The Oil Drum: Europe

First, demand reduction - radically reducing our energy needs through much greater energy efficiency.

This won't work.

Economic success follows the availability cheap energy.

If we deliberately try and squeeze UK genset capacity with the official "excuse" of demand reduction, then we'll end up with a situation of high energy prices.

Industry will move away, and households will have their disposable income squeezed yet again.

Plus it will be interesting to see how the expect demand to be reduced with the large scale construction of new housing (thermal insulation on a UK new build house is appalling) and a net increase in population.

We need new capacity, preferably nuclear.

From 1960 to 1990 the UK commissioned at least 16 nuclear installations. Thats a little over 1 every two years.

There is nothing to suggest that in the next 20 years we couldn't, with the right regulatory approach, commission perhaps 5 to 8 new installations. We need more of a can do approach, and less of this can't-do-make-do-with-less approach.

Of course, we're going to need new/upgraded coal facilities to cover the shortfall from gas.

My main concern is the cost of UK household gas in the next 20 years. I'm not overly concerned about availability, as at the end of the day, wealthy European customers heating their homes & cooking, represent the best (read highest payers) customers for any gas selling entity/country. As most households have little choice in their fuel for cooking/heating they are tied in to consuming gas, short of making expensive capital investments like ground source heat pump systems.

If the cost of gas soars, it would be interesting to see if people purchase electric hobs (stoves) and electric ovens. The peak demand from these if they were fitted nationwide would be quite high. My house peak demand must be about 7.2kW in the winter. If every house did this (circa 28 million UK households) then the peak demand would be about 200GW

What worries me is that the government seems to be taking the same approach with power generation that it took with roads in this country. For the first 6 years or so of their dismal management, they insisted that we could not "build our way out of our trouble" with new road capacity. And so we've ended up with the lowest amount of road, per sq km, per head, per £GDP of any European nation (except Greece). And our competitiveness has suffered as a result. A world stage G8 nation cannot function without a world class road system. The government finaly caved and started major new roadbuilding efforts that have improved some (localised) issues. But the total lack of any strategic planning along with a dogmatic insistance on no new roads have left us in the mess we're currently in. Which the government laughably thinks it can solve by simply charging us to use our own roads, which won't work because public transport has been privatised and is running at capacity. Thus there is no alternative.

I now see the same thing happening with power. The government (by allowing Milliband to make above speech) seems to be taking the approach that we'll be fine, all we have to do is reduce, improve efficency and all will be well.
I hope to god they're allowing new coal builds at the moment.
I think that there is some new coal capacity coming online, I'm sure I read it in one of my engineering mags somewhere.
We do need new capacity in this country (and wind turbines aren't going to cut it) if only to stave off massive increases in the cost of power but also to allow a switch away from gas (in the event of a supply shortage or price spike).

Andy