annum for something that works or £50 billion per annum for something that does not work? Risks to health and the ecosystem of SAI are very minimal. This has been examined in detail in this book:
CO2 is not entirely irrelevant. Most of the global warming potential of CO2 is already happening, and adding more has an increasingly negligible effect. It is approximately a logarithm. See videos by Dr William Happer. It is approximately already at saturation. It does not precisely saturate, but for practical purposes it does.
What is happening is that the atmosphere has been unbalanced since the 1970s, with the cutting of sulphur emissions, first from coal power stations then from road fuel and then aviation fuel and finally from ship fuel. This has had the unintended consequence of increased warming since the 1970s. CO2 has copped the blame, but that is a nonsense. It is the absense of sulphur aerosols which is the main factor.
I have read and listened to a lot of what Dr.Happer has to say.
I agree with most of your points and, as I say, CO2 is irrelevant mainly because of its logarithmic nature and current "saturation ". However, although the sulphur emissions have changed and affect reflectivity, most of any (tiny) warming is a natural cycle as we come out of the Little Ice Age and changing solar cycles.
It is the height of hubris to think that man can control the climate in any meaningful way.
Natural cycles are a factor that is of course true. However they operate on long timescales of thousands of years.
What I am discussing is a far smaller timescale - since 1850.
There are natural factors in this shorter timescale, volcanoes particularly. And they have to be factored in. They emit sulphur aerosols and other materials and this has a strong cooling effect.
I have factored this in. There is a residual signature due to human activity. But it is not CO2 that is the key, it is sulphur aerosols.
Read my book "Stabilising Global Temperature" for the details. I have addressed al of your objections.
The simpler solution is to repeal IMO2O20, and return to lower cost marine fuels that happen to inject SO2 into the atmosphere. At least we have a proper measurement base for that, unlike terraforming proposals for which no proper experimental evidence is available.
That would be part of the picture. Before sulphur was banned in ship fuel, ships were providing about twice as much cooling due to their sulphur emissions compared to warming due to their CO2 emissions.
At sea level sulphur aerosols cool, per tonne, about 150 TIMES more than a tonne of CO2.
At stratospheric levels a tonne of sulphur aerosol cools about a million TIMES more than a tonne of CO2.
Thus it is far more effective to put the aerosol in the stratosphere than at sea level. reason beng that the residence time in the stratosphere is several years. Compared to days or weeks at sea level.
Plus the amounts required in the stratosphere are extremely dilute. No problem with acid rain or with breating difficulties.
If you have an amplifier with a factor of a million it easily overloads and produces chaotic distortions. Its effects in a global system become too hard to predict and may prove undesirable.
I do know about electronic amplifiers. And how hard it is to isolate parts of the circuit. I worked on a ground penetrating Radar where the transmitter and receiver operate simultaneously. Achieved 70 dB isolation. Which was impressive.
However this is not an amplifier. It is a figure of the ratio between two effects.
As ever well written with clear language that even a ECO Zealot could understand.
The way the whole CC scam has been handled is too tie it up neatly in legalise and any attempt by a future non CC committed Government would lead straight to legal action for recovery of real or imagined financial losses.
Sensible people have always gone along with the idea of a “any system that produces cheap, low cost energy” market- be it Coal, Gas, Wind, Solar, Hydro, Tidal or Nuclear.
They do not see the need for subsidies or Carbon Taxes, if a energy source is efficient it will pay for itself with reckless subsidies offered to give the appearance of competition.
When you look at subsidies, those of us of a certain age can recall the years of “nationalised”. Industries- Steel, Rail, Coal, Post, Car, and the cost both via poor to zero productivity, consistently calling strikes, and the general feeling that nothing was affordable.
De-nationalisation brought sanity to those industries, however, now that we have the Worlds highest energy costs, those industries are dying, the Green Revolution has moved primary production to China, India and the Far East. The lesson is simple- Power is Everything, Economic Power is Critical to Survival and we are in a battle, a battle for economic survival which we are losing at a accelerating pace.
If you invest in wind, solar and tidal on a large scale which gets curtailed when between them they produce too much for the puny levels of economic storage?
You end up paying for four systems plus a chunk of storage and a lot of grid to connect it all up, as the renewables also have their periods of zero or neglible output requiring backup.
Nah, the cure will have to be similar to a duet designed to mitigate diabetes. Cut off as many of the risky foods as possible as quickly as possible. All the players in wind &solar & storage knew it was a grift. The canks will perhaps be wiser in the future if they taste some pain today.
We need to stop calling them eco zealot or green, words have a huge power and calling them green makes them sound nice and caring. There is nothing green / caring / nice about the climate hysteria and anti CO2 agenda; the land use; slave labour in china which produces 80% plus of all solar panels and mining for the minerals itself is very bad for environment and promoting human exploitation. Nothing green or eco about it.
The Red/Greens have redefined or added to the definition of so many words there may not be any choice but to use some of them as they do. Humpty Dumpty summed it up at the end of his conversation with Alice.
When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
No but we have to as its dispatchable generation and we are woefully short of it.
Even DENZ has now woken up to that fact hence an attempt to modify the capacity mkt with an even higher cost tier to incentivise new build dispatchable generation.
We are in the process of largely eliminating baseload generation with nuclear closures. It is usually not recognised that wind has replaced coal and nuclear in the share of generation, but for the normal baseload interconnector imports of nuclear from France and hydro from Norway. We used to get reliable coal via BritNed, but the Dutch are now more focused on helping keep the lights on in Germany after they ditched their baseload nuclear.
If you have reliable baseload generation then flex generation like CCGT only needs to cover the extra to meet demand peaks. If you eliminate baseload, you need flex generation to cover the baseload demand when renewables aren't performing as well.
