Energy Twattery

[Protheroe]

Wind is at this moment providing 9% of UK electricity production. The volatility of the gas markets is the sole reason for fluctuating has prices, not wind or any other generation method.

I don't know why you're so obsessed with fracking and gas, putting all our eggs into that basket instead of nuclear in the 80s and 90s are why we're in this mess now (look at France), fracking wells would take years to setup with the high risk of stopping due to geological damage (why the limits are in place at the moment and validated by real world analysis from the Netherlands and Denmark) and would take money away from setting up a nuclear baseload with renewable scaling. All fracking accomplishes is to prop up exploitative gas companies who are detrimental to progress and couldn't give two fucks about prices as they want to extract as much money as possible from the consumer with as little competition as possible which is why they've spent nearly 50 years actively preventing progress and clean energy security.

Anyone who supports fracking and gas exploration is an idiot who doesn't know that they're talking about, a shill or actively profiting from misery.

You and Baggy1 clearly aren't very observant this week Gas is by far the best route to lowering CO2 in transition to nuclear.

[baggy1]

I must have missed my input on the subject, obviously living rent free in all that space up there.

[Borin' Baggie]

Fuck me Proth, I'm fucking employed in the energy generation and production sector, I've spoken to SHV, BOC and BP alone today, I covered energy production and efficiency cycles for my undergraduate degree, I've been tracking LPG and CNG price volatility for one of the projects I'm involved in and I'm well aware of Nordstream 2 and Belarus (that I presume you're on about) as I need to keep on top of shit like that. I know what I'm on about. Gas was the best route for transitioning to nuclear 20/30 years ago when it was that or coal, now it's a choice between renewables (wind/solar/tidal-green hydrogen/liquid air/hydroelectric) and gas and gas clearly doesn't cut it. Not to mention that one of the biggest reasons we don't have any nuclear is because the gas industry has lobbied and pushed for investment to maintain gas as the hegemony in order to hold back competing generation methods. 20 years ago nuclear was a higher proportion of our electricity generation makeup and the reason why we don't have new nuclear plants is because we were to reliant on and comfortable with gas so didn't invest into nuclear in turn fucking ourselves now with the volatile pricing.

And you're seeing the same bollocks today, I guarantee you that the gas industry will hobble green, pink and yellow hydrogen development as much as they can. Blue hydrogen is being lauded as this miracle solution by the gas lobby when all it is designed to do is keep the hegemony of petrochemical companies by presenting something as real as a unicorn. I'm invested in hydrogen, I've seen pink hydrogen in Tyseley and of course green hydrogen. Haven't seen any blue hydrogen. It's all the same bollocks that they've moved onto now their last attempt to keep the hegemony going, fracking, proved to be a geological nightmare in the UK.

Do you think that fracking is going to be a 2 week job? No, it will take years potentially decades to set up at which point in the parallel universe where we went down that route we will be kicking ourselves on wasting money on it and that's if the geological implications and the cost of covering damages.

[baggy1]

Fuck me Proth, I'm fucking employed in the energy generation and production sector, I've spoken to SHV, BOC and BP alone today, I covered energy production and efficiency cycles for my undergraduate degree, I've been tracking LPG and CNG price volatility for one of the projects I'm involved in and I'm well aware of Nordstream 2 and Belarus (that I presume you're on about) as I need to keep on top of shit like that. I know what I'm on about. Gas was the best route for transitioning to nuclear 20/30 years ago when it was that or coal, now it's a choice between renewables (wind/solar/tidal-green hydrogen/liquid air/hydroelectric) and gas and gas clearly doesn't cut it. Not to mention that one of the biggest reasons we don't have any nuclear is because the gas industry has lobbied and pushed for investment to maintain gas as the hegemony in order to hold back competing generation methods. 20 years ago nuclear was a higher proportion of our electricity generation makeup and the reason why we don't have new nuclear plants is because we were to reliant on and comfortable with gas so didn't invest into nuclear in turn fucking ourselves now with the volatile pricing.

And you're seeing the same bollocks today, I guarantee you that the gas industry will hobble green, pink and yellow hydrogen development as much as they can. Blue hydrogen is being lauded as this miracle solution by the gas lobby when all it is designed to do is keep the hegemony of petrochemical companies by presenting something as real as a unicorn. I'm invested in hydrogen, I've seen pink hydrogen in Tyseley and of course green hydrogen. Haven't seen any blue hydrogen. It's all the same bollocks that they've moved onto now their last attempt to keep the hegemony going, fracking, proved to be a geological nightmare in the UK.

Do you think that fracking is going to be a 2 week job? No, it will take years potentially decades to set up at which point in the parallel universe where we went down that route we will be kicking ourselves on wasting money on it and that's if the geological implications and the cost of covering damages.

I consider that to be a shoeing of the highest order. You can stand down for the evening now BB, your work here is done.

[Protheroe]

Fuck me Proth, I'm fucking employed in the energy generation and production sector, I've spoken to SHV, BOC and BP alone today, I covered energy production and efficiency cycles for my undergraduate degree, I've been tracking LPG and CNG price volatility for one of the projects I'm involved in and I'm well aware of Nordstream 2 and Belarus (that I presume you're on about) as I need to keep on top of shit like that. I know what I'm on about. Gas was the best route for transitioning to nuclear 20/30 years ago when it was that or coal, now it's a choice between renewables (wind/solar/tidal-green hydrogen/liquid air/hydroelectric) and gas and gas clearly doesn't cut it. Not to mention that one of the biggest reasons we don't have any nuclear is because the gas industry has lobbied and pushed for investment to maintain gas as the hegemony in order to hold back competing generation methods. 20 years ago nuclear was a higher proportion of our electricity generation makeup and the reason why we don't have new nuclear plants is because we were to reliant on and comfortable with gas so didn't invest into nuclear in turn fucking ourselves now with the volatile pricing.

