Bad to worse

National Grid have spoken out before, but now the power companies are starting to voice their concerns over the shambles that successive governments have made of the power sector and the very real possibility that we may soon see the lights going out.

The boss of the energy firm SSE has warned that "there is a very real risk of the lights going out" in Britain.

Ian Marchant said the government was significantly underestimating the scale of the capacity crunch facing the country.

The energy minister says it's all going to be OK and that there is plenty of spare capacity in the system.

Time to start panicking I guess.

Comments

[Pharos]

nTropywins

Cameron's green evangelism, I suspect largely influenced by his Greenpeace wife, is deep and intractable. He was largely involved in bidding up the ante for the CO2 cuts and carbon taxation for the Climate Change Act, instead of doing due diligence as Leader of the Opposition. It is no accident that he placed like-minded zealots in charge of DECC and probably also used his influence to fill the posts of influence on the CC Committees and other Environmental related quangos/agencies as well. One of his early speeches is here, but there are numerous other clues

http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2007/03/David_Cameron_We_will_keep_up_the_pressure_on_climate_change.aspx

[Clive Best]

It is a strange fact that the landed gentry, traditional Tories and Prince Charles seem to have aligned themselves with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, but for different reasons. One gets the impression that there has always been a deep resentment and mistrust of "upstarts" like Brunel. Stephenson and Telford because they destroyed the feudal system.

Britain is once again leading the world with a de-industrial revolution. God help us !

[cosmic]

Pharos,

Yes indeed. You can only blame so much on the LibDems running DECC. It isn't as if they've gone off in a totally unexpected direction.

Cameron is still fully committed to this nonsense. He thinks it's going to do wonders for the economy.

This is from a speech he gave to the Royal Society on February 4th this year.

"So to those who say we just can’t afford to prioritise green energy right now, my view is we can’t afford not to.

Far from being a drag on growth, making our energy sources more sustainable, our energy consumption more efficient, and our economy more resilient to energy price shocks – those things are a vital part of the growth and wealth that we need.

Already today Britain is one of the best places for green energy, green investment, and crucially for green jobs anywhere in the world."

http://www.ukace.org/2013/02/david-camerons-speech-at-the-launch-of-deccs-energy-efficiency-mission/

[Robin Guenier]

Here's something I haven't seen before: this morning, wind is contributing 5.12GW to our power demand (15.8%) and CCGT only 2.11GW (6.5%). The dreaded coal is however weighing in at 16.12GW (49.7%).

[Steve Jones]

Mar 21, 2013 at 5:23 PM | Unregistered Commenter richard verney

Mr Verney,

Following your period of calm weather due to a blocking high pressure area, it would be good to have a 1987 style storm that doesn't hurt anyone but demolishes every windmill in the country.

[John Shade]

Cloak of Green, Cover for Greed. The SSE which pushes renewables to get the subsidies, then warns us of inadequate power supplies, has now been fined for 'prolonged mis-selling':

Energy supplier SSE has been fined £10.5m by the regulator Ofgem for mis-selling gas and electricity.

The fine is the largest ever imposed on an energy supplier by Ofgem.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22011717

More tawdry behaviour from those who purport to be alarmed about climate. The stench is building up.

[John Shade]

An angry letter in The Scotsman calls for people like Marchant, CEO of SSE and prominent bender-of-the-ear of First Minister Salmond on the urgent necessity of subsidising renewables and reducing 'carbon' (http://www.2020climategroup.org.uk/about-2020/the-2020-story/) to be fined personally:

Fine the liars, not those they conned
... The cost of the fine is always passed on to the 
customer or service user and to fine the victims of a crime makes no sense whatsoever.

Instead, let us fine the individuals who performed the misleading acts and the people whose ineffective management failed to prevent their actions.

We should fine those ­individuals who told the lies and those who encouraged them in it.

We should fine those who turned a blind eye to lying, from board level down to the sales reps. Fine the non-
executive directors and shareholders where they exist, but don’t fine the 
victims. I am sure that a simple clawback mechanism could be devised.

That is the only way to ­effect a change of culture...

http://www.scotsman.com/news/letters/fine-the-liars-not-those-they-conned-1-2875431

Now this was in connection with 'mis-selling gas and electricity' (see previous comment). How long before we see such letters being published re the mis-selling of climate change and all the baggage that has gone with it? What size of fine would be in order then?

But who will conduct the audit to establish at least some of the harm that has been done? Who will lead the way to repairing it? The intellectual arguments over climate and CO2 may well have been won, at least to the satisfaction of most commenters here and perhaps to an increasing number of mainstream journalists, but there is still a great deal of work to be done in the political sphere.