Most liked posts in thread: UK Energy Needs

Well I think a part of this is caused by us refusing to grasp the nettle earlier and spend the time and money required to get these other forms of energy generation to a point where they are viable. Now we're all going to be hit in the pocket massively because of it.

I agree we have serious short term challenges in changing this but it's made geopolitical sense to make this shift anyway, given how the main exporter of gas in europe is now well up for starting ww3. It's a difficult question with no easy answers but I think would be fair to say simply continuing as we are is emphatically not the best course of action.

 

If it wasn't for the Russian backed various climate change groups and shale gas protesters etc we wouldn't have to go looking abroad for our energy supplies....

 

just paying more?

 

* Because wind and solar power that we produce is not enough for our needs.

* Quite the opposite, they don't want us to produce our own so that they can sell to us, don't tell me the XR group and it's other like minded fools are not funded by our adversaries..

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-10625169/Reabold-Resources-granted-permission-drill-gas-Yorkshire.html

Fortuitous or not?

 

That's a ridiculous and unfounded thing to say, but I do agree re tidal waves, if that could be harnessed it would see us right for as long as we wanted...

 

you've just tried to claim XR is a russian plant tony

 

It's not ridiculous or unfounded. There are numerous renewable energy schemes planned and waiting to be built, including several wave schemes. The only thing holding them up is government go-ahead. The reason the government won't give the go-ahead is to appease the dinosaur climate change sceptics on the right of the Tory Party including those with interests in the fracking business

 

Good info, thank you..

 

It depends on the size of the wind turbines. There's just been a couple of huge ones built in Europe that are capable of 14-15MWatts so if you had 130-150 you'd get the same capacity as Ratcliffe power station which will be the only coal fired power station in England by the end of this year. Also, rather counterintuitively to my mind, the larger the wind turbine, the less wind you need to create energy.

Personally, I do wonder if giant "centralised" energy production is an outdated concept, whether it's from a traditional power station or from large wind/solar farms. Domestic energy production and storage is getting much cheaper so I can see a shift to a more decentralised system of lots of homes producing their own (probably solar) power and storing it in a domestic battery for personal use with the excess being sold back to the national grid. Obviously we're a long way off that at the moment and not every home would be able to be self sufficient but I think that this type of energy production will provide a decent percentage of the UK's production capacity in the next 20-30 years.

 

do you think energy companies would let people make money from energy that isn't them?

 

@StaffordBantam how are you weighing up the pros and cons of switching to a heat pump and how ready is your house for it in terms of underfloor heating and insulation etc?

I know that current fuel prices might end up being a paradigm shift when it comes to switching to heat pumps but they are still relatively expensive to install and the cost is likely to come down dramatically (especially with the planned phasing out of gas boilers that's just over the horizon) so do you think potential savings on gas will cover potentially "overpaying" for being an early adopter of the technology before it becomes more mainstream?

Obviously I know that there are good ethical reasons for the switch beyond just £'s!

 

They are also about half the size of our kitchen...never gonna happen...

 

And the radiators are as big as the old style storage heaters.