Incredible frustration when discussing physics and policy with ideologues who sit in panels and make policy. There seems little room for any question to spark an interest in knowing more. They live in a tiny room known as confirmation bias. Ergo, I share your pessimism. I’m also happy there are people such as you who ask the pertinent questions.
Well done for daring to enter the lion’s den of Net Zero wokery. I like the style of your report, phrased very reasonably when (I assume) you found the whole thing a load of b*llocks.
The UK Spectator is far too woke for my liking and is almost certainly under orders from its corporate sponsors to toe the Net Zero party line.
As for politicians like Grant Shapps, my advice is to assume that everything they say is a lie. He is completely off the wall with his talk of giving us the cheapest electricity in Europe using expensive unreliable renewables, hugely expensive hydrogen and £20 billion down the drain on CCS. The UK already has almost the most expensive residential electricity prices in Europe, an astonishing five times more expensive than Hungary, see https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/29/energy-crisis-in-europe-which-countries-have-the-cheapest-and-most-expensive-electricity-a.
The globalist establishment showed their true colours with their Covid “plandemic” and they are now ramping up to do the same thing with Net Zero, namely to degrade the economy and impoverish the people with a dose of depopulation thrown in for good measure.
It takes time to get designs approved and to raise capital. There's a lot of projects in development. Maybe SMRs should be the subject of s future article.
Good idea. Don’t know much about them apart from them being behind reactors for warship propulsion. What does it take to transfer the design to a land-based energy generator? And is there any possibility of thorium reactors becoming viable?
We have to keep plugging away. I plan to make a response to the consultation on new subsidies for wind farms, pointing out that it is ignoring the reality that wind costs are rising, and the integration cost is going to rise with more transmission and more curtailment as capacity increases, making AR5 terms unsustainable, and risking a dangerous gap in capacity procurement.
In the same way I have quizzed National Grid about the LionLink project.
1) What plans are there for additional transmission capacity to transfer power imported on LionLink to areas of demand in England?
2) What plans are there for additional transmission capacity to transport surplus (presumably wind and solar) power generated in GB for export via LionLink?
3) Why was a landing site near Sizewell nuclear power station selected? Are the Dutch hoping to gain access to expanded nuclear at Sizewell C without having to pay a CFD premium for it, being subsidised by UK consumers instead? Is it intended that Sizewell output will be exported to allow more wind and solar to be utilised in GB?
4) Why was it agreed that any connected wind farm and the associated HVDC platform would be in the Dutch sector?
5) Despite that agreement, it transpires that the Dutch have yet to designate a wind farm site for connection or even to decide on its size, and that in consequence they have yet to determine where the link will come ashore in the Netherlands. Given that wind output, especially from smaller geographical areas, can approach zero for extended periods of time, what are the prospects for dispatchable sources of power to feed LionLink at the Netherlands end during periods of low wind in Europe? For comparison, the MPP2/3 plant is right next door to the BritNed HVDC converter station at Maasvlakte, Rotterdam, and thus has been the prime source of supply for Dutch exports, making it effectively a direct replacement for the cancelled Kingsnorth D power station.
6) Is there any outline agreement on the rules for the use of LionLink and the pricing of power delivered to and by it? Who gets to pay if the connected windfarm is curtailed because neither country wants its output? Does the windfarm have priority over dispatch from shore?
7) It seems that the capacity of the line has been decided at 1.8GW. What is the basis of this decision? What utilisation is expected for export and import at each shore station and what share of the connected wind is expected to go to each country?
8) What is the expected cost or benefit for UK consumers from the project? For Dutch consumers? For GB generators? For Dutch generators? Modelling by AFRY in 2021 for OFGEM shows GB consumers, and indeed GB as a whole being losers from increased interconnection.
These are all questions I would expect ministers to ask before giving the project their political endorsement, and thus answers should be readily available.
Of course the chances that ministers actually asked many (even any?) of the questions are probably net zero.
