Funny how the idle hacks (Porter is another from the MacBride stable of spinners!) finally get round to what I’ve frequently been reporting for about two years now!
The Climate Change religionists are the evil genius causing this dreadful mindset inside the Labour government. But in the end it is the indecision of government that is landing us in this indescribable mess. But ‘indecision’ is the trademark of Gordon Brown in everything he touches.
Christina
TELEGRAPH
1.9.09
1. Britain facing blackouts for first time since 1970s
Britain is facing the prospect of widespread power cuts for the first time since the 1970s, government projections show.
By Andrew Porter, Political Editor
Demand for power from homes and businesses will exceed supply from the national grid within eight years, according to official figures.
The shortage of supplies will hit the equivalent of many as 16 million families for at least one hour during the year, it is forecast.
Not since the early 1970s when the three-day week was introduced to preserve coal has Britain faced the prospect of reationing energy use.
The gap between Britain’s energy needs and demand throws fresh doubt on the Government’s assertion that renewable energy can make up for dwindling nuclear and coal capabilities. [There’s no doubt about it - it can’t! -cs]
Over the next 10 years, one third of Britain’s power-generating capacity needs to be replaced [Yes!-cs] with cleaner fuels. [No!-cs] But last night the Conservatives said that Labour had refused to face up to the problem.
The admission that Britain will face power-cuts is contained in a document that accompanied the Government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan, which was launched in July.
Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, outlined the plan amid much fanfare.
Under the plan, 40 per cent of the UK’s electricity will need to come from low-carbon energy sources including clean coal, nuclear and renewables.
Accompanying the report is an appendix, only published online, which warns of power shortages. It details supplies and expected demand between now and 2030.
It highlights the first short-fall in 2017. The “energy unserved” level reaches 3000 megawatt hours per year.
That is the equivalent of the whole of the Nottingham area being without electricity for a day.
By 2025 the situation worsens with the shortfall hitting 7000 megawatt hours per year. That is the equivalent to an hour-long power cut for half of Britain.
Greg Clark, the shadow climate and energy change secretary, said: “Britain faces blackouts because the Government has put its head in the sand about Britain’s energy policy for a decade. Over the next 10 years we need to replace one third of our generating capacity but Labour has left it perilously late, and has been forced to admit they expect power cuts for the first time since the 1970s.
“The next government has an urgent task to accelerate the deployment of a new generating capacity, and to take steps to ensure that as a matter of national security there is enough capacity to provide a robust margin of safety.”
Mr Clark also pointed out that the scale of the blackouts could in fact be three times worse than the Government predictions. He said some of the modelling used was “optimistic” as it assumes little or no change in electricity demand up until to 2020.
It also assumes a rapid increase in wind farm capacity. There is also the assumption that existing nuclear power stations will be granted extensions to their “lifetimes".
The last time Britain experienced regular power cuts because of shortages of supply was in the early 1970s, when a miners' strike caused coal restrictions. The country was forced to do everyday tasks by candlelight and a three-day week was imposed on all but essential services to try and conserve electricity.
The looming problem in Britain is caused by the scheduled closure by 2015 of nine oil and coal-fired power plants. They are the victim of an EU directive designed to cut pollution.
In addition, four existing nuclear power plants are set to be shut, adding to the need for new sources of energy.
Labour failed for several years to commit to a new generation of nuclear power stations. Several reviews and rows with the green lobby delayed any definitive statement on the issue.
The Government has now given the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power, but it remains up to private energy firms to build the plants. Ministers have been urged by business and the power companies to provide more incentives to make building new power stations more attractive.
As yet no new nuclear power stations have been put forward for approval by the Government.
The privatised power stations have been slow to commit to building new capacity because of Government intransigence and their own misgivings over whether profits can be made.
If plans are approved for new nuclear power stations then they will trigger public consultations and possible inquiries, further delaying the day when new electricity sources can be switched on.
It means that there will not be any new nuclear power stations before 2018. Any drive for renewables, in particular wind farms, is unlikely to meet the gap left.