These facts have been somewhat disguised by falling demand, but would come back to bite hard were EVs and heat pumps to become more common.
Reality is until Milibrain is removed the green bandwagon will roll on and im afraid that Starmer going to COP30 indicates to me that he's not about to give up on it either. They will also come up with a few quid off in the budget either via VAT or moving WHD/ECO elsewhere to assuage the cost issue. AR7 outcome is now pivotal here and i suspect we will see some participation because the higher price and duration will be sufficient for some and i reckon the Chinese are looking for somewhere to plant their turbines.
However, what is very clear and despite Milibrain and his coterie of Pinchback and Starkie is that CP2030 is way off being achieved. That was always the likely outcome but what's concerning to me is that OFGEM and blindly ploughing on agreeing costs for the three transmission operators to reinforce the grid now to achieve NZ irrespective of whether the windmills get built or not. The other crippling factor now is the level of outages across the grid to allow these works to takes place is a key contributor to constraint costs. For example B4 boundary (SP-SSE) is forecast at under 60% for next 18mths and thats before the next wave of approved grid expansion in Scotland starts. Yes i know the ecos will say no pain no gain and it will be alright by 2030 but it wont be. Irrespective of whether you agree with NZ or not this is not a sensible way to approach it accruing up crippling costs. There needs to be a complete suspension of anymore ARs until weve dealt with the current wave of transmission construction supported by previous ARs.
The other thing i wish Torys and Reform (and unions) should exploit is the utter dependency we have on overseas supply chain to deliver CP2030. There was a report earlier this week lauded by the renewables blob and their hanger on publications (i do read them so i know how much dead wood generation and storage is coming and where) about Dogger Bank being worth 6.1B to UK economy. Its rather disingenuous as that is NPV of 15 years of O&M which is expected to be largely UK based. The reality is to earn that (which consumers are paying for through higher bills of course) we would have imported billions worth of kit. The report lays bay that pretty well our only manufacturing input is the davit cranes on each turbine. Yes 200 of them is a tidy contract but its a less than 1% of manufacturing input. The turbines, the towers, array cables, substations and offshore installation is all with foreign companies. Yes we dig holes lay cables and erect onshore substations but thats the extent of so called green jobs. Also we are very good at developing and writing the environmental reports now there's a surprise.
So there's plenty to go at here to try and shift policy in smaller steps even a reset to CP2035 which is inevitable would allow a relaxing in grid transmission timelines and alleviate some of the constraint costs.
I saw an interview with the young woman who heads Octopus Renewables, talking about plans to invest £20bn based on Chinese turbines. She was quite clear that they are market leaders for cost and on time manufacture. The interviewer soft soaped the China dependence issues. Not clear which projects they expect to get involved with, but perhaps they are talking to others with development indigestion.
Before Trump 2.0 was elected, he had a team working flat out for almost 4 years on a plan of action through transition and for immediate implementation after inauguration. The Heritage Foundation worked with them to map out all the stupid things the Biden administration has done and a prioritized road map to reverse it all and address new priorities.
I mention this because it is only because of all this work that Trump was able to move so quickly on so many fronts, because it was all mapped out beforehand.
I fear that Reform don't have the infrastructure and/or resources to do all that so will be fumbling and bumbling around as they go along in true British fashion. Net Zero is just one of many issues that will need urgently addressing in detail and far better to have it all mapped out in detail in advance because time will be of the essence. Farage needs to get in place a transition team for each of the critical policy areas to develop at least a policy priority and action plan and I see no evidence of it happening.
Understood David and you are doing very fine work. My comments were designed just to contextualize the problem into the likelihood of failure across the board due to the lack of adequate professional planning which, at best, will slow things down after the event. I believe we share a similar perspective after careers in senior positions in the private sector.
I noticed the only think tank that ran fringe events at the Reform Party Conference was Prosperity (formerly Legatum). However, the news that Lord Frost has resigned the Conservative whip to head up the IEA (not the Paris based Energy Agency) is probably a step in the direction of giving Reform more policy support. Hopefully other think tanks will follow and attract top quality inputs as they will likely be tapped up for people to actually help run the show by reforming quangos and questioning civil service assumptions and practices: some stars may become ministers.
However energy will need much more specialised input from those with a good understanding of applicable law, grid codes and treaties as well as some engineering and economic nitty gritty, and also the opening of conversations with the important companies in the sector. They need to be asked how they would envision a post Net Zero system. Among the quangos needing reform are OFGEM and NESO, mostly by culling the powers they have acquired. As David's article sketches, there is a lot to be fixed.
That's why Reform has brought Danny Kruger onboard. He has specifically invited members of the public with appropriate knowledge and expertise to come forward to assist him. There's your opening ...
With respect, that isn't enough. It requires a defined structure and process, money and control. This isn't, or shouldn't be, like a "Let's all chip into focus groups" effort. We aren't playing around here, our country is collapsing due to a determined and well-organized effort. Time is running out.
I didn't say it was enough. I was merely pointing you towards Kruger, who does indeed have a plan. May I suggest you watch his press conference from a couple of weeks ago?
Reform certainly needs volunteer footsoldiers, like any party, but it also needs a policy generation process, which Kruger, presumably with Farage's full backing, is creating. They have plenty of money to do it with, thanks to the backing of Yousuf and Candy.
I sincerely hope you are correct. I admit that I have a preference for people who a) don't come from privileged backgrounds and b) have proven success in the private sector.
But that's just me. I believe that time in the trenches is what counts But time will tell, let's just wait and see, shall we?
