Rishi: talking bollocks on energy

Sunak treats us to his utterly valueless opinions in the Daily Telegraph

A grinning jack-a-napes, yesterday.

Energy is the fundamental driver of our civilisation, and if we make energy more expensive — as Labour, LibDems and Tories have been doing since at least 2008 — then everything gets more expensive. This should be incredibly obvious to anyone in the West — or, indeed, anywhere else.

Current energy position

As Worstall points out at the Adam Smith Institute, around half of the cost of energy bills is, in fact, tax — Green levies (to subsidise the “oh so very cheap” renewable energy sources) and social levies (paying for those who can’t or won’t pay their energy bills, but who can’t be cut off). Which, in your humble General’s opinion, plumbs new depths of state deception, wherein the government insists that energy companies collect taxes from people, and take all of the heat for higher bills.

In the meantime, the UK has failed to build new power stations in any quantity (not least because of our stupid bloody planning system). And those that we are building (mainly Hinkley Point C) are hugely unlikely to actually start generating any energy until 2031 at the soonest — by which point most of the rest of our nuclear stations will have closed down, so there will actually be a nett loss of power generation.

And electricity is only around 20% of our actual energy usage — petrol and diesel do most of the heavy lifting for transport, and gas does the same for central heating. But, in order to meet its Climate Change obligations, the government wants to move all of that usage onto electricity: that means, even without any growth in population or per capita usage, we need to generate 80% more electricity than currently.

Needless to say, no one can possibly say how that is going to happen, although I think that we can all conclude that it just isn’t going to — not any time in the next couple of decades at least (even were the planning system reformed tomorrow).

Hooray — it’s Rishi!

Fortunately, our glorious leader has taken to the pages of the Daily Telegraph to inform us all of the fantastic progress that his government is making. In an article entitled “Boosting gas capacity is the insurance policy Britain needs while we deliver net zero”, Rishi is in ebullient mood…

You can’t protect national security without delivering energy security. The war in Ukraine reminded us all of that. A nation that is dependent on the whims of dictators for its energy supply can never be truly safe.

OK. But relying on Varadkar, Macron, Geert Wilders and Jonas Støre to keep the lights on is fine. For now.

That is why we stopped Russian energy imports and are standing on our own two feet.

We aren’t. Apart from relying heavily on the interconnectors to the countries listed above, we have been importing massive amounts of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from the United States of America (USA) and charming countries such as Qatar.

Instead of empowering Putin, we are powering Britain – delivering new sources of home-grown energy, with new nuclear power plants, record investment in renewables, and new oil and gas licences in the North Sea.

Right…

First, if oil and gas is so important to our energy mix — and they absolutely are — then one would want to encourage investment in more oil and gas. But companies have been cutting back substantially in the North Sea, for instance, because of the windfall tax introduced by the Tories — and further extended into 2029 in Hunt’s March Budget.

So, Mr Sunak, I call bullshit: you may well be granting new exploration licences (which Labour has pledged to destroy entirely), but you have been destroying the ability and willingness of many companies to invest in new gas and oil fields.

Renewables are expensive and rubbish

And you cannot build “energy security” using intermittent renewables, Rishi — because they are not predictable: the wind does not always blow (and not always at the right time), the sun does not shine at night, and energy storage is mind-blowingly expensive. So you need base-load power sources — energy that is cheap, reliable and dispatchable. And, give our fluctuating energy demands, and the way in which our Electricity Grid is built, renewables need to be backed up by about 90%, i.e. if you have 10GW of wind turbines, you need to build in 9GW of secure base-load power — which, these days, is going to be either gas or nuclear.

Why would anyone pay twice over for generation capacity — unless you were very, very stupid, eh, Rishi?

We should be proud that our domestic energy production is thriving, directly supporting over 160,000 jobs, with tens of thousands more along the supply chains.

Why? Jobs are a cost of doing something, Rishi, and not only in direct wage costs: we are poorer because those 160,000 people are not doing something else more valuable — a massive opportunity cost. We should not — repeat, not — be boasting about the huge numbers of jobs created in any specific industry; how much better would it be to say that we can create the same amount of power but at a cost of only 60,000 jobs…?

And we should be proud that we are on track to meet our net zero targets.

Why? It’s going to make fuck all difference to Climate Change.

By rolling out wind and solar power, heat pumps and home insulation, we have cut the role of fossil fuels across the UK’s electricity system.

As we’ve established, wind and solar are appallingly expensive compared to the alternatives — simply because they are intermittent and so you have to build the alternatives anyway.

The capital cost of building the gas or nuclear power station remains the same: but because it is being used less, it becomes more expensive per unit generated. So, not only are both wind and solar expensive, their use actually increases the cost of conventional generation too!

What a fucking triumph.

Heat pumps: also expensive and rubbish

Heat pumps do not get the water as hot as conventional central heating — so those who have been foolish enough to take them up have often had to re-install most of their heating system at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds, and have then faced colossal electricity bills.

So, heat pumps are a great thing if you are deliberately trying to make your people being colder and more miserable than before — a state of being which no doubt pleases the Greens and other “de-growth” maniacs, but nobody else is terribly impressed.

