Britain Will Need Gas to Avoid Blackouts for Decades as Wind Power Falls Short 71% of the Year, Says National Gas Chief
The man running Britain’s gas network has said the country will need fossil fuels to prevent blackouts for decades to come despite calls for the Government to begin shutting off the pipes. The Telegraph has more.
Jon Butterworth, Chief Executive of National Gas, said a growing reliance on intermittent power sources such as wind and solar meant Britain would be increasingly reliant on gas to make up for shortfalls when renewable energy sources are not generating power.
Mr. Butterworth said: “In 2022, the wind didn’t blow enough or at all for 262 days. And in those 262 days, we would have had rolling blackouts, or a full blackout across the UK if it wasn’t for gas.”
He believes Britain will still need gas to keep the lights on as far out as 2040.
“I actually think we’ll be moving more gas but we’ll be moving gas to power stations to make electricity rather than to homes.”
His conviction comes despite calls for the Government to begin shutting down the gas network as part of the shift to Net Zero.
The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), headed by Sir John Armitt, last week called for the U.K.’s domestic gas network to be decommissioned at a cost of £70bn to encourage people to switch to heat pumps and help the country meet its Net Zero targets.
The cost of decommissioning would most likely be added to consumer bills but the NIC argues the policy would help halve domestic energy costs by 2050.
The Government plans to replace the U.K.’s 25 million domestic gas boilers with heat pumps to end our dependence on both gas and global gas prices. That dependence is why energy bills have doubled since 2021.
However, heat pumps need electricity and in a country committing itself to generating most of its power from wind farms, there will be many low wind days when gas is still needed.
Mr. Butterworth foresees a time when millions of ‘green’ heat pumps will be whirring away – but using un-green power produced in gas-fired power stations.
He said: “That is actually far less efficient than burning gas in your house. Domestic gas boilers are about 90% efficient but the best power station is about 50% efficient.”
Worth reading in full.
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What exactly happens between now and 2040 that solves the problem of the intermittence of solar and wind?
Haven’t you heard? Pandemic X is going to wipe us all out before then.
Nothing to worry about. Incidentally, the WHO are going to rename it ‘Happy Jolly time feeling’ so we can really look forward to catching it.
Not exactly Pandemic X but most probably the “vaccines” intended to control Pandemic X.
I thought we were all going to be boiled by then.
No, we’re going to be frozen in another ice age – at least that’s what I was told in school back in the 70’s. We had 10 years to save the planet from dust. Sound familiar?
My question too.
Nuclear is meant to be expanding, but unless it expands close to 100% (which it won’t – it’s due to be much less than that, assuming current plans actually happen) then storage will be required, and I am not aware of any plans to massively increase storage.
There are times when generation from wind is very low and adding capacity won’t help, ditto solar.
They have no credible plan and they bloody well know it.
And…bear in mind that electricity only accounts for 1/5th of UK total energy needs. Even if the government had the foresight (fat chance) to build and generate 80% of our electricity with clean, safe nuclear that still wouldn’t account for the 4/5ths of “dirty” energy that the green nutjobs think they can replace with windmills.
Manhattan Contrarian is good on storage, and stuff in general:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-3-25-aivx0sdredj216gyhhvx186ph4kyzz
Good article, thanks for posting.
Thanks – excellent. Worth reading in full.
The impracticality of storage given current technology is mind-boggling.
I’m reminded of Umberto Eco “On The Impossibility of Drawing A Map of The Empire On A Scale of 1 To 1” https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/881694/cb6119367bf63e879815ce2299d09995.pdf
My understanding is that Hinkley Point in Somerset was supposed to come online in 2025 but the latest date is late 2026/early 2027 because of the plandemic. Construction on the next one at Sizewell in Suffolk won’t start until Hinkley is done because there just isn’t the expertise available – the same crew will decant to the new site. Hinkley is only designed to produce 3.2 GW anyway, hardly enough for 25 million heat pumps, EVs or the server farms for all that additional govt surveillance. Basically, forget nuclear for the foreseeable future.
The backup has to be close to 100% of maximum generation capacity. If the backup is nuclear, why would you bother with wind and solar?
The Head of the National Grid (Steve Holiday) about 10 years ago said “We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available”——-We are in the era of energy rationing for political purposes. The plausible excuse governments pandering to UN mandates and policies for this energy rationing is “climate change” (Junk science)———-The more you rely on wind the less reliable your supply as the Germans have discovered, but don’t think for a second politicians don’t know this. They know full well that you cannot run the country on wind and sun but they are determined to continue pretending to save the planet anyway and we will just have to accept having energy “as and when it is available”.
And what magic will happen in 2040? Wind power will get no less unreliable of intermittent; will still not be despatchable and we shall still need wind ‘capacity’ almost 100% covered by gas as back up.
We already are operating two parallel generating modes, and that will continue as long as the Net Zero fantasy persists.
What will happen is gas will require more and more subsidy to encourage building of more gas capacity and operate it otherwise at a loss covering the unsustainable output from wind.
We are only a few years from the point where the fantasy starts to hit the brick wall of cold hard reality. It’s going to get messy before it gets better.
A DUMP because the Jewish thread is being censored without explanation
“The final peace’s (sic)are being put into place.
