“So it makes sense for the UK’s Energy Secretary to aim to quadruple the UK’s renewable energy supply by 2020.”

Only if he can do so at market rates. There needs to be tracking of “voluntary” disconnections and unused meters, which are going to soar in the near future, because of the massively-rising cost of energy.

Given the way housing benefit is being “reformed”, and benefit rises limited, without a component linked to heating costs, it’s only a (short) matter of time before food budgets for poorer people in this country fall as a direct result of energy prices.

Given the massively above-market costs being paid for renewable power, and need for energy security, I have to agree with Monobiot that, unfortunately, nuclear power is the best option.

If you don’t believe that we need more nuclear you’re a fake.

sl @ 2,

What’s wrong with tidal?

Nothing wrong with tidal, but, if the crisis is as bad as people say, then there really is only one option in the near term.

Stewart Brand’s book Whole Earth Discipline is excellent on this.

I hope the “extreme energy” resources the OP describes are a sign of the desperation of the fossil fuel industry. If last twitchings they are, then the next barrier to a sustainable future are… The Greens, unless they can understand that nuclear is the best option for now.

” But who would agree with Chris Huhne when he also said this week, “Since privatisation in 1990, our electricity market has served us well, delivering reliable, affordable electricity”? Latest fuel poverty figures show a one-fifth rise in the number of fuel poor households. ”

I am not sure what point you making. Fuel poverty will inevitably rise if the price of energy rises and you define fuel poverty as spending over 10% of income on energy. The way to alleviate that is to raise the incomes of the affected. Trying to manipulate energy prices will only lead to even worse distortions. Furthermore, it is the high prices for fossil-based energy that will help to decarbonise the energy supply by making the alternative energy sources more economical. Although, high prices also lead to a bit of a dilemma where many uneconomic fossil fuels become economic at high prices. For example, the Canadian and Venezuelan tar sands.

The comparison is not whether energy prices have risen, they have risen all over the world. The benchmark is our energy prices ceteris paribus to our neighbours in Europe.

Good luck taking on the US unions involved in the coal extraction business because they are just as powerful a lobby as the business interests in Washington.

We can decarbonise our energy supply. However, we can’t do it cheaply because although RE costs should fall they are always going to be more expensive than fossil fuels. We need a massive breakthrough in some sort of new energy source or we need to get used to paying more for energy and alleviate the higher costs through energy efficiency.

a carpenter without tools is no carpenter, as all will agree. but a citizen without citizen initiative is similarly useless.

get democracy, and use it to shape the planet for the people, not the rich.

@6. Richard W: “We can decarbonise our energy supply. However, we can’t do it cheaply because although RE costs should fall they are always going to be more expensive than fossil fuels. We need a massive breakthrough in some sort of new energy source or we need to get used to paying more for energy and alleviate the higher costs through energy efficiency.”

We *have* to decarbonise our energy supply. Progressively. Oil/gas is too useful to piss it away in car petrol tanks or as mass energy provider.

“…although RE costs should fall they are always going to be more expensive than fossil fuels…” We both know that your statement is incorrect. The word “always”.

“We need a massive breakthrough in some sort of new energy source…” The history of batteries (electrical storage) is gorgeously awful. Those inventors delivered the Milk Float. Functional batteries that can be quickly recharged are in live test so there is a lot of progress. In two years, your G-Wiz may get you from London to Edinburgh without a layover.

But for “new energy source”: it is unfashionable and it is nuclear.

Charlieman – It’s not even that. Gas is going to rise in price, because of Japan, and it makes us dangerously beholden to Russia, where corruption among officials is the national sport.

Charlieman, always is appropriate in context of historical real costs. Maybe by 2025 renewable costs will be lower than fossil fuel costs. However, their real costs will still be higher than the costs that fossil fuels delivered us energy. For example, if energy costs was consuming 20% of a firms input costs 1980-2000 and 30% by 2025. The fact that the 30% of costs is cheaper vis-a-vis fossils does not disguise the reality that we will have moved to a higher energy cost world.

Things like electronics can deliver falling costs over time through innovation, competition and economies of scale. RE will be able to deliver some of those falling costs. However, I am sceptical whether RE will ever be able to achieve the same cheap energy as fossil fuels. Fossil fuel is a dense energy and the price of energy is related to the density of the energy source. A thimbleful of petrol can propel a car about 100m. A thimble size battery will not move it an inch. Outside of nuclear there is currently nothing that we have that can match that density. A nuclear reactor is hardly appropriate for a car. Moreover, fossil fuels are easy to store and simple to transport. That feeds in and is embedded in the price.

In contrast, RE is a dispersed energy. There is plenty of energy blowing in the wind, but the dispersed nature of wind means capturing the energy is not as simple or efficient as digging a piece of coal out of the ground. Moreover, we can’t store the energy. Furthermore, I predict that RE will suffer from a dis-economy of scale that is rarely spoken about. Quite simply, the best sites for capturing wind and wave power will be taken first. Therefore, the later sites will capture less energy and will not be able to deliver downward pressure on costs. Dispersed and density will be crucial in relation to price and that is why I say RE will always be more expensive than fossil fuel.

