Bishop Hill Diary date
May 1, 2013 Energy: grid This panel debate is tonight in central London.
Will the lights go out?
In February this year, Alistair Buchanan of OFGEM, warned that Britain was on an 'energy rollercoaster' with the combination of old coal and atomic power plants closing and overseas gas supplies shrinking leaving future domestic energy reserves "uncomfortably tight". More recently the finger was again pointed at government for significantly underestimating the scale of the capacity crunch facing the country. But with government denying any complacency and confident of the provision of secure supplies and the current cold snap testing the stored gas supplies, we ask 'Will the lights go out?' ' FES has brought together 4 excellent and highly knowledgeable speakers covering a range of specialist perspectives to find out;
- Volker Beckers, Former Group CEO, RWE nPower plc
- Ian Marlee, Senior Partner, SG&G Transmission at OFGEM
- Peter Atherton, Utility Research at Liberum Capital and giver of the FES 2012 annual lecture - Utility Finance in the 2010s
- Gaynor Hartnell, Chief Executive of the Renewable Energy Association.
Details here. As always, if someone can do me a report, that would interesting.
Reader Comments (8)
Pity I have something arranged. I'd read any report.
Well we know what Gaynor Hartnell will say. We have to keep feeding the renewable energy trough and all will be well in fairyland. She doesn't look like she would have any background in anything relevant, but who knows?
The short answer is yes.
The slightly longer answer is yes, due to the government's totally cavalier approach to the provision (or, lack of it) and security of our generating capacity going forward. I worked as a boy engineer for the CEGB, whose approach was 'predict and provide'. This government's approach seems to be: 'Guess, cross your fingers, pontificate, ignore engineering expertise, but listen carefully to the green lobbyists..'
A new excoriating review has been picked up by GWPF
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2013/04/30/climate-change-madness-do-the-europeans-know-what-they-are-doing/
I saw a comment by Dennis Ambler on the weather Action site this morning pointing us to his prophetic SPPI 2008 article: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/social_construction.html . I recommended that all bloggers there read it and think the same may apply here too.
Interesting to see what he has to say about the coming energy penury and how those in power have been moulding public opinion on a systematic 24-hour basis to accustom us to the idea of energy thrift as if the coming situation as was unavoidable - which of course it is not.
But with government denying any complacency ...
The British government is never complacent, is it? Our political leaders are no more complacent over this issue than they have been over many other issues in the past few years, such as the immigration problems caused by the enlargement of the EU, to take just one example.
We all know just how reliable government forecasts are.
No doubt there are many struggle meetings going on in Green Land trying to figure out how to blame upcoming blackouts on the Evil Children-Hating Anti-Science Catastrophe-Denying Fossil-Fuel Industry.
No facts need be considered, but the right emotional note needs to be worked out.
Deja vu?
Just gotten my copy of "The Age of Global Warming". Read to pp.33-34 last eve:
"The 1917 Lever Act put the coal industry under government control, setting prices, allocating supply and requisitioning firms not acting in the public interest, all of which helped trigger America's first energy crisis - lightless nights, heatless Mondays, shutdown of factories producing non-essential items, and fuel riots."