The lights are going out

Those of us who have done a bit of checking into the background of the power situation know there is a crisis coming. Our ageing power generating plants are coming to the end of their useful limits and succesive governments have failed to upgrade them, failed to build new ones and have fallen for the Green religion con trick of global warming climate change coupled with useless renewable energy from unreliable sources (cold day often enough = no wind)

Telegraph.

Forget global warming – the more pressing problem is that the lights are about to go out. Look at the projections, and you will see why Ed Miliband, the Cabinet minister responsible for energy (there have been eight since 1997), should be up at night worrying. Over the next seven years, all the assumptions about where our power comes from will be overturned.
Five years ago, Britain became a net importer of fossil fuels. The depletion of North Sea oil and gas means that we are depending increasingly on foreign supplies. In 2000, we imported just one per cent of our natural gas supplies; now it's nearly half, and the National Grid expects it will reach 70 per cent by 2018. On Tuesday, Oil & Gas UK, which represents the industry, issued a warning that without more investment in the North Sea, its contribution towards our energy needs will continue to dwindle.
At the same time, generating capacity is set to drop off sharply, as ageing coal, gas and nuclear power stations are taken out of service. As so often, Europe is playing its part, in the shape of the EU Large Combustion Plant directive, which says that they should be cleaned up at vast cost or closed. The Government admits that by 2020 the lost capacity will be vast – 22.5 gigawatts, or almost a third of our total requirements. The graphs show that if no action is taken, our energy supply will go downhill faster than Amy Williams at Vancouver.

What needs to be done (but wont, thank you EU) is that the environmental levy on all fuel bills be either scrapped or put into building power generating plants that actually work when the wind isn't blowing. We also need them quick so that means coal or gas and as we're sitting on masses of coal I'd opt for that as we'd at least be in control of our supply. We can even use existing technology to make them as clean burning as possible, but we need them soon. The EU wont let us however as it doesn't fit in with their policy of environmentalism at the cost of all else, which is just another reason as far as I'm concerned to leave.
Politicians are very aware of public opinion (even when they choose to ignore it) but they wont like what's coming when the lights start going out and people start freezing to death mid winter about 2017/18 I doubt many will survive the experience (including those who got us into the mess assuming they haven't jumped ship abroad)
I don't know about you, but I'm sick of short termism in politics, with those in charge seemingly unable to see further than the next election. This coming crisis should have been sorted out 10 years ago during the good times, but it was ignored by the fools in charge. We need the next government to go for a crash course in power station building, and the cost on top of the recession will be heartbreaking as the countries just about bust, yet anything is better than the result of letting the power die.

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Green mugging from the Tories.

Every time politicians mention renewable energy I feel my hackles rising, they like to point out that it's freely generated and that it's clean. They're lying of course, but that's what politicians seem to do these days in order to generate revenue schemes to pay off previous bad decisions on their part or simply to balance the books as welfare costs and public service pensions eat into budget that the government has to play with.
First off wind power is inefficient, no wind, no power. So far the government have spent billions of pounds on building just over 2,000 wind turbines - and yet they contribute barely one per cent of all the electricity that we need.
The combined output of all those 2,000 turbines put together, averaging 700 megawatts, is less than that of a single, medium-sized conventional power station! They're ugly, they kill and as for environmentally friendly has no-one noticed the huge concrete blocks that have to be dug out of the ground to stand one on? They're also a total bugger to service if they go wrong, you can't lower them to the ground and if their bearings go it costs about £1.5 million to replace them. Cheap energy? Don't make me laugh.
But despite its best efforts to conceal the fact that wind turbines expensively and unreliably generate only a derisory amount of electricity, the Government keeps on telling us of its green plans to build thousands more of them at a cost of up to £100billion!
The prime reason for this is that we are legally obliged by the European Union to generate 32 per cent of our electricity from 'renewable' sources by 2020.
The lunacy will continue under the Tories, except that they intend to saddle communities with the cost.

Telegraph.

Residents who allow wind farms to be built in their area would be given ownership of individual turbines and the profits from them under Conservative energy plans.

The Tory plan raises the prospect of residents owning a “village turbine” in the same way some have a community shop or parish hall.

The Copenhagen summit on a new global deal on climate change policies begins next week amid growing signs of popular scepticism about scientific and political claims that urgent action is needed to cut carbon emissions.

Greg Clark, the shadow energy secretary, told the Daily Telegraph, people should be given more incentives to adopt low-carbon technologies.

Labour is changing planning rules to allow the number of onshore wind turbines in Britain to rise from 2,500 to 6,000.

Many rural residents are hesitant about the turbines, which are often more than 100 feet high. The Tories say the final decision on each site should rest with residents, but would offer financial rewards for those backing new wind farms.

There are no profits to be made from wind turbines, the only reason they are economic now is because the government subsidise them! I wonder what will happen to any hamlet who does take up this fools offer when the government is finally forced to cut back? No subsidy and huge costs, the damn things don't pay for themselves, never have, never will!

This is all due to the EU and we see the idiot Tories falling right into line after Labour.

Sooner we're out the better, we're sitting on 300 years worth of coal, nuclear power works fine but we're running out of time and the EU stands in our path for our energy needs with it's carbon emission controls. But our politicians are convinced green power will meet our needs, any engineer will tell them differently, but ignoring inconvenient truths is what being a politician is all about.

More about → Green mugging from the Tories.