192 Comments

1. Robin,

   Many thanks for continuing to update the tale of the folly of UK Net Zero. It’s valuable work.

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2. Fifteenth update! OMG, I’ve been at this for years. My objective has been to produce a fully referenced document that covers all the essential issues – excluding anything about climate science – in under 1800 words and (including endnotes) in no more than 4 pages of A4. I’m sure I’ve missed or misrepresented some matters and would welcome any comments, observations or criticisms that I might use to improve my effort, but keeping it within the constraints I’ve set out above.

   Thanks for the kind comment Mark.

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3. Robin – thanks for refining your posts.

   Only comment I would make was regarding “Battery storage”.

   Seen a few talking heads that trot that out as why ED’s dream is achievable.

   Do they have a clue what they are talking about?

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4. dfhunter,

   Regarding battery storage, as things stand, I believe that suggesting that battery storage is the answer to the unreliability and intermittency of renewables, is the triumph of hope over reality. I suppose that over time there is the possibility that technology will improve sufficiently for batteries to represent adequate back-up, but I don’t see any sign of that happening in the foreseeable future, probably not in my lifetime, and certainly not in the timescales aimed for by our mad government.

   Is addition, there is the problem that not only will performance have to improve exponentially, the need for rare materials will also have to diminish dramatically. I don’t see much, if any, sign of that.

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5. Regarding batteries, here’s an article on the DW website, talking about the problems. Bear in mind that, like much of the media, DW’s line is that there is a climate crisis and renewable energy is essential to deal with it:

   “Europe’s energy problem isn’t green power — it’s storage

   Solar and wind produce lots of energy — but not always at the right time. More battery storage could help Europe to stabilize prices and replace polluting fossil fuel energy, but roadblocks remain.”

   https://www.dw.com/en/europes-energy-problem-isnt-green-power-its-storage/a-77302218

   It pushes the line that battery prices are falling, but the detail is revealing as to the scale of the problem:

   When smaller, private storage systems and large-scale facilities are put together, the [battery storage] capacity in the EU has increased tenfold since 2022. But to meet the bloc’s climate goals, that figure would have to increase by another factor of 10, to around 750 GW — a target that’s still some way off….

   That use of language is potentially misleading. It means that a 100-fold increase over 2022 storage levels will be necessary, and that in four years only one-tenth of that target has been achieved. Then there’s the raw material problem, exacerbated by China’s dominance in this area:

   …Just as important for EU member states, alongside the political will, is access to lithium and other metals needed for battery production. The bloc has been prioritizing the development of its strategy for raw materials, supporting domestic production of rare earths, reducing dependence on China and developing secure supply chains. In addition, the EU wants to promote the recycling of critical raw materials like lithium, nickel, gallium and cobalt.

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6. Robin, Thank you for this update. You have captured all of the key issues clearly and concisely.

   One addition comes to mind. Unless I missed it, there’s no reference to the working conditions in those countries to which we have exported so much of our industry which are likely to be worse than here. That’s a general assertion which would be hard to document so the example of slave labour in the manufacture of solar panels in China could be the example? (You may well have seen the recent reports on how the govt is trying to swerve its obligations on that specific issue.)

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7. Thanks Mike, that’s a good point. The nearest I get to mentioning it is in the second and third lines of item 3.1 where I refer to ‘countries that have weaker environmental regulation‘. I’ll consider how I might expand that to meet your observation.

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8. Every pound spent on storage goes on the renewables bill. Coal and gas can be their own storage.

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9. Regarding batteries, they are commercial operations and are there for selling electricity when prices are high, having bought it when prices are low. They are not charities bent on helping governments to “tackle climate change”. The business case must depend on very high prices at pinch points, in other words the more dysfunctional the grid is, the more they profit.

   I would make more of the “wrong number” point, which I know I bang on about, and in fact I have yet another note to write up about this topic. I am quite sure that there are heads in sand on this: our consumption emissions have not seriously declined despite all the pain, as for example this ONS figure shows:

   

   The final bar is 10.5% lower than the first (though there were higher points in between).

   Another thing I have been paying more attention to lately, as has Mark, is the “cost of carbon” – which it turns out has no foundation in the damage caused by carbon dioxide.

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10. MikeH,

    As promised, I’ve considered how I might fit in a comment about China’s use of forced labour in the manufacture of solar panels. Unfortunately I’ve haven’t been successful as, although it’s an important issue, it’s only marginally relevant to the case against NZ. However it’s caused me to review item 3.1 and I might redraft part of that.

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11. Robin, I see your point and agree. There must be quite a few issues which can be linked to NZ but are better handled separately. Certainly poor working conditions and slave labour are involved in a multitude of products we import, not just solar panels.

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12. MikeH,

    Thanks. Here’s the link I might have used had I been able to logically fit it in without compromising the length of the A4 document: https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/solar-companies-linked-to-forced-labour

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13. Robin, You may find something useful if you compare your text to a speech on energy policy made a few days ago by Reform MSP Duncan Massey in the Scottish parliament. Newly-elected Mr Massey has worked as a senior economist in the oil and gas industry. My colleague Biologyphenom of Dundee keeps a close watch on Holyrood proceedings and has posted a video of  the speech on the substack: https://biologyphenom.substack.com/p/scottish-parliament28-may-2026.

    I would go as far as to say that Mr Massey’s speech is the most common sense that has ever been spoken on the subject of energy policy in the entire lifetime of the Scottish parliament. The transcript of his speech is here: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/official-report/search-what-was-said-in-parliament/meeting-of-parliament-28-05-2026?meeting=20163&iob=222892#orscontributions_M20999E391P964C3056362.

    For a laugh (or cry) you can also read the speech which follows from Green party nutter Lorna Slater and go to the start of the debate and the motion proposed by SNP nutter Stephin Gethins “That the Parliament believes that Scotland’s energy should be in Scotland’s hands, and calls for all energy powers to be immediately devolved to the Scottish Parliament.”

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14. Thanks for the link Doug. Duncan Massey’s speech was both eloquent and excellent. It was remarkable just how much ground he was able to cover in only nine minutes. The contributions from Stephen Gethins and Lorner Slater were depressing but unsurprising: there isn’t the remotest likelihood of such people paying any attention to the good sense expounded by Mr Massey.

    I would urge other Clisceppers to read the linked transcript of Massey’s speech.

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15. Here’s the latest from Ed Hoskins, a sort of synthesis of Robin’s practical criticism of net zero and Jaime Jessop’s attack on the science behind it. Of interest to Clisceppers, I hope:

    https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/proportions-of-the-temperature-contributions-of-greenhouse-gasses-h2o-co2-n2o-ch4/

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16. I’ve now read the transcript of Duncan Massey’s speech. I agree that it is an extremely good opening to his career as an MSP. He may be one to keep an eye on. Sadly, as Robin says, the response to it from the usual suspect was predictably poor.

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17. dougbrodie1 – thanks to you & your mate Biologyphenom for that speech link by Duncan Massey.

    As Robin & Mark comment, his grasp of the facts regarding the looming energy crisis the UK/Scotland face was impressive.

    Haven’t listened to the “Stephen Gethins and Lorner Slater” bits, but from above comments I can guess it was the usual pie in the sky renewable nonsense.

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18. David Turver has a powerful piece this morning:

    Reform and Tory Policies Not Enough to Reverse Miliband’s Net Zero Madness Opposition – Opposition parties will need to go further than cancelling AR7, eliminating carbon taxes and abolishing ROCs to bring electricity bills down.

    His conclusion is stark:

    If the UK is to survive as a developed economy, these extra costs simply cannot be allowed to endure. In fact, drastic action will be required to cut subsidies even more than Reform and Tory plans and the extra grid integration overheads driven by intermittent renewables will need to be removed too. The legislative and contractual barriers to doing the right thing are considerable. It will take brave and principled politicians to enact the required changes. This will mean inflicting considerable pain on the current beneficiaries of this state largesse – renewable energy generators, their investors, storage companies and grid operators. Emergency powers are going to be needed to return to a rational energy policy. Laws need to be repealed, subsidies removed, contracts broken and assets left stranded. Investors in these doomed projects should take note.

    However, the pain inflicted on the green industrial complex by a return to a sane energy policy will be small compared to the pain inflicted on the rest of the economy if high electricity prices are allowed to continue. Clean Power 2030 and Net Zero must be stopped now.

    A must read.

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19. Excellent piece by Ben Pile in today’s Daily Sceptic on Blair’s malign influence on the development of UK politics:

    https://dailysceptic.org/2026/06/01/we-dont-need-tony-blair-to-tell-us-the-sky-is-blue/

    His conclusion captures the challenges of dealing with the Climate Change Committee and all the other “Blob” elements:

    “Blairism is not the whole of the story of Britain’s tragic experiment with green politics. But it does explain its form. There was no persuasion required in this era of politics, because the exercise of power no longer required the consent of the governed. Trying to challenge a quango such as the CCC to account for its obvious bullshit, or explaining to an MP why the CCC’s instructions to Parliament were wrong, was like barking at a brick wall. Public institutions became bland, sterile monoliths, whose idiot staff were flattered – mostly by themselves – into believing that they were planet-saving super-geniuses, not mediocre hacks advancing banalities at our expense. Tony Blair’s flim-flam about the formulation of ‘policy’ and about recognising a policy failure in the face of “global change” is not being made on our behalf or in our interests; it is an attempt to sustain that form of politics which prohibits the representation of our interests. It might be fun to see Blair giving Miliband a bloody nose, and to see the Blob’s consensuses tearing themselves apart. But to come out of the other side of the climate policy disaster without addressing its causes would be to invite it to happen all over again. We don’t need any more Blairs.”

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20. Andrew Montford has a summary of the history of the global warming climate science/policy interface at the Daily Sceptic today:-

    https://dailysceptic.org/2026/06/03/how-corrupted-science-poisoned-society/

    Regards, John C.

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21. From Dieter Helm:

    “The cost of energy and what to do about it”

    https://dieterhelm.co.uk/energy-climate/the-cost-of-energy-and-what-to-do-about-it/

    …Britain is currently accelerating the closure of its North Sea gas production, switching from “home-grown” British gas to Norwegian North Sea gas and US fracked LNG gas. The industrial consequences have been dire. High electricity prices have contributed to the closure of Grangemouth refinery, the Exxon refinery in Scotland, one of the Hull refineries, the closure of most of the steel industry, the closure of the fertiliser and fibreglass industries, and severe problems for pottery and for glass-making. Car manufacturing is back to the 1950s’ levels. There is devastation amongst the SMEs, aggravated by the increase in employer national insurance contributions, enhanced workers’ rights, and increases in the minimum wage. The unfunded welfare spending has increased the cost of capital, with record gilt costs. Energy policy has reduced economic growth, not increased it.

    As to the promised falls in the costs of renewables and the new enthusiasms for nuclear, the facts are not encouraging. The costs of offshore wind are rising, as witnessed in the latest AR7 auctions, and the system costs of solar and wind are rising as more excess capacity is needed to meet peak demand, and as the grid has to be doubled and all the batteries and storage added to keep the lights on for the same peak demand. (More on this later.)…

    …All this might be more bearable if it was reducing global warming, or at least leading to Britain no longer causing climate change; if all that “world leadership” was actually having an impact on climate change. The sad fact is that it isn’t making much difference. It is not just that the UK contributes a very small amount to the global total emissions, but rather that net zero carbon production is the wrong target, if this is what you want to do. It has to be net zero carbon consumption, and that is a different story. High prices accelerating the closure of large energy-intensive industries, and replacing “home-grown” production with foreign imports makes climate change worse not better. Making steel and cars and solar panels and refining minerals in China, which burns more than 50% of the world’s total coal, is not an obviously good climate change policy. The facts are clear and scary: the carbon concentration in the atmosphere has continued to increase at around 2 parts per million (ppm) since 1990, now accelerating to 3ppm. There isn’t a blip in this disaster, and certainly not a “British blip”. And, sadly for Johnson and Miliband, no world leaders are looking to Britain to find out how to make a difference. No one else wants the highest prices and stagnant economic growth.

    In this context, it is worth also debunking the idea that the energy world is divided simplistically into “clean” and “dirty” energy, and that renewables in particular are “clean”. They are not. The supply chains are full of emissions and pollution – from mining to transport to refining to manufacture of the generation equipment and the transmission and distribution systems, and batteries can be very dirty. Take a look at the lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper and rare earth mines around the world. Renewables may be “cleaner” (although not always), but they are not clean and they are not zero emissions. Decarbonising the world’s energy systems is a much harder task than advocates of the simplistic notion of “clean energy” apparently believe….

    And much, much more.

    Excellent as always.

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22. Mark,

    Thanks for the link to the Helm article. It’s very long and very interesting. And I suspect very important. To get a proper grip of it, I’m going to have to read it again. I’m sure it will be worthwhile. His final paragraph amounts to an extremely short summary of his position:

    Realism points up the need to urgently address the two immediate crises: the crisis in British industry as a result of the highest electricity prices in the developed world; and the crisis of affordability for households. To these can be added the climate crisis: there is no significant global progress on reducing the carbon concentration in the atmosphere, fossil fuels still make up 85% of global energy supplies, and there is no transition from coal, oil and gas globally. Britain may have got out of domestic coal, achieved by the Conservative governments, but it has not got out of coal consumption embedded in imports. It is still 75% fossil-fuel-dependent. There is no transition from fossil fuels taking place globally, and nobody is looking to Britain to find out how to do it – how to have the highest costs, and be the most vulnerable to shocks like those in Ukraine and Iran, even when it does not take much gas from either Russia or Qatar. There is a deep irony that Johnson and Miliband share the enthusiasm for the go-for-broke strategy which has resulted in the current problems.

    He doesn’t say that there is no climate crisis – few people who are in authority or otherwise influential are willing to say that openly. But I believe many are beginning to think it. And I’d be surprised if Dieter Helm was not one of than. Read his article.

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23. Robin, you wonder whether Dieter Helm is beginning to think there is no climate crisis. I suspect that he is not yet there for the following reasons.

    Firstly, he is the author of two books [Refs. 1 and 2] published within the last decade which show his deep interest in ending the fossil fuel age and in Net Zero.

    Secondly, my retired academic friend has met Helm (probably since Covid) and, if I recall correctly, says Helm believes firmly in the climate crisis and the need to exit fossil fuels.

    However, none of the above precludes a change of mind!

    References:-

    1. ‘Burn Out. The endgame for fossil fuels’, Yale, paperback 2018. Blurb on the cover says, “The coming energy revolution is bringing an end to the fossil fuel age …”
    2. ‘Net Zero. How we stop causing climate change.’, William Collins, revised paperback 2021. Regards, John C.

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24. John,

    I only said beginning to think… And, if not, I’m pretty sure he would agree there’s not much, if anything, the UK can do about it.

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25. I was able to cite Helm’s article in a comment on a The Conversation article: https://theconversation.com/how-methane-policy-will-make-or-break-the-climate-crisis-281920

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26. Robin, I admire your persistence and fortitude!

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27. I’ve just now read Dieter Helm’s article again. It’s an utterly damning indictment of Britain’s energy policy. My only regret is that he makes his points quietly and almost understates them. Normally I would welcome this, but what I believe is needed now is for someone of his calibre and understanding to describe loudly, clearly and above all publicly the appalling ‘impasse we have reached‘ (his phrase).

    PS: a result of reading it again is that I’ve made a small amendment to paragraph 2.6 of the header article.

