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I took a course in my undergrad in physics on energy systems. It was basically a holistic look at the UKs primary energy sources, the grid, future sources of en

by reedf1 2y ago

I took a course in my undergrad in physics on energy systems. It was basically a holistic look at the UKs primary energy sources, the grid, future sources of energy and some policy. We briefly covered the elimination of coal. A graph showed a huge void in domestic energy at coal-plant closures, with other domestic sources planned in the future (renewables) to fill the void. These renewables sources have been much slower to come online and have been under resourced. The issue is now that we are enormous net-importers of energy, some of our demand is likely fulfilled by foreign coal burning. So none of this reporting is really that honest about how horrific it is to be a net energy importer, it would be another thing if we were at greater than 100% domestic energy generation and that these can now be taken offline (which many will take as the implication.)

GaggiX 2y ago
The vast majority of imported energy comes from France and Norway, much cleaner energy than the UK.
CalRobert 2y ago
The UK seems to import around 10% of its electrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom """ Demand for electricity in 2023 was 29.6 GW on average (259 TWh over the year), supplied through 235 TWh of UK-based generation and 24 TWh of energy imports.[4] """ Hopefully this is paired with reduced coal burning in the places Britain relies on for power, and improvements in efficiency. The wastefulness of British houses is something to behold... Of course, there's also the energy used to build things that Britain imports that used to be made domestically, not accounted for here. Britain seems to be doing reasonably well w.r.t. energy imports though - https://www.statista.com/statistics/550304/electricity-imports-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/550304/electricity-impor... From https://www.statista.com/topics/4938/energy-imports-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/#topicOverview https://www.statista.com/topics/4938/energy-imports-in-the-u... """ Although historically relatively self-sufficient in covering domestic energy demand, the United Kingdom’s dependency on imports has increased in the past few decades. With oil and gas fields on the continental shelf depleting and the government phasing out coal, the country has grown increasingly reliant on supplies from other countries. Energy dependency reached its peak in 2013, at nearly 48 percent. Thanks in large part to growing capacity additions of wind power and a decline in primary energy consumption, the dependency rate had fallen to some 35 percent since. This is notably lower than the European Union average. """
- pjc50 2y ago
  > The wastefulness of British houses is something to behold... I'm reminded of how there was an "Insulate Britain" campaign group, using unpopular disruptive tactics; the outcome of that was the law changed and they got jailed for several years, and the British public could go back to not thinking about insulation again.
  - stuaxo 2y ago
    We have some of the oldest housing stock in Europe. There isn't much space inside for insulation, one solution is thin wall insulation. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/975982/tiwi-summary-report.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
    - pjc50 2y ago
      > We have some of the oldest housing stock in Europe. Yeah. One of those complex issues that just keeps getting worse as you dig into it. I think people in the UK are much more conservative about historical preservation of ordinary houses, due to both percieved ugliness and build quality issues and also some genuine regressions of utility from, say, the days of the Parker-Morris standards.
      - pm215 2y ago
        Also we appear to be unable to build new houses at anywhere the rate needed to meet demand, so it's unsurprising that old houses are retained and that people are willing to live in houses with suboptimal energey efficiency...
    - CalRobert 2y ago
      Not to mention horrendous draughtiness.
      - smcl 2y ago
        Which was a feature, given historical reliance on coal fires inside homes for heating.
danhor 2y ago
I'm no expert in the UKs domestic energy, but at least looking at electricity mix charts it seems to me like growth of renewables after introduction (lets say 2005) from <5% to ~40% compensates the drop in electricity produced from coal (~33% to <2%) quite nicely. The huge drop in coal production starting ~2014 also doesn't seem to correspond to an increase in net electricity import, so I don't see what you're basing your claims on. It's also news to me that the UK was ever self sufficient for energy in the last few decades. Most countries are at least roughly matching their electricity production, but almost all are huge energy importers for non-electric energy, so I don't quite see the issue (if e.g. most large oil producing countries were to suddenly stop exports, most of the world would be in huge trouble). Why do you claim that this, which has been the reality for almost all countries over the last few decades, would be horrific?
- dazc 2y ago
  I'm no expert either but I do know that we have been importing significant amounts of energy from France for quite some time. This suggests to me that France has a huge surplus rather than just matching their own need.
  - VBprogrammer 2y ago
    France built out a huge number of Nuclear reactors in the 80s. Some 70% of it's electricity comes from Nuclear. Nuclear has a very low marginal cost so when it's up and running you want to run it at full power as much as possible. At times of low demand in France this means exporting as much of it as they can at whatever rate they can get for it. It's not that they have a huge surplus overall, it's just the economics make it better for them to export rather than load following.
- reedf1 2y ago
  https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-chapter-1-digest-of-united-kingdom-energy-statistics-dukes https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-chapter-1-di... This is what you want to look at. Really energy dependance is a complicated issue. You'd have to be living under a rock to not see how this dependance has rocked Europe (particularly Germany) since the Ukraine war. Energy price instability is an enormous social problem.
HPsquared 2y ago
How does it count if you import fuel and burn it locally? It's still "imported energy". Most of our energy is imported if you look at it that way.
pjc50 2y ago
https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/britain-net-electricity-exporter/ https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/britain-net-electricity-exporter/ "Britain is a Net Electricity Exporter for First Time in 44 years" (2023) OK, so that was the brief period when half the French nuclear reactor fleet had to be taken offline at the same time for crack inspections, but the other half of that - importing for 44 years - implies this is not a new situation nor a disaster. It is not "horrific" to be a net energy importer, nor is is particularly environmentally unfriendly when the French nuclear reactors are working. The second most important link is importing energy from Norway, which is 99% (!) renewable. The main delaying factor was the Conservative moratorium on building onshore wind in England, which I believe is ending, and the general reluctance to build new power lines to import more renewables from Scotland, Orkney etc. Since someone complained, direct quote from article: "So what happened? Over the past year, French nuclear power stations had many maintenance problems which led to significant reductions in their output. In August, 57% of the country’s generation capacity was not being used. Despite a modest recovery, as of January 2023, 15 of its 56 reactors were closed for repairs. All this meant nuclear-reliant France had to import electricity from neighbouring countries. This led to more electricity being generated in Britain than would otherwise have been the case, to satisfy the additional demand from France. So while Britain’s renewable generation was at a record level, its fossil fuel generation was also higher than in the previous year. Without the problems in France, 2022 could have been the first year that Britain’s wind, solar and hydro combined generated more electricity than its fossil fuels – a milestone that will happen anyway over the next couple of years."
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- radicalbyte 2y ago
  One of Labour's more important policies is to repair the damage that the Tories did to the energy production system. The UK has a huge amount of potential wind energy just from off-shoring. Hopefully they'll start building onshore too and closing more of these ugly and polluting biomass plants.
_fizz_buzz_ 2y ago
> some of our demand is likely fulfilled by foreign coal burning Actually very little. Most is French nuclear power. The electricity that the UK imports has a lower carbon footprint than the UK's domestic electricity.
christkv 2y ago
Does this mean the UK is basically completely reliant on import of power for a base load or does the nuclear reactors and whatever hydro there is cover the need to offset the intermittency of renewables?
bArray 2y ago
> These renewables sources have been much slower to come online and have been under resourced. It's far worse, then have been over-resourced using green taxes on fossil fuels and are still not coming to fruition. When they lose their green tax subsidies, the cost of renewable energy will sky-rocket. > The issue is now that we are enormous net-importers of energy, some of our demand is likely fulfilled by foreign coal burning. When the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, we have no other way to magic up energy. The thing that made the most sense was nuclear, but the UK also failed to invest in that too. I think the UK is quickly heading towards energy insecurity, rolling black outs and high-priced foreign energy. This winter for example is already set to be overly expensive.