I have forwarded a link to this substack article to Reform HQ AND emphasised how important it is to hit the ground running. Labour being a classic example of how NOT to take over Government!
One thing I'm hopeful of is that Farage and Trump are in touch and Farage sees just how revolutionary Trump is being in his time and the preparation put in to ensure it.
Ironically Doomberg flags up issues where Trump's whole plan may fail and his Presidency be neutralised by the US Courts. This is well worth reading to get some idea of how Trump prepared for his Presidency and how little information the MSM provide about how revolutionary and long term beneficial his decrees would be. Unfortunately the data and the meat of this article are behind a paywall, all you will see here is the introduction concentrating on shipbuilding.
I trust Doomberg will excuse my revealing the penultimate paragraph of the information behind the paywall.
"We close by admitting how torn we are on this issue. The policy’s strategy and tactics are actually quite effective and address acute issues in the US economy. Only Trump’s unique combination of bluster and boldness could have conceived of such a plan, let alone gotten this far down the path of its execution. However, the US is still a constitutional republic, and the how matters at least as much as the what."
You won't find the MSM understanding the real Trump or IF they did, reporting on it. The BBC in particular seems keen on even inventing his speeches despite being allegedly against "Fake/False News" - Now their two top people have gone, the Panorama team needs to resign as well, or be sacked.
Another country to watch is Argentina. Millei is making good progress, having done well in recent elections. He had to contend with a dysfunctional and corrupt government system and powerful barons running the provinces who helped run up tte country's debts. A large dose of removing government interference in many areas seems to have been his main prescription.
True! I hope Farage knows how revolutionary Milei and Trump are as the MSM seem determined to ignore it; assuming of course they even know!
I fear Farage will find as much opposition to any Reform Govt plans as both of those have. Opposition keen (as Mr Turver points out the Greens will be) to blame any issues on the cure NOT the disease.
The Task is staggering and it will be a war on many fronts, Constitutional, Political, Economic and 'The Science' BUT succeed and history will raise him above any PM I can think of. Failure to my mind means the end of this country as a modern, functioning state.
Given what I believe is the real population (North of 80 Million and many not wedded to the ideals that made England and the UK so great a shaper of the modern world.) I fear the consequences if he fails cannot be over-exaggerated. Look to the EU for how rapidly break-down can occur.
One thing that I'd be interested to see, is if Reform could request the data from industry, particularly the ones mentioned in this 18 year old Independent article, as to their data's indication of the current population they serve. The fact that so many things that are built on Census population data are failing may NOT simply be incompetence but may well be due to overuse!
"If, representatives the Conservatives and Reform were to make statements in Parliament before AR7 contracts are signed that they would change the law to negate them if they gained office, then it might be argued that QCiL provisions do not apply. This might be enough for bankers to back away from financing these projects, so they never reach Final Investment Decision (FID)."
Agree David but I fear this also speaks to my earlier comment regarding the lack of preparation and professional planning. Such actions MUST be identified as part of a transition framework and, as I said, I see no evidence this is in place. Reversing Net Zero will also require a lot of legislation to be unwound and some new legislation put in place. This process must be ready to commence on day ONE of the new Administration.
And I believe the same pre-emptive process should be put in place for other unsavory policies such as Digital ID. Reform and Conservatives should announce that they will reverse Digital ID, cancel all Supplier contracts and destroy the databases immediately upon coming into power. This would again serve the purpose of putting financing and technology suppliers on notice that they may not get paid in full in the very likely event that Labour will not be in power long enough to see the project through to completion. It would also encourage we the people NOT to comply with any Digital ID demands. In fact, one wonders WHY they have not already done so?
Unless, of course, they quietly support this dystopian digital prison?
You can imagine the Roman candle effect on Miliband were more developers to pull out under threats from Reform, who he would accuse of destroying his cheap energy system. That is why they need to be ready with positive proposals, preferably with a degree of industry endorsement that show up Miliband's nonsense.
Meanwhile there are other plots afoot to try to entrench the renewables system, not least via REMA, which is likely to see the CFD regime replaced by one that pays at least partly for capacity rather than energy, making curtailment risk and actual weather less important. That would provide an opportunity to bail out the aggressive bids from AR3 and AR4 as well. ENTSO-E go even further, recommending an RAB model that puts all the volume risk on consumers
Yes thanks. We can't all be experts in specialized areas and I don't pretend to have any expertise in energy or energy economics, on which I gladly defer to experts such as David and yourself.
My perspectives are from the point of view of a) common sense and b) a long successful career in global business at CEO level (in a field unrelated to anything energy).
My inputs are more from the perspective of processes and structures required to effectively and efficiently address strategic issues which might contribute to this debate.
You are quite right. Truss found out quickly that the Long March through the institutions has been so pervasive that they simply blocked her attempts at reform and mounted a coup against her, aided by those who had infiltrated the Conservative Party. Badenoch is in a battle to defenestrate the latter, and Reform is so afraid of impostors that they are failing to establish wide enough policy analysis and support. It certainly requires money and organisation and wide ranging experience, and a big effort on talent spotting and the creation of the right ethos. Don't exclude talent, but seek to ensure that talents are balanced and the process of policy development and legislative priorities is cooperative.
So as they've already launched a consultation into adding an extra higher cost tier to the Capacity Mkt infers they will now separate out dispatchable from unreliable generation. Even they must now realise this is necessity given we've aligned with EU on carbon tax will just drive up the wholesale price.
Can't see how buying capacity is the right thing for the consumer unless they want a stepping stone to CEGB MkII. Presumably this proposal is being pedalled by the renewable trade bodies rather than DENZ although not sure what the timeline is on the latest attempt at market reform.