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28. Helm’s article explains the problems in terms that even MPs can understand. Will any of them read it?

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29. David Turver has published another distinctly worrying piece this morning:

    Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 Plan Off the Rails Soaring costs, failure to deliver wind and solar capacity and Drax withdrawal from BECCS show Miliband’s CP2030 plan is off the rails.

    From his conclusion:

    The Clean Power 2030 plan is failing on all three dimensions of cost, time and quality. Grid integration costs are soaring, undermining claims that CP2030 can bring down bills or can be achieved without costs to consumers. Wind and solar installations are way behind schedule and now Drax has kiboshed the main element that was supposed to deliver supposedly negative emissions to meet the CP2030 emissions targets. It is clear the CP2030 project is off the rails.

    The shortfall in wind and solar is probably going to have to be met from reliable power stations. As we have covered before, the nuclear fleet is being retired and the gas fleet is aging, so it is unclear where this capacity is going to come from.

    That and Dieter Helm’s recent article indicate that we’re fast approaching a dreadful near future. Yet no one in a position to do anything about it seems to have noticed.

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30. Robin, you wrote (1.56pm on 5th June), “My only regret is that he [Dieter Helm] makes his points quietly and almost understates them.” I wonder whether Helm, Porter, Turver (and others?) could work together to provide the lead in the creation of a united front against the dangerous idiocy of current UK energy policy.

    The UK energy situation is becoming desperate and I suspect that only a large organisation will attract the interest of the media and thereby gain political traction.

    In haste, John C

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31. I have dropped a quick line to each of Porter, Turver and Helm to suggest consideration of the common front idea. By so doing I hope I have not muddied the waters of any behind the scenes discussions that may already be in progress. Regards, John C.

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32. Good for you John. I cannot see how it could do any harm.

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33. I’ve commented at Eigen Values on the food displacement issue.

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34. James Woudhuysen at Spiked on the demise of Denby.

    “Net Zero is reversing the Industrial Revolution.”

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35. Denby Pottery survived the Napoleonic Wars and the Great Depression. But it couldn’t withstand Ed Miliband.

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36. An excellent article on the Daily Sceptic about the consequences for the UK of the Iran war and our extreme vulnerability to such disruptions. A couple of paras are particularly strong:

    “A serious country treats resilience as a cost worth paying — not from nostalgia for coal or hostility to cleaner energy, but as the ordinary prudence of a nation that would rather not stand on one leg. This winter will be hard. We in Britain will come through it the way we have come through worse: by keeping our heads, by looking after one another, by holding on for the morning. But coming through it cannot be the end of the matter. It must be the beginning.

    Because once it is over, this country has to confront the thing that did this to us. Not the strait, and not the war — those merely pulled the trigger. What loaded the gun was an ideology: the belief that a modern nation can dismantle its own energy system, at ruinous cost, in the name of a meaningless target, and pay no price. That belief will now be tested to destruction, in public, at our expense.”

    Full article: https://dailysceptic.org/2026/06/12/hormuz-the-slow-motion-crash/

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37. Just checked the grid stats. As of now (22:00), the interconnectors are supplying over 30% of our electricity: 8.0 GW out of a total of 26.2 GW. That’s the highest I can remember seeing.

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38. MikeH,

    For the people charged with running and stabilising the Grid, it must feel like a bucking bronco ride. We seem to import far more via the interconnectors than we export, but over the last couple of weeks, the Grid has shown every possible combination, from 30%+ (net) coming in via the inerconnectors, to small levels of export; sun and wind combined have produced 70%+ down (more commonly) to 20-30% and occasionally less than 10% (which is incredibly poor for the time of year, when it’s at its peak); gas has produced anything from 5% to 50%; and the price is mostly high, but has ranged from mildly negative to £150 per MWh. It’s a total mess.

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39. “Britain ‘faces deindustrialisation’ without relief from high energy prices, survey warns

    Make UK says manufacturers’ feedback shows sector at risk of collapse as it calls on Treasury to take action”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/15/britain-faces-deindustrialisation-relief-energy-prices-survey-make-uk

    Britain’s industrial sector is at risk of collapse as thousands of companies warn that they could face bankruptcy within the next year because of high energy prices, according to an industry survey.

    The manufacturers’ body Make UK said the latest feedback from its members found that many would not be able to cope for much longer with energy costs that were twice the average in continental Europe and four times higher than in the US.

    A survey revealed that a quarter of manufacturing companies either planned to move their production overseas or had already done so, while one in 10 companies believed it was likely or very likely they would be insolvent within the next 12 months….

    …“The time for talking is over. The time for action is now,” he said. “Britain faces deindustrialisation unless manufacturers get relief from high energy prices. Electricity and gas in the UK are far too expensive and it’s costing our country steeply. We cannot afford to be delayed by political upheaval, or by further consultations.”

    Almost half (46%) of industrial companies have been hit by a further increase in their energy bills since the start of the conflict in the Middle East, with six in 10 passing this rise on to customers, according to the survey. However, despite raising prices, almost all companies (98%) told Make UK that they expected to experience a significant squeeze on their profitability over the next quarter.

    In response to falling profit margins, almost four in 10 (38%) companies have delayed investment and more than a fifth (21%) have reduced their headcount, according to the survey.

    About 800 of the UK’s 130,000 manufacturing companies are large and mostly foreign-owned. Phipson said larger businesses were moving production overseas to countries in mainland Europe and Asia where they could benefit from cheaper energy costs, while mostly smaller domestic firms were forced to cut investment and jobs to stay afloat.

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40. Mark, that’s an utterly damning indictment of Britain’s energy policy. And from the Guardian!

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41. And yet we know what the reaction is going to be.

    “Nurse! The patient is dying. We need more leeches”.

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42. There’s more. Nils Pratley (one of the Guardian’s few sensible journalists, though he has to say some non-sensible things occasionally – he does write for the Guardian after all):

    “Listen to manufacturers and unions: high electricity prices are killing industry”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2026/jun/15/manufacturers-unions-electricity-prices-make-uk-tuc

    The problem, though, is that there is no serious analysis of the root cause of the high prices. There can’t be, can there? That would involve abandoning net zero.

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43. “Maintaining grid stability in a wind and solar world”

    https://watt-logic.com/2026/06/16/maintaining-grid-stability-in-a-wind-and-solar-world/

    …In electricity, the traditional answer has been: make sure there is enough generation to meet demand. Make sure the market clears. Make sure counterparties can perform. Make sure fuel is available. And make sure there’s enough capacity margin.

    All of that still matters, but it’s no longer enough.

    In a power system increasingly dominated by wind, solar and batteries, the central risk question is changing. It’s not simply whether we have enough megawatts, it’s whether the system can remain stable while those megawatts are being delivered?

    That distinction is crucial. A system can have plenty of installed capacity, plenty of renewable generation, and even a healthy-looking market position, while still being vulnerable to fast-moving physical instability.

    The Iberian blackout of April 2025 should be understood in precisely that way. The final ENTSO-E expert panel report described the event as the result of interacting factors, including oscillations, gaps in voltage and reactive power control, rapid output reductions and generator disconnections, leading to fast voltage increases and cascading disconnections in Spain and Portugal.

    That’s not a conventional fuel-supply problem. It’s not a simple “there wasn’t enough generation” problem. It’s a power-system stability problem.

    Which also makes it a credit problem, a collateral problem, a contract problem, a regulatory problem, an insurance problem and an asset-valuation problem.

    The physical event and the financial event are not separate. A voltage problem can become a settlement problem, a collateral problem, a performance problem and a disputes problem within minutes. When protection systems trip, generation disappears, imbalance positions change, interconnector flows change and prices can move in ways that standard base-case models rarely capture. So the question isn’t just whether the engineering works, it’s whether the commercial architecture assumes that the engineering will always work.

    The difficulty is that many of the most important stability services in a power system have historically been invisible to markets because they were bundled with conventional power stations. Coal, oil, gas, nuclear and hydro generators connected to the grid, are heavy rotating equipment, which have both physical and electromagnetic coupling with the grid, delivering inertia, voltage support and fault current. The market paid for electricity, but it received grid stability more or less for free.

    But that bundle is now being unpicked because inverter-based resources – wind, solar and batteries work differently. They produce direct rather than alternating current and they are not coupled to the grid in the same way that conventional generation is…..

    …Many decarbonisation plans assume that wind, solar, batteries and grid-forming electronics will scale smoothly. Perhaps they will. But a prudent risk manager should ask what happens if the engineering takes longer than the policy timetable. What happens if assets are built before the network is ready? What happens if markets reward energy production but underpay stability? What happens if the system becomes dependent on services that have yet to be demonstrated at scale?

    We hear a lot these days about energy security. Mostly people think about this in terms of fuel supplies, or managing intermittency. Grid stability is neglected, not least because of the perceived threat to the energy transition – if we admit that wind, solar and batteries make the grid less stable, the public might be less keen on continuing with a transition they are already realising is far more expensive than they were promised.

    Unfortunately there are too few people making energy policy that understand the physics of power grids. They just about understand capacity but have no idea about voltage. Even within the sector too many people use terms such as “reactive power” without really understanding what they mean. Worse, they misunderstand them, for example, reactive power is now often assumed to be a commodity that any current bearing device and provide when that is a highly dangerous assumption.

    Not only do they not understand the risks to grid stability, they actively seek to avoid understanding it. But that’s not a luxury those of us working in the market can afford….

    …So my closing message is this.

    A wind and solar world is fundamentally different from the world for which our power grids were designed. Not just in the obvious ways of being weather dependent and intermittent.

    They are direct current resources being forced into alternating current infrastructure. This means we must look differently at every element of the grid, well beyond energy and capacity.

    We have to pay attention to local voltage support, real fault ride-through, tested inverter behaviour, dynamic stability services, synchronous condensers where needed, robust black-start plans, better data sharing, enforceable grid codes, and markets that pay for resilience before a blackout happens rather than after it.

    We need regulators who understand that reliability is not an optional extra, and system operators who are honest about physical limits rather than keeping quiet to satisfy policy ambitions.

    We need developers who treat grid-code compliance as a core asset capability, not an administrative hurdle, and risk managers who are willing to ask uncomfortable questions.

    And we need policymakers who don’t assume the laws of physics can be repealed by the legislature.

    The lights stay on not because we have enough megawatts on a spreadsheet, but because millions of devices, machines, controls and contracts perform together in real time.

    In the old system, much of that performance was supplied by the physics of synchronous machines. In the new system, it has to be designed, procured, tested and paid for.

    There’s no room for complacency.

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44. Yesterday’s by-elections may turn out to have a substantial impact on net zero. That’s because, although the Tories had a disastrous night at Makerfield – down 9 points on 2024 and losing their deposit – they were astonishingly successful at Aberdeen South where they won handsomely with a 24 point increase in their vote. And that happened because, in a city that has thrived massively because of the now under-attack oil industry, they made the vote a referendum on the net zero policy of both the UK and the Scottish governments.

    As polling guru Sir John Curtice (from whose article this morning I derived the above analysis) said:

    Last night’s by-elections will reverberate around Westminster for a long time. A challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s tenure in Number 10 now seems inevitable.

    But just as importantly, the government’s energy policy could well now find itself in the midst of a serious political storm. [My emphasis]

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45. “Everything About Net Zero is Fake

    All the claims about Net Zero from the temperature record through catastrophic warming to cheap renewables and becoming a green energy superpower are fake”

    https://davidturver.substack.com/p/everything-about-net-zero-is-fake

    Conclusions

    It is clear that everything about Net Zero is fake. The temperature record is dodgy. The climate models are faulty. The most extreme warming scenarios have been withdrawn because even the most ardent alarmists can no longer promote them with a straight face. As a result, the Climate Emergency is also fake. This means that the whole Net Zero project has been justified on a false prospectus. Not only that, the claim that Net Zero will bring cheap renewables is a lie. The idea of a green industrial revolution has been exposed as a fantasy by the reality of energy-intensive industries shutting up shop and moving abroad. Even the claim of massive reductions in emissions is fake. Nothing about Net Zero is real.

    Net Zero is a fib, wrapped in a falsehood inside a farrago of lies. Net Zero is peddled by tricksters, charlatans and shysters to scare the public into handing their money over to parasites sucking the lifeblood from the economy. It is time for reality to bite back, for Net Zero to be abandoned and the debt to truth to be repaid.

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46. Hmm … I get the distinct impression from the above article that David Turver is not over keen on net zero.

    LikeLike

47. With good reason, Robin.

    He approaches the question methodically, taking each of the arguments step-by-step. Combined with your own “Case Against…” it’s a useful summary of much that is wrong with the damaging, pointless and economically illiterate policy that is Net Zero.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

48. Another article heavily critical of climate policy has been published this morning. It’s by Tilak Doshi and is headed ‘The Oxford Institute Letting Climate Ideology Bias its Research’.

    Mark in particular will I think relate to his principle aim: to illustrate the danger, absurdity and seeming inevitability of yet another Oxford-related body accepting the tenets of climate change orthodoxy. However his comments on Western climate policy will I think resonate with many Clisceppers.

    Two extracts:

    … no country has ever successfully industrialised on the basis of non-dispatchable, intermittent wind and solar power. Not one. The historical record is unambiguous, as Vaclav Smil’s monumental work attests to. Every nation that has achieved sustained economic development has done so on the back of reliable, affordable, continuous energy — coal, oil, gas, hydro, nuclear. Given prohibitively expensive battery storage, wind and solar with their requirement for dispatchable backup power generation cannot fill that role at scale. The empirical picture is consistent: the global energy system is not transitioning away from fossil fuels on any timescale relevant to current policy debates. Demand for oil, gas, and coal continues to grow in the developing world, even as Western nations (minus Trump’s America) add renewable capacity at enormous cost to their consumers and to grid stability.

    Central to the energy transition narrative — and one that pervades the policy framing OIES adopts — is the false claim that solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels. This claim deserves to be demolished clearly and firmly, because it rests on a fundamental confusion between marginal costs and system costs. The Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) — the misleading metric used to declare renewables the cheapest option — captures only the costs of generating a unit of electricity from a wind farm or solar panel in isolation. It entirely ignores the system costs imposed on the wider grid by intermittent generators. It is indeed time to stop pretending that renewables are cheap.These system costs are substantial. They include the cost of backup generation (gas peakers, typically) that must be kept on standby for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine; the cost of grid balancing and frequency regulation; the cost of transmission infrastructure to connect remote wind and solar sites to load centres; and the cost of battery or pumped hydro storage. When these system costs are properly accounted for, the ‘cheap renewables’ claim collapses. Prof Helm makes essentially the same point on his website, noting that renewables are “capital-intensive” as they share the economics of utilities — large fixed and sunk costs — not the zero-marginal-cost miracle that their promoters claim.

    Along with David Turver’s powerful and uncompromising piece this morning (see above) and in particular the Tory win in Aberdeen South on Thursday there seem to be a lot of straws in the wind that may just possibly herald the beginnings of the end of Britain’s absurd and damaging climate policy.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

49. Here seems to be as good a place as any to refer to David Tuver’s latest article. Worth a read, as always:

    “Plug-In Solar Safety Shocker

    Safety study did not test protection devices installed in most households and of most concern to professionals and was produced by an apparently unqualified person.”

    https://davidturver.substack.com/p/plug-in-solar-safety-shocker

    LikeLike

50. Mark,

    Your latest comment here brings to mind the following news item:

    Solar panels switched off at 80 schools after fire

    “Solar panels are being switched off at about 80 schools in Suffolk as a ‘precautionary measure’ following a fire.

