We're All Doomed !

Fascinating Spectator article by Steven Nixon on the forthcoming energy crisis, as the oil and gas run out and the nuclear power stations age and are not replaced.

Energy policy has been strange ever since Mrs Thatcher closed pits and coal-fired stations in order to meet emission targets on CO2 and sulphur dioxide. I can't understand why she's not a Green heroine .....

Nixon writes

"Not only is the government failing to address the problem, however; it is actually making it worse — by reducing our energy diversity. Coal, which used to deliver 80 per cent of our electricity, is virtually obsolete, a victim of strict new environmental laws. Now the government is determined to run down the nuclear industry, which produces 23 per cent of our power. All but one of our nuclear power stations are to be decommissioned by 2010 and no new ones will be built. Instead, the government says that we will make up the difference from renewable sources — primarily wind. By 2010, it wants 10 per cent of our electricity to come from renewables, rising to 20 per cent by 2020, up from less than 1 per cent today.

These are preposterous targets. Professor Ian Fells, a supporter of wind power, reckons we’ll be lucky to get 7 per cent of our electricity from wind by the end of the decade, and 10 per cent by 2020. To meet the government’s target, we need to install 20 2MW windmills every week from now until 2020. Yet no one knows where these windmills will go, let alone what they will cost to install. Most will have to be located offshore and new transmission lines will have to be built to bring the electricity to the national grid. Indeed, the grid itself will have to be substantially reconfigured. It is designed to transport power from large central power stations to the periphery; wind power will require it to do exactly the opposite. What’s more, windmills run at optimal capacity for only a few weeks every year. This means that 100 per cent back-up is needed. But where will this back-up come from? The government hasn’t a clue. "

It could of course be a cunning plot to tie us to Europe. We are I believe connected to the French system - but the link at 2000MW is only to help cope with peaks in demand. No, it's cockup not conspiracy. Just as with their inability to build prisons, our Government is looking the other way and hoping that the laws of physics and economics will be suspended just for them.

A few weks ago we took the kids to Big Pit, a day out I'd thoroughly recommend. Blaenavon is set in magnificent country - the back road over the hill from Abergavenny is wonderful, and the National Mining Museum of Wales is free. At last a use for my taxes I can approve of. And the children, who hadn't been keen, loved it when they got underground.

There is only one other deep mine left in Wales, Tower Colliery.

If this article is correct we need to start building nuclear stations and re-opening mines now. There is no chance at all of this government doing anything of the sort.