None of this should be read as anti-RE or me saying that there will not be innovation driving down costs. I just do not see how we can produce cheap non-fossil fuel energy. Being the first trillionaire awaits the inventor who can figure out a way to store large quantities of electricity. In the meantime, I think that innovations in energy efficiency will drive our immediate future. If we think oil is expensive now we ain’t see nothing yet as just next year oil will be significantly higher.

NASA knew by 2004 that CAGW was imaginary. Its response was to force physicist Ferenc Miskolczi to leave when he discovered the greenhouse energy term in the climate models, ‘back radiation’, was a mistake dating from 1922.

NASA also knew that cooling by polluted clouds supposed to hide this heating was also imaginary. So AR4 was known by insiders to be wrong when published. Various scientific organisations, including sadly the Royal Society, since then have been defending fake science by claiming incorrect physics.

So, CAGW is political, an attempt to impoverish the working class to instil revolution. You have to decide whether to support that knowing the truth about the science [real AGW has been aerosols reducing cloud albedo, a self-limiting and temporary phenomenon which also explains palaeo-climate.]

Fuel starvation will kill 100s of 1000s per year. ‘Green jobs’ eliminate productive jobs at a ratio of c. 1:3. Porritt has openly called for halving the UK population. It’s a Malthusian dream, the landowners paid off by subsidy farming; the Mafia controlling the distribution companies, bought politicians deceiving the masses.

“Over 500 Appalachian mountains have had their tops blown off to get the coal beneath. It’s now a moonscape.”

Only very slightly exaggerated.

The Appalachians are between 100 and 300 miles wide and 1.500 miles long, from Newfoundland to Georgia. 500 of anything (except perhaps A Bombs) is hardly going to turn an area that size into a “moonscape”.

What puzzles me is that you seem not to notice that the choice we face is between cheap, reliable energy and “clean” energy. This is the trade off we have to make and the “cleaner” we go the more expensive it’s going to be.

It’s perfectly reasonable to say that one or other side of the coin is the most important and should be pursued regardless but you can’t have your kayak and heat it.

@10, Richard W

Returning to “always”. Some people, including climate change sceptics, believe that photovoltaics will deliver electricity at the same cost as fossil fuels in about ten years. Ten years is a plannable time frame. It would be ridiculous to switch to photovoltaics now (although the Germans have decided to waste citizens’ money on micro schemes) but it would be similarly foolish not to plan for the future. Photovoltaic generation may also be inappropriate for the UK and we will probably need our friends in Spain and Portugal to generate mass electricity. As Leon Wolfson pointed out, we need to be able to trust our energy suppliers.

“A thimbleful of petrol can propel a car about 100m.” The fuel to turn over an engine once fits in the head of a darning needle. At low ground speed, a car engine rotates at about 1500 rpm and the time taken to travel 100m is measured in seconds. The fuel consumed would barely wet the inside surface of a thimble.

“Outside of nuclear there is currently nothing that we have that can match that density.” For personal transport, hydrogen looks good. You can use a renewable or nuclear electricity source to make hydrogen, a process which is not as inefficient as it sounds (all of the conventionally fuelled standby generators that are required if, heavens forbid, the UK chooses to adopt wind power as a primary source can produce hydrogen whilst they are ticking over too; daft but logical). The calorific value of hydrogen is less than that of petrol or diesel but it is good enough for a car or motorcycle.

Then you can choose whether to make cars with a combustion engine or with a fuel cell/electric motor combo. The latter is orders of magnitude more efficient. Recent trials with hydrogen powered cars have used liquid hydrogen. That’s scary to those of us who know about the Hindenburg. In the 1980s scientists talked about hydrogen storage using metal hydride cells; storage density is lower but they are less likely to go “bang!”.

Thinking about it though, battery powered cars should be banned on environmental grounds. The current bunch of battery cars use Lithium Ion cells for storage. Your laptop computer has six Lithium Ion cells in its battery and an electric car contains thousands. Your phone contains a little one. And we are all familiar with stories of laptops and phones catching fire owing to faulty batteries. Cars have other opportunities to catch fire.

I don’t know how much environmental damage is caused by a fire around a Lithium Ion cell, but I know that it is pretty nasty. It is not the fire that is worrying, but the Lithium stuff. Those of us who visit scrapyards know that you don’t unnecessarily touch cars that have caught fire; avoid dioxins from burnt out car interiors. Putting Lithium Ion cells in millions of cars is plain daft.

13. Falco: “What puzzles me is that you seem not to notice that the choice we face is between cheap, reliable energy and “clean” energy. This is the trade off we have to make and the “cleaner” we go the more expensive it’s going to be.”

It is not a puzzle but a cycle. We can continue using fossil fuels in order to create renewable sources that are cheap enough to stop using fossil fuels.

@11 – “NASA also knew that cooling by polluted clouds supposed to hide this heating was also imaginary.”

Ah so, the cooling effect seen after 9/11 was illusionary, so 9/11 never happened. Right. Gotcha. Thanks for that. Now, back in the real, AGCC-affected world…