re Mr Lowe's, solar panels, you misunderstand the difference between consumer solar panels and grid connected solar farms, they are a world apart. A Guardian newspaper article is similarly disconnected from reality when they accused Mr Lowe of being hypocritical for using solar panels on his farm. The irony is that the economic argument for domestic or industrial solar panels is only positive due to the very high unit electrical cost due to renewables.
The Contract for Difference price for solar farms is normally higher than the median wholesale market price. They also need the support of conventional generation to feed the grid. Also typically they include a battery system to harvest the capacity market, a very lucrative source of revenue. Essentially solar farms are simply subsidy farms and have very little value.
What I don't think is realised that the core , i.e. old existing, transmission system is capable of carrying about 30% more than it actually carries. The expansion required, as is claimed, is for poorly sited generation sources, which are also very poor generators.
We don't need more pylons or the alternative extremely costly underground cables. We need proper generators to be built, as soon as posible, CCGT in the interim but much more nuclear.
Coal would be ideal, but, realistically that is not going to happen. A grid with zero renewables is what should be the aim.
The day that I find a political party that understands energy in all it's facets would be my Nirvana,
You're relying on an out-of-date report that looks at AC undergrounding. Reform, the Conservatives and the Green Party all want to see HVDC undergrounding in the East of England. It has lower lifetime costs, National Grid says so. The NESO study showed that it was a great alternative to pylons (and it could be built even quicker than they said). Plus note that one can upgrade the existing grid to triple capacity using TS Conductors, part-owned by National Grid and approved for use in the UK. Plus an offshore grid is cheaper and better: three independent reports since 2011 have said so and National Grid was discovered deleting a video saying just that from its website only this month.
regarding nuclear, we need nuclear we don't need batteries, at least not in the proliferation that we now see, largely due to them being very lucrative for the owner.
Nuclear regulation has suffered for decades by a mistaken view that radiation has a linear effect on the human body, a view that has proven to be incorrect. Also why are the same procedures for acceptance required for reacators of the same design, even if they are built in a different country?
The consequences of failure are indeed severe and must be rigorously controlled and safety features must be adequate and in place. Small modular reactors, as I understand, are due to their size inherently safer than larger reactors.
The principle of building new reactors on decomissioned stations is a good one as grid connection is there already, no pylons or cables required, O.K., possibly some refurbishment but that is relatively small change.
There is a perception, since the very early days of nuclear, partly due to fear of 'the bomb' that nuclear is not favoured. It is, however, the only alternative we have if CO2 emissions are the criteria for new generation. Renewables will never work, a strong statement no doubt, but because of fundamental attributes of their operation and construction is a realistic view.
If they ban National Grid from paying out dividends, if I were them I would do one of two things (1) just do share buybacks instead to return money to shareholders which is probably better from a tax perspective anyway, (2) just reinvest money that would have been spent on dividends on growth, or (3) de-list from the London Stock Exchange and move primary listing to New York then re-domicile the abroad then divest from UK assets and go all in on the American portfolio (as National Grid already have a big American exposure).
For the sake of the UK, I'd hope the National Grid did the first rather than two latter options
I had to admit to chortling with gallows humour at the mention of the 100 million bat tunnel, costing £330k per bat (and that's presuming they would all be killed), or the expensive Hinkley C underwater sound system aimed at scaring off fish from a cooling outlet system, lest they meet a gristly end.
Reform won't win because of any issue other than mass migration. And by 2029, they will likely win on this issue alone. Net Zero is lunacy. The path to a sustainable future is innovation, and nothing else. Renewables are useful up to around 30%, but beyond that point energy cost per unit steadily rises. The energy failures are the UK, Germany and California. The energy successes are Sweden and France. One of the hidden costs of solar farms is the rampant thievery of valuable cables. It's a huge ongoing costs few anticipated.
The establishment class hasn't looked at the literature on ingroup, genetic political leanings, or openness to new experiences. They think its a matter of learning to accept people from different cultures through experience and education. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it's a fallacy people in Brexit areas have the least experience of migration- many of them have moved the Brexit areas because of ingrained preference for the homogenous British culture to which they are accustomed. My aunt is a former teacher and spent a stint as an estate agent, and she used to hear it all the time, and, contrary to expectations, a huge percentage of her clients were young couples looking to start a family, or with young children- mainly from London and Essex.
