Chris Goodall writes about the many options the world has to move away from fossil fuels. He covers energy generation and efficiency from both technical and policy perspectives.
I’ve found a new use for AI. It can list all the inaccuracies in Daily Mail articles quickly and comprehensively. To test it out, I gave Claude a copy of an Andrew Neil article on onshore wind from late August last year. This journalist’s purpose was to use some of the temporary problems of the global wind developer Ørsted to rubbish the UK government’s plans for the energy transition. Claude came…
Britain is going to get a lot more electricity storage as a result of recently announced plans for new batteries and pumped hydro. The press didn’t notice just how transformative this might be. As of June 2026, Great Britain has about 10 gigawatts of grid battery capacity, capable of delivering about 18 gigawatt hours of power. [1] In addition, four pumped hydro sites offer storage around 24 GWh.…
Several European news outlets carried an article last week by a Belgian journalist about the poor performance of the world’s most important carbon capture site at Brevik in Norway, where Heidelberg Materials operates a large cement works. [1] Having promised to deliver 360,000 tonnes into permanent storage in its first year - and 400,000 tonnes thereafter - the Brevik works seems to have achieved…
(Want to know more about plug-in solar? Here’s a French website (in English) that provides more details). In the long list of new technologies that might help reduce carbon emissions ‘plug-in solar’ sits towards the bottom. A small array of PV panels perched on the garage roof, or perhaps fixed to the railings of a balcony or laid on supports in the garden, and then directly connected into an…
Source: www.electricitybills.co.uk . All data in real 2025 prices and exclude VAT. Figures are for a household consuming 3,100 kWh a year. The analyst Ben James provides very useful data on the composition of energy costs at www.electricitybills.uk . He calculates how a bill is made up for a household consuming 3,100 kWh a year, showing how much arises from the wholesale cost of electricity and…
When wind and solar provide more than 55% of GB electricity, imports of power from other countries start to drop sharply. Below this level of renewables generation we usually see over 5 GW of electricity from interconnectors but when the level gets above 75% the volume is typically less than 1GW. Not only will continued growth in renewables reduce average wholesale prices - as has been recently…
The first winter storm of 2025 has just passed over the UK, providing huge amounts of wind-generated electricity. This wasn’t the first time in recent weeks. From late July to late August 2025 we saw a consistent mixture of high winds and good sun across the UK. At the peak at about 11am on the 11th of September, these renewable sources provided more than 27.5 GW into the GB electricity grid…
The journalist Andrew Neil published an article on 27th August about offshore wind in the Daily Mail, a UK newspaper. The article contains a large number of factual inaccuracies. I have commented on these in 15 notes in the text below. These points are are embedded below and to the right of the relevant sentences in the Andrew Neil text (which is now all in a bold font). Many of Mr Neil’s other…
We still hear assertions that adding renewables to the grid has increased the UK’s electricity costs. I looked at two sources of data and plotted one against the other to test whether there’s any truth in this. 1, The ‘next day’ electricity price for each hour in the period from 1st January 2025 to the early days of August 2025.[1] That’s about 220 days, covering the coldest period of the year and…
If the government achieves its targets for renewable electricity capacity for 2030, will it meet its objective for virtually decarbonising the GB grid by that date? Several analysts have given optimistic assessments but this note suggests that in all probability the answer is ‘no’. I looked at the last year (May 2025 to end April 2025) and multiplied the output of solar and wind generators in each…
Abstract This article takes data surrounding last week’s announcement of the first SMR farm in Ontario, Canada to assess whether this new approach to nuclear shows any signs of reducing costs below the level of larger reactors and renewable generators. In brief, the conclusion is that it does not. SMRs A small number of experimental SMRs have been built or are under construction in Russia, China…
Last week the UK government effectively nationalised the blast furnaces at Scunthorpe on the north-east coast of England. These furnaces are the last sites in the UK that can manufacture iron from ore as a precursor to the production of virgin steel. The emergency legislation will help to keep open this important source of local employment and industrial activity. Nevertheless, I argue that it was…
On 10th December of last year the UK government announced it had signed contracts for the support of the first two parts of the proposed carbon capture cluster in the north-east of England.[1] The projects to be funded are a new gas-fired power station with CCS, largely owned by BP, and a CO2 transmission network that takes the gas to subsurface storage in the North Sea. BP is also a major…
The purpose of this note is to point out that the CO2 that will need to be captured to make synthetic fuels is only slightly less than the carbon dioxide emitted by burning the equivalent amounts of fossil oil or gas. The crucial implication is that it might make sense not to focus on synthetic alternatives but to develop massive carbon capture infrastructure instead that makes burning fossil…
The energy transition is being held up by the slow rate of growth in electricity demand. Two examples illustrated this problem today (December 19th 2024). · Aurora, the Oxford energy consultancy, said that periods of negative price in the UK multiplied six fold between 2022 and 2024. Aurora points out that this causes concern among investors about the future profitability of new renewable…
A yearly opinion survey carried out in many countries around the world looks at attitudes to climate change and to emissions reductions.[1] Paid for by the French utility EdF, the data collection is carried out by Ipsos. In the edition that collates the results from the 2022 survey, twenty researchers - mostly French - analysed the results and provided crisp commentary. One thing immediately…
Thames Water I spoke yesterday (Wednesday April 3rd) to Ruth Williams of Utility Week about the probable outcomes of the current debacle at Thames Water. I hypothesised that the financial challenges facing the company were so severe that it would inevitably end up in public ownership. The resulting article is here . I’ll attempt to provide the detailed numbers in this note to justify this view.…
This week the UK government welcomed the first transatlantic flight by a commercial airliner using 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). Prime Minister Sunak said ‘SAF is primarily made of waste oils and fats. … SAF will be key to decarbonizing aviation. .. It could create a UK industry with an annual turnover of almost £2.5 billion, which could support over 5000 UK jobs’.[1] Unfortunately, this…
Almost every week a new report quantifies the investment needs for part of British infrastructure. Without unfailingly consistency, the researchers specify requirements for large numbers of billions of pounds to modernise energy, transport, water supply or similar sectors. Strikingly, these figures are never put into context. We are not told whether the additional capital investment represents a…
Wholesale electricity prices are lower when the wind is blowing hard. This is true across the year. If the UK installs more turbines, there will be more wind power at all times, tending to further pull down the cost of electricity for all. How much might electricity consumers benefit if the country added more wind capacity? I looked at the data for the last 12 months and found that just by adding…