I wrote Making The News almost three years ago in order to draw attention to what I consider to be the way in which news is now routinely reported by the mainstream media – that is to say, news websites regularly do little more than cut and paste press releases, without bothering to check the accuracy and validity of their contents. Increasingly the press releases in question refer to a “study” or an opinion poll, usually commissioned by the organisation issuing the press release, all with a view to generating some favourable publicity regarding their pet subject. These days the “climate crisis” (sic) and net zero seem to be the subjects that bulk large in this way, and much of the media, especially the BBC, are happy to oblige.
Given that I consider Great British Energy to be an empty shell, I find it surprising to note how little it has to say about anything. In fairness, it might be said that this is because the Great British Energy Bill is currently going through the committee stage and is not yet an Act of Parliament, so it is simply avoiding jumping the gun. Perhaps that is the case. And yet, that hasn’t stopped it dabbling with social media. It has an account with “X” (which I can’t see, because I don’t have an “X” account); it has a You Tube channel (with a single video, five minutes and forty one seconds long, showing a Channel 4 interview with Ed Miliband parroting what I consider to be his usual nonsense); it has a LinkedIn account (which again I can’t see); and it has a Facebook account. They seem to be experimenting, as there is also this Facebook account (described as a Government organisation, with no posts, no likes and no followers) and another one described as an energy company, with two posts from January 2020, one like and five members.
What appears to be the “real” Facebook page has a short but interesting history. It made a brief attempt to appear, for some unknown reason, at the Scotland Against Spin (SAS) Facebook page a few days ago, but as that page is closed to comments other than from members, it failed to be visible to anyone other than SAS admins. When they drew the attention of its members to this, a number of them posted comments at the Great British Energy Facebook page. They were unprepared for this, it seems, and shortly afterwards the page disappeared. Now it’s back, but so far all that is visible is a post updating the profile picture, which makes it clear that its headquarters are (will be?) in Aberdeen. At the time of writing it has no likes and no followers. Again, it is described as an energy company.
Why so coy? It certainly is coy. The news section of its website says virtually nothing, and the rest of its website contains very little at all. I suppose, in fairness, it is all (as it claims) set up on a pro bono basis, and Great British Energy is not yet formally established.
Still, there is some big news that has largely passed without much mention in the media. Yes, the government issued a press release, but it seems to have generated very little interest, and the government doesn’t seem to be much inclined to talk about it. The news in question is that with effect from tomorrow (or so the press release tells us) the government is to acquire the Electricity System Operator (ESO) from National Grid.
This, we are informed, “will support the UK’s energy security, help to keep bills down in the long term, and accelerate the government’s clean power mission.” I note that the talk is now of keeping bills down in the long term, though even that seems unlikely with the government’s accelerated targets for “decarbonising” the national grid. The ESO was formed in 2011 and (as National Grid Electricity System Operator Limited) has until now been a wholly-owned subsidiary of National Grid Holdings One PLC, which in turn is ultimately owned and controlled by National Grid PLC.
Subject to “customary closing adjustments” National Grid is to receive £630 million for the transfer of ESO into government ownership. The government’s press release assures us this is OK because “[t]he majority of taxpayer costs will be recouped via existing charges on energy bills, which previously would have gone to National Grid.” [my emphasis]. Going forward, ESO is to be known as the National Energy System Operator (NESO). Its new Chairman is to be Dr Paul Golby (former CEO of E.ON) and its Chief Executive is to be Fintan Slye. Having worked in the industry for some time, and having been with ESO since 2018, Mr Slye might well be the right man for the job, which is just as well, as he has his work cut out. For on 23rd August 2024 a letter was sent to him jointly by Mr Miliband and by Chris Stark, the new Head of Mission Control for Clean Power 2030. It:
…provides a formal commission to the ESO, in advance of becoming the National Energy System Operator (NESO), to provide practical advice on achieving clean power by 2030 for Great Britain. This advice should consist of a range of pathways that enable a decarbonised power system for Great Britain by 2030 and an enduring contribution to economy-wide decarbonisation beyond 2030….