About 40% of political leanings are genetic. They established this by looking at monozygotic twins separated at birth. Regardless of political leanings, social conservatives have larger amygdalas. The liberal literature codes this as being more fearful, but another way to read it is they are more accurate at assessing *potential* human threats. Regardless, it's a proxy for ingroup, because socially conservative cultures naturally have higher ingroup. The other issue is the SES spectrum, and particularly parental education background. Epigenetically, and through environment people from less safe, secure and affluent backgrounds develop larger amydalas for non-genetic reasons. It's why I can enjoy exploring new cultures, food, and visiting cultural sites, and others, quite frankly, cannot or won't.
The real problem is that the educated cosmopolitan classes naturally enjoy the best immigration has to offer. The people they meet through university and work, also have lower ingroup (smaller amydalas), and are generally much better integrated by virtue of being highly bicultural. The problem with mass migration is that it naturally sorts the highest ingroup populations- both amongst native and migrant populations together- the people least likely to get along, through virtue of their general position on the SES spectrum (with trade professionals, entrepreneurs, and other high proles, the notable exceptions) and throws them in together.
The other issue is the grooming gangs. Labour imagines it's a matter of far right echo chambers. Although they undoubtedly exist, they are not the culprit. Instead, it's lived experience. In 2023 the CSE taskforce found 4,000 group CSE cases (victims). The average person has 150 acquaintances, who aren't friends, but with whom they are friendly and learn a fair amount of biographical detail. A favourite hairdresser you've known for more than five years, might be a good example- or someone you chat to quite regularly down the pub.
Charlie Peters has found 50 towns and cities through court records in which Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs have been active, and there are doubtless more. One can reasonably expect that everyone in these communities of a certain class knows a rape victim, or knows someone who knows a rape victim. And there is a certain amount of class osmosis which has occurred in the past, and will continue to occur. There is a middle class schoolteacher active on Substack, who safeguarded a girl, when most of her colleagues and other institutional figures stood back and did nothing.
I'm sorry to say that Labour and other conventional political parties mishandled this from the start. The best way to protect the large majority of lovely, law abiding and peaceful Muslims was not by ignoring victims for years, or making vapid claims about White offenders being more common, which is only true in total numbers, but not on a per population basis, where Pakistani Muslims are heavily overrepresented. The best way to protect their reputations and fend off the genuine far right, would have been to deal with the problems as they arose, and by providing a massive deterrence to potential future offenders. The figures are only so high because people believed they could get away with it, because an overwhelming majority did. Only the ringleaders and chief facilitators were imprisoned.
There is likely only one thing Labour can do if they want to avert a Reform victory in 2029. If they announced they were willing to put the full evidential resources of the CPS at the disposal of one or all of the victims group, and also agreed to fund law firms to sue the rapists with a view to taking the homes and businesses in civil suits, and pushing the rapists to abscond with their assets to Pakistan, a non-extradition country- it might just prevent a Reform victory. But they would also need to substantially reduce legal migration and curb asylum seeking. It would be a relatively easy logistical matter to train and reallocate existing civil servants to administer lie detector tests, to ask basic questions about the legitimacy of claims, and ascertain red flag histories of violence, rape and organised crime activities. The Court of Appeals already uses such a vetting system to sort inmates who claim innocence from those who probably are innocent.
Sky recently did a rather unique poll. They asked people who they definitely wouldn't vote for at the next election. It was roughly 55% for both the Tories and Reform, leaving an available voting poll of 45% for both, with only a percentage point in it. I can't imagine Labour are any better off, and are likely in a worse position. On the current course, barring substantial change, Reform look likely to prevail.
Currently the bookies have Labour as the favourites at 7/4. Reform are only slightly worse off at 9/4. The Tories are at 5/2. But at the moment the direction of travel is all one way, and if Labour are stupid enough to do something drastic like curtail free speech, then it has the potential to backfire massively. The two main competitors to the hard right party in Austria refused to form a coalition. The voters got annoyed and their polling shot up from 29% to 39%. Labour needs to restrain any urges it might feel towards authoritarianism. The same thing has happened in other parts of Europe.
I hadn't quite appreciated how likely it was that Reform could be the next UK government. Just checked the odds and Farage is 3/1 favourite to be next PM after Starmer and Reform are pretty much joint favourite with Labour to win the most seats. Extraordinary.
Sam, it’s a shame you missed calling the costs associated with burying transmission as a “no-pole tax”.
I’ll show myself out.