    Suffolk County Council announced the move after a fire at Sidegate Primary School, in Ipswich, on Wednesday.

    Panels were installed there in 2012 and the council said three fires at schools in the county over the last year were believed to be linked to the renewable energy devices.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yzl5qn385o

    And yet, despite the obvious link, the BBC were able to find an expert who was prepared to say:

    “However, this is not a renewable energy problem, but potentially one of electrical system specification, installation and maintenance.”

    Do these people ever listen to themselves? Apparently, it is not a problem with renewable energy technology, only a problem with its specification, installation and maintenance. Well, that’s alright then!

    LikeLiked by 3 people

51. It’s interesting that, just as we’re experiencing ‘unprecedented’ high temperatures in much of Europe, the temperature in the Arctic has yet to get above freezing – something that hasn’t happened since the DMI record began in 1958. Both events caused by man-made climate change I suppose.

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52. Robin G; on the same theme, you have probably seen that Paul Homewood has reported on the Greenland ice cap (for some reason I cannot post a link!). Of course the MSM has ignored it!

    Aiui, this is down to the position of the jet stream, ie: it’s weather.

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53. Thanks MikeH. Yes I’ve seen Paul’s report. The DMI story is remarkable – and surely very important: it hasn’t happened before in any year since their record began in 1958. And regarding the current ‘unprecedented’ heatwave, it’s interesting to consider what happened during the extraordinary warming event of 1911.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

54. Here’s the text of an email I sent to Paul Homewood yesterday:

    Something else that may be worthy of a separate post is the extraordinary 1911 heatwave. It was I understand primarily a UK and western European event and was ‘extraordinary’ because it began in early July and lasted until mid-September. It seems that the highest officially accepted UK temperature was 36.7°C recorded at Canterbury on 9 August, with temperatures over 30ºC occurring repeatedly over a long period. (Data here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_United_Kingdom_heatwave?utm_source=chatgpt.com (see the various links)). There were a huge number of deaths but I cannot find a reliable data source although this report mentions over 40,000 in France: https://www.cnews.fr/france/2019-06-29/en-1911-la-canicule-avait-fait-40000-morts-en-france-855671. Best – Robin

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55. 1911 mentioned at Notalot here.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

56. Thanks Jit, I missed that. And have sent a brief apology to Paul.

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57. Jo Nova has a post up about extraordinary heat and massive drought across Europe in the mid-1500s:

    https://joannenova.com.au/2026/06/horse-drawn-carriages-must-have-caused-a-megadrought-in-europe-in-1540/

    This para gives the scale of the drought: “In a 2014 paper that calls the drought a “worst case,” Pfister and his colleagues showed that rainfall was down by as much as 80 percent in some regions. Rivers like the Rhine, Elbe and Seine dried up to the point that people could wade across them on foot. The Thames was so low that the sea flowed inland and reversed the river’s direction.”

    LikeLike

58. The Spectator has this morning published what I believe is a hugely important article: ‘Revealed: the shady funding of net zero’. It’s long piece about what it describes as ‘the concerted campaign to push a ruinous net-zero agenda’. It sets out how Net Zero has given the left a new means of controlling and constraining capitalism and growth.

    Here (from an early paragraph) the authors, John Power and William Atkinson, set out what they aim to achieve:

    This is the story of the Dark Green lobby: a network of foundations, research groups and policy shops, often funded through foreign channels. It has been astonishingly successful in shaping policy, controlling debate and overruling elected governments in the courts. It has prevented the exploration of oil and gas in the North Sea, kept energy prices high and made us ever more dependent on Chinese technology.

    It proceeds, in considerable detail, to achieve precisely that, based on what seems to me to be admirably detailed research and analysed around what it describes as the green lobby’s three objectives: ‘to shape policy’, ‘to distort the energy debate by de-legitimising opponents’ and ‘to use litigation against elected governments to frustrate the will of voters’.

    I cannot easily summarise it all here. But here are its concluding three paragraphs:

    The murky nature of how Dark Green money operates is a design choice. By having funds flow from companies and individuals through foundations and charities to campaign groups and activists, the real source and motivation can be obscured. The use of ‘charities’ for political campaigning can be camouflaged with green foliage. The British left has spent years warning about malign billionaires, ‘industrial complexes’ and dodgy lobbying networks. Yet on net zero it has built such a machine itself: an internationally funded ecosystem that bankrolls thinktanks, campaign groups, media organisations and litigation in pursuit of a single political objective.

    The consequences of that work are all around us – high energy prices, industries crippled by those costs, manufacturing in retreat, cities like Aberdeen hollowed out, rising fuel poverty and higher bills for the poor, and an ever-expanding state regulating every-thing from gas boilers to air conditioning.

    Net zero has given the left a new means of controlling and constraining capitalism and growth. It has given international billionaires a cause to signal their virtue while they asset-strip and price-gouge elsewhere. When their rapacity is called into question, they can point to their climate credentials, claim benefit of clergy and know the poorest will pay the price. And now the darling of the Dark Green lobby, Ed Miliband, is on the verge of becoming the man controlling the economy. It is hard not to be impressed. And deeply depressed.

    I cannot say it’s essential reading as I don’t believe all Clisceppers subscribe to the Speccie. But, if you can access it, please do so. For example, it’s the cover piece in the magazine that will be on the newsstands tomorrow. Buy one!

    LikeLiked by 3 people

59. “NESO cutting exports during a low frequency event may come back to bite us in winter”

    https://watt-logic.com/2026/07/02/neso-cutting-exports-during-a-low-frequency-event-may-come-back-to-bite-us-in-winter/

    …The data indicate that NESO’s demand forecasts are getting less accurate with very large errors now evident – the average error this year so far is a huge 800 MW (57% of the SQSS) with the maximum error per the NESO version of INDO of 5.5 GW, just under 4 times the reserve NESO is required to hold in respect of the single largest infeed loss. I struggle to see how NESO can demonstrate it is operating the system securely on this basis and would encourage Ofgem to ask this question: can NESO evidence that it is operating the grid securely rather than simply being lucky that it hasn’t been caught out yet?

    I get the feeling that in NESO’s view the absence of a blackout is “proof” the system is secure – this is not the case. Faulty wiring in your house are not “safe” simply because your house hasn’t burned down yet, nor is running out into traffic “safe” just because you don’t get run over every time you do it.

    Over the course of a week we had two summer EMNs – never been seen before – and three instances of EU interconnector trading limits being breached. But most worrying is that the grid appears to have been unstable on 23 June and there were no warnings from NESO at all which suggests it simply didn’t see the problem coming. What’s also worrying is that NESO normalised export curtailment as a regular operational tool – after all, as no system warnings were issued, the 23 June was treated as a “normal” day, and so Emergence Assistance on interconnectors was added to the normal operational toolkit.

    This came within a week of NESO publishing the Early Winter Outlook in which it confirmed a significant reliance on imports. Of course, export curtailment isn’t just something NESO can do – all the countries which export to us could do the same. And NESO just made cutting off previously agreed flows unexpectedly part of the normal operational toolkit, so perhaps we will see other system operators doing the same and restricting our access to imports even when their grids are not notionally under stress. This puts our winter system security at greater risk, undermining the winter margin NESO claims to have (of 5.5 GW, which is coincidentally the same as the maximum DA demand forecast error so far this year…)…..

    LikeLiked by 1 person

60. Excellent piece by Tilak Doshi on his substack:

    https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzQgMgMkPJdnQBVTGkSDVxxxvklg

    He shows, very clearly, how the climate movement has become divorced from reality.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

61. Climate Skeptic has just published another excellent report by Paul Homewood: ‘Net Zero Barely Cutting Emissions, Government Figures Show
    Real carbon emissions down just 15% since 1996 – despite over £100 billion spent’

    He shows how, despite spending over £100 billion on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Government figures show that, when ‘consumption based emissions’ (emissions embedded in imports) are taken into account, we have reduced overall emissions by only 15% since 1996.

    Paul concludes:

    What these latest figures show is that Net Zero is a mirage. No matter how many wind farms we build, we will never eliminate all emissions. The only way it can be achieved is by a drastic reduction in consumption and a ban on all imports which cannot be certified as zero carbon – effectively an impossibility.

    Given all of this, why on earth are we proposing to spend hundreds of billions on an impossible dream?

    One absurdity of this is that the wind farms themselves are replete with embedded emissions and can never be certified as zero carbon.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

62. Yes, Robin, it’s worth hammering home the obvious point that those in authority blithely ignore. Of course, Jit is already on the case here:

    https://cliscep.com/2025/03/26/hello-is-that-net-zero-sorry-wrong-number/

    https://cliscep.com/2026/06/06/more-than-half-the-uks-ghg-emissions-are-imported/

    LikeLiked by 2 people

63. And I’ve been touching on it for some time. See item 3.1 of the header article.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

64. “Renewables still provided only 6% of global primary energy in 2025”

    https://clintel.org/global-primary-energy-2025/

    “Grid Costs Set to Soar Even Higher

    NESO calls for an extra £89bn of grid spending beyond 2030.”

    https://davidturver.substack.com/p/grid-costs-set-to-soar-even-higher

    LikeLiked by 1 person

65. “The end of “studies show”

    I’ve built a deterministic simulator of the British electricity system. It replays the last forty years of real weather, half-hour by half-hour, against any grid you care to describe.”

    https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/the-end-of-studies-show

    LikeLiked by 1 person

66. Robin, on 02 Jul 26 at 11:55 am you quoted from The Spectator article as follows, “The British left has spent years warning about malign billionaires, ‘industrial complexes’ and dodgy lobbying networks. Yet on net zero it has built such a machine itself: an internationally funded ecosystem that bankrolls thinktanks, campaign groups, media organisations and litigation in pursuit of a single political objective.“

    The Spectator has done a very good job highlighting what many Clisceppers will have long suspected regarding the green blob. However, the consequences for British democracy are very much wider than Cliscep’s bread and butter issues, namely climate and energy policy.

    This thread may not be the best place to explore all the ramifications of the blob’s ecosystem. However, I wanted at least to echo what you quote, namely that the green blob “… has been astonishingly successful in shaping policy, controlling debate and overruling elected governments in the courts.“

    The anti-democratic nature, influence and effects of the green blob are particularly severe in the UK, but many other Western polities are also badly affected. This is a very bad place for us all to be; but how do people of goodwill start to right the green-blob wrongs that have been inflicted upon us before the political and economic damage is too great for a meaningful recovery to be made? Perhaps the first task is to stop further democratic subversion and economic decline.

    Regards, John C.

    LikeLiked by 3 people

67. Mark – as usual, thanks for an interesting link & read. Sounds exactly what is needed to show the folly of NZ to the UK public. Notice it ends –

    “So that’s it. It’s code name on my computer is ‘grid-sim’. There’s a prize for anyone who can think of something better”.

    Sure someone here can think of a better name for a “deterministic simulator of the British electricity system” & win the prize 🙂

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68. You may well be right John. But how might we go about stopping further democratic subversion?

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69. “NESO Suffers Credibility Outage

    Whistleblowers, low frequency and low inertia incidents deal seven strikes against NESO credibility.”

    https://davidturver.substack.com/p/neso-suffers-credibility-outage

    Conclusions

    Stability of the grid and the provision of electricity-on-demand is a fundamental underpinning of modern society. Widespread interruptions to supply or even worse a countrywide blackout like that seen in Spain last year could be catastrophic.

    It is clear that experienced grid operators are so concerned about what is going on they have felt the need to go outside NESO and blow the whistle to Claire Coutinho. This is the first strike against NESO’s credibility. NESO’s attempt to denigrate the whistle blowers is another strike. It is outrageous that NESO management should claim the whistleblowers have somehow let the company down when they are clearly trying to save us all from potential catastrophe. The scope of the independent investigation also leaves a lot to be desired.

    The low frequency events on 23 June and the multiple breaches of the inertia lower limits in late June indicate that the grid operators are right to be concerned. These incidents constitute further strikes against NESO’s credibility and the “pause” in providing inertia data to obstruct independent analysis is another indictment against them. Now we learn there were sufficient concerns in the SQSS committee for three of the seven members to withhold their vote to approve a further reduction in grid inertia. Although now approved, NESO’s plan appears to rely on procuring synthetic inertia that failed to deliver enough in late June to close the gap between market inertia and the required minimum. After seven strikes, it must surely be time for some of the NESO senior management to be out.

    Wishful thinking and Net Zero ideology will not keep the lights on. Security of supply must rank higher than Net Zero. Always. It is to be hoped NESO’s credibility outage is restored before the country endures a significant power outage.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

70. The David Turver to which Mark provides a link above is extremely important and worrying. I recommend it be read in full if possible.

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71. Jaime has also penned some thoughts about this:

    https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/nesos-modelling-failed-to-anticipate

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72. Another excellent speech from Kathryn Porter:

    “Affordable and reliable energy: where to from here?”

    Affordable and reliable energy: where to from here?

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73. I should perhaps have added a few telling quotes from the speech:

    …But replacing reliable, energy-dense generation with large volumes of intermittent wind and solar is a poor use of both capital and natural resources. It requires us to build far more generating capacity than we need, duplicate it with dispatchable capacity for periods when the weather does not co-operate, expand the network to connect increasingly remote and dispersed assets, and then procure additional equipment and services to replace the essential electrical characteristics lost when synchronous power stations close.

    This isn’t an elegant transition from an old system to a better one. It’s the construction of several overlapping systems, at enormous cost, in an attempt to reproduce the reliability we already had….

    …Installed capacity is not dependable capacity, annual production is not production when electricity is needed, and a megawatt hour is not the only thing a power station provides. Policymakers have counted visible inputs while overlooking total system performance and cost.

    The central problems are intermittency, energy density and trying to force direct current technologies onto alternating current grids….

    …In Britain, we tend to talk about cold, dark and still winter weather. Demand is high, wind output can remain low for days, the solar contribution is meagre and it disappears altogether before the evening peak. That’s a serious problem…

    …whether the critical event is a cold, dark and windless winter evening or a hot, still summer evening, the underlying requirement is the same. The system has to meet demand continuously, not merely on average and not merely when the weather is helpful.

    This is why claims that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity are so misleading. They may have a low marginal cost when they happen to generate but consumers don’t buy isolated megawatt hours at the gate of a wind farm. They buy a reliable electricity service, delivered at the right voltage and frequency every second of the year.

    The relevant cost isn’t simply the cost of the wind turbine or the solar panel. It’s the cost of the whole system: generation, backup, storage, transmission, distribution, balancing, constraint management, reserve and stability services.

    If wind and solar replace dispatchable generation, what supplies the system during a prolonged period of low renewables output? If dispatchable generation has to remain available, then it hasn’t really been replaced – we’ve simply built another generating fleet alongside it and forced the original fleet to recover its costs over fewer running hours….

    And much more in similar vein, expanding on the point. Well worth a read, as ever.

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74. KP also commenting at UnHerd this morning, on our Andy’s approach to oil and gas, etc.

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75. Thanks Mark. The essence of that KP speech:

    The central problems are intermittency, energy density and trying to force direct current technologies onto alternating current grids.