Rather him than me, especially given this:
…We would ask you to work with Mission Control at DESNZ to ensure that the plan is based on a shared set of assumptions about what is technically required and feasible to deliver clean power by 2030….
David Turver has been unimpressed with the response to date:
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.
I suspect that he may be correct. However, as most days see me solidly sceptical rather than cynical, we shall have to wait and see what develops. I hope Mr Slye has rather more idea than those who wrote the press release, which breathlessly tells us:
Currently, there is no single body responsible for overseeing the strategic planning and design of the country’s electricity and gas networks.
NESO will fill this gap – breaking down the siloes which currently exist between the planning of electricity and gas systems, with independent oversight for the design of all Great Britain’s energy networks.
The move will enable investors to build out new energy infrastructure with confidence in how their project will fit into the country’s wider clean energy plan.
Perhaps this will all come true, more likely it won’t. At least Mr Slye isn’t Mr Miliband, who continues to write things like this:
We need to move Britain off expensive, insecure fossil fuel markets, and onto clean, cheap homegrown power that we control. This is how we reduce bills in the long term, strengthen our energy independence and support skilled jobs across the country.
In any event, tomorrow is the big day. Perhaps by then ENSO will have a website. If you search for it right now you will simply be told “We’re making some changes” along with the promise that they’ll be back up and running tomorrow and that they can’t wait for us to see what’s next.
Maybe by then there’ll be some media interest. There ought to be. This stuff is absolutely critical to the UK’s energy security and pricing. Indifference really isn’t good enough.
Climate Scepticism 
I’m so tired of this. Just as the whole point of the UN COP process is to cut emissions so is the UK’s Net Zero policy. But now that it’s becoming obvious that the former is not cutting emissions and is never likely to do so and that, re the latter, any emissions that might be cut (unlikely) would be so slight as to make no difference, we find the former focussing on ‘rich’ countries (i.e. the West) compensating ‘poor’ countries for ‘loss and damage’ and the latter focussing on ‘cheap homegrown power’.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I thought this might be topical:
“The man in charge of Labour’s green energy dream: ‘It’s at the limit of what’s achievable’”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/01/the-man-in-charge-of-labours-green-energy-dream-its-at-the-limit-of-whats-achievable
Needless to say, it’s something of a puff piece:
“Fintan Slye, head of the new grid operator Neso, is aware that critics are sceptical about achieving ‘clean power by 2030’. But with tough decisions, he says, it can be done…
...The electricity system operator is transforming too. The company responsible for keeping Britain’s lights on has broken away from the energy conglomerate National Grid – and from Tuesday 1 October will be known as the National Energy System Operator (Neso), a publicly owned company with a mandate to deliver the government’s green energy agenda.
If the man tasked with turning energy secretary Ed Miliband’s dream of a clean power system by 2030 into a reality has any qualms about the scale of the challenge, he is not showing it. Standing in the Wokingham control room, Fintan Slye scans the screens: power plants are firing, turbines are spinning, and electricity is flowing through Britain’s subsea cables....
…The first task facing Neso will be setting a plan to decarbonise Britain’s electricity. In its first weeks in power, the government charged Slye and his team with drawing up the roadmap that will take Britain to an era of clean power by 2030, including the difficult changes that will be required to the UK’s planning and regulation regimes.
This plan will be used to inform a wider strategy for Britain’s creaking energy infrastructure as part of an effort to break down the fragmented thinking that has hindered progress to date, and chart a holistic future for British energy. For the first time, the system operator will be co-creating the landscape it controls.
This is “absolutely” the biggest challenge facing the new organisation, Slye says. “We have a new government coming in with a really clear mission around what it wants to achieve in energy. It was one of the main planks of their election manifesto, and it’s one of their key missions now that they are in power. But it is undoubtedly hugely ambitious to get to clean power by 2030. It requires not only for us to do everything that we can do quicker, but also very, very differently as well.”