by reedf1 2y ago

GaggiX 2y ago

The vast majority of imported energy comes from France and Norway, much cleaner energy than the UK.

CalRobert 2y ago

The UK seems to import around 10% of its electrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom """ Demand for electricity in 2023 was 29.6 GW on average (259 TWh over the year), supplied through 235 TWh of UK-based generation and 24 TWh of energy imports.[4] """ Hopefully this is paired with reduced coal burning in the places Britain relies on for power, and improvements in efficiency. The wastefulness of British houses is something to behold... Of course, there's also the energy used to build things that Britain imports that used to be made domestically, not accounted for here. Britain seems to be doing reasonably well w.r.t. energy imports though - https://www.statista.com/statistics/550304/electricity-imports-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/550304/electricity-impor... From https://www.statista.com/topics/4938/energy-imports-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/#topicOverview https://www.statista.com/topics/4938/energy-imports-in-the-u... """ Although historically relatively self-sufficient in covering domestic energy demand, the United Kingdom’s dependency on imports has increased in the past few decades. With oil and gas fields on the continental shelf depleting and the government phasing out coal, the country has grown increasingly reliant on supplies from other countries. Energy dependency reached its peak in 2013, at nearly 48 percent. Thanks in large part to growing capacity additions of wind power and a decline in primary energy consumption, the dependency rate had fallen to some 35 percent since. This is notably lower than the European Union average. """

pjc50 2y ago
> The wastefulness of British houses is something to behold... I'm reminded of how there was an "Insulate Britain" campaign group, using unpopular disruptive tactics; the outcome of that was the law changed and they got jailed for several years, and the British public could go back to not thinking about insulation again.
- stuaxo 2y ago
  We have some of the oldest housing stock in Europe. There isn't much space inside for insulation, one solution is thin wall insulation. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/975982/tiwi-summary-report.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
  - pjc50 2y ago
    > We have some of the oldest housing stock in Europe. Yeah. One of those complex issues that just keeps getting worse as you dig into it. I think people in the UK are much more conservative about historical preservation of ordinary houses, due to both percieved ugliness and build quality issues and also some genuine regressions of utility from, say, the days of the Parker-Morris standards.
    - pm215 2y ago
      Also we appear to be unable to build new houses at anywhere the rate needed to meet demand, so it's unsurprising that old houses are retained and that people are willing to live in houses with suboptimal energey efficiency...
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    Not to mention horrendous draughtiness.
    - smcl 2y ago
      Which was a feature, given historical reliance on coal fires inside homes for heating.

