Major infrastructure projects are always locally unpopular. The UK wouldn't have an electricity grid at all if we'd been so fixated by local objections in the past. Objections contributed towards making HS2 pointless trying to satisfy them cost the taxpayer nationwide so much. Compensate and build. Jenkin claiming not NIMBYs when they literally are campaigning on not having the infrastructure near them is pretty funny, too.
Why should people be displaced for peanuts just so these international renewable companies can cash in millions? I’m sure you’d feel differently if your home was going to be uprooted .
Why not subsidise rooftop solar big time, combined with electric cars which also double as grid storage when plugged in. And start using energy depending on the weather, by varying the price in real time. Many loads can wait until the sun’s shining or there’s a drop in demand, like Economy 7 works now.
Same reason Spain makes Private solar illegal. Grid is Monopoly and easily taxed. Conversion to hydrogen at production could be a good solution, but it will allow for consumers' energy independence. Big No No..
The UK has a link to Norway for pumped hydro excess . If the Morocco link goes through Plus the fact we have the top 2/3 biggest wind turbine farms . I think we are on a good path . But I also think each county should either generate their own power or have a battery within its borders to store from another source then under ground cables linking to each other . UK government must pass a law like they have in France where all petrol forecourts must have solar on the roof. Same with schools and car parks hospitals etc .
Not yet. We're just better at burning stuff out of sight. A lot of industrial heating uses natural gas because it's cheaper than electricity - just about every industrial furnace, smelter and heater runs on it.
2:59 I keep hearing this 4x by 2050. But UK power demand has done nothing but fall since 2007. From 375twh down to 306twh in 2022. Wake me up when demand actually starts going up.
In the segment where inertia from gas generators was covered, the fact that batteries can provide inertia was not mentioned. It was jarring to hear the National Grid spokesman say that they needed to run generators instead of using batteries in order to get the inertia required. Sounded like hogwash to me.
That's not back up plant. That's actual plant The back up would be reactive load shedding (IE turning down industrial and commercial air conditioning units), stationary batteries, Domestic batteries and Electric Vehicle charge/discharging
If it is relied on to generate base load surely that would be an even greater risk to our energy security? as we have witnessed with the Russian situation it can have a big impact on energy prices and the cables would be vulnerable to attack as was the case with the gas pipelines.
@@miles5600It’s also much harder to find faults, takes much longer to fix those faults. . Overhead cables can be thinner as the air cools them and they don’t need insulation on the conductors. Capacitive reactance is also a huge problem when conductors are close together and especially when run under the sea.
I get so fed up with these NIMBY’s. Happy to use the power, so long as all the pylons and generators are up north. Just concerned about their over valued houses, as opposed to the long term competitiveness of the U.K. and lower power bills. Frankly, I’d just do as the French do and go ahead and build, without forever consulting. Or else, cut of their power supplies and then see how they feel a month later.
Yeah that really annoyed me so selfish. I used to liver across a road from a masive substation a little hum in the damp and a few cats went bang but nobody got hurt or any ill health.
Perhaps we could mitigate the problem by lowering the load on the grid by simply disconnecting the NIMBYs. I just watched a BBC report about wind turbine blades being transported through Hawick town centre, and yes! the complaints about being stuck in traffic an extra 20 minutes rolled forth. There's nothing people won't complain about. We really need to start giving them something real to complain about to distract them.
If the government opted to install a compulsory 1kw of solar on every new house being built, they would add infrastructure at the point of use at no cost to the economy or the public. Every year, the infrastructure would increase in capacity. The solar wouldn't need to be metered. It could simply be connected to the houses electrical infrastructure. What isn't used by the household could go back into the grid. Th3 cost per new house would be small. The increase in capacity of the grid would be substantial over time
Couple of years back we started a major refurbishment and extension to our 1935 property and I had quite a Net Zero journey with it the additional cost for these over standard building was around 10-15% Solar Thermal tied to a large new type hot water tank provides 75% of hot water of your energy bill about 20% is spent on water heating. Double insulation using a product called SuperQuilt and all the floors had insulation + Floorquilt heating went off in April didn't come back on till end of November Underfloor heating runs at low temperatures uses around 40% less energy than a radiator system would especially given the main extension has a vaulted ceiling Replacement windows all with the latest glass technology All the stuff I've listed should be in new builds the Regs are still C+ standard
@SlowhandGreg we have an 1860s sandstone property with 2 foor thick sold walls. The property is tightly jointed dressed sandstone. Internally, it's all ornate cornices and 10" skirting boards. External or internal insulation would destroy the character of the property. There is no easy fix. We have good double glazing, insulated external doors. A loft conversion with 6" of kingspan insulation. The extension has fully insulation and underfloor heating. Doing any other insulation work is hugely expensive. Solar is relatively cheap by comparison
The UK is not known for being sunny. Wind however is in constant supply. By 2030 energy production from wind power will be 98GW 170% of todays household demands.
The battery in electric cars could be reimagined as some forms of city wide “grid”, and those home with solar as millions of mini power plants, however, the inertia of keeping grid stable as 50Hz is indeed a big challenge. Thanks Sky for illustrating the deep challenge for transitioning to renewables.