Some people in Australia have been advocating to exit net zero for years but the party that comes into office with a mandate to exit Net Zero will need to spend some years in advance working on the plan to get over the resistance from the myriad of departments, quangos, and other government-funded agencies that are currently dedicated to Net Zero.
The reform program must minimise failures that discredit the whole enterprise.
In addition to the plan, prospective Cabinet ministers will have to be trained and prepared to go head-to-head with their departments and they will need alternative advisors.
At the moment, talking about exiting Net Zero is just that… But the first step is to start the public discussion. Much depends on the capacity of the journalistic classes to stop endorsing and spreading misinformation about firming unreliable energy with more unreliable energy and puny storage devices.
Your opening paragraph on how first Reform and now the Conservatives (or at least party leader Badenoch) have repudiated the fantasy of Net Zero makes for very happy reading.
It takes me back to 2019 when I tried to persuade PM candidates Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt who were competing for Theresa May’s lost crown that they had a great opportunity to ditch the Net Zero ideology and leave the rest of the Uniparty (to use the recently coined name) stuck out on a limb looking very stupid. I even attracted an online endorsement from Lord Lawson! Alas, they ignored my “very sound advice” (Lawson’s endorsement) and it has taken their third party leader since Johnson to finally see sense: https://windfarmaction.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/beware-the-elephant-trap/.
I suspect that the other parties of the Uniparty (Labour, Lib Dems, SNP) will never see sense. They are certainly now looking very stupid.
Then there’s the bonkers SNP which only last week updated their plans to reach Net Zero in Scotland (where energy is not devolved from being the responsibility of the UK government) by 2045: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c30v97m59dyo.
The globalists showed their true colours through their Covid “plandemic” and it is obvious now that climate change/Net Zero was never anything to do with climate but was always a globalist plot to control global resources and the global populace.
Boris Johnson was a professed climate sceptic when he was Mayor of London but for some reason (he says because he came to believe the climate alarmist narrative, I suspect because he received a clandestine promise of much wealth) he switched to become a climate change zealot when he became an MP and then prime minister.
Mr Turver, as positive as it may appear that the scam is falling apart, I do not see the Conservatives keeping to it. I also doubt Reform, although intending to, would make a change either. The act is a gift from on high for the state and they won't let go of it.
That also ignores the political machination from the Left who are making a lot of money from it. Then there's the media and pension companies. No doubt NEST are very eager to publicise the collapse of their fund because of common sense policy.
For reasons I do not understand there seems a steadfast intent to ration this country: energy, fuel, wealth, growth - everything. To tell people: you WILL have less, your quality of life WILL be reduced. The tax scam hoax of 'climate change' is just their latest weapon.
Very thoughtful analysis. One way to get the windmill monstrosities decommissioning funded adequately would be to require that sufficient funds be diverted to pay for bonds guaranteeing the full removal and restoration of the land they blight. Then the market could properly assess the costs involved and charge an appropriate premium based on an objective risk review This works in the oil industry quite well
Drax burns imported woodchip and is UK's largest single source of 'renewable power' . This 2.6 GWe Rankine Cycle plant has become 'must run' because of its dispatchability, location and electrical capacity but it costs the nation FOREX and has notable lifecycle rates of emissions. HM Treasury or DESNZ would be well advised to read this article and to meet Siemens, who built it.
Peterhead has similar 660 MWe units as are used at Drax. It is running today to provide vital flexibility in Scotland but repowering as an efficient CCGT counterfactual is not disclosed within the July 2025 report
At conclusion 1.6 (a) suggested that DESNZ 'ensure that its conclusions (of DESNZ/Drax) are supported by relevant evidence throughout' . At stake is whether Drax is to be re-contracted with further woodchip subsidy or in another form from 2027-2031 to achieve week-on-week sustained and dispatchable capacity. Both features are already important during calm-cold periods. Meanwhile it would be wise for the gas turbine slots to be booked by DESNZ ready for free issue when the usual UK delays are completed for Drax and elsewhere.
"All windfarms would need to hold ring-fenced cash in the operating company to cover the present value of the liability in the expected decommissioning year"
Yeah, I suspect that this would immediately make a lot of them bankrupt, as I doubt they've actually set aside anything.
So important!
Excellent article thank you.
Net zero is clearly not able to provide planetary cooling. At the most it would achieve is stabilising the temperature - in around 300 years time! Due to the vast storage of CO2 in the oceans, the time constant of the oceans being about 600 years according to ice core measurements.
We are inevitably going to do solar geoengineering. Maybe the West will not but China and India and Arabic countres will just do it when the economic argument is made. They suffer from extreme heat waves, they will experience considerable political pressure to just do it.
Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is the most cost effective. For the UK costing around £10 million per annum, to completely cancel out the whole UK greenhouse gas emissions. And it would actually work. And with results almost immediately - within a few months of starting. The technology to do it already exists or very easily implemented at minimal time and cost. In cotrast, net zero cannot work in any sensible timeframe and is vastly expensive and will not work anyway. We are going to have to pay something, would you prefer £10 million per annum for something that works or £50 billion per annum for something that does not work? Risks to health and the ecosystem of SAI are very minimal. This has been examined in detail in this book:
https://www.lulu.com/shop/clive-matelas/stabilising-global-temperature/paperback/product-579yr4w.html
CO2 is irrelevant but the blob has managed to build a multi billion pound industry on it due to ignorance.
I'd quite like the 'carbon' involved in pushing the green con to be recycled. The people and department for net zero might jam the shredders though.
A plastic bag to stop them exhaling CO2, perhaps?
