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Why does the U.K. have the highest fuel prices in the World?
NET ZEROhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JXnDSSeZa8&t=960s
We are de-Industrialising at an astonishingly fast speed.
Only one Virgin Steel Works left
and that hangs by its fingernails.If only that were true.
Maybe you could elucidate, Shibboleth
make (something) clear; explain.
The United Kingdom is the World Leader in Net Zero.
The Elite are obsessive.
They never ask the lower orders, if they agree with Net Zero?“The United Kingdom is the World Leader in Net Zero. The Elite are obsessive. They never ask the lower orders, if they agree with Net Zero?”
Many people are obsessed with things they don’t understand or agree with, Michael. We are a very reactionary, superstitious and fearful hairless ape, after all. The remainder are obsessed by things that truly matter and what they can influence. The road to contentment, not perdition.
Your recent posts are instructive. I do sincerely hope you can attain your own metanoia one day, but that requires a step into the unknown and a complete surrender to the reality you discover there.
All the best with that endeavour.
Michael, there are a lot of reasons British energy prices are so high. I’ve posted a lot of them. I wish you had read them so I didn’t have to post them again.
There are certain people and groups that would pin all the blame on net zero, but as I keep demonstrating, they are dishonest. The reason for their dishonesty is to distort public opinion to influence voting patterns, both ours (the electorate) and MPs in parliamentary votes.
Collectively, the reasons add up to decades of mismanagement of Britain’s energy infrastructure, and some very bad subsidy regimes that are easy to exploit.
Here are a few of the contributory issues:
* Blair’s government sold Britain’s only long term gas storage facility, a depleted gas North Sea gas field called Rough, to Centrica Storage. Centrica Storage trashed it by misusing it to play the market. Cameron’s government then let Centrica Storage off of their contractual obligation to repair it. Underlying cause – privatisation and corruption.
* Insufficient grid has been built to accept all the output of wind farms, especially offshore one. The subsidy regime then pays new wind farms silly money NOT to generate electricity if the grid can’t accept it. Underlying cause – incompetent legislation at best, possibly corrupt.
* Insufficient north-south grid has been built by Scottish Power and another Scottish company, so often, although enough electricity can be generated, it can’t be moved to the right part of the country, causing more expensive electricity to be imported via the interconnectors from mainland Europe. Underlying cause – I don’t know.
* The west coast distribution HVDC link has been up and running for years, but the more important east coast one hasn’t even been started, it’s over a decade behind schedule. Underlying cause – I don’t know.
Michael, my info comes from an expert who has been watching this débâcle unfold over the course of decades. He is utterly furious about it. Please make good use of all the work he has done. He is a good and honest man.
The people who blame net zero are the ones getting rich off Britain’s extortionate energy prices. Upgrading the grid would bring energy prices down, so they want to prevent that. Don’t fall for their propaganda.
Michael, you should be able to tell my real-world description from commercially motivated propaganda, by contrasting the detail and complexity of my comment against the soundbite nature of “net zero is bankrupting us”.
I don’t claim to know all the problems, and I’ve listed just the problems I happen to remember right now.
Michael, a bit more real world energy infrastructure stuff.
It is true that there is not enough gas generation capacity to satisfy demand when windspeed across the whole country is low, but without a long term gas storage facility we wouldn’t be able to run extra gas-fired power stations anyway, we just can’t get gas into the country fast enough to run more than we already have.
I hope you can tell the difference between engineering considerations and commercially motivated propaganda.
C lark, thanks for your considered replies.
Something confuses me.
Base Load.
Once we used to rely on home dug Coal for the Base Load
of our Electricity.
I think we then moved ” Dash for Gas”
towards a Base Load that was based on home dug Coal with home extracted North Sea Gas or Natural Gas.
That used to seem to work reasonably well.
Now, at least in part we use or will be using Nuclear Energy to be our Base Load.
If/when Hinkley Point C and Sizewell
https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/hinkley-point-c
and
https://www.sizewellc.com/
We could have somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3
of our Base Load supplied by Nuclear.
I think the government call this “Green” Energy.
I had thought that the efficient way for a Nuclear Power Station to run was constantly, just slightly below “Flat Out”we seem to varry in our Nuclear Energy to our National Grid, between 10% -20%.
That seems rather strange.
Currently the figure is 20% 04.42 17/04/2025Is it because less electricity is consumed at night, therefor the Nuclear Plants are still constant?
So, at a casual look, it just seems they are producing more but they are producing the same?Anyway, moving on, If we do have two or four or six or eight new EPR reactors running and we gradually shut down the older Nuclear facilities, our Base Load, will be Nuclear.
These facilities are incredibly expensive, I am assuming that the new fleet of EPR
will be running all the time ( apart from refueling) at close to maximum, for the next sixty years?
If one EPR Reactor produces 3 1/2 per cent of our needs, a double will produce 7% of our needs, so three doubles would produce 21 % of our needs.