And you're seeing the same bollocks today, I guarantee you that the gas industry will hobble green, pink and yellow hydrogen development as much as they can. Blue hydrogen is being lauded as this miracle solution by the gas lobby when all it is designed to do is keep the hegemony of petrochemical companies by presenting something as real as a unicorn. I'm invested in hydrogen, I've seen pink hydrogen in Tyseley and of course green hydrogen. Haven't seen any blue hydrogen. It's all the same bollocks that they've moved onto now their last attempt to keep the hegemony going, fracking, proved to be a geological nightmare in the UK.

Do you think that fracking is going to be a 2 week job? No, it will take years potentially decades to set up at which point in the parallel universe where we went down that route we will be kicking ourselves on wasting money on it and that's if the geological implications and the cost of covering damages.

None of that changes the fact that Nuclear is not ready. Rainbow hydrogen is not ready - and is there a delivery date on that in volume?

And in the meantime Europe is being held to ransom by Putin for Russian Gas whilst China appears to want to buy all the LPG that's being produced in the Middle East.

My concern isn't ideological. It's practical. Where does our baseload come from in the absence of wind? How much does gas cost? Where does gas come from? What certainty and security of supply do we have? And most fundamentally, how do I keep my house warm?

If you're employed in the industry tell me the answers to those questions - all my analysts tell me is that for the forseeable future we should be prioritising gas.

[Borin' Baggie]

They're reductive questions as you can't turn fracking on like a tap. It would take 10 years to even get to a point (assuming things go smoothly which they won't as evidenced by Cuadrilla breaching geological levels during exploration and being told to stop) where natural gas sourced from fracking in the UK would be in a position to be used to feed into gas turbines for the UK grid at which point it's there for 20/30 years and we would have wasted more money on something stupid instead of renewables and nuclear as happened every decade since the 1970s. You sure as hell aren't going to set up fracking wells or even more proven and geologically benign offshore wells in the next 6 months to help with your electricity and heating bills so what's the point?

It's not practical in the slightest, it's magical fantasy that ignores the practicalities by oversimplifying the processes in turn ignoring the difficulties and timescales involved, probably because you have it in your head that fracking is this golden bullet when it isn't.

[Protheroe]

You still haven't told me where our baseload is coming from to fire up all these crappy heat pumps and soulless milk floats.

We have proven gas resources and the proven capability to exploit them. I don't disagree with you at all about kicking the can down the road on nuclear since Sizewell B FFS, but we have a huge upcoming increase in baseload requirement and as far as I can tell no other option than gas.

Combine that with the deteriorating geopolitics of energy and I think that's the point.

[Borin' Baggie]

I have, short term combine scaled up wind potential due to come live in next 24 months with hydroelectric storage both in Wales and via interconnectors to Norway hydroelectric. That is the most cost effective and practical means of producing low carbon baseload capacity while Nuclear is scaled for the early 2030s.

We are still extracting gas from the North Sea, we are still issuing new licenses for exploration in the North Sea, this isn't going to stop. As are Norway who are the only country that we rely on for natural gas imports (88% as per BEIS DUKES) and I doubt they will be taken over by Lukashenko or Putin any time soon. What we are seeing with the gas markets is a vindication of 1970s French energy policy and a condemnation of our failure to invest in nuclear up to the point, coupled with the issues with the French interconnectors until March (best estimate) reducing potential supply. There isn't an immediate term fix, we have to bare the price increases and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

The underlying point is that fracking is a dead duck and, as a direct result of being stupid, money pit. Going down that route will only take money away from better long-term solutions as it did in the 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s by hogging investment (which is what the petrochemical companies want to the detriment of society and consumers, as they have done in the past. Shell, as an example but not limited to, could have initiated moves towards green tech in the 80s when they cared more about short term profits) meaning in 20/30 years time we will look back at it as a stupid decision. Fracking not only isn't ever going to solve issues with energy mix but also isn't even a short term solution, by the time it could be up to scale we'll have MWs more wind potential capacity and nuclear capacity so what's the point? It isn't going to help us with our current energy pricing problems, it isn't going to meaningfully cut emissions and as the French have shown the best means to solving the energy security issue for stabilised energy prices is nuclear. Not to mention, which I keep repeating, the huge issues with fracking such as frequent low intensity tremors due to the nature of the UK being built up and population dense and houses not being built to resist geological activity which has been an issue in the Netherlands and Denmark and was being reproduced during exploration before the moratorium was put into place, what about the costs for repairing damage to houses and infrastructure?

[Remi_Moses]

I think you're missing the bigger picture.
The European gas supply is a smoke screen.
Putin wants Europe to use up its gas reserves before he marches into the Baltic States. He will then swing his attention to northern Europe.
Do you think the EU will want to be our friends again then ?
As Germany shuts it's last nuclear power plants down will the invasion begin? Xmas day ?

[SophLad]

Is "energy guy" Tory for coke dealer?