CO2 is not entirely irrelevant. Most of the global warming potential of CO2 is already happening, and adding more has an increasingly negligible effect. It is approximately a logarithm. See videos by Dr William Happer. It is approximately already at saturation. It does not precisely saturate, but for practical purposes it does.
What is happening is that the atmosphere has been unbalanced since the 1970s, with the cutting of sulphur emissions, first from coal power stations then from road fuel and then aviation fuel and finally from ship fuel. This has had the unintended consequence of increased warming since the 1970s. CO2 has copped the blame, but that is a nonsense. It is the absense of sulphur aerosols which is the main factor.
I have read and listened to a lot of what Dr.Happer has to say.
I agree with most of your points and, as I say, CO2 is irrelevant mainly because of its logarithmic nature and current "saturation ". However, although the sulphur emissions have changed and affect reflectivity, most of any (tiny) warming is a natural cycle as we come out of the Little Ice Age and changing solar cycles.
It is the height of hubris to think that man can control the climate in any meaningful way.
Natural cycles are a factor that is of course true. However they operate on long timescales of thousands of years.
What I am discussing is a far smaller timescale - since 1850.
There are natural factors in this shorter timescale, volcanoes particularly. And they have to be factored in. They emit sulphur aerosols and other materials and this has a strong cooling effect.
I have factored this in. There is a residual signature due to human activity. But it is not CO2 that is the key, it is sulphur aerosols.
Read my book "Stabilising Global Temperature" for the details. I have addressed al of your objections.
The simpler solution is to repeal IMO2O20, and return to lower cost marine fuels that happen to inject SO2 into the atmosphere. At least we have a proper measurement base for that, unlike terraforming proposals for which no proper experimental evidence is available.
That would be part of the picture. Before sulphur was banned in ship fuel, ships were providing about twice as much cooling due to their sulphur emissions compared to warming due to their CO2 emissions.
At sea level sulphur aerosols cool, per tonne, about 150 TIMES more than a tonne of CO2.
At stratospheric levels a tonne of sulphur aerosol cools about a million TIMES more than a tonne of CO2.
Thus it is far more effective to put the aerosol in the stratosphere than at sea level. reason beng that the residence time in the stratosphere is several years. Compared to days or weeks at sea level.
Plus the amounts required in the stratosphere are extremely dilute. No problem with acid rain or with breating difficulties.
If you have an amplifier with a factor of a million it easily overloads and produces chaotic distortions. Its effects in a global system become too hard to predict and may prove undesirable.
I do know about electronic amplifiers. And how hard it is to isolate parts of the circuit. I worked on a ground penetrating Radar where the transmitter and receiver operate simultaneously. Achieved 70 dB isolation. Which was impressive.
However this is not an amplifier. It is a figure of the ratio between two effects.
Well balanced article. Thanks
Excellent. Thank you David
As ever well written with clear language that even a ECO Zealot could understand.
The way the whole CC scam has been handled is too tie it up neatly in legalise and any attempt by a future non CC committed Government would lead straight to legal action for recovery of real or imagined financial losses.
Sensible people have always gone along with the idea of a “any system that produces cheap, low cost energy” market- be it Coal, Gas, Wind, Solar, Hydro, Tidal or Nuclear.
They do not see the need for subsidies or Carbon Taxes, if a energy source is efficient it will pay for itself with reckless subsidies offered to give the appearance of competition.
When you look at subsidies, those of us of a certain age can recall the years of “nationalised”. Industries- Steel, Rail, Coal, Post, Car, and the cost both via poor to zero productivity, consistently calling strikes, and the general feeling that nothing was affordable.
De-nationalisation brought sanity to those industries, however, now that we have the Worlds highest energy costs, those industries are dying, the Green Revolution has moved primary production to China, India and the Far East. The lesson is simple- Power is Everything, Economic Power is Critical to Survival and we are in a battle, a battle for economic survival which we are losing at a accelerating pace.
If you invest in wind, solar and tidal on a large scale which gets curtailed when between them they produce too much for the puny levels of economic storage?
You end up paying for four systems plus a chunk of storage and a lot of grid to connect it all up, as the renewables also have their periods of zero or neglible output requiring backup.
Nah, the cure will have to be similar to a duet designed to mitigate diabetes. Cut off as many of the risky foods as possible as quickly as possible. All the players in wind &solar & storage knew it was a grift. The canks will perhaps be wiser in the future if they taste some pain today.
We need to stop calling them eco zealot or green, words have a huge power and calling them green makes them sound nice and caring. There is nothing green / caring / nice about the climate hysteria and anti CO2 agenda; the land use; slave labour in china which produces 80% plus of all solar panels and mining for the minerals itself is very bad for environment and promoting human exploitation. Nothing green or eco about it.
The Red/Greens have redefined or added to the definition of so many words there may not be any choice but to use some of them as they do. Humpty Dumpty summed it up at the end of his conversation with Alice.
When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
Very aptly put and thank you for the great reference 😊🙏
My pleasure.
Would you keep the forecast £0.5b a year CfD contract for Drax biomass?
No but we have to as its dispatchable generation and we are woefully short of it.
Even DENZ has now woken up to that fact hence an attempt to modify the capacity mkt with an even higher cost tier to incentivise new build dispatchable generation.
I am afraid we have to keep it until we can build replacement capacity, unless it can be cheaply converted back to coal
Turn it back into a coal fired plant.
We are in the process of largely eliminating baseload generation with nuclear closures. It is usually not recognised that wind has replaced coal and nuclear in the share of generation, but for the normal baseload interconnector imports of nuclear from France and hydro from Norway. We used to get reliable coal via BritNed, but the Dutch are now more focused on helping keep the lights on in Germany after they ditched their baseload nuclear.
