So just now a (foreign owned) electricity generator is charging the UK grid £5000/MWh (about 20x the consumer price) to spin up their gas power station to take up the shortage due to the lack of wind power. This is the direct consequence of the UK not making the necessary investment into nuclear energy for decades. These periods of settled weather happen quite regularly, both summer and winter; in the summer they are coupled with an increased demand on AC and reduced efficiency of PV solar panels, and in winter with extra heating demands. Anyone who imagines we can address this by more windmills and batteries is at best delusional, at worst deliberately pushing anti-environmental agenda (Big Oil are not the only ones who don’t give a shit).

Electricity accounts for only about one fifth of our energy requirements just now, so if we are to decarbonise at present energy consumption, our electricity demand will increase many fold. And while there is some efficiency saving to be had from replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, there is also a significant energy demand increase from the renewables rollout, so as we transitioning to renewables our overall energy demand is growing, not decreasing, and that’s before we factor in nonsense such as AI growth, and consider whether the material costs of the renewables transition can be met (they can’t) and their environmental costs.

So, in the medium term we will need at least the five times the amount of electricity we do now, probably more. And here is the rub: the more electricity we produce from wind, the bigger the settled weather problem becomes, since more alternative capacity needs to be found somewhere else. Without nuclear that spare capacity is going to remain gas (with all that entails).

And no, there is no way we can power whole countries from batteries for days and weeks on end, the current technologies do not scale to the current energy demands, nor does pumped hydro (there is some utter bulshit out there on this subject from people who should know better). And please don’t say tidal: tidal has been around for three quarters of a century and nobody has managed to scale it beyond a couple hundred MWs, it’s peanuts, a child pissing into a swimming pool. Nuclear energy would have been our best option (which is not the same as saying nuclear is good), but we have sadly shot ourselves in the foot on that one (a consequence of policy built on activism rather than science).

But the basic problem is we require too much energy to sustain our current existence, i.e., our existence is not sustainable, and so is, necessarily, coming to an end. We have run out of time on new technological solutions, we are so near the climate change tipping points that we can’t even afford the medium term increase in energy demands arising out of the renewables rollout. Our only chance is a radical cut, which means radical altering of our life styles and societies, we need to stop worshipping the Growth idol and degrow instead. But chances of that are near zero, for we are governed by megalomaniacs, lovers of money, and, not least, ignorants and idiots.