Safeguarding our energy independence
On 7th November Prime Minister Rishi Sunak set out his plans to build a globally connected and innovative economy. Top of the list: 'Safeguarding our energy independence'.
Safeguarding our energy independence is a worthy aim, though agreements to buy energy from other countries during periods of exceptional demand might be cheaper than keeping enough backup of our own.
On 20th November he tweeted a little more detail:
New nuclear power stations
Backing North Sea oil & gas
Investing in renewables
It looks like he has a very strange idea of what safeguarding our energy independence means.
New nuclear power stations
As I explained in a previous article, nuclear is a very bad idea.
For one thing, we'd be concentrating a lot of energy generation in a very small area, which would be vulnerable to enemy attack as in Zaporizhzhia, to natural disaster as at Fukushima (expensive!) or to human error as at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Britain's a small country. A major accident here would have a huge impact on the GDP (which is what Tories care about, apparently).
Also, nuclear projects have a habit of having major time and cost overruns. Hinkley C is already way over budget. Nuclear is definitely not the cheapest form of energy, let alone too cheap to meter, and it is getting increasingly uncompetitive.
Nuclear projects tend to take many years to come to fruition - and the carbon cost of building them is so great that it can take 17 years before they break even. And as I explained in a previous article, Sunak does not seem to understand the importance of getting to net zero sooner rather than later.
Nuclear power relies on uranium mining. Most uranium comes from Kazakhstan, Namibia, Canada, Australia, Uzbekistan and Russia. - not Britain
Since British Energy was sold, mainly to EDF, these will not be British projects but foreign-owned. This adds complexity to the whole process, and syphons profits out of the country.
Nuclear power plants also produce products that can be made into nuclear bombs.
Nuclear power plants need to be cooled - difficult if there is a drought reducing cooling water from rivers, bad news if global warming causes the water to be too warm, and potentially disastrous if prolonged rain or rising sea level causes flooding.
On the plus side, a comparatively small amount of radioactive material is produced for the treatment of cancer.
Backing North Sea oil & gas
Expanding domestic fossil fuel supply might make us independent if we nationalised it all, but, judging by the contracts Sunak has signed so far, that is not the intention. So the gas will be produced by foreign firms (Norway in the case of Rosebank) and the energy will be sold on the international market, leaving us vulnerable to price hikes engineered by OPEC and others as happened at the start of the war in Ukraine.
Sunak says that Rosebank will boost energy security, but environmentalists say it's a disaster for UK's fight against climate change and its economy, including the conservative MP who is Chair of the Independent Government Review on Net Zero.
Unlike renewables, fossil fuels will eventually run out. And as fields are used up, it becomes more and more expensive to extract the remaining oil. Hyping oil and gas is a disincentive to switching to renewable electricity - it is no way to become a world leader. If demand is maintained beyond what Britain can produce, then it could get very expensive.
Britain only had one large storage area for gas - Rough - and that was allowed to become disused, a short-sighted decision which bit Britain in the butt when the Ukraine invasion hit supplies. It is now being recommissioned, but for how long?
Like nuclear, a major accident can have devastating consequences.
On the plus side, if we were self sufficient in oil and gas, we would no longer need to spend vast amounts on the military to defend pipelines and shipping lanes - though the same is true for renewables.
Investing in renewables
The sun and the wind will never run out, and with enough capacity and batteries and other storage methods, Britain's energy security should be secured forever - that's the long-term decision should be making. Tidal power should last too, though droughts could reduce water power from rivers.
Renewables are cheap and getting cheaper and more efficient.
Because sun, wind and tide are intermittent, a lot of storage is needed, most of it in the form of batteries. At present most batteries use lithium which is mined in several countries but not Britain. Lithium has been discovered in Cornwall, however, so that may change soon. Also, batteries are being developed using other elements, so perhaps a long-term decision would be to encourage research into batteries using elements we have in abundance.
Similarly, developing solar panels that use elements that we have, so that we could build our own, would also be worth researching.
Renewables can and should be distributed in such a way that neither enemy action nor bad weather can knock out more than a local area. We'd still need the national grid, but blackouts could be more localised.
How to safeguard our energy independence?
So, there are several elements to energy security:
distribution - no huge projects despite economies of scale - they are too vulnerable
reduce length of supply chains - avoid supplies from or via unfriendly countries
do as much as possible within the country - and that includes the finance, and divorcing from the oil and gas market (but continue peak load energy sharing with other countries as now)
increase investment in the electric grid, so that renewables can connect much quicker, and make it cheap and easy for households and communities to generate their own
reduce our energy consumption (and costs), for example by improving the insulation of our housing stock.
Sunak has not covered all the possibilities, and in some cases is doing the opposite of what he should be doing.
Many of these solutions will have the added benefit of being better for the environment and the economy and the health of our country.
Will he do it? As the COVID inquiry shows, we have 'leaders' who do not understand (or choose to ignore) science and who don't care if people die. In the case of energy, they are more interested in letting some companies make a profit than securing our energy and keeping our costs down. Despite his rhetoric about reducing inflation, he did little to bring that about and it's doing little to help with the cost of living. The tweet cited at the beginning of this article proves that he is not going to do what is right and best for Britain.
Another reason not to develop gas...
"Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants"
https://news.yahoo.com/giant-batteries-drain-economics-gas-071607545.html
"Giant batteries that ensure stable power supply by offsetting intermittent renewable supplies are becoming cheap enough to make developers abandon scores of projects for gas-fired generation world-wide."