If you have reliable baseload generation then flex generation like CCGT only needs to cover the extra to meet demand peaks. If you eliminate baseload, you need flex generation to cover the baseload demand when renewables aren't performing as well.
These facts have been somewhat disguised by falling demand, but would come back to bite hard were EVs and heat pumps to become more common.
Reality is until Milibrain is removed the green bandwagon will roll on and im afraid that Starmer going to COP30 indicates to me that he's not about to give up on it either. They will also come up with a few quid off in the budget either via VAT or moving WHD/ECO elsewhere to assuage the cost issue. AR7 outcome is now pivotal here and i suspect we will see some participation because the higher price and duration will be sufficient for some and i reckon the Chinese are looking for somewhere to plant their turbines.
However, what is very clear and despite Milibrain and his coterie of Pinchback and Starkie is that CP2030 is way off being achieved. That was always the likely outcome but what's concerning to me is that OFGEM and blindly ploughing on agreeing costs for the three transmission operators to reinforce the grid now to achieve NZ irrespective of whether the windmills get built or not. The other crippling factor now is the level of outages across the grid to allow these works to takes place is a key contributor to constraint costs. For example B4 boundary (SP-SSE) is forecast at under 60% for next 18mths and thats before the next wave of approved grid expansion in Scotland starts. Yes i know the ecos will say no pain no gain and it will be alright by 2030 but it wont be. Irrespective of whether you agree with NZ or not this is not a sensible way to approach it accruing up crippling costs. There needs to be a complete suspension of anymore ARs until weve dealt with the current wave of transmission construction supported by previous ARs.
The other thing i wish Torys and Reform (and unions) should exploit is the utter dependency we have on overseas supply chain to deliver CP2030. There was a report earlier this week lauded by the renewables blob and their hanger on publications (i do read them so i know how much dead wood generation and storage is coming and where) about Dogger Bank being worth 6.1B to UK economy. Its rather disingenuous as that is NPV of 15 years of O&M which is expected to be largely UK based. The reality is to earn that (which consumers are paying for through higher bills of course) we would have imported billions worth of kit. The report lays bay that pretty well our only manufacturing input is the davit cranes on each turbine. Yes 200 of them is a tidy contract but its a less than 1% of manufacturing input. The turbines, the towers, array cables, substations and offshore installation is all with foreign companies. Yes we dig holes lay cables and erect onshore substations but thats the extent of so called green jobs. Also we are very good at developing and writing the environmental reports now there's a surprise.
So there's plenty to go at here to try and shift policy in smaller steps even a reset to CP2035 which is inevitable would allow a relaxing in grid transmission timelines and alleviate some of the constraint costs.
I saw an interview with the young woman who heads Octopus Renewables, talking about plans to invest £20bn based on Chinese turbines. She was quite clear that they are market leaders for cost and on time manufacture. The interviewer soft soaped the China dependence issues. Not clear which projects they expect to get involved with, but perhaps they are talking to others with development indigestion.
Before Trump 2.0 was elected, he had a team working flat out for almost 4 years on a plan of action through transition and for immediate implementation after inauguration. The Heritage Foundation worked with them to map out all the stupid things the Biden administration has done and a prioritized road map to reverse it all and address new priorities.
I mention this because it is only because of all this work that Trump was able to move so quickly on so many fronts, because it was all mapped out beforehand.
I fear that Reform don't have the infrastructure and/or resources to do all that so will be fumbling and bumbling around as they go along in true British fashion. Net Zero is just one of many issues that will need urgently addressing in detail and far better to have it all mapped out in detail in advance because time will be of the essence. Farage needs to get in place a transition team for each of the critical policy areas to develop at least a policy priority and action plan and I see no evidence of it happening.
Indeed, which is why I am writing pieces like this to illustrate the need for a proper plan.
Hopefully they will include you!
Understood David and you are doing very fine work. My comments were designed just to contextualize the problem into the likelihood of failure across the board due to the lack of adequate professional planning which, at best, will slow things down after the event. I believe we share a similar perspective after careers in senior positions in the private sector.
I noticed the only think tank that ran fringe events at the Reform Party Conference was Prosperity (formerly Legatum). However, the news that Lord Frost has resigned the Conservative whip to head up the IEA (not the Paris based Energy Agency) is probably a step in the direction of giving Reform more policy support. Hopefully other think tanks will follow and attract top quality inputs as they will likely be tapped up for people to actually help run the show by reforming quangos and questioning civil service assumptions and practices: some stars may become ministers.
However energy will need much more specialised input from those with a good understanding of applicable law, grid codes and treaties as well as some engineering and economic nitty gritty, and also the opening of conversations with the important companies in the sector. They need to be asked how they would envision a post Net Zero system. Among the quangos needing reform are OFGEM and NESO, mostly by culling the powers they have acquired. As David's article sketches, there is a lot to be fixed.
That's why Reform has brought Danny Kruger onboard. He has specifically invited members of the public with appropriate knowledge and expertise to come forward to assist him. There's your opening ...
With respect, that isn't enough. It requires a defined structure and process, money and control. This isn't, or shouldn't be, like a "Let's all chip into focus groups" effort. We aren't playing around here, our country is collapsing due to a determined and well-organized effort. Time is running out.
I didn't say it was enough. I was merely pointing you towards Kruger, who does indeed have a plan. May I suggest you watch his press conference from a couple of weeks ago?
Reform certainly needs volunteer footsoldiers, like any party, but it also needs a policy generation process, which Kruger, presumably with Farage's full backing, is creating. They have plenty of money to do it with, thanks to the backing of Yousuf and Candy.
I sincerely hope you are correct. I admit that I have a preference for people who a) don't come from privileged backgrounds and b) have proven success in the private sector.