    Best to read it all. Nothing new but, as always, well expressed.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

76. “Britain’s National Security Must Not Be Sacrificed to Net Zero

    Growing dependence on China shows the threat is not being taken seriously”

    https://www.climateskeptic.org/p/britains-national-security-must-not

    Written by Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, the concerns raised in this article should not be dismissed lightly.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

77. Mark: and see items 2.5 and 2.6 of the header article.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

78. On the front of today’s Times, via the BBC:

    

    That Net Zero denialism is spreading, I think.

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79. Dearlove ends his article thus, “Anticipate the moment, not too far away, where the keel grinds on the rocks and the British ship of state is holed and wrecked by Net Zero. It will be to the amazement and delight of our enemies worldwide, rubbing their eyes in disbelief at their luck.”

    I agree that the moment the British ship of the state is finally wrecked irretrievably may not be far away unless we drastically change change course soon. However, we have been taking water for some time without taking corrective action and so, contrary to Dearlove, I think our adversaries will be not the least amazed – but, as he says, they will be delighted (with our stupidity). Luck will have had little to do with it as we naively followed the range of woke-to-Net Zero policies promoted by both globalists and enemies alike. How foolish are we and especially our politicians?

    Regards, John C.

    P.S. I would have liked to compare our present state to that of Captain Cook when HMS Endeavour was holed on the Great Barrier Reef in 1770. Cook jettisoned cargo, patched the hole to slow the leak, and then ran the vessel safely ashore to effect a permanent repair. However, I fear our modern captains have not yet developed Cook’s maritime skills and so such a comparison would be both invalid and invidious to Captain Cook.

    LikeLiked by 4 people

80. “The Week in Energy — 25 July 2026

    £45 off your bill. Nothing off the cost. — A VAT cut that moves money from your bill to your taxes, a storage programme still ‘being demonstrated’, and a flexibility case DESNZ admits it can’t price.”

    https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/the-week-in-energy-25-july-2026

    LikeLiked by 1 person

81. “NESO – an accident waiting to happen”

    https://dieterhelm.co.uk/energy-climate/energy/neso-an-accident-waiting-to-happen/

    It’s very hard to know how close the electricity system recently got to a blackout. Probably not that close, but it’s also hard to know how good NESO (the National Energy System Operator) is at forecasting future demands, and even harder to know whether a system grounded on intermittent small-scale and geographically dispersed wind turbines and solar panels and reliant on interconnectors is going to be able to cope with an ever-greater focus on the firm-power demands of an increasingly digital world, with AI and data centres.

    Whatever the answers, what we do know is that NESO is tasked with achieving net zero by 2030, and if it is tightly tied into the interests of the government, there is an inherent conflict of interest between the policy job and the day-to-day management of the system. The former is ultimately political; the latter is technical.

    NESO should be objective, transparent and independent of government. When NESO checks the forewords to its documents with the secretary of state or the political advisers, and when corporate relations people are present in the control room, the alarm bells should be ringing….

    …Will there be a crisis? The answer is of course uncertain, but it is more likely as the system becomes more and more intermittent, as more and more wind and solar are added. Why? Because the system is inherently more difficult to manage, and because it needs to manage big swings in electricity generation. In the “old system” with gas, and nuclear (and coal), there was lots of firm power, so that only around 60GW of capacity was needed to meet an expected peak demand of around 45GW. But with wind and solar as the mainstays of the future system, the intermittency means that – according to NESO – the system might need around 250–300GW to meet a somewhat higher peak demand. Worse still, it will need lots of interconnectors, and interconnectors that can deliver quickly when there is a generation deficit.

    It doesn’t take much to imagine the risks. What if the French nuclear generation is offline? What if continental Europe has similar peaks and troughs of demand and supply? What happens when the gas back-up is so intermittent that it is required to be instantly available but for only 4% of the time? There are lots of risks that are “new”. They didn’t arise under the old firm-power system.

    None of this suggests that it is a mistake to have lots of renewables nor that power cuts are imminent. Having lots of renewables, and fast-tracked, is a political choice with massive system consequences, and high system costs, whatever the claims about renewables being cheap. What is true is that if this is the direction of travel, the system is inherently more uncertain and harder to forecast. Other things being equal, power cuts are more likely. All the more reason for a genuinely independent professional system operator, outside the policy remit of NESO. The sooner the design fault is remedied, the less chance of nasty surprises.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

82. See The Net Zero Machine Laid Bare – by David Turver has an interesting post. Well worth a read.

    Liked this from the comments where the author (Shane Oxer) chips in –

    “Dougie 4 – I’ve contributed online to a number of government consultations recently. They all essentially presuppose the desired outcome and invite comment about relatively trivial aspects of how to get there. There is never an opportunity to state an opinion on whether the desired outcome is actually desirable or even achievable.

    Shane Oxer – Exactly, Dougie.

    The destination is decided first, and the public is invited to comment only on the route chosen to reach it. Questions about whether the policy is affordable, technically achievable or even desirable are kept outside the consultation.

    I raised this directly in my annex for the Energy Transition discussion at Portcullis House, particularly in relation to energy security, food security, grid capacity and the loss of productive land. The evidence increasingly suggests that policy is being constructed backwards from predetermined targets, while cost, practicality and public consent are treated as secondary considerations.

    That is not meaningful consultation. It is managed consent for decisions that have largely already been made.”

    Sums things up nicely.

    PS – I’m not Dougie 4 by the way.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

83. “Climate change is real, but it is an unfortunate fact that renewables are useless

    Tim Stanley’s claim that a green energy revolution is underway does not stack up”

    https://archive.ph/Lk9zg#selection-2149.4-2153.84

    …It is often said, and Tim Stanley repeats it, that “the renewables revolution” is already under way. But is it? Global energy consumption has tripled since the early 1970s, bringing vast advances in wellbeing, but virtually all of that growth has been supplied by oil, coal and gas. Renewables, including the traditional biomass on which a significant part of the world still cooks, accounted for some 12 per cent of primary energy in 1971.

    They account for about 15 per cent now, and much of that modest proportional gain is the result of heavy subsidy in the West, over £200bn in the UK alone since 2002, as well as intense market coercion favouring wind and solar and deprecating coal and gas. The cost has been large, yet the resulting renewables output is not only modest but still, after all these years, in need of subsidy. “Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.” The mountains laboured, and brought forth a ridiculous mouse.

    The Office for Budget Responsibility’s most recent forecast puts the Renewables Obligation subsidy at £8.3bn this year and Contracts for Difference at £2.7bn, both for large-scale generators. To these could be added the Feed-in Tariff for small generators, which the OBR does not list at all. Ofgem’s latest annual report puts the scheme at just under £1.84bn.

    Approaching £13bn a year, then, in direct income support to renewables before any other costs are included. And while the OBR expects the Renewables Obligation to taper as older contracts expire, the Contracts for Difference liabilities will double, from £2.3bn in 2024-25 to £5.1bn by 2030-31. Total environmental levies rise across the same period from £10.5bn to £18.5bn.

    Instructively, the Capacity Market, which cost £1.3bn in 2024-25, is forecast to reach £4.4bn by 2030-31. This is required because subsidised, zero-marginal-cost, weather-dependent generation has driven the firm generators that guarantee security of supply out of the energy market, and that plant must now be paid to exist. This is an indirect subsidy to renewables, and there are others.

    Overall, grid balancing costs ran at some £370m a year in the early 2000s, before wind and solar, but now amount to several billion annually. Transmission charges have also climbed as the grid is extended and reinforced to connect remote wind with centres of demand. Adding the direct and the indirect together, my colleague Lee Moroney and I at Renewable Energy Foundation estimate that the total renewables subsidy cost to consumers since 2002 stands at about £223bn in 2024 prices – near £8,000 per household – running now at roughly £25bn a year.

    Renewables subsidy accounts for something like 40 per cent of the total cost of electricity supply in this country. Most tellingly of all, the subsidy per megawatt hour of renewable electricity generated has not fallen but has actually risen by about half in real terms since 2005, to around £200.

    How can 20-plus years of lavish public support have been so unsuccessful? Physics….

    …The gap between what the consumer needs and what wind and solar can supply is no mere detail; it is a fundamental difference of thermodynamic quality, and it cannot be wished away. The necessary physical order has to be supplied by something, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics is quite clear that order is never free.

    So the grid system provides the remedial correction – with gas turbines held in readiness, synchronous compensation, interconnectors, batteries, reinforced transmission, and a constant traffic of balancing actions by NESO, the system operator. That is the entropy correction, and it must be paid for. Consequently, the falling auction prices for renewables and the rising system costs are not in contradiction. The cost has been moved, not removed.

    These costs have consequences. Britain’s electricity consumption has already fallen by 23 per cent since 2005. This is not efficiency but price rationing, and total primary energy consumption is down by an alarming 30 per cent over the same period….

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84. The latest from Kathryn Porter:

    “Have the events of 23 June exposed failures in Ofgem’s approach to regulation?”

    https://watt-logic.com/2026/07/27/is-ofgem-failing-in-its-statutory-duties/

    LikeLike

85. The latest from Richard Lyon:

    “Flying Blind

    Britain’s 2050 electricity system has been modelled, costed and legislated around. Nobody has tested whether it runs. It doesn’t.”

    https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/flying-blind

    …When NESO wanted to know whether their 2030 system would actually run, it published a whole annex on operability: inertia, stability, restoration, constraint management.

    Nobody has done it for the 2050 fleet.

    Nor can you go and look for yourself. Of the seventy-six energy models the UK Energy Research Centre counts in Britain, about half publish no open information at all and only a sixth are open source. You are invited to trust the estimate and forbidden to inspect it.

    Which is one of the reasons I built GridSim. It is a simulator, not an optimiser: it chooses nothing, and asks the control room’s question of a grid that exists only on paper. It runs Britain half-hour by half-hour across forty years of real weather, 1985 to 2024, with interconnectors and internal transmission constraints in place rather than assumed away, and it publishes its scenarios, data, code and its own weaknesses — which include no plant-outage model, and most of which flatter the pathway rather than damn it.

    The obvious thing to put through it is the Committee’s 2050 Balanced Pathway, and it is not one picture among many. It is the work of the government’s statutory climate adviser, it is the fleet drawn to satisfy the budget Parliament has just made law, and it is what the network plans and the connection queue are shaped around: some ninety-five gigawatts of offshore wind by 2050, and about thirty-eight gigawatts of firm low-carbon plant the Committee declines to split between gas-with-carbon-capture and hydrogen. Its claim for that fleet could not be plainer — nuclear, dispatchable plant, batteries and interconnection together will ensure reliable supply ‘even in adverse weather years’. That is a testable sentence.

    It does not survive the test. Run the fleet against all forty years with cold driving demand rather than only wind driving supply and it comes up short in every single one of them, and not by a whisker: across the record the demand it cannot serve totals 1,751 terawatt-hours, 79 of them in the worst single year. Hand it its own assumed flexibility, better turbines and full firm interconnection, and some 495 terawatt-hours of that shortfall remains. What fails is the firm plant. Peak demand climbs past 185 gigawatts, the thirty-eight gigawatts of dispatchable capacity runs flat out, and there is nothing behind it….

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86. A pretty convincing case aganist climate hysteria, by David Turver. The zealots must be cursing his dastardly resort to using real-world data to make his case:

    “Green Empire Strikes Back

    The green empire is fighting back to protect Net Zero, but the energy jedi will prevail.”

    https://davidturver.substack.com/p/green-empire-strikes-back

    He also references an appalling tweet from Dale VInce on X:

    https://x.com/DaleVince/status/2081767267369390086

    It’s good to see lots of intelligent pushback to Dale’s nonsense.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

87. We were at a family gathering yesterday on a farm just East of Glasgow, the holder and 3 other families were farmers from Solway to Fife. As I had worked on farms during the 70’s and 80’s I was asking questions regarding my observations of what I thought were recent changes to farming practices. The regular answer was finding finding ways to earn family living cash i.e. build and sell houses, farm shops, grow more vegetables and of course solar and turbines where possible. They agreed the South of the country has been hardest hit but the records include wet harvests in recent years, the oat crop took a beating in Scotland 2 or 3 years ago. The total changes in farming money/earnings policy will show as changes in output.

    LikeLike

88. “National grid operator failing to report on risks to network and power supply”

    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/national-grid-neso-report-deadlines-ofgem-fs59ks8w7

    Britain’s grid operator has repeatedly failed to submit reports on risks and electricity planning to the energy regulator, The Times has learnt

    The National Energy System Operator (Neso) has been required to submit an annual report to Ofgem, outlining the chance of high-risk grid events and the cost of managing them, since a major blackout affected one million customers in 2019. That requirement has been suspended this year after it took so long to produce the previous year’s report.

    Neso initially submitted for Ofgem’s approval a proposal in last year’s risk report that its stability standards be watered down, but this was rejected. The regulator then held a consultation with “15 stakeholders”, a third of whom supported the watered-down standards proposal.

    Neso resubmitted the proposal in March and three of the seven members of an expert Neso panel declined to support the change. Despite that, Ofgem granted permission to run the grid with lower levels of “inertia” — a key marker of stability in the grid network.

    Ofgem exempted Neso from publishing a risk report for 2026 because it said the 2025 process had taken so long that there would be insufficient time before the 2027 report was due.

    Neso is also behind on updating its backup communications systems. It relies on fax machines that are not due to be phased out until January 2027.

    Neso has also been released from a separate requirement to publish a ten-year statement on electricity supply for this year, having failed twice to meet publication deadlines.

    Ofgem said the statement would be replaced by new strategic plans, but these have also been delayed and are now due to be published in late 2028, less than 18 months before the government’s deadline for moving almost entirely to “clean” electricity generation….

    LikeLiked by 1 person

89. What a joke. What is the point of Ofgem I wonder, if Neso can just ignore it’s report requirements.

    Maybe O/T & not related – Incident: Manchester | National Rail

    “Description – A failure of the electricity supply at a communications centre means trains across the Greater Manchester area and North West of England are being disrupted.

    Trains across the Greater Manchester area and North West of England will be cancelled, severely delayed or revised. Where trains can run, some may be severely delayed or will be revised to only run part of its route.

    Some train operators are advising do not travel. Northern are advising do not travel until 10:00 on Friday 7 August.”

    LikeLike

90. dfhunter,

    This story is a fine illustration of the dual problems of seeking to electrify everything while making the UK’s electricity supply less reliable and more prone to faults.

    The BBC’s rolling story:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cwy0d0wgy4xt

    contains this:

    …I’ve had more details from Network Rail, which manages the infrastructure, to explain exactly what’s happened to cause this disruption.

    My understanding is that there was a power supply failure in the Ardwick area of Manchester, not just affecting the railway.

    But this affected Network Rail’s Regional Operating Centre, which houses all the controls to safely operate the railway, including signalling.

    There was a delay to the back-up supply kicking in….

    So it appears to be an electricity supply issue, though it may be too early to pronounce definitively that this is so. Nevertheless, I am sure we can expect more of this sort of thing.

    LikeLike

91. Update from the BBC:

    Yesterday’s 90-second power cut in Manchester took place at 13:40 and affected more than 400 Manchester postcodes, including the main control hub for north-west England’s railways.

    Electricity distribution company SP Electricity North West said there was an “incident” involving a high-voltage cable in Harpurhey, north-east of Manchester city centre.

    The failure affected “around 5,000 customers in the Manchester area”, with all power “fully restored within 90 seconds”, a spokesperson said.

    Following the power cut, some of the systems controlling the signalling were damaged, so parts had to be replaced. That’s why it’s taken so long to fix the problem, according to our transport correspondent.