Incredible frustration when discussing physics and policy with ideologues who sit in panels and make policy. There seems little room for any question to spark an interest in knowing more. They live in a tiny room known as confirmation bias. Ergo, I share your pessimism. I’m also happy there are people such as you who ask the pertinent questions.
Interesting piece David, thanks for that.
Seems there are chinks developing in the AGW hoax consensus, Keep up the good work!
Well done for daring to enter the lion’s den of Net Zero wokery. I like the style of your report, phrased very reasonably when (I assume) you found the whole thing a load of b*llocks.
The UK Spectator is far too woke for my liking and is almost certainly under orders from its corporate sponsors to toe the Net Zero party line.
As for politicians like Grant Shapps, my advice is to assume that everything they say is a lie. He is completely off the wall with his talk of giving us the cheapest electricity in Europe using expensive unreliable renewables, hugely expensive hydrogen and £20 billion down the drain on CCS. The UK already has almost the most expensive residential electricity prices in Europe, an astonishing five times more expensive than Hungary, see https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/29/energy-crisis-in-europe-which-countries-have-the-cheapest-and-most-expensive-electricity-a.
The globalist establishment showed their true colours with their Covid “plandemic” and they are now ramping up to do the same thing with Net Zero, namely to degrade the economy and impoverish the people with a dose of depopulation thrown in for good measure.
SMRs have been mooted for some time - what is actually stopping them from being implemented?
It takes time to get designs approved and to raise capital. There's a lot of projects in development. Maybe SMRs should be the subject of s future article.
Good idea. Don’t know much about them apart from them being behind reactors for warship propulsion. What does it take to transfer the design to a land-based energy generator? And is there any possibility of thorium reactors becoming viable?
We have to keep plugging away. I plan to make a response to the consultation on new subsidies for wind farms, pointing out that it is ignoring the reality that wind costs are rising, and the integration cost is going to rise with more transmission and more curtailment as capacity increases, making AR5 terms unsustainable, and risking a dangerous gap in capacity procurement.
In the same way I have quizzed National Grid about the LionLink project.
1) What plans are there for additional transmission capacity to transfer power imported on LionLink to areas of demand in England?
2) What plans are there for additional transmission capacity to transport surplus (presumably wind and solar) power generated in GB for export via LionLink?
3) Why was a landing site near Sizewell nuclear power station selected? Are the Dutch hoping to gain access to expanded nuclear at Sizewell C without having to pay a CFD premium for it, being subsidised by UK consumers instead? Is it intended that Sizewell output will be exported to allow more wind and solar to be utilised in GB?
4) Why was it agreed that any connected wind farm and the associated HVDC platform would be in the Dutch sector?
5) Despite that agreement, it transpires that the Dutch have yet to designate a wind farm site for connection or even to decide on its size, and that in consequence they have yet to determine where the link will come ashore in the Netherlands. Given that wind output, especially from smaller geographical areas, can approach zero for extended periods of time, what are the prospects for dispatchable sources of power to feed LionLink at the Netherlands end during periods of low wind in Europe? For comparison, the MPP2/3 plant is right next door to the BritNed HVDC converter station at Maasvlakte, Rotterdam, and thus has been the prime source of supply for Dutch exports, making it effectively a direct replacement for the cancelled Kingsnorth D power station.
6) Is there any outline agreement on the rules for the use of LionLink and the pricing of power delivered to and by it? Who gets to pay if the connected windfarm is curtailed because neither country wants its output? Does the windfarm have priority over dispatch from shore?
7) It seems that the capacity of the line has been decided at 1.8GW. What is the basis of this decision? What utilisation is expected for export and import at each shore station and what share of the connected wind is expected to go to each country?
8) What is the expected cost or benefit for UK consumers from the project? For Dutch consumers? For GB generators? For Dutch generators? Modelling by AFRY in 2021 for OFGEM shows GB consumers, and indeed GB as a whole being losers from increased interconnection.
These are all questions I would expect ministers to ask before giving the project their political endorsement, and thus answers should be readily available.
Of course the chances that ministers actually asked many (even any?) of the questions are probably net zero.