But that's just me. I believe that time in the trenches is what counts But time will tell, let's just wait and see, shall we?
I have forwarded a link to this substack article to Reform HQ AND emphasised how important it is to hit the ground running. Labour being a classic example of how NOT to take over Government!
One thing I'm hopeful of is that Farage and Trump are in touch and Farage sees just how revolutionary Trump is being in his time and the preparation put in to ensure it.
Ironically Doomberg flags up issues where Trump's whole plan may fail and his Presidency be neutralised by the US Courts. This is well worth reading to get some idea of how Trump prepared for his Presidency and how little information the MSM provide about how revolutionary and long term beneficial his decrees would be. Unfortunately the data and the meat of this article are behind a paywall, all you will see here is the introduction concentrating on shipbuilding.
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/shipwrecked
I trust Doomberg will excuse my revealing the penultimate paragraph of the information behind the paywall.
"We close by admitting how torn we are on this issue. The policy’s strategy and tactics are actually quite effective and address acute issues in the US economy. Only Trump’s unique combination of bluster and boldness could have conceived of such a plan, let alone gotten this far down the path of its execution. However, the US is still a constitutional republic, and the how matters at least as much as the what."
You won't find the MSM understanding the real Trump or IF they did, reporting on it. The BBC in particular seems keen on even inventing his speeches despite being allegedly against "Fake/False News" - Now their two top people have gone, the Panorama team needs to resign as well, or be sacked.
Another country to watch is Argentina. Millei is making good progress, having done well in recent elections. He had to contend with a dysfunctional and corrupt government system and powerful barons running the provinces who helped run up tte country's debts. A large dose of removing government interference in many areas seems to have been his main prescription.
True! I hope Farage knows how revolutionary Milei and Trump are as the MSM seem determined to ignore it; assuming of course they even know!
I fear Farage will find as much opposition to any Reform Govt plans as both of those have. Opposition keen (as Mr Turver points out the Greens will be) to blame any issues on the cure NOT the disease.
The Task is staggering and it will be a war on many fronts, Constitutional, Political, Economic and 'The Science' BUT succeed and history will raise him above any PM I can think of. Failure to my mind means the end of this country as a modern, functioning state.
Given what I believe is the real population (North of 80 Million and many not wedded to the ideals that made England and the UK so great a shaper of the modern world.) I fear the consequences if he fails cannot be over-exaggerated. Look to the EU for how rapidly break-down can occur.
One thing that I'd be interested to see, is if Reform could request the data from industry, particularly the ones mentioned in this 18 year old Independent article, as to their data's indication of the current population they serve. The fact that so many things that are built on Census population data are failing may NOT simply be incompetence but may well be due to overuse!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/city-eye-facts-on-a-plate-our-population-is-at-least-77-million-5328454.html
"If, representatives the Conservatives and Reform were to make statements in Parliament before AR7 contracts are signed that they would change the law to negate them if they gained office, then it might be argued that QCiL provisions do not apply. This might be enough for bankers to back away from financing these projects, so they never reach Final Investment Decision (FID)."
Agree David but I fear this also speaks to my earlier comment regarding the lack of preparation and professional planning. Such actions MUST be identified as part of a transition framework and, as I said, I see no evidence this is in place. Reversing Net Zero will also require a lot of legislation to be unwound and some new legislation put in place. This process must be ready to commence on day ONE of the new Administration.
And I believe the same pre-emptive process should be put in place for other unsavory policies such as Digital ID. Reform and Conservatives should announce that they will reverse Digital ID, cancel all Supplier contracts and destroy the databases immediately upon coming into power. This would again serve the purpose of putting financing and technology suppliers on notice that they may not get paid in full in the very likely event that Labour will not be in power long enough to see the project through to completion. It would also encourage we the people NOT to comply with any Digital ID demands. In fact, one wonders WHY they have not already done so?
Unless, of course, they quietly support this dystopian digital prison?
You can imagine the Roman candle effect on Miliband were more developers to pull out under threats from Reform, who he would accuse of destroying his cheap energy system. That is why they need to be ready with positive proposals, preferably with a degree of industry endorsement that show up Miliband's nonsense.
Meanwhile there are other plots afoot to try to entrench the renewables system, not least via REMA, which is likely to see the CFD regime replaced by one that pays at least partly for capacity rather than energy, making curtailment risk and actual weather less important. That would provide an opportunity to bail out the aggressive bids from AR3 and AR4 as well. ENTSO-E go even further, recommending an RAB model that puts all the volume risk on consumers
https://www.entsoe.eu/2024/02/20/position-paper-on-sustainable-contracts-for-difference-design/
Yes thanks. We can't all be experts in specialized areas and I don't pretend to have any expertise in energy or energy economics, on which I gladly defer to experts such as David and yourself.
My perspectives are from the point of view of a) common sense and b) a long successful career in global business at CEO level (in a field unrelated to anything energy).
My inputs are more from the perspective of processes and structures required to effectively and efficiently address strategic issues which might contribute to this debate.
You are quite right. Truss found out quickly that the Long March through the institutions has been so pervasive that they simply blocked her attempts at reform and mounted a coup against her, aided by those who had infiltrated the Conservative Party. Badenoch is in a battle to defenestrate the latter, and Reform is so afraid of impostors that they are failing to establish wide enough policy analysis and support. It certainly requires money and organisation and wide ranging experience, and a big effort on talent spotting and the creation of the right ethos. Don't exclude talent, but seek to ensure that talents are balanced and the process of policy development and legislative priorities is cooperative.