Many within the industry would more readily describe the task as unachievable. If Slye is to meet this challenge, in the timescale set by the government, it will require an unprecedented effort, they say. Slye admits that there is a “huge degree of scepticism”, which has already led many to believe that the plans are “fantastical, undoable”. But he is adamant that they can be delivered.…
…“So we’re not saying that the target is achievable with the current energy industry processes and systems and ways of working. In fact, it’s not achievable in those circumstances. But if you can make the required changes, then it can be delivered,” Slye says….
...“There’s no established definition of clean power,” says Slye. “So what does it realistically mean? One of the key pieces of work from the Committee on Climate Change found that the cost [of decarbonisation] really begins to escalate when you reach those last percentage points towards 100% clean power.
“So at the moment, the working definition that we’re using for this analysis is to reach 95% clean power. That means that, by 2030, 95% of the generation in Great Britain over the period of a year will be from clean power sources. And that means that the remaining 5% will come from unabated gas. That’s our definition.”
There will continue to be “a significant amount” of gas power plants in reserve for the cold, dull, windless weeks of winter, but they will run for only limited periods, Slye says…..
Perhaps David Turver is correct, and the goalposts have been moved. Even with the moving of the goalposts, I am one of those sceptical critics who very much doubt it can be achieved.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are so many places where I could have posted this, but this is as good a place as any, given that the Guardian’s front-page headline is based purely on a press release, no doubt timed for the year-end:
“Climate crisis exposed people to extra six weeks of dangerous heat in 2024
Analysis shows fossil fuels are supercharging heatwaves, leaving millions prone to deadly temperatures”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/27/climate-crisis-dangerous-heat-2024
“Supercharging”? Really? Is that scientific language or the language of clickbait? Nowhere does the article mention the fact that around the world, both globally and by continent, many many more people die of extreme cold than of extreme heat, and that for the foreseeable future a warming planet is reducing the number of deaths from extreme temperatures. Thanks, however, to this sort of ongoing narrative, I suspect that the vast majority of people are dangerously unaware of the basic facts.
…“The impacts of fossil fuel warming have never been clearer or more devastating than in 2024 and caused unrelenting suffering,” said Dr Friederike Otto, of Imperial College London and the co-lead of WWA. “The floods in Spain, hurricanes in the US, drought in the Amazon, and floods across Africa are just a few examples. We know exactly what we need to do to stop things from getting worse: stop burning fossil fuels.”…
Well, if we don’t have fossil fuels, life will rapidly become much worse for billions of people. And if we stop burning fossil fuels and the climate doesn’t miraculously “improve”, what then?
LikeLiked by 3 people
Climate activist Otto and her fake extreme weather attribution outfit are a clear and present danger to decent, honest science. The Grauniad and her have obviously teamed up to promote agenda-driven disinformation and propaganda on climate change and weather.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Soundbites like that are bringing a once-great institution into yet more disrepute.
The clickbait version of the headline should not tell you what the peril is:
“People exposed to six weeks of extreme danger in 2024”
LikeLike
Otto says, if quoted correctly from that article –
“In most countries there is no reporting on heatwaves at all, which means the numbers we have are always a very gross underestimate,” Otto said. “If we can’t communicate convincingly that actually lots of people are dying, it’s much harder to raise awareness that heatwaves are by far the deadliest extreme events, and they are the extreme events where climate change is a real gamechanger.”
Not sure if she has lost the plot or the Guardian cherry pick, but that seems unlikely.
LikeLike
dfh, I agree. The idea that many heatwaves aren’t reported on, with the result that the numbers are a gross underestimate, strikes me as highly unlikely, given that we now live in an age of 24/7 news reporting, the internet, smartphones, and a media (plus people like Otto) who are desperate to report on the “climate crisis” angle.
The reality is that it’s the weather in the past that is under-reported, with the result that today’s scare stories (hottest, wettest, stormiest, worst drought since…. and the like) are likely to represent a gross over-estimate.
LikeLiked by 1 person