If the U.K. now (minimally) produces 10% of our Base Load,
do you think in fifteen years ( even without Modular Nuclear Reactors) we could be producing something like 31% of our needed Electrical supply from home based Nuclear Power?If in fifteen years, we are producing something like 1/3 of our Electricity by Nuclear Base Load,
does that mean, that at times we will have to “dump” at least some of the renewably produced
home spun electricity?
Perhaps we could be a net exporter of electricity to Europe?Anyway, my concern would be, we could get to the point, where we would not need all the Wind or all the Solar,
that we will have installed, in fifteen years?
I would be interested in your thoughts?Checking gridwatch,
last year, 2024 Nuclear did not stay constant.
It seemed to have changed between 2.5 to 5.0Probably the lower figures are when plants have come off line?
https://gridwatch.co.uk/Let’s go Green to save the planet. Let’s, let others do the dirty work, while we claim we are so clean?
“Rare Earths are mostly mined and refined in China”quote BBC
“In a visit to Inner Mongolia in 1992, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who oversaw China’s economic reform, famously said: “The Middle East has oil and China has rare earths”.“Beginning in the late 20th century, China prioritised the development of its rare earth mining and processing capabilities, often at lower environmental standards and labour costs compared to other nations,” said Gavin Harper, a critical materials research fellow at the University of Birmingham.
“This allowed them to undercut global competitors and build a near-monopoly across the entire value chain, from mining and refining to the manufacturing of finished products like magnets.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1drqeev36qoSo, if we go for Nuclear Base Load for our U.K. Electricity supply, because by 2030, we expect to be producing our Electricity 95% as ,
where will we get the Yellow Cake?
I doubt we will mine it in the U.K., maybe we could buy some from France, after all, they have a huge Nuclear Industry and we will be moving to French Tech.
Hang on, the French do not mine the Uranium in France, they mostly get it from their former colonies.
Yellow dust blowing across The Sahel.
Some of their stuff comes from Russia or The Former Soviet Union states.
Some from Australia and some from Canada.
It is a dirty business.It would seem, almost all energy has a dirty side.
Mobile phones and Laptops also have a dirty side.
EV vehicles, also have a dirty side.
As we in the U.K. are quickly moving to a new Utopia, where we hardly mine anything, my goodness, we have clean hands and clean souls.
Yet, almost everything we require, comes from the land or from under the surface.
Is it correct, to just let other people do all this dirty work for us?Modern Britain was at least in part, built on mining.
Mining or ochres, mining of kaolin, mining of salts, mining of tungsten, mining of potash, mining of copper, mining of lead, mining of tin, mining of slate, mining of coal, mining of calamine, mining of graphite ( our first strategic resource) mining of silver, mining of gold, mining of limestone, sands, clays, gravels, sandstones and so on.
We still do a bit of mining, most open cast. We are opening a new ( expensive) mine in Yorkshire – Woodsmith
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodsmith_Mine
Polyhalite, this will probably, also become a strategic resource, as globalisation ends and the growing of food in the U.K. becomes very important.well, well, well, we might not be done yet, in the U.K.
Quote
” The town grew from a mere idea in the late-1820s, to become the commercial centre of one of the world’s greatest iron and steel producing regions in little over two generations. By 1881, the year of Middlesbrough’s Golden Jubilee, output of ironstone drawn from the Cleveland ore-field exceeded 6,000,000 tons”
“Cleveland Ironstone Formation”
https://www.geplus.co.uk/news/woodsmith-makes-shaft-sinking-progress-despite-project-slowdown-31-01-2025/
So as it sinks, the Woodsmith mine goes through The Cleveland Ironstone Formation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Ironstone_Formation#:~:text=The%20Cleveland%20Ironstone%20Formation%20is,underlying%20Cleveland%20in%20North%20Yorkshire.As this may well be one of the deepest mines in all of Europe,
many formation will be encountered, some may come to have commercial possibilities.
Maybe one day, we could resume mining Iron ore in the East of England.Michael, there’s a lot for me to catch up with since I posted last night, and I might not be able to, it looks like I have a very busy time ahead. The Gridwatch site you linked has historical generation figures that may help answer some of your questions.
Scotland – recycling
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce822pe7p4yo.ampQuote BBC
“Police and firefighters have begun investigations into the cause of a blaze at a battery recycling plant in North Ayrshire.The fire at Fenix Battery Recycling on Byrehill Industrial Estate in Kilwinning”
Second fire at this place in twelve months.
The heat and smoke are intense.
It is very near houses.Quite tricky transporting EV.
RoRo Ship Delphine Catches Fire with just 60 EVs Onboard.
No global rules for transporting electrical vehicles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8s3mSNdZScSupercritical carbon dioxide
EVIL Carbon dioxide has some uses
“sCO2 promises substantial efficiency improvements.
Due to its high fluid density, sCO2 enables compact and efficient turbomachinery.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_carbon_dioxide
For use in power stations or as boat turbines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7dr6oKHqqMLet’s see, useful for plants,
useful for cleaning foods.
Useful for putting out fires.
Useful for making small efficient turbines.