Sam,
re Mr Lowe's, solar panels, you misunderstand the difference between consumer solar panels and grid connected solar farms, they are a world apart. A Guardian newspaper article is similarly disconnected from reality when they accused Mr Lowe of being hypocritical for using solar panels on his farm. The irony is that the economic argument for domestic or industrial solar panels is only positive due to the very high unit electrical cost due to renewables.
The Contract for Difference price for solar farms is normally higher than the median wholesale market price. They also need the support of conventional generation to feed the grid. Also typically they include a battery system to harvest the capacity market, a very lucrative source of revenue. Essentially solar farms are simply subsidy farms and have very little value.
What I don't think is realised that the core , i.e. old existing, transmission system is capable of carrying about 30% more than it actually carries. The expansion required, as is claimed, is for poorly sited generation sources, which are also very poor generators.
We don't need more pylons or the alternative extremely costly underground cables. We need proper generators to be built, as soon as posible, CCGT in the interim but much more nuclear.
Coal would be ideal, but, realistically that is not going to happen. A grid with zero renewables is what should be the aim.
The day that I find a political party that understands energy in all it's facets would be my Nirvana,
but I don't expect it any time soon.
You're relying on an out-of-date report that looks at AC undergrounding. Reform, the Conservatives and the Green Party all want to see HVDC undergrounding in the East of England. It has lower lifetime costs, National Grid says so. The NESO study showed that it was a great alternative to pylons (and it could be built even quicker than they said). Plus note that one can upgrade the existing grid to triple capacity using TS Conductors, part-owned by National Grid and approved for use in the UK. Plus an offshore grid is cheaper and better: three independent reports since 2011 have said so and National Grid was discovered deleting a video saying just that from its website only this month.
Sam,
regarding nuclear, we need nuclear we don't need batteries, at least not in the proliferation that we now see, largely due to them being very lucrative for the owner.
Nuclear regulation has suffered for decades by a mistaken view that radiation has a linear effect on the human body, a view that has proven to be incorrect. Also why are the same procedures for acceptance required for reacators of the same design, even if they are built in a different country?
The consequences of failure are indeed severe and must be rigorously controlled and safety features must be adequate and in place. Small modular reactors, as I understand, are due to their size inherently safer than larger reactors.
The principle of building new reactors on decomissioned stations is a good one as grid connection is there already, no pylons or cables required, O.K., possibly some refurbishment but that is relatively small change.
There is a perception, since the very early days of nuclear, partly due to fear of 'the bomb' that nuclear is not favoured. It is, however, the only alternative we have if CO2 emissions are the criteria for new generation. Renewables will never work, a strong statement no doubt, but because of fundamental attributes of their operation and construction is a realistic view.
Nuclear is Hobson's choice!
If they ban National Grid from paying out dividends, if I were them I would do one of two things (1) just do share buybacks instead to return money to shareholders which is probably better from a tax perspective anyway, (2) just reinvest money that would have been spent on dividends on growth, or (3) de-list from the London Stock Exchange and move primary listing to New York then re-domicile the abroad then divest from UK assets and go all in on the American portfolio (as National Grid already have a big American exposure).
For the sake of the UK, I'd hope the National Grid did the first rather than two latter options
Good article. Have you seen the Spiked NIMBY video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI8HLm-UfzI&t=220s
I had to admit to chortling with gallows humour at the mention of the 100 million bat tunnel, costing £330k per bat (and that's presuming they would all be killed), or the expensive Hinkley C underwater sound system aimed at scaring off fish from a cooling outlet system, lest they meet a gristly end.
Reform won't win because of any issue other than mass migration. And by 2029, they will likely win on this issue alone. Net Zero is lunacy. The path to a sustainable future is innovation, and nothing else. Renewables are useful up to around 30%, but beyond that point energy cost per unit steadily rises. The energy failures are the UK, Germany and California. The energy successes are Sweden and France. One of the hidden costs of solar farms is the rampant thievery of valuable cables. It's a huge ongoing costs few anticipated.
The establishment class hasn't looked at the literature on ingroup, genetic political leanings, or openness to new experiences. They think its a matter of learning to accept people from different cultures through experience and education. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it's a fallacy people in Brexit areas have the least experience of migration- many of them have moved the Brexit areas because of ingrained preference for the homogenous British culture to which they are accustomed. My aunt is a former teacher and spent a stint as an estate agent, and she used to hear it all the time, and, contrary to expectations, a huge percentage of her clients were young couples looking to start a family, or with young children- mainly from London and Essex.