    It may have nothing to do with grid instability, but it demonstrates starkly the problems that can arise from power cuts. I think it”s beyond time that the Secretary of State concentrated on the Energy Security part of the brief.

    LikeLiked by 2 people

92. Mark; It will be very interesting to learn the details of what happened – if they are published.

    From my very limited understanding of electrical engineering, important systems usually have proper back-up resources. It appears that the control hub was not supported as it should have been.

    Also the reports of damage are puzzling. Aiui a simple loss of power should not cause damage which suggests there was maybe a voltage surge or a frequency fluctuation or similar.

    Oddly the Gridwatch Templar website shows wind power dropping suddenly from approx 8 GW to under 5 GW at the time of the incident. At the same time Biomass output kicked up from 2 GW to around 3 GW.

    Vverryy interestink, to use a saying from the past 😉

    LikeLiked by 2 people

93. The latest from the BBC:

    The origin of the problem was a 90-second power cut in Manchester. How the railway infrastructure coped and responded to that will now come under scrutiny.

    The power failure affected Network Rail’s important operations centre in Manchester. A source told me yesterday afternoon that there is a backup supply, but there was a delay to this coming into effect. Signalling was affected by this; everything had to stop. And railway systems had to be rebooted.

    The impact of mass disruption can last a long time because the railway is very busy and timetables are complex. So when trains and crews end up displaced, the knock-on effect is significant.

    LikeLiked by 1 person

94. Reminds me a bit of this from 22 March 2025 – Energy secretary calls for investigation in power outage near Heathrow – BBC News

    LikeLike

95. Front page of today’s Times, from the BBC website:

    

    LikeLiked by 1 person

96. For some reason, I can read that Times article for free. I won’t abuse the fact that I am somehow behind the paywall, so will just offer a couple of quick quotes:

    “Labour looks to row back on net zero targetsRules on electric car sales may be watered down and Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, will prioritise lower bills over ‘clean power’”

    https://www.thetimes.com/article/dd53adb8-c437-4315-9a92-02c49522f0cd

    …Ministers are planning to water down rules on electric car sales, which could mean that half the new cars sold at the end of the decade will still have petrol engines, The Times has learnt. Under current laws, by 2030 only 20 per cent can use fossil fuel. 

    Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, said the government would not stick rigidly to her predecessor Ed Miliband’s pledge to almost eliminate fossil fuels from Britain’s power supplies by 2030 if it risked higher household bills. 

    In her first big interview, Fahnbulleh said Britain faced an “affordability challenge” that the government needed to tackle….

    …Mike Hawes, the head of the SMMT, said July’s figures reflected the “industry’s huge investment in zero emission mobility”.

    But he said: “That progress cannot be sustained if manufacturers continue haemorrhaging billions in EV discounts, distorting demand to avoid even steeper penalties. We need urgent reform of the regulation, else Britain risks undermining its competitiveness.”…

    LikeLiked by 1 person

97. Coming back to that power outage…….here’s what is being done to try and make the grid more resilient (at great expense, no doubt):

    https://www.neso.energy/news/pembroke-project-marks-latest-milestone-clean-grid-stability-programme

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98. MikeH – thanks for the link, interesting that cost was never mentioned.

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99. In a long and interesting article this morning in which he says ‘I didn’t think it would be possible to get a worse Energy Secretary than Ed Miliband, but here we are’, David Turver notes that new Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh doesn’t accept that Net Zero policies and green levies are increasing energy bills. In rebuttal he cites a detailed paper he wrote for the Prosperity Institute.

    Well worth finding the time to read it in full.

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100. Apologies, Robin. I have almost simultaneously posted a link to that article under my piece about the true cost of net zero. Still, the more publicity it receives, the better – it is very important.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

101. Richard Lyon too has done a wonderful job of analyzing these horrendous subsidy costs and of making them visual (https://subsidyclock.co.uk/).

     However, perhaps the greater tragedy is that our Western politics has been so undermined by “saving the world from CO2” ideology that the underlying wastefulness of current “renewables” technology has been totally ignored despite being quantified well over 10 years ago (see Fig. 1 in Turver’s analysis of work by Weissbach et al. here: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/why-eroei-matters).

     To grasp the depth of the energy hole that we have fallen into we need look no further than the final sentence of the abstract to the Weissbach paper, “The results show that nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more effective than photovoltaics and wind power.”

     This energy crisis is indeed a very serious one, and one that we will have to work very hard to climb out of, all the more so as bad actors (or Nature’s variability) may be biding their time waiting to stress the system beyond breaking point.

     Regards, John C.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

102. No need to apologise Mark – Turver’s article is well worth two links.

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103. I missed this report (link below) by the excellent Rupert Darwall back in late January. Looking back briefly to your ‘Thirteenth’, Robin, I did not see any comments on it.

     https://www.prosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Its-Broke-Fix-It-Report-RD-22Jan26-FINAL.pdf

     Anyway, I recommend the approx. 35 page report since its subtitle is “Where British Energy Policy Went Wrong and How to Get it Right”. Policy capture is mentioned about 10 times. Also there is a very useful appendix which gives a summary timeline of UK energy policy from 1990 to 2019.

     Regards, John C.

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104. Apologies if this has been covered somewhere on Cliscep previously, but I think these points from the Darwall report (mentioned in my previous comment on this thread) are worthy of emphasis. Although they will not surprise Clisceppers the points hammer home the degree of self-harm successive governments have done to the economy for very little impact on the dreaded CO2.

     Chapter 5 is called, “Why renewables are bad for growth and productivity.”

     Page 21: “The fundamental economic fact of Net Zero and the energy transition is that it requires more inputs to produce less. This explains why electricity costs have been rising and will continue to do so until renewables are no longer being added to the grid … Net Zero’s huge capital requirements have negative macro-economic implications for the British economy …”

     Page 22: “In other words: a 20.3% increase in total [British] generating capacity generated 24.2% less electricity.”

     Page 23: “The British economy is in a macro-economic trap: it is too weak to generate the resources needed to invest for growth.”

     All this makes me think of Sun Tzu and his “Art of War” manual; AI tells me his most famous quote is, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” which our politicians could learn from even at this late hour.

     Regards, John C.

     LikeLiked by 2 people

105. An interesting article by Camilla Tominey in the Daily Telegraph:

     Miliband’s hard-Left interns now run our energy policy. What could go wrong? The retreat on electric cars is a fig leaf. Britain’s new energy ministers are net zero zealots

     Two extracts:

     … not a single minister in the seven-member DESNZ team possesses an undergraduate or postgraduate qualification in engineering or any scientific field of study. Privately educated Fahnbulleh studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, as did McCluskey. Shanks, Billington and Curran primarily studied history. White studied politics. When it comes to navigating the hard laws of physics or scrutinising highly technical data, you could say their qualifications are at net zero. They may be experts in opining the state of the UK’s carbon emissions and air quality – but understanding the mechanics of power generation? Not so much. And … when it comes to redrawing the grid at least a modicum of scientific knowledge, along with some parliamentary experience that extends beyond the last general election, would surely be preferable?

     What happens when you appoint a front bench of Miliband loyalists with no business experience, no scientific qualifications, and no parliamentary track record? You get yet more pure, unadulterated zealotry precisely when Britain desperately needs grounded, open-minded pragmatism.

     Worth reading in full if possible.

     LikeLiked by 2 people

106. “How Energy Costs are Driving the Great Stagnation

     Energy costs are a big reason why Britain has stopped growing.

     Chapter of a new book for the Institute of Economic Affairs.”

     https://davidturver.substack.com/p/energy-costs-driving-great-stagnation

     Very comprehensive, with the following headings: “Energy is Important”; “Legislating for Energy Suicide”; “Tangled Web of Subsidies”; “Hydrocarbon Taxes”; “High Electricity Prices”; “Impact of Renewables Subsidies”; “Extra Costs of Renewables”; “Declining Energy and Electricity Consumption”; and “Impact on Growth and Productivity”.

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107. Another important article by David Turver

     Headed ‘How Energy Costs are Driving the Great Stagnation Energy costs are a big reason why Britain has stopped growing’

     Here’s his conclusion:

     Energy is the foundation stone of modern economies as demonstrated by there being no examples of rich countries that are low energy consumers. The UK has imposed a swathe of legislation that has increased the regulatory burden and made energy scarce and expensive. In particular, the focus on expensive and intermittent renewables and punitive taxes on hydrocarbons has given the UK the most expensive industrial electricity prices in the developed world.

     As a result, energy and electricity consumption are in a steep downtrend and the economy is flatlining. Energy consumption in the industrial sector is plummeting and many of the most productive sectors in the economy are shrinking. We need look no further than insane energy policy to find out why Britain has stopped growing.

     Well worth reading.

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108. Apologies for the duplication. But having the full text of Turver’s conclusion may be helpful.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

109. John C: thanks for your links to that excellent Darwall report. His chapter 5 is of course making the same point as David Turver’s detailed article published this morning. Your reminder of the famous Sun Tzu saying seems very appropriate. Is there any hope that our ‘leaders’ might recognise that? I think Camilla Tominey has the answer.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

110. At 7.15 this morning: gas 59%, solar 2%, wind 3%, hydro 2%, nuclear 17%, biomass 11%, interconnectors 6% and price £203.89/MWh.

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111. Working well, isn’t it?

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112. “CLAIRE COUTINHO: Miliband ditched Net Zero report knowing it would expose his fantasy promises”

     Mail link.

     The report, launched with bugles prior to the election and cancelled afterwards, has now been completed. Though some might surmise it gave the answer its commissioner wanted.

     I really object to the way Coutinho adopts the green language – “Our electricity would still be nearly 80 per cent clean” – which cedes moral authority before an argument is made. Anyway, the report claims that there are savings to be had by not rushing headlong into renewables. The trouble is, those who believe that will believe it, and those who don’t, won’t.

     I haven’t looked for the actual report yet.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

113. Meanwhile, someone has noticed that if you subsidise renewables, gas becomes unprofitable (because of its lower utilisation rate). The answer (and you can hear a ping as a lightbulb goes on, or probably explodes) is to subsidise the gas, too. Then everyone’s a winner.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

114. At 7.50 this morning: gas 44%, solar 4%, wind 18%, hydro 2%, nuclear 17%, biomass 10%, interconnectors 5% and price £ £165.80/MWh

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115. Jit: that gas subsidy story can be found HERE

     ‘Taxpayers face paying billions to subsidise the UK’s gas supply as Ed Miliband’s net zero crusade drives energy firms to pull investment from Britain.‘

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116. Those who can’t get past the Telegraph paywall might find this useful:

     https://archive.ph/vmQTt

     As Jit notes, if this story it is true, it demonstrates extraordinary stupidity on the part of the politicians in charge. Their “reasoning” seems to go something like this: we need to decarbonise, therefore we need to make gas more expensive and we must subsidise renewable electricity. Consequence – gas is becoming more expensive and the people who supply it aren’t interested in ensuring its supplies any more. But we need gas and are going to do so for many years to come. We need a solution. I know, let’s subsidise it.

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117. The Mail article without being bombarded by adverts or having to subscribe:

     https://archive.ph/5pxVs

     Perhaps I am a true believer in the devastating cost of net zero, so my only issue with this is that it underestimates the true cost by a significant factor (I reckon it’s wrong by a factor of 9 or 10).

     LikeLiked by 1 person

118. Calls to mind the “If it stops, subsidise it” part of that famous quote by Reagan. You could use this example as a case study, in fact.

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119. Another railway power outage. More chaos:

     “CrossCountry cancels ‘almost all’ UK services after power cut”

     https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9w9y0lz5go

     Trains across the UK have been cancelled by rail operator CrossCountry after a power cut at its control centre.

     The power outage started in Birmingham on Saturday and as a result, many of the systems used to manage the railway are unavailable, the operator said.

     Cancellations are affecting most routes, from Glasgow to Penzance and Leeds to Manchester, until further notice because of “significant and unforeseen disruption”, said CrossCountry, ranked Britain’s worst rail operator, in June….

     LikeLiked by 1 person

120. Can’t blame this one on a heatwave.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

121. Strangely that BBC article makes no mention of them trying to find out why the “power cut at its control centre” happened. Wonder why?

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122. “We’ll never invest in Britain again, says FTSE oil giant

     Hunting chief executive claims UK’s ‘crazy’ politics has harmed country’s reputation”

     https://archive.ph/uaOeq#selection-2225.4-2229.88

     The boss of one of Britain’s oldest energy companies has said it will never invest in the UK again because of the country’s “crazy” politics.

     Jim Johnson, chief executive of Hunting, said the UK had become uninvestable and warned Andy Burnham’s hopes of rebuilding industry were doomed because of punitive oil and gas taxes and unpredictable policy decisions.

     It comes after Hunting, one of the London Stock Exchange’s oldest listed companies, shed dozens of staff and shut down 80pc of its UK operations last year.

     Mr Johnson said: “The reality is that Britain has become uninvestable. Everything your politicians have done has shown me that we cannot trust them. So why would I make a big investment here?

     “It will never happen – the UK has become less investable than Venezuela.”…

     LikeLiked by 1 person

123. “Firms scramble for battery power in Spain and Portugal”

     https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjrg10j721jo

     …Firms across Europe have been switching to electricity from fossil fuels for their industrial needs, encouraged by subsidies from EU funds.

     While that is helping bring down emissions of climate-warming gases, it has also made firms more vulnerable to power cuts.

     And in Spain and Portugal that threat was made painfully clear last year.

     On both sides of the border, firms are looking for ways to avoid disruption.

     “The industrial sector has been one of the first to look at storage systems, since it can’t have its production drop off too abruptly,” says Miguel Matias, founder of the Portuguese energy services company Self Energy, headquartered in the UK.

     “A backup for a few hours, or even minutes, might guarantee that machines don’t get damaged,” he says….

     …Today, Bodegas says customers are demanding more advanced capabilities, such as seamless backup, meaning the switch from grid to backup occurs instantaneously and without any noticeable interruption.

     This is particularly critical for sensitive environments such as hospitals and data centres.

     Delivery times are also crucial for buyers, currently under tight deadlines linked to EU funding programmes. Battery companies are being pressed to meet increasingly shorter delivery dates, Bodegas says….

     …Portugal’s Vista Alegre, the oldest and largest porcelain maker in the Iberian country, decided to install energy storage systems in 2022, seizing the opportunity of abundant funds from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Plan.

     “The blackout ultimately served, above all, to accelerate this process,” Emília Encarnação of Vista Alegre explains. The company’s facilities in the coastal city of Ílhavo, in the province of Aveiro, are now equipped with modules with around 2MWh of storage capacity.

     “The blackout caused some irreparable losses, particularly at the plants operating on a continuous production basis, where sudden power interruptions have a direct impact on production processes,” Encarnação recalls….

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124. “Renegotiating British Energy Policy: An international comparison of energy costs and policies”

     New Civitas report. I haven’t read it yet. The headline is that the UK has more expensive energy than any comparator country.

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125. Rare sense at the Guardian – as ever, from Nils Pratley:

     “Labour’s energy bills crisis is getting worse. Political honesty is essential

     Ofgem and ministers should be transparent about why energy bills for households are expected to stay stubbornly high”

     https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2026/aug/26/labour-energy-bills-crisis-political-honesty-essential

     Another Ofgem energy price cap day, another increase in bills. Miatta Fahnbulleh, the new energy secretary, can blame the usual culprit on Wednesday – the fossil fuel price “rollercoaster”, given a shove this time by Donald Trump’s Middle East misadventure. Higher gas prices will indeed be the main quarter-on-quarter reason why bills stand at a three-year high on a unit basis.

