[Politics] The Labour Government

Right Brain Ronnie · Jul 25, 2024

nicko31 said:
Thank god there’s no threats to British birds from climate change and we just have to worry about the windmills

When did you last go to china, India and America to show your concern and protest, if Millie the willie thinks he is going to make any difference to climate change he is pissing in the wind.
It like making a dam on the Niagara falls with a match box.
I want to climate protestors putting pressure on those nations.

nicko31 · Jul 25, 2024

Right Brain Ronnie said:
When did you last go to china, India and America to show your concern and protest, if Millie the willie thinks he is going to make any difference to climate change he is pissing in the wind.
It like making a dam on the Niagara falls with a match box.
I want to climate protestors putting pressure on those nations.

China is doing a lot with 50 percent renewable electricity on their grid already. They are also manufacturing EVs, solar panels and batteries at scale that is help drive the transition to renewables worldwide.

abc · Jul 25, 2024

Right Brain Ronnie said:
Its totally the wrong answer to have all these turbines, I'm wondering how labour voters will like it when they spoil beautiful Britain and it's birds.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess. Personally i think they are majestic but i can see why others don’t. However if it’s a choice between not liking the look of turbines and the impact of climate change….

Cats will always kill far more birds than turbines so let’s ban cats! (Actually a law requiring all cats to have a bell around their necks would do the the same job and would be slightly less controversial!)

beorhthelm · Jul 25, 2024

the £300 target will be roughly a return to the 2021 price level. or what would probably happen if they do nothing.

it's hard to see how GB Energy investment alone would change much on bills, wind has more volatile prices on short term than normal gas. while wind is great form of electricity generation, it's too unreliable, needs over capacity to cover current demand, and expensive storage back up. really we'll have to have a large nuke fleet to work, then do we need the wind power? i fear they'll over invest in wind because the nameplate capacity makes it look good, ignore how variable generation is. there needs to be more honesty from politicans, they cant really deliver cheap and carbon free energy.

CheeseRolls · Jul 25, 2024

fly high said:
No bids for offshore wind in government auction

There will be no new offshore wind projects after firms said the price for electricity was too low.

www.bbc.co.uk

Who knows how long before household bills go down & how much they will have to go up to fund a massive increase in off shore wind. Yes eventually but how much pain before will have to be endured. I know many just hate Tories full stop, what ever they did but I assume Ed Miliband would have been happy to land households with higher bills by giving the bidders higher guaranteed price per kW than was on offer in 2023. Billions is needed from private investment for the offshore work plus hundreds of miles of new pylons & cables. £8.3 billion won't buy you much. Private investment means profit for private companies so policy is pretty much the same.

Your argument here is undermined by two points.

1 Technology stands still and lower costs of deployment and more efficient generation systems will have no impact.
2 All of the existing investment in green technologies is sunk and no further returns are possible.

On the second point you are right to point out the transmission infrastructure requirement, but there has already been a lot of work on building out interchanges with neighbouring nations and storage capacity in the North Sea. These initiatives should enable the government to change the way that the market operates in this country. There are no guarantees, but price rises are not inevitable. At the same time there is no guarantee that another global shock will not happen in the next decade forcing our import costs sky high once again.

chickens · Jul 25, 2024

beorhthelm said:
the £300 target will be roughly a return to the 2021 price level. or what would probably happen if they do nothing.

it's hard to see how GB Energy investment alone would change much on bills, wind has more volatile prices on short term than normal gas. while wind is great form of electricity generation, it's too unreliable, needs over capacity to cover current demand, and expensive storage back up. really we'll have to have a large nuke fleet to work, then do we need the wind power? i fear they'll over invest in wind because the nameplate capacity makes it look good, ignore how variable generation is. there needs to be more honesty from politicans, they cant really deliver cheap and carbon free energy.

You have heard of batteries, right?

Our issue at present is quantity of storage, but many solar installations include batteries, allowing taking from the grid in times of surplus. In addition there are grid level sites like Pillswood and new grid scale energy storage systems are being built right now.

We already have 2.4GWh live in the UK, with a total UK need estimated at about 300GWh, and a further 120GWh is considered to be in pipeline. The article linked to below details one organisation looking to add 60GWh capacity by themselves. Apparently we’re on course to add 3.3GWh in 2024, only 1.1% of what we need, but money is coming in, and capacity is growing.

