By Ivor Williams
WITH 2050 in mind, a government report has announced a new target reduction of emissions by the period 2038-2042. The same report restated the earlier manifesto aim to have nearly all our electricity generation ‘clean’ (i.e. emission-free) by 2030. The three aims of the 2030 plan are ‘a secure and affordable energy supply . . . new industries and investments . . . and protection of the environment’.
Notice that ‘affordable’? ‘Families and businesses across the UK,’ they say, ‘will continue to reap the benefits of the clean energy transition.’ Are your clean energy benefits continuing? Have any of you received help of any kind from this Net Zero madness?
Emission reduction means we are seemingly committed to heat pumps, specifically designed to provide background warmth in a fully-insulated house, possibly needing larger radiators and a hot-water tank. Warning! They are no use for oldies like me who need at least one room really warm.
We are also told we should buy electric cars. This is only really practical if your house has an off-road site for charging. High-rise folks, flat-dwellers, terrace-house people and all those others who can park only on the highway have to use public charging stations. Good luck with that when there’s ten million of you on the road.
The real key to reducing our emissions, the experts say, is to manufacture our electrical life blood from wind and sun. That’s all free energy, because the wind always blows, especially in the North Sea, and the sun always shines. Except that they don’t. At the time of peak early evening demand over the winters of 2024/2025 and 2025/2026, even in the worst storms the 12,000 turbines on and off-shore could generate only about half the power needed.
The November to February winter evening peak electricity demand, usually between 6pm and 7pm, is the most critical time for the UK power supply. There is no direct solar power available at this time of day for six months of the year as the sun sets too early. Another interesting point: if they fill the North Sea with turbines, during the occasional spells of calm weather and light winds there will be little output even from 25,000 of them.
The government’s plan is to bring on the grid battery revolution, that is batteries storing surplus electricity when the winds blow hard and the climate-changing summer sun shines longer and ever more powerfully. Then at the touch of a switch releasing that energy when it’s needed.
Well now, how far has that got? The plan for 2030 is to have five or six times more battery capacity than we have now. The result would be useful in a short-term regional power cut, but would keep the whole of the UK going for only about 35 minutes. Technical translation: current capacity 4.5 GWh (gigawatt-hours) but the 2030 aim is for 23-27 GWh.
The foundations of the plan for 2030 are sun and wind. There is to be a massive expansion of both off and on-shore wind, a tripling of solar capacity, lots more batteries (as above) but less nuclear. All in the next three and a half years. Unbelievable.
You really cannot think that precious billions will be spent on all that when there are serious discussions about our miserable defence budget and the economy is collapsing. Besides, thanks to both this and previous government spending sprees, the national debt meant that for 2025/2026 the interest alone cost the country £110billion.
There are various other sources such as borrowing electricity from Europe (as we do now), consumer actions, and – would you believe it? – gas, forecast to provide the same as today. ‘We recognise,’ says the 2030 report, ‘the importance of gas capacity to maintain security of supply.’
Did you notice there’ll actually be less nuclear in 2030? The report says: ‘Nuclear power will . . . play a key role in achieving clean power 2030.’ Yet two of our five nuclear power stations will shut down before 2030, and none of the new ones, Hinkley Point C, Sizewell C and the Small Modular Reactors will be ready by then.
Emission reduction well under way, then, with help from wind, sun and batteries. More nuclear by 2050. All to slow down a possible change in the climate. Now let’s look at some details about emissions from this side of reality.
Seven nations emit 59 per cent of the global greenhouse gas total. China is by far the highest at 29 per cent. Ten other countries emit between one and two per cent. The remaining 193 (including the UK) in the Edgar (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) list emit between zero and 0.9 per cent. The UK’s dreadful behaviour in using petrol, oil and gas results in an emission total of seven-tenths of one per cent of the global total, the same as Egypt’s.
The 2025 data details are not available yet, but from that same source, you can discover that global emissions from 1990 to 2024 increased by around 21,000 MtonCO2eq. (That’s how they measure them: in megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent, and no I don’t how they do it.) During that same period the UK reduced our total by around 400 MtonCO2eq. Let me make that even clearer: the world’s increase was 50 times larger than the UK’s decrease.
Think about that. We proudly declared we were world leaders in the Net Zero race as countries like China took over making everything for us. One news item earlier this year said: ‘Proposals to build coal-fired plants in China reached a record high in 2025.’ Another found that global investment in coal has reached a new record.
Do you know why? It’s because generating electricity from coal is the cheapest and quickest way to do it.
Conclusion: there’s no way we’re going to have ‘clean power’ by 2030 and it is simply unthinkable madness for this country to go on crippling its economy until 2050.