     But there is more to the tale on a longer view. Even when the gas rollercoaster dips downwards, the energy industry’s medium-term projections suggest bills will not fall meaningfully….

     …Political dangers for Labour are mounting. The Conservatives, endorsing a “cheap power” report from centre-right thinktank Onward, last week laid out an alternative post-2030 script that imagines more nuclear (beyond Labour’s ambitions) and a bigger role for gas in generation while keeping the installed renewables.

     Many energy analysts have criticised the cost assumptions behind the claim that such a set-up would save consumers £320bn by 2050 (we’ll come to those assumptions another day). But Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, was still right to complain that the government never published a “full system cost” analysis – one that takes full account of the back-up, balancing and extra grid costs created by using more weather-dependent generation. Again, there is a need for straight transition accounting: you can’t just count the gains from using less gas.

     Fahnbulleh is in a tight spot. In a less fiscally constrained world, the chancellor would shift more transition costs into general taxation as many other European countries do. If John Healey can’t dig deep, her argument can no longer be that a clean power system is straightforwardly “cheap” for consumers but that it is cheaper than the alternatives eventually.

     She will also have to tell those Labour backbenchers calling for a recommitment to the 95% clean power target by 2030 that it ain’t happening. Building delays mean the outcome will be more like 80%-85%. The priority is to keep costs under control. Clean power is not a free lunch, as also argued here on occasions. But the political challenges would be made easier with greater transparency.

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126. The Civitas report is thin on discussion, but the basic result is confirmation of what we already know: that the UK pays a lot more for energy than comparable countries. The report seems to be part of a series, and the next is to analyse the contribution of energy costs to the UK’s deindustrialisation.

     Table 7.2 of the report shows the headline difference in costs across the 11 countries, and it shows that not only is industrial electricity more expensive here than elsewhere (6X higher than China, for example), but also so is gas (though not by any means at these crazy ratios).

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127. An important post by Kathryn Porter (outlining her report published today) about how Government policy, and in particular the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) are driving oil refineries out of the UK, thereby destroying a vital UK industry and increasing emissions:

     Green Taxes Are Decimating British Industry – And My New Report Proves It We’ve nothing to show for the damage except high energy prices and offshored emissions

     LikeLiked by 2 people

128. Robin, one of my great hopes (but not expectations) from Brexit was that carbon taxes would be dismantled since, as Kathryn Porter rightly says, they are and have been decimating British industry. However, as prof. Dieter Helm has pointed out in his publication ‘British energy policy – not cheap, not home-grown and not secure’ from 3rd November 2025:-

     “There have been proposals to reduce or abolish carbon prices, notably on electricity generation. This is an extremely complex issue, not least because of the impacts via the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and the EU CBAM (carbon border adjustment mechanism). Though the EU is itself reconsidering the scale of the carbon costs, and recalibrating the European Green Deal, as long as there is a carbon price on the other side of the interconnectors, simply removing carbon prices in Britain will cause serious issues to arise.” (Sorry but I do not currently have the link for this quote.)

     Perhaps Kathryn’s report deals with this issue.

     In haste. Regards, John C.

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129. Found it! …

     https://dieterhelm.co.uk/energy-climate/british-energy-policy-not-cheap-not-home-grown-and-not-secure/

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130. “Net Zero is leaving Britain defenceless”

     Spiked link. By NZW’s Maurice Cousins.

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131. Interestingly the SNP is now calling for windfall taxes on oil and gas production to be ended.

     Brings to mind the quote attributed to Ayn Rand: “You can ignore reality but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality”. Those consequences are now looming large.

     LikeLiked by 2 people

132. An article by John Gummer in the FT today:

     Tory attempts to repeal the UK Climate Act are tin-eared Summer’s droughts and wildfires demonstrate the need to stick to cross-party consensus on policy and to UK strategy on net zero

     Unfortunately I can’t open it – it looks like fun. Can anyone here access the FT?

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133. Nope, but searching for Lord Deben on the web led me to this:

     “The Independent’s acclaimed Climate 100 List returns for 2026 – and we need your help”

     The list will be unveiled alongside The Independent’s Climate 100 event, held in New York on September 22 and hosted by The Independent’s Editor-in-Chief, Geordie Greig. It will feature a keynote speech by former British foreign secretary David Miliband.

     Independent link. [I used to read this newspaper regularly.]

     What do they need help with? Dosh? No – at least, not here. They want nominations of climate heroes, probably because they can’t fill a list of 100 without copying’n’pasting last year’s list, or the year before’s. Just fill in the form, and boom, your neighbour could be on a list that no-one cares about [how many could name anyone from last year’s list?]

     LikeLiked by 2 people

134. “What To Do About Net Zero

     My speech to the Reform fringe.”

     https://davidturver.substack.com/p/what-to-do-about-net-zero

     …There are considerable legal barriers to achieving the changes we need to deliver cheap and abundant energy. A new Great British Energy Reform Bill will be required to repeal or neuter existing legislation. This is not the time or place to list all of the offending legislation, but at the very least the Climate Change Act of 2008 will need to be amended and/or repealed; substantial parts of the various Energy Acts from over the years will have to go; many clauses in the various Finance Acts and pieces of legislation on Pensions will need to be repealed too.

     In closing, Britain has maintained what can only be described as a suicidal energy policy for at least the past two decades. It is an inescapable fact that energy costs must be rapidly reduced to unleash the potential of the economy and get growth going. In addition, domestic energy supplies must be fully exploited to improve energy security.

     National turnarounds, like corporate turnarounds, require a willingness to face the truth, bold changes and fast action. It is time for Reform to undo the damage of the past twenty years.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

135. “The Week in Energy — 6 September 2026

     The week the small print stopped agreeing with the press line”

     https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/the-week-in-energy-6-september-2026

     LikeLike

136. “EU faces 300,000 factory job cuts as China ‘colonises’ supply chains, industry warns

     Protest using 10 coffins to symbolise struggling manufacturing industry to take place in Brussels”

     https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/06/eu-factory-job-cuts-china-colonises-supply-chains-industry-warns

     Job losses in EU manufacturing will rapidly increase unless Brussels stops the “colonisation” of industry by Chinese component manufacturers, a leading industry trade body has warned.

     Eurometal predicts 300,000 job losses in manufacturing in the rest of 2026 because of expanding competition from China, which is now enjoying a record €1bn-a-day trade surplus with the bloc…..

     ….Among the conditions allowing the “virus” to spread is the increasing costs borne by European metal manufacturers with tariffs on steel imports and carbon emissions taxes for those high-energy sectors. [my emphasis].

     Components manufactured in China face none of those levies….

     LikeLiked by 1 person

137. The AI tells me that the EU’s CBAM is well on track (reporting beginning in February). The geniuses in Brussels don’t seem to realise that they are going to wreck any chance that their car manufacturers could export their way out of trouble. It will also, of course, remove the option for consumers to buy cheap Chinese cars, because these will be subject to the tax. So the folk of the EU, and the UK, who is in it for the ride, will face inflation and declining living standards, by design.

     I can’t quite understand why anyone would vote for that. Did they?

     LikeLiked by 1 person

138. It appears also that the UK’s mini-me CBAM is coming into force on 1 January. That went under the radar somewhat.

     LikeLike

139. “Net zero grid upgrades drive a £200bn energy industry civil war

     Rising network upgrade fees push up bills as projects suffer HS2-style cost inflation”

     https://archive.ph/xB2iH#selection-2225.4-2229.89

     The subsea cable known as Eastern Green Link 1 will slip into the water at Torness, east of Edinburgh, before resurfacing near the coastal town of Seaham, County Durham.

     It is often referred to as a “bootstrap” by energy insiders. But that doesn’t do the project’s scale justice.

     Developers say that by 2029 the 120-mile electricity “superhighway” will help unlock Scotland’s renewable energy reserves by transporting enough power for two million homes southward.

     At an estimated cost of £2.5bn, it is probably one of the most expensive infrastructure schemes you’ve never heard of – perhaps because it lacks the visibility of a railway, road or bridge.

     Yet amid severe delays and escalating costs, Eastern Green Link 1 and schemes like it are now beginning to attract more attention.

     The cable and its sister project, Eastern Green Link 2, were originally meant to cost a combined £3.4bn, a figure that has since doubled to an estimated £6.8bn.

     Elsewhere, some grid-improvement schemes have already seen their projected budgets balloon by nearly 500pc.

     Against the backdrop of a wider £200bn upgrade under way across Britain’s power network, critics fear that it risks becoming a fresh HS2-style fiasco for the Government, with millions of households and businesses left to pick up the tab.

     “This is going to make HS2 look like a slick, well-executed operation,” one worried energy industry source says….

     LikeLiked by 1 person

140. “Speed up electricity grid upgrade or else face higher bills, warns UK watchdog

     National Audit Office says failure to implement £70bn modernisation would also hold back economic growth”

     https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/11/speed-up-electricity-grid-upgrade-or-else-face-higher-bills-warns-uk-watchdog

     Consumers will pay higher energy bills unless the UK government speeds up work on a vast programme of upgrades to the electricity grid to enable the switch to renewables, the public spending watchdog has warned.

     The National Audit Office (NAO) said that without faster action the extra costs associated with managing the ageing power network, which are ultimately passed on to the public, could reach £7.8bn a year by 2030.

     A £70bn programme is under way to modernise Great Britain’s network of pylons, overhead lines and substations so that more power can be carried from wind and solar farms and other clean energy sources to homes.

     Labour has said its plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030 will keep consumer bills lower than they would otherwise be, but the NAO said that if the planned upgrades did not happen fast enough then bills could rise instead.

     Of the 80 projects it said were needed to meet the target, just 16 are finished and most are in their early stages.

     Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said the planned upgrades would “test systems not designed for activity at this pace or scale”.

     He added “Value for money now depends on delivery. Failure to implement these necessary grid upgrades will hamper economic growth as well as increase consumer bills.”…

     The NAO Report, and the gist of this Guardian article, is aimed at the rising cost of constraints payments. The problem is it reckons that if we accelerate spending of £70 billion on grid enhancements, that will (by eliminating or greatly reducing constraints payments) save every household £30 per annum on their electricity bills. But who will pay for the £70 billion? That would be the electricity consumers. And it will cost them a lot more than £30 per annum. We’re damned if they do, and we’re damned if they don’t.

     LikeLike

141. The ever-reliable Nils Pratley tells a much more realistic story than the optimistic version in the Guardian’s main article:

     “The ‘great grid upgrade’ is off track – ministers should spell out the risks for bills

     National Audit Office calls for greater transparency on £70bn programme that is running over budget and behind schedule”

     https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2026/sep/11/grid-upgrade-electricity-transmission-bills-nils-pratley

     It’s an open secret in the energy industry that “the great grid upgrade” – the £70bn programme to rewire the nation’s electricity transmission network to enable clean power by 2030 – is running over budget and behind schedule, and may end up costing consumers and businesses more in their bills than advertised.

     How far behind? How much more? It is impossible to get straight answers from the bodies overseeing the massive spending programme, which may continue at an even greater scale into the 2030s. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnz), its in-house body, the National Energy System Operator (Neso), and Ofgem, the supposedly independent regulator, publish acres of information on narrow matters, but none provides a clear big-picture assessment: how is the grid upgrade really going?

     Thank goodness, then, for Friday’s National Audit Office (NAO) report. The watchdog has unearthed a few hard statistics and demanded far greater official transparency. Prime minister Andy Burnham, in cost-of-living mode, should take note: trouble is brewing.

     Of the 88 grid upgrade projects originally identified, 12 have already been completed (good news) and 12 have been subsumed into newer work (fair enough). But of the 56 deemed “essential” for meeting the government’s target of clean power by 2030, the NAO says 50 are “forecast to be delivered after their optimal date”. Of those, only 22 are forecast to be less than a year late; the rest are further behind schedule, with one put at between six and seven years behind.

     The “optimal” date, in this context, is the date required not only to fulfil the 2030 clean power deadline but also to keep a lid on the maddening “constraint costs” – payments to Scottish windfarms to turn off when the grid can’t handle their output, plus payments to southern gas-fired generators or interconnecters to France to start supplying electricity.

     On one windy day alone this week, such constraint payments reached £29m. The tally for the whole of 2026 is virtually guaranteed to top £2bn. The big worry is that the upper end of Neso’s forecast for 2030 – a colossal £7.8bn, all going on bills – might be realised if the delays worsen….

     …But nailing down what it implies for that original £70bn figure, and thus bills, remains impossible. Nobody, it seems, is willing to put the numbers together. This passage from the NAO report is damning: “Publicly available information gives a partial and inconsistent view of progress towards upgrading the grid. Coverage is incomplete and key delivery risk metrics are missing. As a result, the available datasets cannot be reconciled with each other or the data we received from Ofgem, Neso and Desnz, and they do not give a clear view of overall portfolio delivery status.”…

     …The political danger for the government is that, sometime around 2028, the delays and cost inflation will become impossible to ignore. Even some pro-renewables enthusiasts, who fully back the government’s stance that the upgrade is the only way to bring down electricity bills eventually, warn of a backlash if £70bn becomes a much larger number. Ministers should do themselves a favour: be open.

     Schadenfreude only goes so far. It doesn’t give me much pleasure to be able to say “we told you so”.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

142. Ross Clark has an article in the Speccie titled Why green zealots want to drop ‘net zero’. Unfortunately they – the Commons Select Committee on energy security and net zero – are not referring to the policy but to the term. As Ross says:

     They complain that the term has become a ‘lightning rod for opposition to climate action’, and that it has become a ‘distraction’, even though it describes perfectly what the government is – ruinously – trying to achieve. They want the policy to continue, but under a different name – though possibly not ‘net stupid’, which is Reform UK’s preferred term. Presumably it would be known by some propagandistic euphemism or other. How about a Sovietesque ‘glorious transition’?

     Worth a read – if you can access it.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

143. It’s interesting that the term Net Zero is becoming problematic, and very possibly toxic. I think that speaks volumes.

     LikeLike

144. It does. Here’s Clark’s concluding paragraph:

     Trying to rename net zero is an attempt to regain control of a narrative which is collapsing: that eliminating net zero will bring us cheaper energy, more jobs, and just about everything else you could possibly want. It is a sign of desperation which will fool no one.

     LikeLiked by 2 people

145. The Spectator has this morning published another article – Rebranding net zero is daft – about that select committee report. It includes some interesting citations from the report:

     ‘[The term net zero] increasingly acts as a distraction from the broader aims of the energy transition and as a lightning rod for opposition to climate action. As part of efforts to communicate the energy transition effectively, the term net zero should be dropped from the department’s name and reduce [sic] its use in regular communications and public statements, instead focusing on wider societal benefits.’

     ‘We were told that this ambition has not been consistently translated into a clear and compelling public narrative about how these goals were derived and decided and why these goals matter in practice or about how they can be achieved’.

     ‘We would like to see social media platforms encouraged or mandated to emphasise credible information sources over those working to engender outrage and misinformation.’

     Words fail me – for once. Perhaps someone else could help?

     However I liked one comment:

     ‘Imagine if politicians had done this in times past, to cover their nefarious activities: ‘We need to re-brand “slavery”. It’s too obvious. How about extra-voluntary unpaid work experience?”.’