NatPower allocates £10bn to expand the UK’s grid-scale battery storage

NatPower has announced plans to build over £10bn worth of battery storage amounting to around 15-20% of the UK’s needs by 2040.

eandt.theiet.org

Why would we invest in nuclear, which produces environmentally difficult byproducts AND is more expensive?

deletebeepbeepbeep · Jul 25, 2024

GB Energy sounds like snake oil. It just seems another way to funnel public money to private companies. I don't trust it.

chickens · Jul 25, 2024

deletebeepbeepbeep said:
GB Energy sounds like snake oil. It just seems another way to funnel public money to private companies. I don't trust it.

This is why Britain stays poor. Every time the state involves itself, every Brit goes, ooh, government involvement bad.

Yet no other country on earth allows itself to be plundered in the way Britain does. France’s state energy company EDF is running huge swathes of our energy network. It’s state owned and it earned 40 billion euros for French taxpayers last year, France’s government and public services saw the profit, not Britain’s. We should at the very least ensure our government maintains a minority stake and a seat on the board for all our strategically important companies.

America doesn’t allow its most technologically advanced companies to be sold off, try saying you’re buying Microsoft or Apple and see how far you get. And yet when we owned ARM, one of the most advanced semiconductor companies on the planet, we held the door open for a takeover, and now they’re owned by Japan and listed on Nasdaq.

We’re idiots. No other country does this. It baffles international investors who expect resistance, but we welcome them in, help them load up whatever they want, and wave them goodbye as they take it. I dearly wish the British people would give their heads a significant wobble.

deletebeepbeepbeep · Jul 25, 2024

chickens said:
This is why Britain stays poor. Every time the state involves itself, every Brit goes, ooh, government involvement bad.

Yet no other country on earth allows itself to be plundered in the way Britain does. France’s state energy company EDF is running huge swathes of our energy network. It’s state owned and it earned 40 billion euros for French taxpayers last year, France’s government and public services saw the profit, not Britain’s. We should at the very least ensure our government maintains a minority stake and a seat on the board for all our strategically important companies.

America doesn’t allow its most technologically advanced companies to be sold off, try saying you’re buying Microsoft or Apple and see how far you get. And yet when we owned ARM, one of the most advanced semiconductor companies on the planet, we held the door open for a takeover, and now they’re owned by Japan and listed on Nasdaq.

We’re idiots. No other country does this. It baffles international investors who expect resistance, but we welcome them in, help them load up whatever they want, and wave them goodbye as they take it. I dearly wish the British people would give their heads a significant wobble.

I'm all for more public ownership of essential utilities. I just don't believe using public money to offset the potential risk of private companies is the way to go about it. It is more privatise the profits and use public money to offset the losses.

Is it PotG? · Jul 25, 2024

I really hope there is nothing to this story about pension tax
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/s...eople-3190349?ito=copy-link_share_article-top

chickens · Jul 25, 2024

deletebeepbeepbeep said:
I'm all for more public ownership of essential utilities. I just don't believe using public money to offset the potential risk of private companies is the way to go about it. It is more privatise the profits and use public money to offset the losses.

Thanks for the measured response, I was just wondering if I’d been incredibly rude and needed to edit my post.

Agree with you, but Britain seems somehow allergic to demanding equity. It’s like the way PFI worked, where the taxpayer ended up basically footing most of the bill and then watching the private partner run the finished project as “efficiently” (cheaply) as possible, or if it turned out to be loss making just giving up and handing it back so the cost fell on the taxpayer anyway.

We really don’t look after our own in this country, I’m politically centre-ish, I have no real quarrel with immigration as long as it’s needed immigration, but it boils my piss that we sell everything, and don’t retain at least a meaningful stake in our successes.

Bob! · Jul 25, 2024

Is it PotG? said:
I really hope there is nothing to this story about pension tax
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/s...eople-3190349?ito=copy-link_share_article-top

Why?

zefarelly · Jul 25, 2024

nicko31 said:
Thank god there’s no threats to British birds from climate change and we just have to worry about the windmills

f*** the birds . . . Think of all the sealife that's thriving under the protection of the rampion wind farm. . . Spare a thought for all the crustacians, and fish that haven't been bottom trawled . . . . And the poor dolphins that have food to eat.

If it carries on like this there'll be kelp growing and people will start moaning about seaweed on the beach . . . . The poor farmers will be forced to harvest it to enrich their crops and make our fruit and veg taste like it says in those old books no one reads any more.

zefarelly · Jul 25, 2024

chickens said:
Thanks for the measured response, I was just wondering if I’d been incredibly rude and needed to edit my post.

Agree with you, but Britain seems somehow allergic to demanding equity. It’s like the way PFI worked, where the taxpayer ended up basically footing most of the bill and then watching the private partner run the finished project as “efficiently” (cheaply) as possible, or if it turned out to be loss making just giving up and handing it back so the cost fell on the taxpayer anyway.