danhor 2y ago

I'm no expert in the UKs domestic energy, but at least looking at electricity mix charts it seems to me like growth of renewables after introduction (lets say 2005) from <5% to ~40% compensates the drop in electricity produced from coal (~33% to <2%) quite nicely. The huge drop in coal production starting ~2014 also doesn't seem to correspond to an increase in net electricity import, so I don't see what you're basing your claims on. It's also news to me that the UK was ever self sufficient for energy in the last few decades. Most countries are at least roughly matching their electricity production, but almost all are huge energy importers for non-electric energy, so I don't quite see the issue (if e.g. most large oil producing countries were to suddenly stop exports, most of the world would be in huge trouble). Why do you claim that this, which has been the reality for almost all countries over the last few decades, would be horrific?

dazc 2y ago
I'm no expert either but I do know that we have been importing significant amounts of energy from France for quite some time. This suggests to me that France has a huge surplus rather than just matching their own need.
- VBprogrammer 2y ago
  France built out a huge number of Nuclear reactors in the 80s. Some 70% of it's electricity comes from Nuclear. Nuclear has a very low marginal cost so when it's up and running you want to run it at full power as much as possible. At times of low demand in France this means exporting as much of it as they can at whatever rate they can get for it. It's not that they have a huge surplus overall, it's just the economics make it better for them to export rather than load following.
reedf1 2y ago
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-chapter-1-digest-of-united-kingdom-energy-statistics-dukes https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-chapter-1-di... This is what you want to look at. Really energy dependance is a complicated issue. You'd have to be living under a rock to not see how this dependance has rocked Europe (particularly Germany) since the Ukraine war. Energy price instability is an enormous social problem.

HPsquared 2y ago

How does it count if you import fuel and burn it locally? It's still "imported energy". Most of our energy is imported if you look at it that way.

pjc50 2y ago

https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/britain-net-electricity-exporter/ https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/britain-net-electricity-exporter/ "Britain is a Net Electricity Exporter for First Time in 44 years" (2023) OK, so that was the brief period when half the French nuclear reactor fleet had to be taken offline at the same time for crack inspections, but the other half of that - importing for 44 years - implies this is not a new situation nor a disaster. It is not "horrific" to be a net energy importer, nor is is particularly environmentally unfriendly when the French nuclear reactors are working. The second most important link is importing energy from Norway, which is 99% (!) renewable. The main delaying factor was the Conservative moratorium on building onshore wind in England, which I believe is ending, and the general reluctance to build new power lines to import more renewables from Scotland, Orkney etc. Since someone complained, direct quote from article: "So what happened? Over the past year, French nuclear power stations had many maintenance problems which led to significant reductions in their output. In August, 57% of the country’s generation capacity was not being used. Despite a modest recovery, as of January 2023, 15 of its 56 reactors were closed for repairs. All this meant nuclear-reliant France had to import electricity from neighbouring countries. This led to more electricity being generated in Britain than would otherwise have been the case, to satisfy the additional demand from France. So while Britain’s renewable generation was at a record level, its fossil fuel generation was also higher than in the previous year. Without the problems in France, 2022 could have been the first year that Britain’s wind, solar and hydro combined generated more electricity than its fossil fuels – a milestone that will happen anyway over the next couple of years."

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radicalbyte 2y ago
One of Labour's more important policies is to repair the damage that the Tories did to the energy production system. The UK has a huge amount of potential wind energy just from off-shoring. Hopefully they'll start building onshore too and closing more of these ugly and polluting biomass plants.

_fizz_buzz_ 2y ago

> some of our demand is likely fulfilled by foreign coal burning Actually very little. Most is French nuclear power. The electricity that the UK imports has a lower carbon footprint than the UK's domestic electricity.

christkv 2y ago

Does this mean the UK is basically completely reliant on import of power for a base load or does the nuclear reactors and whatever hydro there is cover the need to offset the intermittency of renewables?

bArray 2y ago

> These renewables sources have been much slower to come online and have been under resourced. It's far worse, then have been over-resourced using green taxes on fossil fuels and are still not coming to fruition. When they lose their green tax subsidies, the cost of renewable energy will sky-rocket. > The issue is now that we are enormous net-importers of energy, some of our demand is likely fulfilled by foreign coal burning. When the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, we have no other way to magic up energy. The thing that made the most sense was nuclear, but the UK also failed to invest in that too. I think the UK is quickly heading towards energy insecurity, rolling black outs and high-priced foreign energy. This winter for example is already set to be overly expensive.