     LikeLiked by 2 people

146. Robin,

     This looks like the classic reaction of a government that realises it is losing the argument. Rather than re-examine the validity of its proposition, it starts to question why those who are in the wrong are winning the debate.

     LikeLiked by 2 people

147. All these articles about AI have induced me to have a conversation with ChatGPT about the government’s net zero and renewable energy plans. It started off by being quite defensive, but as is the way with AI, a few detailed questions saw it shifting its ground, with the conversation ending with the following from ChatGPT:

     1. “Limited Gas” is actually an Enormous Fleet kept on Standby

     The UK is not dismantling its gas power plants. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) explicitly mandates keeping 35 GW of unabated gas capacity fully operational as a strategic reserve.

     The Difference: Instead of burning gas 24/7, these plants will sit idle most of the year, running at just a 5% load factor.

     • The Risk: Keeping a massive fleet of gas plants open just to run them during winter lulls or dunkelflutes is financially inefficient. The government must pay operators capacity market subsidies simply to stay available, adding hidden costs to bills. Furthermore, The Guardian reported warnings that declining North Sea fields make the UK highly reliant on gas imports from Norway and international LNG tankers to feed this backup fleet during cold winter snaps.

     2. Nuclear Power is Bottlenecked by Time, Not Choice

     The plan’s reliance on a limited 3.5 to 4.1 GW of nuclear power by 2030 is born out of engineering delays rather than a desire to avoid it.

     Civil nuclear projects take over a decade to build. Hinkley Point C has suffered multiple construction delays, and older reactors are reaching the end of their operational lifespans.

     The UK cannot logically use nuclear to solve immediate 2030 goals because new reactors physically cannot be built that fast. Renewables are heavily favored because wind and solar can be deployed in 1–3 years to meet immediate carbon targets.

     3. Why Critics Call the Plan “Hugely Problematic”

     Even with gas plants on standby, the true vulnerabilities of the UK’s high-renewable framework center on three core industrial bottlenecks:

     • The Transmission Crisis: To make this work, the UK must build twice as much high-voltage grid infrastructure by 2030 as it did over the entire previous decade. This requires thousands of new pylons and subsea cables. Local opposition, planning bottlenecks, and supply chain delays mean the grid upgrades may not be finished in time.
     • The Scale of Battery Upgrades: The roadmap dictates growing utility battery storage (BESS) to 23–27 GW and long-duration storage (LDES) to 5–8 GW. Pumping that much capital into storage infrastructure within a narrow timeframe risks supply-chain shocks and drives up consumer network charges.
     • Interconnector Over-Reliance: The UK plans to lean on 12–14 GW of subsea interconnectors to import electricity from continental Europe when British weather fails. If a massive weather system causes a simultaneous dunkelflaute across France, Germany, and the UK, every European nation will try to hoard its own power, threatening UK energy security.

     Summary

     The plan is highly problematic if viewed as an effortless, cheap transition. It avoids blackouts by keeping a massive, underutilised gas fleet on standby—paid for by consumer bills—while rushing an unprecedented grid expansion. It is a high-stakes race against time, where any delay in building cables or securing backup gas imports leaves the system incredibly exposed.

     LikeLiked by 2 people

148. “Open Letter to Martin Lewis

     Time to consider the Net Zero impact on electricity bills.”

     https://davidturver.substack.com/p/open-letter-to-martin-lewis

     LikeLiked by 1 person

149. The latest from the excellent Richard Lyon:

     “The Week in Energy — 20 September 2026

     The week the Bank put this winter’s bill in writing.”

     https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/the-week-in-energy-20-september-2026

     The bill rise is printed in a letter and dated. The help — the cables, the smart heaters, the auction savings — is late, small, or depends on work not yet started. And the one cost the state can name to the penny is the one it gives back, to companies, not to you.

     LikeLike

150. “Sir Jim Ratcliffe suspends production at key UK plants blaming high gas prices”

     Sir Jim said: “We are being forced to mothball some of the most efficient plants in Europe, but with gas prices now 12 times the level in the US and 8 times that of China, we just cannot compete.”

     BBC link.

     LikeLike

151. Jit, thanks for the link. That article is well worth a read. It contains lots more, including this:

     …The facilities produce raw materials used to make pharmaceuticals, clothing, cosmetics, detergents, construction materials and military explosives in the UK and Europe. Gas is a key ingredient in production.

     Ineos said the move will affect up to 1,000 of its staff, of whom 245 work directly at the site.

     But the BBC understands workers across the sites will be kept on while Ineos tries to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) directly from the US at lower prices – which could take up to a year – or waits for gas prices to go down….

     LikeLike

152. More job losses, caused in part (though not entirely) by high energy costs:

     “Job losses as glass company enters administration”

     https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqn0j7wj9z9xo

     Nearly 300 jobs are being lost after a major glass manufacturer entered administration.

     Clayton Glass is to close its headquarters in Harelaw, County Durham, with 189 workers being made redundant.

     A further 101 jobs will be lost at the company’s sites in Blackburn and North Lanarkshire….

     …Administrators Interpath said the business had been hit by high energy and raw material costs, as well as an extended period of low demand….

     LikeLike

153. “Why the Renewable Energy Transition is Doomed to Fail

     Politicians make many grand claims for renewable energy. But simple arithmetic shows the ‘energy transition’ is doomed to fail, says Richard Lyon, whose new book, The Energy Trap, is out today.”

     https://dailysceptic.org/2026/09/24/why-the-renewable-energy-transition-is-doomed-to-fail/

     LikeLiked by 1 person

154. I bought the Kindle version of Richard Lyon’s book this afternoon It’s quite short, very readable – and I’ve read it. I thought I would know it all and that it would serve to reinforce that understanding. But that’s not what happened. There’s one major reality that I simply hadn’t appreciated: we passed peak oil several years ago and what’s left is depleting fast. The consequences of that are extremely significant and that’s why the final part of his book in which he deals with how we can cope is very different from what I might have expected.

     Highly recommended.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

155. OK Robin, you got my attention, now give me a clue 🙂

     LikeLike

156. dfh: isn’t ‘we passed peak oil several years ago‘ an adequate clue?

     LikeLiked by 1 person

157. OK – a little more detail. Richard Lyon devotes Part III of his book to a major problem of which I wasn’t aware. It’s headed:

     The Depleting Inheritance

     In which we discover that the one-time endowment of fossil sunlight is running out faster than anyone in authority will admit.

     A key extract:

     Economic oil – the cheap conventional oil that built the modern world – peaked around 2006. The International Energy Agency’s ‘World Energy Outlook 2010’ acknowledged that conventional crude production had reached its maximum and would never return to that level. The event passed almost without public comment. It should have been the most important news story of the century.

     If that’s correct – and I’m pretty sure it is – the energy conundrum is very different from what I’d imagined.

     LikeLike

158. If you look at total production, the present level seems to be about 10% higher than 2006.

     

     LikeLiked by 1 person

159. If I remember Richard Lyon’s figures correctly then the annual rate of consumption of oil is currently about 15 times greater than the annual rate of discovery of new oil reserves … which, to the extent that oil is involved, is part of the reason why the grid-wide use of wind and solar renewables (using current technologies) is such a very bad idea; their EROEI or “energy return on energy invested” ratio [see Note 1] is very poor compared to, say, nuclear power and conventional fossil fuel systems [Ref. 1].

     There are, as the Chinese are very well aware, other fossil fuels besides oil which can be used in the production of the aforementioned “renewables” and which, at current consumption rates, will not run out so quickly (e.g. coal [see Note 2]). And so old King Coal may become king once again in those countries which have not so definitively turned their back on it as the UK.

     Note 1. EROEI is the ratio, measured over the asset lifetime, of the asset’s energy output to the total energy consumed by the asset in the three stages of its life cycle (namely construction, productive lifetime, plus dismantling/disposal).

     Note 2. AI suggests that oil reserves will last about 50 years and coal reserves about 100 to 150 years.

     Reference 1. https://davidturver.substack.com/p/why-eroei-matters especially Fig. 1, and drill down to the original paper by Weissbach et al.

     Regards, John C.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

160. Another extract:

     The danger is not that any single barrel becomes too expensive, but that our buffer of cheap, conventional crude is shrinking. As that cheap base pulls back, the expensive sources it was carrying drag the global average upwards. At some point the average cost exceeds what the economy can bear. Growth stalls. Demand falls – and with it, the price. But when the price drops, the expensive oil that was only marginally viable at the higher price is no longer viable at all. It stops being produced – not gradually, but suddenly.

     Yes other fossil fuels are becoming increasingly important. But accessible gas will not last for ever – far from it – and coal has limited, although important, applications.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

161. And another extract:

     Gas is in a different position. Proven reserves stand at roughly fifty years of current consumption. This is a significant buffer – but it is not a solution to the oil problem, because oil and gas are not interchangeable. Oil is a liquid. It powers virtually all transport: almost every car and truck, every ship, every aircraft. It is the feedstock for plastics, pharmaceuticals and the entire petrochemical supply chain described in Part ii. Gas can heat buildings, generate electricity and provide some petrochemical feedstock, but it cannot fuel a truck fleet, fly an aircraft or replace naphtha – the petroleum feedstock on which the chemical industry depends – in the steam crackers that produce plastics, pharmaceuticals and most industrial chemicals. The depletion of oil is therefore not softened by the abundance of gas. It is a separate crisis, running on its own clock.

     LikeLiked by 3 people

162. Robin – thanks for the reply & giving additional quotes.

     My “give me a clue” comment was poorly worded, as It was aimed at “that’s why the final part of his book in which he deals with how we can cope is very different from what I might have expected”.

     Still not sure how “he deals with how we can cope” has be answered, or have I missed something?

     On a tangent, this post by Chiefio may be of interest/relevant – Hydrogen Wells for Power? Who knew… | Musings from the Chiefio

     LikeLike

163. No dfh you haven’t missed anything. I’ve only dealt above with the aspect of his book – that we’ve already passed ‘peak oil’ – that was for me a totally unexpected surprise. I’ve said nothing about how we might cope with that. I’ll have a look at his concluding chapter tomorrow and see if I can find a paragraph or so that summarises his position.

     Thanks for the Chiefio link. Interesting.

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164. Richard Lyon was interviewed on Planet Normal a day or two ago. He’s on from mebbe 22 ish minutes.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

165. Jit – thanks for that link, the whole vid was worth a view & answerers some of my questions to Robin.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

166. I watched Richard Lyon on Planet Normal. And was disappointed. As I expected the issues he raised were sound and interesting, but his presentation was poor: he kept swivelling about on his chair, waving his hands around and and nodding his head. He could well emulate Kathryn Porter who looks steadily at the camera and stays still – hence you focus on what she’s saying and not on what she’s doing.

     A pity: the great merit of his book is that he’s able to communicate quite complex issues plainly and convincingly – a rare skill.

     LikeLike

167. dfh: I said yesterday that I’d have a look at the concluding chapter of Richard Lyon’s book and see if I could find a paragraph that summarises his position. Well that proved almost impossible because his key message is found in his chapters v, vi and vii. However I’ll give it a try. Remember the book (note its title) is about our depleting inheritance of fossil fuels and his message is about how we can cope with that. And we do it, he says, by means of ‘managed descent’. So here’s a relevant extract that may help:

     What managed descent looks like

     If those are the investments that pass the test, what does the broader picture look like? A managed descent is not a catastrophe. It is a deliberate, planned reduction in total energy throughput, buffered by nuclear baseload and targeted conservation, with the remaining hydrocarbons reserved for the industrial processes that nothing else can support. It is an economy that consumes and wastes less energy. As the introduction to this part noted, no civilisation has done this before. The transition we propose – to nuclear baseload, conservation and what hydrocarbon use the remaining inheritance can still afford – is harder than anything that has come before.

     Note: when he mentions ‘investments that pass the test’, he means relevant developments that, unlike for example renewables, do not require unnecessary consumption of fossil fuels.

     LikeLiked by 2 people

168. Sir Richard Dearlove’s lecture to the GWPF on energy security:

     LikeLike

169. “The Week in Energy — 26 September 2026

     The week a supporter of the transition warned that electricity won’t follow gas back down.”

     https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/the-week-in-energy-26-september-2026

     …The OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency and EPRI, the American power industry’s research institute, publish the standard international table of what each kind of power station costs. This month’s edition finds that new onshore wind and solar farms have stopped getting cheaper: ‘compared to past editions, no significant further cost decreases have been observed.’ They come in under $100 a megawatt-hour only ‘as long as their system costs are excluded’: the backup, storage and extra cables needed because wind and sun come and go. Twenty-one countries sent in their costs. Britain, a member of the agency, sent none. The best international check on what wind and solar cost has no British numbers in it….

     …The government’s sums count on solar farms getting cheaper to build; the one international check says they’ve stopped, and Britain’s numbers aren’t in it. So the lever the government keeps reaching for is who pays: VAT and some levies moved off bills onto taxpayers, and households picking up the share of manufacturers being exempted. Moving a cost isn’t cutting it.

     LikeLiked by 1 person

170. Robin – thanks for taking the time to read further & reply with your quotes/thoughts, much appreciated.

     Seems “A managed descent is not a catastrophe” is more or less your/our position, as a dash for NZ by xxxxyr is proving to be a potentional “catastrophe“.

     LikeLike

171. Robin, your quote (at 1245pm today) from Richard Lyon’s book merits some important historical qualification, specifically the word ‘and’ in the lines, “It is an economy that consumes and wastes less energy … no civilisation has done this before.”

     The specific genius of the industrial revolution, starting with Newcomen and collaborators in about 1710, was that it turned steam engine technology from one of marginal utility into one that, through much increased fuel efficiency, could seed the development (and specifically the mechanisation) of totally new industries [Ref 1] including, a hundred years later, those based upon electricity and magnetism rather than just the thermal power of coal. And after a further 100 years the nuclear age was born. Thus in this sense modern society on average consumes/wastes less energy per unit of output than previously.

     Robert Allen [Ref. 1] cites fuel efficiency of steam engines increasing by a factor of almost 15 times between 1727 and 1847. My own calculation based on Allen’s figures gives steam engine thermal efficiency increasing from less than 1% to about 6% – for confirmation AI tells me that 6% is the typical lower bound efficiency of mid-20th century railway train steam engines.

     Hence, in modern terms, the steam engine increased its EROEI (energy return on energy invested) from about 1 early in the 18th century to about 15 by the middle of the 19th century. The steam engine’s fuel thus became more and more affordable to more and more (nascent) industries and, in consequence, more and more coal and other fossil fuels were consumed each year; this is the so called Jevons paradox whereby “technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a resource’s use lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in total consumption of that resource.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

     In summary it can be said that, on a per unit-of-output basis, society now consumes less fuel AND wastes less fuel than long ago [Note 1]. However, total output is much, much greater now than it was some 300 years ago. This is all due to the industrial revolution and its rich bounty … which includes public bads (e.g. perhaps our naïve ‘Just Stop Oil’ propagandists) as well as public goods (e.g. street lighting).

     The future proposed by Richard Lyon is thus, in my understanding, one of maximising the EROEI of a reduced total output in order to eke out precious fossil fuel and other natural resources.

     Note 1. The recent adoption of “renewables” based on current technology is reversing the long-term trend towards increasing EROEI and is thus to be deprecated as wasteful and unsustainable.

     Reference 1. Robert C. Allen, “The Industrial Revolution – A Very Short Introduction”, OUP, 2017, notably page 48.

     Regards, John C.

