From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t It doesn’t add up

This is a very good overview of the state of our current energy policy by Kathryn Porter, who is an energy consultant:

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Energy Industries Club dinner on the subject of energy security…here is a copy of my remarks…

Good evening everyone, I’m delighted to be here for the inaugural evening meeting of the Energy Industries Club.

I feel under some pressure with a dinner-time speech to be entertaining. I was scarred a few years ago at a dinner where an EU Commissioner gave a speech between the starter and main course. He wasn’t brief. By the time the charred remnants of the main course were served even the most die-hard Remainers were dreaming of Brexit!

So we successfully avoided that pitfall, but I still feel the pressure. I might be tempted to throw in the odd joke or witty one-liner. I’ll do my best…

As you may know, following the recent Budget, we have a new approach to energy policy: Gaslighting.

It’s kind of you to laugh but that’s not actually a joke. That really is how I feel about large parts of our energy policy at the moment.

It goes something like this: we’re going to have cheap, reliable renewable energy based on wind and solar but we’ll need subsidies to get it going. What’s that? The weather isn’t reliable? Good point, OK right, so we’ll need subsidies for non-renewable energy to come on when it’s not windy and sunny. OK then.

Not OK?

Something about grid infrastructure?

Oh yes, I guess we don’t have a much of that in the sea. Good point, we’ll have to build some more. But we can delay some of it to keep costs down for consumers.

Sorry what?

Curtailment?

We have to pay wind farms if we can’t use the electricity they want to generate. Oh, that’s annoying. I’m sure it’s still cheap though.

OK now what?

Balancing?

It’s more expensive to balance the grid when generation varies with the weather.

OK I don’t care. Renewables are cheap and reliable. End of.

Does anyone else feel like they’re being gas-lit?

The full speech is here.

It covers a lot of ground, although it gets a bit wishy washy at the end, with talk of the “need to do something”. She also seems to think more demand side response will make a big difference, though in my view this you cannot control grid frequency by hoping that people switch their electrical devices off.

The next speaker will apparently be Chris Stark, CEO of the Committee on Climate Change. I can give a pretty good guess about what he will have to say:

• We must get to Net Zero
• Renewables are much cheaper
• Clean energy is good – dirty energy is bad
• Lots and lots of green jobs
• We must lead the world

Let me know if I have missed anything!