About 40% of political leanings are genetic. They established this by looking at monozygotic twins separated at birth. Regardless of political leanings, social conservatives have larger amygdalas. The liberal literature codes this as being more fearful, but another way to read it is they are more accurate at assessing *potential* human threats. Regardless, it's a proxy for ingroup, because socially conservative cultures naturally have higher ingroup. The other issue is the SES spectrum, and particularly parental education background. Epigenetically, and through environment people from less safe, secure and affluent backgrounds develop larger amydalas for non-genetic reasons. It's why I can enjoy exploring new cultures, food, and visiting cultural sites, and others, quite frankly, cannot or won't.
The real problem is that the educated cosmopolitan classes naturally enjoy the best immigration has to offer. The people they meet through university and work, also have lower ingroup (smaller amydalas), and are generally much better integrated by virtue of being highly bicultural. The problem with mass migration is that it naturally sorts the highest ingroup populations- both amongst native and migrant populations together- the people least likely to get along, through virtue of their general position on the SES spectrum (with trade professionals, entrepreneurs, and other high proles, the notable exceptions) and throws them in together.
The other issue is the grooming gangs. Labour imagines it's a matter of far right echo chambers. Although they undoubtedly exist, they are not the culprit. Instead, it's lived experience. In 2023 the CSE taskforce found 4,000 group CSE cases (victims). The average person has 150 acquaintances, who aren't friends, but with whom they are friendly and learn a fair amount of biographical detail. A favourite hairdresser you've known for more than five years, might be a good example- or someone you chat to quite regularly down the pub.
Charlie Peters has found 50 towns and cities through court records in which Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs have been active, and there are doubtless more. One can reasonably expect that everyone in these communities of a certain class knows a rape victim, or knows someone who knows a rape victim. And there is a certain amount of class osmosis which has occurred in the past, and will continue to occur. There is a middle class schoolteacher active on Substack, who safeguarded a girl, when most of her colleagues and other institutional figures stood back and did nothing.
I'm sorry to say that Labour and other conventional political parties mishandled this from the start. The best way to protect the large majority of lovely, law abiding and peaceful Muslims was not by ignoring victims for years, or making vapid claims about White offenders being more common, which is only true in total numbers, but not on a per population basis, where Pakistani Muslims are heavily overrepresented. The best way to protect their reputations and fend off the genuine far right, would have been to deal with the problems as they arose, and by providing a massive deterrence to potential future offenders. The figures are only so high because people believed they could get away with it, because an overwhelming majority did. Only the ringleaders and chief facilitators were imprisoned.
There is likely only one thing Labour can do if they want to avert a Reform victory in 2029. If they announced they were willing to put the full evidential resources of the CPS at the disposal of one or all of the victims group, and also agreed to fund law firms to sue the rapists with a view to taking the homes and businesses in civil suits, and pushing the rapists to abscond with their assets to Pakistan, a non-extradition country- it might just prevent a Reform victory. But they would also need to substantially reduce legal migration and curb asylum seeking. It would be a relatively easy logistical matter to train and reallocate existing civil servants to administer lie detector tests, to ask basic questions about the legitimacy of claims, and ascertain red flag histories of violence, rape and organised crime activities. The Court of Appeals already uses such a vetting system to sort inmates who claim innocence from those who probably are innocent.
Sky recently did a rather unique poll. They asked people who they definitely wouldn't vote for at the next election. It was roughly 55% for both the Tories and Reform, leaving an available voting poll of 45% for both, with only a percentage point in it. I can't imagine Labour are any better off, and are likely in a worse position. On the current course, barring substantial change, Reform look likely to prevail.
Currently the bookies have Labour as the favourites at 7/4. Reform are only slightly worse off at 9/4. The Tories are at 5/2. But at the moment the direction of travel is all one way, and if Labour are stupid enough to do something drastic like curtail free speech, then it has the potential to backfire massively. The two main competitors to the hard right party in Austria refused to form a coalition. The voters got annoyed and their polling shot up from 29% to 39%. Labour needs to restrain any urges it might feel towards authoritarianism. The same thing has happened in other parts of Europe.
I hadn't quite appreciated how likely it was that Reform could be the next UK government. Just checked the odds and Farage is 3/1 favourite to be next PM after Starmer and Reform are pretty much joint favourite with Labour to win the most seats. Extraordinary.