Under Mr Miliband’s new plan it is predicted that by 2020 there will be around 30 per cent of electricity coming from renewables, 10 per cent from Carbon Capture and Storage - even though the technology is still not certain – and only about 8 per cent from nuclear, which is about half of the current level.
There will be huge reliance in the short term on gas, with up to 50 per cent of electricity coming from gas fired power stations.
Despite the belated commitment for new nuclear power stations, Mr Miliband has expressly ruled out giving any financial help to companies contemplating the move. The CBI had hoped that the Energy and Climate Secretary would help by putting a floor of the carbon price and therefore acting as an incentive.
Only a few existing nuclear sites like Sizewell B in Suffolk will still be generating electricity in 2020.
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “We are moving in the right direction towards low carbon energy but we are
in transition, we can’t just click our fingers and expect to end carbon emissions overnight. In the near turn there will be a need for the continued use of fossil fuels.
“We’re determined the imports of those fuels should be diverse and the emissions from them capped by the emission trading scheme. We will need to import more gas in the short term – that’s why diversifying our import options for gas is important – something else that is happening already.”
2. When the power cuts start, blame Labour
Telegraph View: Nowhere is Labour's myopia more damaging than in energy policy, where an obtuse refusal to plan ahead now promises the direst consequences.
When confronted by a major strategic challenge, Labour's usual response has been to duck it. Welfare reform, healthcare, the modernisation of the Armed Forces to pursue its interventionist agenda – all required the kind of bold, long-term decisions that governments are elected to take. Not this one, unfortunately. It has made an art form of muddling through.
Nowhere is this political myopia more damaging than in energy policy, where an obtuse refusal to plan ahead now promises the direst consequences. According to the Government's own figures, in less than 10 years the country will face systematic power cuts of the kind that are all too familiar in the Third World. Data buried in last month's Low Carbon Transition Plan project the level of "expected energy unserved" – that is, unmet demand – for the next two decades. The figures show that just eight years from now, the shortfall at times of peak demand will amount to 3,000 megawatt hours – the equivalent of blacking out a city the size of Nottingham for an entire day. Those old enough to remember the three-day week 35 years ago will be familiar with the impact of regular power cuts. For a modern, advanced economy to be contemplating a return to such a situation beggars belief.
How could this happen? In essence, there has been a catastrophic failure to plan for our most important strategic requirement: for on energy, everything else depends. Cushioned by North Sea oil and gas reserves, successive governments have been complacent to a dangerous degree. But it is Labour's unwillingness to respond to changing circumstances that has been especially reckless. Our nuclear reactors are ageing – four of the 10 are scheduled to be decommissioned within six years – yet only now, after 12 years, is the Government finally getting round to ordering replacements, and they will not be operational for more than a decade. Even worse, our increasing reliance on imported gas has not been matched by the development of appropriate storage facilities. This country can hold just 15 days' supply of gas, compared with France's 99 and Germany's 122.
A greater sense of urgency is evidently required, yet Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, appears to be far more focused on climate change than energy generation. It will be left to a new Government to take the decisions Labour has dodged, and that will mean extending the operational life of old power plants while dramatically accelerating the development of new generating capacity, notably nuclear, and vastly increasing gas storage capacity. Even then, it is going to be touch-and-go whether the lights stay on or not just a few years from now.
GREG CLARK’S Blog
1.9.09
Commentary: The dark secret in Labour’s energy policy
Back in July, the Government launched the UK Low Carbon Technology Plan with great fanfare.
At the time, Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, said: “Our plan will strengthen our energy security, it seeks to be fair to the most vulnerable, it seizes industrial opportunity and it rises to the moral challenge of climate change.”
However, buried at the back of the plan’s Analytical Annex there’s a dark secret to be found on page 86. A very dark secret, because it reveals that the Government is expecting blackouts across Britain during the years ahead.
This comes in the form of a chart which projects the level of “Expected Energy Unserved” in the years up to 2020. Expected Energy Unserved, or EEU, is a euphemistic piece of jargon that basically means power cuts caused by the inability of our power stations to meet demand.
