Too many eggs in one basket

From Climate Scepticism (cliscep.com

By MARK HODGSON

As we all know, the Guardian is a leading protagonist when it comes to proselytising about the “climate crisis” and the “need” for Net Zero. If you’re an organisation which exists to push that agenda, then the Guardian will probably be happy to publish whatever you write, without first applying any critical editorial standards.

A good example is the “report” by CarbonBrief on 8^th August 2022 (and updated on 24^th August when gas prices peaked, but never subsequently updated despite gas prices now being less than 10% of the price they reached on that day).

On 7^th October 2022 the Guardian website featured an article by Caroline Lucas repeating the claim and linking to the CarbonBrief report, even though by the date her article appeared, the price of gas had already fallen steeply (by around 60%) from the peak of 702.95p per therm (which was used to justify the highly dubious claim made by CarbonBrief) to 285.04p per therm (today, by the way, it sits at 60.29p per therm). In other words, the original claim was highly dubious (as I pointed out in The Lies Have It), and it was already wildly untrue by the time Caroline Lucas wrote her piece and the Guardian published it. Amusingly (I missed it at the time) the url for the Caroline Lucas article was https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/07/energy-crisis-it-isnt-that-we-have-too-little-oil-and-gas-we-have-too-much-lucas. While the jury is out as to whether we have too little oil and gas, all of us hear at Cliscep would probably agree that we have too much Lucas.

The other day I spotted another article in the Guardian, this time by Gaia Vince. It broadly consisted of the stuff we have come to expect, both from her and from the newspaper for which she was writing, but the final section of her article included this:

Alarming forecasts from Big Wind this week, as the world’s three largest companies are struggling with hikes in raw material costs, delays, investment problems and high inflation — offshore wind is around 30% more expensive now.

Finally, I thought: recognition that the claims of cheap renewable energy are false – surely then, we will see something of a mea culpa for having mislead Guardian readers for so long, and perhaps a bit of sense will appear regarding the UK’s energy policy? I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead the article assured us that we just have to accept higher prices:

Governments must create the conditions for rapid expansion in these challenging offshore and floating markets, even if it means agreeing higher energy prices in the short term. Now, where did we put that £28bn?

My own suspicion is that going down this road will saddle us with higher energy prices in the meduim and long term too. However, only time will prove which of us is right.

All of the above is a long-winded way of setting the scene for the huge surprise I received yesterday when I read another Guardian article, this time with the heading “Power struggle: fears for UK energy generation as green projects delayed” and the sub-heading “Path to relying solely on green power appears long as series of problems collides with reality of keeping the lights on”. Written by Alex Lawson, it could almost have been written by any of us here at Cliscep.

He starts by talking about the fact that the 280 miles between Hadrian’s Wall and Peterhead (which includes, he says, stunning Scottish countryside and quaint villages) is “to become a building site for vast power lines connecting offshore windfarms with urban centres.” This, he tells us, is part of the “national transmission plan” necessitated by net zero driving increasing demand for electricity and the consequent need to accommodate numerous “green” energy projects.

Policymakers face a tricky decade as the target of decarbonising the electricity system by 2035 collides with the day-to-day job of keeping the lights on and ensuring electric vehicles, heat pumps and industrial machinery are powered.

He goes on to point out that in worst-case scenarios we will struggle to meet the surging demand forecast for the early 2030s if “nascent technologies” (such as pie-in-the-sky – my words rather than his – CCS and hydrogen) fail to take off as hoped. Although “the scenarios vary wildly”, we in the UK could be left with “39 gigawatts less power than previous forecasts.”

The problem is exacerbated, given that gas power stations still provide most of our electricity (35.7% last month), nuclear power looks increasingly problematic (at least over the necessary timescales) given further delay to Hinkley Point C, and windfarm planning has been shaken by supply problems “that forced the world’s biggest developer, Ørsted, to scale back, and for Sweden’s Vattenfall to pull out of a huge offshore project [Norfolk Boreas] off the Norfolk coast after they said rising costs meant it was no longer profitable”.

Although he suggests that switching gas plants to hydrogen is viable, he acknowledges it will be costly. CCS is unproven at scale; and large battery projects are facking a backlog to connect to the grid. And even National Grid ESO acknowledges that we will struggle to meet security of supply by relying on battery technologies alone.

A section of the article then talks about the problems experienced by those project developers seeking to connect to the grid – a problem I discussed in Gridlock. Then there is talk of the need to shift consumer demand to times of greater supply and lower demand (in other words, customers are there to serve the needs of the grid, not the other way round).

Next he moves on to discuss the problems with the Labour Party’s energy plans such as its “target to decarbonise power by 2030 and how practical a target to only use gas-fired stations as a backup really is.” Its reliance on Drax is problematic, given its dubious green credentials and massive subsidies (as pointed out by Jit in The Beast of Selby). And there is the question mark within the party over how much money to commit to decarbonising home heating, and the problem of vested interests to be overcome in this area – not only gas companies, but also trade unions.

He concludes thus:

An industry source says: “Everything relating to government decarbonisation targets has an asterisk with ‘subject to security of supply’ attached.”

The path to relying solely on green power appears as long as the journey to Peterhead.

Well said Alex Lawson. And what a refreshing change, in the Guardian of all places!

As a postscript, I should add that I took a look to see what other articles Mr Lawson has written, and was pleased to note that he doesn’t shy away from writing things that don’t seem to fit the Guardian agenda, such as (to give just a few examples) “Danish windfarm firm Ørsted to axe up to 800 jobs and pause dividend”; “UK electric vehicle maker Arrival enters administration with 170 jobs at risk”; and “‘Hypocrisy’: Tata builds vast India furnace despite Port Talbot emissions claims – Owner says shutting Welsh blast furnaces will cut emissions, but it is opening a new one in India”.

I hail an independently-minded journalist committed to telling it like it is, and (unusually for me) I give considerable credit to the Guardian for allowing him to write there as he does. At least one journalist is allowed to let the Guardian’s readers know that chickens are coming home to roost.