The Climate Scaremongers – Energy Operator Tells Miliband: Your Plans Cannot Work

PAUL HOMEWOOD

LABOUR’S manifesto promised we would have a zero carbon electricity system by 2030. It is a pledge that Ed Miliband has been making for years, not least in his party conference speech last year, and it was also one of Labour’s ‘Five Missions for a Better Britain’ policy pledge launched last year.

It would therefore be reasonable to presume that Miliband had a detailed plan of how he would achieve this and in particular how much it might all cost. So it came as a surprise when shortly after taking office in July he asked the National Energy System Operator, NESO, to provide practical advice on achieving the target.

NESO have now responded with some bad news!

Many energy experts have long argued that a zero carbon grid simply is not possible at these timescales, because you cannot run a grid predominantly on intermittent renewable energy. It turns out that NESO, whose job is to make sure that Britain has the electricity has it needs every second of the day, agree.

Their report sent to Ed Miliband emphasises that we will need to retain a full fleet of gas power plants to fire up when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine:

This really is a damning indictment not only of Labour’s energy policy, but also of the whole Net Zero agenda and its reliance on intermittent renewable energy.

Even though NESO say that gas power will supply only 5 per cent of our electricity, they admit there will be many days when we will need it for half our power or more, just as we do now. And keeping a fleet of gas plants on standby creates problems of its own. They will need to be fully manned all year, fully maintained, and ready to fire up when needed, all of which will cost a lot of money. With these plants standing idle most of the time, operators will demand billions in standby payments, all of which will end up on our energy bills.

We will have to pay for two electricity systems – one for when the wind blows, and the other for when it does not!

The NESO report also confirms that the increase in wind and solar power demanded by Miliband will drastically increase bills, not lower them as we were promised.

Not only is renewable energy more expensive to produce than gas generation, there are indirect costs to consider, such as the standby capacity mentioned above, storage, curtailment payments when we have too much wind, and grid upgrades.

Analysis of NESO data suggests that annual costs could be £20billion higher by 2030 if Miliband’s plans are carried through.

NESO also say that annual investment of £48billion will be needed for grid upgrades between now and 2030 to achieve targets.

All this expenditure will merely end up duplicating what we already have.

If this was not all bad enough, over-reliance on intermittent renewables will mean that we will end up having energy rationing. According to NESO, households will have to switch off appliances at times of peak demand. Currently, of course, gas generation is turned up and down to match demand.

They hope the public will do it voluntarily! Good luck with that. The reality is that there will be brownouts and punitive pricing to discourage electricity consumption at peak times.

Unsurprisingly, Ed Miliband has already been bragging that this new report proves that his clean power plan is both achievable and will lead to cheaper electricity. Both are outright lies. But it looks as if we will have to prove this the hard way!

Bragging in Baku

SIR Keir Starmer flew out to Azerbaijan to make a speech at COP29 on Tuesday. He is obviously deluded enough to think that the rest of the world would pay the slightest attention to the platitudes and lies he delivered in his usual monotone.

It was almost as if his speech had been written by ChatBot. He talked of a climate crisis, opportunities for Britain, 1.5C warming and technologies of the future.

He lied that Net Zero would bring energy independence, by which he meant reliance on the EU for electricity imports, and boosting living standards, when his plans will push up energy prices and destroy jobs.

He bragged about stopping new North Sea oil and gas licences, while spending billions on inefficient technologies such as hydrogen and carbon capture. And he claimed the UK was a ‘climate leader’, committing to an 81 per cent cut in emissions by 2035 (meaning a cut of 65 per cent from today’s emissions). He does not seem to realise that nobody else is in this race.

Meanwhile Azerbaijan’s President revealed the same day that his country would continue to exploit its God-given reserves of oil and gas.

As ever with COPs, this one is all about the money. COP29’s President, the Azerbaijani Minister for Ecology, demanded $8trillion to ‘fight climate change’, claiming that we had ‘marshalled’ the same amount to fight Covid-19.

Will Starmer and Lammy have the backbone to stand up to this blackmail? I doubt it.

Over 66,000 are attending the jamboree, including 470 ministers and officials from the UK. Yet curiously only 3,975 have registered for ‘virtual online’ participation. So much for saving the planet!

Why, for instance, did Starmer fly out to make a speech that nobody took any notice of? Could he not have done a video presentation instead? As for the other 469 bureaucrats and ministers, why are we even employing them? Nothing they do will alter the weather.

This article (The climate scaremongers – energy operator tells Miliband: Your plans cannot work) was created and published by The Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Paul Homewood