So as they've already launched a consultation into adding an extra higher cost tier to the Capacity Mkt infers they will now separate out dispatchable from unreliable generation. Even they must now realise this is necessity given we've aligned with EU on carbon tax will just drive up the wholesale price.
Can't see how buying capacity is the right thing for the consumer unless they want a stepping stone to CEGB MkII. Presumably this proposal is being pedalled by the renewable trade bodies rather than DENZ although not sure what the timeline is on the latest attempt at market reform.
Some people in Australia have been advocating to exit net zero for years but the party that comes into office with a mandate to exit Net Zero will need to spend some years in advance working on the plan to get over the resistance from the myriad of departments, quangos, and other government-funded agencies that are currently dedicated to Net Zero.
The reform program must minimise failures that discredit the whole enterprise.
In addition to the plan, prospective Cabinet ministers will have to be trained and prepared to go head-to-head with their departments and they will need alternative advisors.
At the moment, talking about exiting Net Zero is just that… But the first step is to start the public discussion. Much depends on the capacity of the journalistic classes to stop endorsing and spreading misinformation about firming unreliable energy with more unreliable energy and puny storage devices.
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/looking-for-the-net-zero-exit-sign
Your opening paragraph on how first Reform and now the Conservatives (or at least party leader Badenoch) have repudiated the fantasy of Net Zero makes for very happy reading.
It takes me back to 2019 when I tried to persuade PM candidates Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt who were competing for Theresa May’s lost crown that they had a great opportunity to ditch the Net Zero ideology and leave the rest of the Uniparty (to use the recently coined name) stuck out on a limb looking very stupid. I even attracted an online endorsement from Lord Lawson! Alas, they ignored my “very sound advice” (Lawson’s endorsement) and it has taken their third party leader since Johnson to finally see sense: https://windfarmaction.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/beware-the-elephant-trap/.
I suspect that the other parties of the Uniparty (Labour, Lib Dems, SNP) will never see sense. They are certainly now looking very stupid.
Starmer has just conceded that the consensus on “climate change” is broken yet he is doubling down on his unilateral Net Zero flailing: https://x.com/clim8resistance/status/1986813908695314873?s=20.
Never forget that earlier this year all 72 of the Lib Dem MPs voted to support the suicidal Climate and Nature Bill with plans for emissions reductions far more draconian than Starmer’s Net Zero: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/12/31/the-climate-and-nature-bill/.
Then there’s the bonkers SNP which only last week updated their plans to reach Net Zero in Scotland (where energy is not devolved from being the responsibility of the UK government) by 2045: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c30v97m59dyo.
The globalists showed their true colours through their Covid “plandemic” and it is obvious now that climate change/Net Zero was never anything to do with climate but was always a globalist plot to control global resources and the global populace.
Boris Johnson was a professed climate sceptic when he was Mayor of London but for some reason (he says because he came to believe the climate alarmist narrative, I suspect because he received a clandestine promise of much wealth) he switched to become a climate change zealot when he became an MP and then prime minister.
Yup, all about TOTAL control in perpetutity with pathogens and the threat of C02. Invisible enemies.
Mr Turver, as positive as it may appear that the scam is falling apart, I do not see the Conservatives keeping to it. I also doubt Reform, although intending to, would make a change either. The act is a gift from on high for the state and they won't let go of it.
That also ignores the political machination from the Left who are making a lot of money from it. Then there's the media and pension companies. No doubt NEST are very eager to publicise the collapse of their fund because of common sense policy.
For reasons I do not understand there seems a steadfast intent to ration this country: energy, fuel, wealth, growth - everything. To tell people: you WILL have less, your quality of life WILL be reduced. The tax scam hoax of 'climate change' is just their latest weapon.
Concorde was cooling the planet due to its sulphur emissions about 20 TIMES more than warming due to its CO2 emissions.
We need a successor to Concorde!
Jet A1 sold in the UK has long been no more than 0.05% sulphur, so I doubt your claim.
Very thoughtful analysis. One way to get the windmill monstrosities decommissioning funded adequately would be to require that sufficient funds be diverted to pay for bonds guaranteeing the full removal and restoration of the land they blight. Then the market could properly assess the costs involved and charge an appropriate premium based on an objective risk review This works in the oil industry quite well
Drax burns imported woodchip and is UK's largest single source of 'renewable power' . This 2.6 GWe Rankine Cycle plant has become 'must run' because of its dispatchability, location and electrical capacity but it costs the nation FOREX and has notable lifecycle rates of emissions. HM Treasury or DESNZ would be well advised to read this article and to meet Siemens, who built it.
https://www.modernpowersystems.com/analysis/great-flexibility-gained-by-peterhead-repowering/?cf-view .
Peterhead has similar 660 MWe units as are used at Drax. It is running today to provide vital flexibility in Scotland but repowering as an efficient CCGT counterfactual is not disclosed within the July 2025 report
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68c1461feeb238b20672a912/Final_report.pdf
At conclusion 1.6 (a) suggested that DESNZ 'ensure that its conclusions (of DESNZ/Drax) are supported by relevant evidence throughout' . At stake is whether Drax is to be re-contracted with further woodchip subsidy or in another form from 2027-2031 to achieve week-on-week sustained and dispatchable capacity. Both features are already important during calm-cold periods. Meanwhile it would be wise for the gas turbine slots to be booked by DESNZ ready for free issue when the usual UK delays are completed for Drax and elsewhere.
"All windfarms would need to hold ring-fenced cash in the operating company to cover the present value of the liability in the expected decommissioning year"
Yeah, I suspect that this would immediately make a lot of them bankrupt, as I doubt they've actually set aside anything.
They haven't. As covered here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/offshore-wind-decommissioning-timebomb?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false