Large numbers of dinghy divers are being trained as SIA staff.
Meanwhile our army/RAF are sending 37k+ to Estonia
Go figure what’s about to happen.”
A comment from Gracie at TCW.
John O’Looney was told by Black Watch officers that when the shit goes down in this country our armed forces will be abroad.
Something nasty is approaching.
Bear in mind that electricity is just 1/5 of UK energy needs. And, bear in mind that 60% of electricity is still provided by gas even when the wind is blowing…..so in order to keep the greenie maniacs happy with their barmy aim of 100% renewable energy we need to up wind and solar by approx. 2000% of its present capacity and it’ll STILL only be 29% reliable.
Average daily UK energy demand = 39GW. Installed wind capacity, 38GW.
Already wind can supply 97% of UK average daily power, so all we need is another 1GW capacity wind power and problem solved, so why the need for gas?
Therein ladies and gentlemen, lies the rub.
As you point out, the power supplied by added windmills is logarithmic to the point that you could fill the Irish Sea and North Sea with offshore wind machines and it still would only supply at best 30% of demand AND require dozens more gas plants as back-up and to provide inertia and frequency stability.
And I am leaving aside the extra power needed to replace motor fuels and domestic gas.
Because the windmills have a maximum ability of X, does not mean they can make that much more than 10-20% of the time. Full power requires just the right wind conditions, very steady winds, no gusts. As this is rare the actual average generation is about 30% of maximum capacity. But the common failure of brain is that “average” generation does not keep the lights on, and in fact makes it likely that the grid will collapse. Where does your “average” come from when there is no wind? The grid requires 35-40GW available 24/7, otherwise you get nothing. Simple enough ?
And the investors in combined cycle gas turbine kit need it for a couple of decades to make a return on it, so they probably got it right. At present, 14:00 23/10, 45% of the National Grid output was from gas.
Time to get fracking!
With respect, LONG PAST TIME!!!
“In 2022, the wind didn’t blow enough or at all for 262 days”
And for the rest of the time, the wind blew too strongly for the windmills to spin without excessive risk of them catching fire and disintegrating, so they were feathered and locked in place.
Yes. Let’s build back (better) the coal-fired power stations that used to provide us with 50%+ of our electricity. Stable, reliable, continuous supply, despatchable, least cost.
Absolutely right,JXB.
Unfortunately, even in a fantasy world where all Beloved Leaders, Civil “Servsnts” and even King Charles had amazingly had a moment of epiphany and woken up to reality; even if Planning laws were abolished; even then it would be three or four years before significant quantities of (surface mined) coal could be produced.
For deep mined coal, perhaps ten years, even assuming that experienced shaft sinkers and mining engineers and indeed miners, could be lured to the UK, perhaps from Poland, Ukraine, India, South Africa?
Then most of Drax would need to be converted back to coal rather than woodchip. Major work also required to Ratcliffe, the ONLY functioning Coal Power Station in GB, assuming Sharma doesn’t blow it up. And both Drax and Ratcliffe now obsolute technology.
So, we are Royally stuffed.
Only realistic option for the medium term? Fracking, of course. But we certainly should build new Ultra Supercritical Coal power plants, starting this evening.
The UK receives nearly 30% of its liquefied natural gas imports and 17-22% of its gas requirement from Qatar. Trouble is those 50-60 cargoes a year transit the straits of Hormuz and Iran has past form in attacking tanker shipments. A dispute involving the US over Israel has potential to seriously limit UK domestic gas availability this winter. It affects Europe as ” in 2022, LNG imports to the UK reached a record high of 25.6 bcm (billion cubic metre) , rising 74 per cent on the previous year.
LNG imports accounted for 45 per cent of natural gas imports across the year, and 35 per cent of demand. UK LNG infrastructure was utilised to allow the UK to act as a land-bridge to increase natural gas imports to mainland Europe as it pivoted away from Russian gas” See https://dohanews.co/qatar-to-expand-welsh-gas-terminals-amid-uk-scramble-for-lng/
Of course the USA has benefited greatly from restrictions on Russian gas supply that mean more transshipment and regasification imports into the UK to be exported to EU.
I thought oil and gas were abiotic (not fossil) fuels? Coal is a fossil, no?
Abiotic fuel is only a hypothesis AFAIK.
He’ll be sacked and ” cancelled ” for daring to tell the truth. All these EV’s abandoned at the roadside 😂
A few years ago I was having a discussion with a German guy working in the UK in the wind Industry here. He had been working in Scotland for Siemans for about 40 years. We had an interesting conversation. He was in favour of wind turbines as you might expect, and I was not in favour of them. He made his points and I made mine. ——-At the end of our talk I said to him “So can wind power Industrial Society”? ——-There was a 10 second silence. ———-Before he finally said “I don’t know”——————————–Wind cannot provide bas load. It is always going to be part time energy.
The loony “green nut jobs” who infest the Establishment and Parliament are going to collide very badly with the juggernaut of public opinion when the lights go out.
Did anyone notice the comment from Sir John Armitt, that the decommissioning costs could be £70 billion, that is about £1,000,000 per head of UK population, paid for via the electricity bills. Just shows how far from reality these people are.
Anyone who thinks the UK should not use gas in a domestic situation should be severed from the network now.