Greenery is national security threat

Windfarms and all the other bonkers attempts to green the electricity grid are not only an expensive and pointless gesture that encourages graft and sets neighbour against neighbour. It turns out that they represent a threat to national security too:

Security experts said last year that measures to make the electricity grid greener are boosting its vulnerability to computer hacking since new wind farms, solar panels and smart meters mean there are additional portals to be breached.

“The energy grid today is vulnerable from all degrees,” Slava Borilin, critical infrastructure business manager at Kaspersky, said in an e-mail. “Its electricity production is under threat of interruption and down-time from breaches of industrial control systems.”

Department for Exaggeration, Crookery and Conmen

Here's an astonishing essay, looking at the shambles DECC has made of smart-meter rollout.

Last week the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change announced that the UK’s smart metering deployment was facing another 12 months delay.  That’s 18 months after they announced that the UK’s smart metering deployment was facing another 12 months’ delay.  This is not all bad news.  It means that the growing population of consultants within DECC can look forward to what is fast becoming a never-ending gravy train of consultancy work, public consultations and project reviews.

There are also some astonishing revelations about DECC's attempts to hide its incompetence and this rather juicy ending:

It’s all part of the Alice in Wonderland world that is our current energy policy, which is coming to resemble Swift’s satire of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.  That’s probably the only renewable energy policy that DECC has not tried funding, but now I’ve brought it to their attention, they might.  From feed-in-tariffs to keep the voters happy to offshore windmills that are about as effective as treadmills for mermaids, we have a department that is out of control and prepared to squander taxpayers’ money on anything that can be claimed to save energy, ministerial face, the climate or the world.

And you can count the MPs who give a stuff on the fingers of one hand.

Read the whole thing.

(Coincidentally, the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee are taking evidence on smart meters, right now).

Diary dates, cafe culture edition

The Dundee Cafe Science has an event on renewables on Monday:

Dr David Rodley from the University of Dundee Centre for Renewable Energy will speculate on how the energy landscape in Scotland and the wider UK might look in the future. Will carbon become the new currency as extreme targets for limiting greenhouse gas emissions begin to bite? Can Scotland achieve its goal for 100% equivalent renewable electricity, and how might smart metering help keep the lights on, and affordable?

Details here.

Give your opinion

Those of you with concerns or opinions about or expert knowledge of smart meters might like to be reminded that the deadline for submissions of evidence to the House of Commons ECCC will close on Tuesday 4^th November.

The deadline is Tuesday 04 November 2014. As a guideline submissions should state clearly who the submission is from e.g. ‘Written evidence submitted by xxxx’ and be no longer than 3000 words; please contact the Committee staff if you wish to discuss this. If you need to send hard copy please send it to: The Clerk, Energy and Climate Change Committee, 14 Tothill Street, London, SW1H 9NB.

Written submissions for this inquiry should be submitted via the inquiry page on the Energy and Climate Change Committee website.

[Link repaired. TM]