We really don’t look after our own in this country, I’m politically centre-ish, I have no real quarrel with immigration as long as it’s needed immigration, but it boils my piss that we sell everything, and don’t retain at least a meaningful stake in our successes.

self harm for the majority
obscene profit for a tiny minority

I really would like to see heads roll. There is a lengthy list of treasonous politicians over the last 40 years.

beorhthelm · Jul 25, 2024

chickens said:
You have heard of batteries, right?

great at small scale, that 300GWh isn't going to last long when wind doesn't blow, which happens more often than you think. National Grid is concerned with capacity to smooth out the supply over hours, not provide 100% backup for a week. i reckon this is where hydrogen can come in, store surplus from wind and burn on demand. it's considered inefficient though, so looks likely to be shunned.

nuclear is logical conclusion once you realise how much over capacity you need from wind+storage to meet demand for electricity, then add on doing something about 75% energy use thats transport and non-generating gas. 1650TWh total to supply.

Is it PotG? · Jul 25, 2024

Bob! said:
Why?

I feel it would be inappropriate

nicko31 · Jul 25, 2024

Is it PotG? said:
I feel it would be inappropriate

Its pretty good for higher earners now, £60k p.a tax free contribution plus lifetime allowance removed entirely.

I'd favour a scheme where the full tax relief only applied to UK investments. We need to get investment at home as a priority

chickens · Jul 25, 2024

beorhthelm said:
great at small scale, that 300GWh isn't going to last long when wind doesn't blow, which happens more often than you think. National Grid is concerned with capacity to smooth out the supply over hours, not provide 100% backup for a week. i reckon this is where hydrogen can come in, store surplus from wind and burn on demand. it's considered inefficient though, so looks likely to be shunned.

nuclear is logical conclusion once you realise how much over capacity you need from wind+storage to meet demand for electricity, then add on doing something about 75% energy use thats transport and non-generating gas. 1650TWh total to supply.

I’m not so sure that it isn’t going to be cheaper to have over-capacity in wind and solar and then store it. With nuclear the cost of commissioning and decommissioning is huge, plus in a finite world, where do we keep storing more and more spent fuel rods?

The Americans had already filled up Yucca Mountain by 2009 with stuff that apparently has a half-life of 650,000 years. Do I believe we can and/or will maintain this facility for 650,000 years? I do not.

Continuing to use an energy source where we have no known method for making the byproducts safe is utterly foolhardy. The best we’ve got at present appears to be KBS-3, but it seems far more cost effective to overgenerate solar/wind and store it than be messing around with this stuff.

With nuclear, any advances in technology require new plants to be built at huge expense. With solar, if panels with greater efficiency are created, they can be replaced ad-hoc as old panels fail. The renewables solution is just better.

nicko31 · Jul 25, 2024

chickens said:
I’m not so sure that it isn’t going to be cheaper to have over-capacity in wind and solar and then store it. With nuclear the cost of commissioning and decommissioning is huge, plus in a finite world, where do we keep storing more and more spent fuel rods?

The Americans had already filled up Yucca Mountain by 2009 with stuff that apparently has a half-life of 650,000 years. Do I believe we can and/or will maintain this facility for 650,000 years? I do not.

Continuing to use an energy source where we have no known method for making the byproducts safe is utterly foolhardy. The best we’ve got at present appears to be KBS-3, but it seems far more cost effective to overgenerate solar/wind and store it than be messing around with this stuff.

With nuclear, any advances in technology require new plants to be built at huge expense. With solar, if panels with greater efficiency are created, they can be replaced ad-hoc as old panels fail. The renewables solution is just better.

What about X-link, would certainly help fill some of the gap.

Machiavelli · Jul 26, 2024

Nicks said:
He actually says "We will start to see the effect of it " and he also says 2030 which equals 6 years.
So he doesn't actually say when they will come down.

OK, it's that you don't understand.
First, you're quibbling between 'We will start to see the effect of it' and what I said which was 'it'll start to come down in the course of the parliament'.
Second, in your initial post that I responded to, you said that 'it would take at least six years to get energy prices down'. So in your reply to me, you're now admitting that you were wrong in your initial post (which is what I said).
Third, Miliband is talking about two things. You took up the issue of consumer prices, which has been dealt with above. The 2030 date is an ambition to decarbonise electricity. I doubt that'll be achieved but suspect we'll get relatively close, but it's hugely ambitious and will be an enormous step towards the net zero by 2050 legal goal. Beyond electricity decarbonisation, we'll need to transfer away from fossil fuels in transport, central heating in homes, cement and steel production, and other more minor changes.
It appears that you are not keen on decarbonising electricity. If that is the case, here's a question for you. What alternative do you propose?

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