Left in the dark
Because Labour have left it too late to start the process of building new power stations, there is a strong probability of power cuts in Britain within the next decade, whoever wins the next election.
The admission that Britain will face power-cuts is contained in one of the supporting documethns for Government’s own "Low Carbon Transition Plan", launched in July.
As the Daily Telegraph reports here an appendix to the report, only published online, warns of power shortages. It details supplies and expected demand between now and 2030, and highlights the first short-fall in 2017. The “energy unserved” level reaches 3000 megawatt hours per year.
That is the equivalent of the whole of the Nottingham area being without electricity for a day.
Shadow Energy and Climate Change secretary Greg Clark has a new blog on which he explains here how the problem has arisen.
He concludes:
The next government has an urgent task to accelerate the deployment of new generating capacity of all types. We must promote the rapid roll-out of ’smart grid’ technology to enable the sensitive matching of supply and demand, without recourse to the blunt instrument of rolling blackouts. Above all we must make robust margin of security an explicit object of British energy policy.
The admission that Britain will face power-cuts is contained in one of the supporting documethns for Government’s own "Low Carbon Transition Plan", launched in July.
As the Daily Telegraph reports here an appendix to the report, only published online, warns of power shortages. It details supplies and expected demand between now and 2030, and highlights the first short-fall in 2017. The “energy unserved” level reaches 3000 megawatt hours per year.
That is the equivalent of the whole of the Nottingham area being without electricity for a day.
Shadow Energy and Climate Change secretary Greg Clark has a new blog on which he explains here how the problem has arisen.
He concludes:
The next government has an urgent task to accelerate the deployment of new generating capacity of all types. We must promote the rapid roll-out of ’smart grid’ technology to enable the sensitive matching of supply and demand, without recourse to the blunt instrument of rolling blackouts. Above all we must make robust margin of security an explicit object of British energy policy.
Comments
You lot created an Open Market and the Labour government just went along with it. It's a bit disingenuous of you to start whinging that it's the Labour Governments fault we will have blackouts in the near future, this is what you get in an Open Market. Supply and demand and all that and the Maximisation of profit.
You either have a free market (without subsidy and bailouts), or you have a Nationalised infrastucture for the greater good of the Country.
You can't have it both ways. You made your bed now lie in it.
The real question is where you strike the balance between them - and Britain needs it struck in a way which makes it practical for people to build new power stations.
We the populus of Britain are simply being held to ransom by these companies for mistakes the Conservative government made and the Labour government perpetuated.
However, it is quite possible to build a tax and licensing regime in which different forms of cleaner energy compete on an even footing. And nuclear power is economically competitive with other forms of low-carbon generation even if you include, as you should, the costs of decomissioning and dealing with waste.
That's why there are companies which are applying to build and run new nuclear plants.
In the 80s and 90s when gas was cheap they built hundreds of gas-fired plants, thus depleting our gas reserves at an alarming rate, where was the regulation then? who was looking after Britains assets? No one, it was for the market to decide and decide they did hence the mess we are in know. The market, these Privatised Utilities weren't interested in what's best for the country they were driven by self interest and greed, they always were, they always will be.
If you really are interested in what is best for Britain, Nationalisation of these Utilities would be a start.
The dash for gas was a direct result of deliberate government policy: rightly or wrongly the government of the day thought that diversity and security of energy supply would best be served by a significant increase in the gas element of the mix.
There were some good reasons for that - prior to the increase in use of gas, North Sea oil rigs were wasting millions of cubic metres of gas which was found with and on top of the oil reserves by simply flaring it off and burning it.
As for nationalised versus privatised utilities - there is no such thing as a perfectly run big company in either the public or private sectors. But looking at the awful record of nationalised industries in this country, on safety, profitability, reliability, bringing out products which customers want, or any other criteria you care to mention, the case for nationalisation is seriously underwhelming.
I have no hesitation in saying that I would rather be a customer of most privatised industries than most nationalised ones.