Currently, EEU is close to zero, but by 2017 the Government’s own figures shows this going up to three thousand megawatt hours a year. These power cuts are most likely to strike at times of peak demand — i.e. around teatime during the winter months. The Government’s central assumption is equivalent to a million people seeing the lights go out for 15 minutes at peak time on twenty-four winter evenings a year by 2017.
It gets worse. By the middle of the 2020s the Government is predicting over seven thousand megawatt hours of power cuts a year. This is equivalent to the whole of London suffering a fifteen minute power cut on every single winter weekday evening for a month.
Is this what Ed Miliband means by strengthening energy security? Or by being fair to the vulnerable?
In these circumstances the only way to protect vulnerable householders would be by forcing offices and factories to take the brunt of the power cuts, which puts Mr Miliband’s promise to “seize industrial opportunity” in a different light.
The Government’s neglect of our energy security closely mirrors the way it has mishandled the economy. For most of the last decade we have known that our nuclear fleet was reaching the end of its planned life, that the most polluting coal-powered generating plants would need to be closed and that we had failed to exploit more than a pitiful share of our renewable resources. Yet, just as with the economy, the Government failed to mend the roof when the sun was shining – the consequences of which are laid bare in these official blackout predictions.
The next government has an urgent task to accelerate the deployment of new generating capacity of all types. We must promote the rapid roll-out of ’smart grid’ technology to enable the sensitive matching of supply and demand, without recourse to the blunt instrument of rolling blackouts. Above all we must make robust margin of security an explicit object of British energy policy.
Net energy
• The influential Cambridge physicist, David Mackay, writes for the New York Times on the future of energy.
• WSJ Environmental Capital reports that the money markets are starting to fund major wind power projects again.
• CleanTechnica on a potential solution to the variability of many forms of renewable power: compressed air energy storage.
• Stimulus measures in the US have only had a modest impact on improvements to domestic energy efficiency, according to Earth2Tech.
CONSERVATIVE HOME 1.9.09
Evidence that the Energy side of Greg Clark's brief is even more pressing than Climate Change
Not so long ago, on one of the many occasions on which the departmental structures of Whitehall have been tinkered with, Gordon Brown created the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
Yet on the basis of most of what comes out of the department and its Secretary of State, Ed Miliband, you'd have thought that it was the Department for Climate Change (well, for tackling Climate Change), with the Energy side being rather overlooked.
So today's Daily Telegraph provides a stark reminder of the urgent need for politicians and policy makers not to ignore the need to ensure energy supplies in the near future.
The paper cites official figures showing demand for power exceeding supply from the national grid "within eight years", and warning of the prospect of "widespread power cuts".
And these are problems which Greg Clark, Miliband's shadow, claims the Government is not facing up to:
Greg Clark, the shadow climate and energy change secretary, said: “Britain faces blackouts because the Government has put its head in the sand about Britain’s energy policy for a decade. Over the next 10 years we need to replace one third of our generating capacity but Labour has left it perilously late, and has been forced to admit they expect power cuts for the first time since the 1970s.
“The next government has an urgent task to accelerate the deployment of a new generating capacity, and to take steps to ensure that as a matter of national security there is enough capacity to provide a robust margin of safety.”
Mr Clark also pointed out that the scale of the blackouts could in fact be three times worse than the Government predictions. He said some of the modelling used was “optimistic” as it assumes little or no change in electricity demand up until to 2020.
It also assumes a rapid increase in wind farm capacity. There is also the assumption that existing nuclear power stations will be granted extensions to their “lifetimes".
The Telegraph also carries a robust editorial stating that "when the power cuts start, blame Labour", reminding us that the Government has been slow to order replacements for ageing nuclear reactors - at a time when EU directives are forcing the closure of nine oil and coal-fired power plants: at that rate, a few additional wind farms are not going to be sufficient to stop the lights going out...
Jonathan Isaby
Posts