Yet another massive triumph, Rishi — well done you.

We’re going further and faster than ever to deliver green energy, in a way that doesn’t place extra burdens on the British people.

As I have briefly shown above, that is just a colossal lie.

But our analysis – underpinned by research out today – shows that we will need gas generation in the immediate term to meet rising demand.

Yes, we do. And will do for the foreseeable future.

Get to frack!

So why the hell aren’t we fracking, Rishi? We’re happy to enjoy the fruits of the USA’s fracking efforts but, for no substantial reason, we refuse to tap our own colossal resources by strangling an industry that, in a few short decades, has turned the US from a nett oil and gas importer to a massive exporter of these fuels.

I would have thought that Mr Hunt, at least, would have been salivating at the gargantuan tax receipts that a home-grown fracking industry would bring into the Treasury.

Apparently not.

The Climate Change Committee also supports a defined role for gas generation in 2035. But this exposes a new challenge, because much of our existing gas capacity is nearing the end of its life.

So, get fracking, you massive bell-end. It would solve a good deal of our budgeting problems too.

It’s time to set out the plan to secure our energy supplies on the road to net zero – and that’s what we’re doing today.

Does it involve fracking…?

While we will continue leading the world in renewable power we will also take decisive action to boost our gas power capacity. First, by extending the life of existing gas facilities, where it is practical to do so.

No. Of course not.

Second, by building the necessary new capacity to replace the gas-fired power plants that will need to be retired.

And when will those come on stream, Rishi — sometime in 2055 on current progress.

When the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, this is how we will keep your lights on and your bills down.

Hmmm.

The Labour Party prefers to take a fantasy approach, which would put our energy security at risk. Labour’s pledge that there must be no unabated gas running in 2030 would plunge households into darkness, just to satisfy their Just Stop Oil mates.

Yes, the Labour Party approach — which also includes even further increasing the “windfall tax” — is indeed even more stupid and short-sighted. But I reckon that the only thing that you and Starmer are even moderately concerned about is who is holding the parcel when the music stops and the lights go out. Because that government is finished.

Ultimately, we will use British energy to deliver British energy security – making our nation safer, stronger and more prosperous for generations to come.

Absolute crap.

What about those mini-nukes?

The simple fact is that, if you are concerned about Climate Change and want electricity on tap, nuclear power is the only game in town. And, on this, the Tories and LimpDums have been worse than Labour: rather surprisingly, formerly slightly loony activist Zion Lights gives a highly coherent chronology of the various parties’ attitudes to nuclear over the last couple of decades.

And points out that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) managed to build four nukes, generating 25% of their electricity, in just ten years.

Given that we are barely able to build anything at all in a timely manner, let alone controversial large nuclear power stations — and Hinkley Point is absolutely colossal — surely those legendary Small Modular Reactors will save us? After all, we’ve been putting them in submarines for years…

Unfortunately, it is not merely planning that our governments have completely arsed up. Our wonderful Civil Service with its Rolls-Royce minds are, as outlined by the ASI in some detail, completely screwing up the Small Modular Reactor procurements too.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has just announced the winners in the competition to select suppliers of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). GB Nuclear is supposed to be the driving force, independently choosing the latest and the best, but DESNZ has stepped in and included some of the least modern or qualified. The six are: EDF, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy International LLC, Holtec Britain Limited, NuScale Power, Rolls Royce SMR and Westinghouse Electric Company UK Limited. These are all old tech: no advanced modular or molten salt reactors. They are high pressure and low temperature. They are all low temperature despite DESNZs claim a couple of years ago that high temperature reactors are the future. DESNZ hopes to get around to ordering the first SMR by 2029 and actually having it running six years later. Four of the six are a long way from receiving design approval and EDF, for example, has no SMRs and has to go back to the drawing board. This should give them time to do so. None of those chosen is “rampable”, i.e. output can be varied by the Grid to match demand. Modern ones are.

And that is just the start of the absolute balls-up — I do heartily recommend reading the rest. If your blood pressure can stand it.

Fourteen years of failure

The simple fact is that the Tories and the LimpDums — who were, somewhat foolishly, allocated Energy during the Coalition (under the idiot Ed Davey, who now “leads” that party) — have doubled down on Labour’s stupidity and short-sightedness. After all, it was Nick Clegg who, in 2010, stated that there would be no point in building nuclear because it wouldn’t be ready until 2021 or 2022.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Tories have spunked enormous amounts of money up the wall on vastly expensive and deeply unreliable renewables, whilst failing to invest in base-load, dispatchable power stations which would, at the very least, act as back-up when the wind is not blowing.

With Hinkley Point ever more delayed and Sizewell C not even started, with the government cluelessly bollocksing up the procurement of SMRs, Sunak now has no option but to try and clear through increased gas capacity — or the lights will go out.

At the same time, both his merry men and the Labour Party are hamstringing new gas and oil investment through the windfall tax, increasing costs to the consumer and strangling and delaying domestic gas supply.

A plague on all their houses. Which, unlike ours, will no doubt be brightly lit and deliciously warm; meanwhile, we will huddle in our hovels, whilst these grinning jack-a-napes repeat the old Lie: “you’ve never had it so good — besides, you plebs, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”