     LikeLiked by 2 people

172. “ESNZ Calls for More Net Zero Propaganda

     Energy Security and Net Zero committee calls for more trusted messengers to combat misinformation.”

     https://davidturver.substack.com/p/esnz-calls-for-more-net-zero-propaganda

     Conclusions

     They very fact that ESNZ wants to drop the term Net Zero and reframe the debate as about the energy transition is a strong indication that Net Zero zealots recognise they have lost the debate. ESNZ then go on to worry about “misinformation” yet become a purveyor of misinformation themselves. They claim that delaying Net Zero and the energy transition will lead to higher prices, less security, colder homes and lost jobs but this is an inversion of the truth. The push for renewables is already leading to higher bills, less security, cooler homes, less food, lower growth and fewer jobs.

     The call for the dissenting voices to be censored and for a new effective Ministry of Truth to receive greater prominence in social media is further admission that they cannot win the argument unless they tilt the playing field in favour of themselves.

     Most people read books like 1984, Animal Farm and Brave New World and recoil in horror. Sadly, ESNZ is using them as an instruction manual. The whole thing stinks to high heaven and the sooner we get a new government of energy realism, the better. I would like to encourage reader to sign this petition calling for Net Zero to be suspended until a full impact assessment has been carried out.

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173. Yes Mark, I thought David Turver’s article this morning about that report unusually damning. He makes numerous important observations, not least for example noting the committee’s absurd idea that Britain’s GHG reductions can have any practical impact on the global position and how their wish to drop the term ‘Net Zero’ and introduce censorship are clear evidence that they know they’ve lost the argument. But I thought David Turver’s description of something Chris Stark, head of Mission Control for Clean Power 2030, told the committee was particularly revealing:

     “That public support for the energy transition will not be secured by reference to a single overarching objective, warning that “we are not going to win this argument if there is only one reason for doing all this, which is the achievement of a statutory target”. He wanted the Government to “talk about the things we are doing” rather than primarily the pursuit of a goal. He argued that Government should communicate the tangible benefits of the transition, including energy security, lower bills, economic growth and job creation, rather than focusing primarily on net zero.”

     As David commented:

     It is clear that ESNZ and Stark are living in a fantasy world. In reality, the transition is leading to higher bills, less security, cooler homes, lower growth and fewer jobs. The total opposite of what they claim.

     But what in my view is especially remarkable is that Stark is recommending in effect that the whole (and only) point of the Climate Change Act as amended in 2019 – i.e. that greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced to a level 100% lower than that of 1990 – should in practice be relegated to being subordinate to the make believe benefits of the ‘transition’. It’s both extraordinary and mad.

     Another Turver must read article.

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174. Yes, Robin, Chris Stark in particular does seem to inhabit an alternative universe. I have opined about all this in the past, including the early stirrings of concern on the part of the establishment about the increasing unpopularity of “net zero” (which they seem to think extends only as far as the term, not the concept):

     https://cliscep.com/2024/04/23/the-stark-reality/

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175. Well, the Net Zero debate ceased to be an intellectual one years ago. It is now a moral one. The ultimate goal of the righteous ESNZ justifies contortions that would be humorous if the path they wanted was not so damaging.

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176. Regarding the Committee, Gemini says this about the witnesses:

     The list of witnesses for the Zero sum game inquiry primarily consisted of clean energy trade associations, climate academics, environmental think tanks, and consumer advocacy bodies. While written submissions included some heavy critiques of Net Zero policy accounting—such as data from the Net Zero Watch think tank—the oral evidence sessions were designed around a shared consensus: that the energy transition must happen, and the primary dilemma is how to successfully market it to an increasingly resistant public.

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177. An interesting conclusion: the GHG reduction cannot happen therefore the energy transition must happen.

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178. From the minutes:

     Amendment proposed, “This Committee declines to give the report a second reading because it engages in a debate about Government propaganda and makes dangerous suggestions that there should be restrictions upon freedom of expression where views expressed are contrary to those being promoted by the Government.”.—(Sir Christopher Chope.)

     Ayes, Chope. Noes, Crichton, Downie Hobhouse, Read & Young.

     “Question accordingly negatived.”

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179. Robin, going back to the excerpts you quoted from Richard Lyon’s book, his comments about gas are wide of the mark. Just from background knowledge I disagreed with much of what he said. So I asked a few questions of AI wrt transport uses.

     Shipping: “LNG is therefore still a small share of shipping overall, but it has a much larger presence in new construction: in 2025, LNG-fueled ships accounted for 31% of newbuilding gross tonnage.”

     LPG vehicles: “Turkey: more than 30% of passenger cars reportedly use autogas. Poland has Europe’s largest LPG-car fleet by some recent estimates, at around 3.5 million vehicles. South Korea has approximately 2 million LPG cars. Italy is one of Europe’s strongest markets, with roughly 2–3 million LPG vehicles. These countries together account for a very large share of the world’s approximately 27–28 million autogas vehicles.”

     CNG (Compressed Natural Gas): ” As of 2023, the total number of compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles worldwide is approximately 28 million. This figure indicates a substantial growth in the adoption of CNG vehicles across various regions. Significant market presence is noted in countries such as China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, and Italy.”

     He is particularly wide of the mark in what he says about gas not being capable of replacing oil for fuels, etc. That caught my eye because, some years ago, curiosity led me to read up on Shell’s huge plant in Qatar which produces diesel from natural gas. Further, AI came back with this on GTL (Gas to Liquids) plants: “Globally, roughly 100,000–200,000 barrels per day of diesel-equivalent fuel is made from natural gas through GTL plants. The estimate is approximate because most GTL facilities do not publish a global diesel-only total. They produce a product slate—usually diesel or gasoil, kerosene/jet fuel, naphtha, LPG, waxes, and lubricants.” That last comment directly contradicts his assertion.

     While the numbers in each example are relatively small in a global context – except shipping – they show that gas can substitute for oil in many situations.

     That “research” took all of about 30 minutes and calls into question his statements. Was I reading the book, my reaction to this would be to wonder whether other assertions are also on shaky foundations.

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180. Thank you Mike,

     Interesting material. It would be interesting to see a response from Lyon.

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181. Sorry for another late comment but I’ve only just caught up with this thread.

     Wrt to Richard Lyon’s views on “Peak Oil”……Really?

     This year marks the centenary of the report from the Federal Oil Resources Board, commissioned by President Coolidge. The experts predicted that oil would run out in the early- to mid-1930s. It’s been rinse-and-repeat ever since, notably with King Hubbert’s publications on the 60s and 70s.

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182. MikeH,

     He was referring to peak easily recoverable oil. Here’s an extract I posted on Thursday:

     Economic oil – the cheap conventional oil that built the modern world – peaked around 2006. The International Energy Agency’s ‘World Energy Outlook 2010’ acknowledged that conventional crude production had reached its maximum and would never return to that level. The event passed almost without public comment. It should have been the most important news story of the century.

     And another I posted on Friday:

     The danger is not that any single barrel becomes too expensive, but that our buffer of cheap, conventional crude is shrinking. As that cheap base pulls back, the expensive sources it was carrying drag the global average upwards. At some point the average cost exceeds what the economy can bear. Growth stalls. Demand falls – and with it, the price. But when the price drops, the expensive oil that was only marginally viable at the higher price is no longer viable at all. It stops being produced – not gradually, but suddenly.

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183. Robin – does “But when the price drops, the expensive oil that was only marginally viable at the higher price is no longer viable at all. It stops being produced – not gradually, but suddenly.” apply to state owned producers as well as private?

     The reason I ask is because in a comment above, which I agree with, you quote –

     “the petroleum feedstock on which the chemical industry depends – in the steam crackers that produce plastics, pharmaceuticals and most industrial chemicals“.

     That makes me wonder if even “expensive oil” will always have a market.

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184. “New report: Gas security: The foundation of energy security”

     New report: Gas security: The foundation of energy security

     My report makes six key recommendations:

     Fix the broken understanding of how the gas market works. Policymakers should recognise that British gas production is not sold on global markets at a global price. The GB gas market uses marginal pricing and additional domestic production displaces more expensive LNG imports, thereby reducing British gas prices. The report argues that claims that additional UK production cannot affect domestic prices are simply wrong.

     Increase UK Continental Shelf gas production. Domestic gas should be preferred to imports wherever possible. UKCS gas is both cheaper and cleaner than imported LNG and provides a secure source of supply directly connected to the British gas network.

     Reduce reliance on electricity imports. Britain is increasingly depending on electricity imports during periods of low domestic renewable generation. However, highly correlated weather patterns mean low wind generation in Britain can coincide with shortages elsewhere. The report warns that Norway and France cannot be assumed to provide unlimited electricity to their neighbours during periods of stress.

     Model gas and electricity security together. The gas grid transports far more energy than the electricity network. Electrifying heating will take decades while gas-fired generation will remain critical to electricity security for years to come. The report argues that planning should recognise the interdependencies of gas and electricity to a greater extent.

     Focus on cheap energy. Rapidly rising network costs are overtaking fuel costs as the main driver of energy bills. The report calls for tighter control of network expenditure and for the suspension of the Connect & Manage regime, arguing that consumers should not be required to fund expensive infrastructure whose output is frequently constrained or wasted.

     Treat energy security as national security. The government should subject energy policy to an explicit national-security test, prioritising resilience, diversity of supply, sufficient domestic energy capacity and the preservation of strategically important industrial capability alongside affordability and sustainability.

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185. 1. Mark, regarding the six conclusions in Kathryn Porter’s latest report from which you quote; I say yes to all six.
     2. Regarding Richard Lyon’s argument on supply/demand for oil based upon average price elasticity, I echo dfhunter’s concern because arguments based only on averages, whether in economics or in the sciences, fail to capture the behaviours either side of the distribution’s average – the tails of the distributions can be very important. Regards, John C.

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186. Thanks Mark, KP’s report outline is an interesting and compelling read.

     A concluding paragraph:

     Gas is not going away because policymakers would like it to. We need to plan for the energy system Britain will actually have, rather than the one we might hope to have. Britain needs an integrated energy-security strategy which recognises the continuing importance of gas, maximises economically viable domestic production, reduces dependence on electricity imports and puts affordability and resilience at the centre of energy policy.

     Anything less is irresponsible.

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187. dfh and John C,

     dfh asks if the if problem when the price drops and previously expensive oil that was only marginally viable becomes uneconomic applies to state owned producers as well as private producers. I can only guess but Lyon says that’s what happens when demand collapses and it would seem to me that that economic reality might not apply so harshly in a state monopoly.

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188. Robin – thanks again for your response. I should have aimed that comment at the wider reader rather you (John C for example), your quotes just got me wondering, but I realise you don’t have all the answers.

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189. From the BBC this morning:

     Burnham to unveil public body to invest in electricity grid

     The prime minister will tell party activists in Liverpool that the new publicly owned company, branded Great British Grid, will speed up grid hook-ups by driving up competition for connection projects.

     Burnham is expected to put the proposals at the heart of a new goal to bring UK energy costs in line with other nations in Europe within ten years.

     He will promise to have an “honest conversation” with the public and take on the “difficult issues” that have been ignored for too long.

     Hmm … ‘in line with other nations in Europe within ten years‘ is absurdly unambitious. But perhaps that ‘honest conversation‘ will fix it.

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190. Robin,

     The words “honest conversation” jumped out at me too. I wonder if that will include mentioning all the costs of renewables and the problems caused to the grid by their unpredictable and unreliable nature?

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191. An “honest conversation”?

     “Cost of green transition could be spread among UK taxpayers, energy secretary suggests

     Miatta Fahnbulleh says Britain must look at how costs are recovered – and that could mean money off bills”

     https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/28/green-transition-uk-taxpayers-energy-secretary-miatta-fahnbulleh

     Billions of pounds worth of green levies could be taken off bills, the energy secretary has said, as the government investigates funding green infrastructure through taxes instead.

     Miatta Fahnbulleh is looking at how green projects are funded, including varying levies between customers and funding them all through general taxation.

     Such a move could save customers an average of £120 a year, but could involve putting up taxes by as much as £3bn….

     …Analysis by the MCS Foundation, a green energy charity, recently found such a move would save about £120 a year on bills but would cost the Treasury a little more than £3bn a year.

     Fahnbulleh said she would cut bills, but did not recommit to her predecessor Ed Miliband’s pledge to bring them down by £300 a year.

     “My mark of failure or success is whether I can get bills down or not,” she said. “That’s the only thing I’m in this job to do.”…

     Moving the costs of net zero from energy bills to taxation does not cost the Treasury £3 Billion, it costs taxpayers £3 Billion. We all still pay, hust through a different account. It’s a patently dishonest way to try to hide the government’s failure to reduce our energy bills as they promised before the election that it would. The Energy Secretary’s job isn’t to move the deckchairs on the Titanic, while the ship still sails full steam (or wind) ahead towards the iceberg. Her job, the thing that marks her as a success or as a failure, is to ensure that we have reliable and cheap energy, not a pretence that we have cheap energy by hiding the costs in general taxation.

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192. I have been reading prof. Dieter Helm’s recent article on reducing regulation (https://dieterhelm.co.uk/publications/how-to-reduce-regulation-by-25/) and quote below key sections which apply to electricity:-

     “The creation of NESO is an attempt to plug a huge gap left by the privatisation of utilities. The attempt to commoditise and split up the functions of the privatised companies, and move towards competitive provision, left out almost every aspect of the systems in which they are set. The planning functions in the nationalised industries for the industries as a whole were simply washed away.

     Abolishing system planning and system regulation does not make the problems go away. In many respects it makes matters much worse. Take electricity: much of the generation is in the wrong places because the project developers have no incentive to locate in the right places from the system perspective. The grid and the renewables have not been co-planned and their roll-out integrated. The result is that Britain has an increasingly dysfunctional system. Wind generators, for example, are constrained off (paid for generating electricity that no one wants and cannot get to market), and Britain’s electricity is amongst the most expensive in the developed world. This should be recognised as a disaster for industry and households.

     The high cost of energy is a major “blocker” to economic growth. This is partly the result of very badly designed regulation.

     Reforming and restructuring NESO and creating water catchment planners and regulators is a critical part of regulatory reform.”

     Helm continues further down with, “Since privatisation, there has been a large increase in propaganda and lobbying both by government departments and by the regulators. They now spend lots of money on “corporate relations” departments and PR consultants. DESNZ pays significant sums to “influencers”; NESO is accused of having corporate relations people in the control room in a semi-emergency tightness of capacity event and a risk that the lights may go out. This is getting out of control.”

     Helm concludes thus, “A reform package to meet the 25% reduction in regulatory costs

     None of the above is beyond a reforming government to carry through. What it needs is an overarching regulatory structure fit for the purposes of now rather than those of 1990. It needs to lift the ambition to ensure that the great utility networks which are the cornerstones of the economy are properly maintained and enhanced. That requires a major investment programme to rebuild the water networks and the electricity networks, and significant airport, rail and communications investment. Current regulation is a serious drag on this objective. By all means, set some bold objective to reduce regulation, but it would be more convincing if the objective came with some serious proposals to achieve it. Current policies will increase regulation, not reduce it by 25%.”

     I echo Helm’s sentiment (above) that “Britain’s electricity is amongst the most expensive in the developed world. This should be recognised as a disaster for industry and households.” But I fear my Guardian-reading, socialist, academic friend would still tell me that the UK has to set an example to the rest of the world.

     Regards, John C.

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