The country should have stronger laws to make critical infrastructure smooth. People will always object to everything but do they even understand the impact of climate change?
If it costs double, and hence double the payback period, 'government' will always go for the cheaper option. Why not put the cables out to sea where that is feasible? We really don't want to double the number of pylons around the country, so worth spending extra now to avoid the eyesore.
@@RussTillling Being an eyesore is not a good enough reason. Devaluing houses is not a good enough reason. SOMEone will have to make those sacrifices, exceptionalism is simply not good enough, there IS no choice to the transition. Every year the fossil fuels are responsible for 4-8million deaths -thats more than the total of covid deaths. Such selfish responses clearly indicate a lack of understanding of the situation, a misbelief that nature can be negotiated with, that reaching net zero can come about without sacrifices. People have lost their sense of social responsibility. The transition has to be done in such a way that it is fair and timely. From the video, it is known that the sea route would take too much time and cost the taxpayer much more. This at a time when councils are going bankrupt because the gov is unable to give them the central money they need these last 15-odd years, at a time when people down the road are surviving without beds, without more than one meal a day. But because it's an eyesore, its suddenly okay to make other people's lives so much worse.
@@RussTillling We already have a substantial undersea grid around the generating sites in and around the North Sea coast. The problem is where those cables land onshore, the power has to come inland somehow, and that requires pylons.
Possibly a way to placate the East Anglia folk ( ugly pylons ? ) is to convert the electricity to DC ( Direct Current ) .... this can be sent via a deep buried cable with VERY LOW losses , at the London end a giant Thyristor converter will turn it back into synchronised AC for the grid ... this is how we send electricity back and forth with France ! ! ........ DAVE™🛑
Is it impossible to build more hydro power stations in the UK ? Maybe they cannot get enough graft by using them ? they are pollution free and can run for over 40 years that I know of, there are hundreds of Lochs in Scotland that I'm sure can be utilized with modern technology but maybe they can't siphon off enough cash from them to fill their pockets. Maybe the main suppliers Centrica and Genie will hold too much power for that to happen?
It is not easy to manage a deeply complicated welfare society - and satisfy everyone with various necessary (unpopular) decisions. By the way, a good interesting video. 😉
Excellent report by Ed Conway and Sky News. Growing complexity against a background of an exponentially increasing mineral resource extraction requirement and collapsing net energy from indigenous oil and gas makes this approach to energy transition very challenging indeed.
The fact that the control room featured is in the National Grid HQ in Warwick is not a secret. The location of the back up facility is less well known though.
With conventional power generation we have energy on demand. Flick a switch electricity flows. With solar or wind we have intermittent supply. We can’t make the wind blow harder when we want more power. Too much wind turbines shut down, too little wind no power, wind too gusty grid can’t cope. And we can’t make solar panels that work at night, or when it is cloudy. No prospect of having enough energy storage to cover a winters day with no wind and little sun. With wind and solar we cannot match supply to demand. We will have to match demand to supply. Some politician will decide who to cut off when the wind drops. Who are they most likely to switch off Westminster or Wigan? Islington or Inverness? Cambridge or Coventry?
They should calculate the cost of above ground pylons and the extortionate cost of underground cables, and then offer to increase the NIMBYS electric bills to make up the difference.
Being an eyesore is not a good enough reason. Devaluing houses is not a good enough reason. SOMEone will have to make those sacrifices, exceptionalism is simply not good enough, there IS no choice to the transition. Every year the fossil fuels are responsible for 4-8million deaths -thats more than the total of covid deaths. Such selfish responses clearly indicate a lack of understanding of the situation, a misbelief that nature can be negotiated with, that reaching net zero can come about without sacrifices. People have lost their sense of social responsibility. The transition has to be done in such a way that it is fair and timely. From the video, it is known that the sea route would take too much time and cost the taxpayer much more. This at a time when councils are going bankrupt because the gov has reduced the central money they need these last 15-odd years, at a time when people down the road are surviving without heating, bed poverty, without more than one meal a day. But because it's an eyesore for these wealthy rural people, its suddenly okay to make other people's lives so much worse. I'll bet they call themselves patriots and voted to kill the uk's economy
Pylon’s don’t hurt bats or birds. But I agree an undersea grid study needs to be completed. We may need more power in the future but we currently use x10 amount of gas very inefficiently. And the amount of power currently be wasted in for example in refining petrol can be used instead in heating our homes.
we can cut usage by upgrading buildings with insulation and new windows I've just refurbished a 1935 house and took up all the floors insulated under them and installed a low temp underfloor system saves a fortune in running costs
Wave power also has some negatives. Firstly moving electrical parts in water is not a good combination. The force of storms can be magnificent but requires over-building. Floating things have a low profile which is good for scenic views but not so much for shipping. Anything that affects sea currents also affects erosion. I prefer wind turbines and solar, but I would accept nuclear. Coal power plants are not green, but they are greener than petrol, so provide a small advantage.
Not enough resource available. Extremely difficult environment. Intermittent if more predictable than wind/solar. I think people do not comprehend the enormous quantities of energy involved.
Both parties are making a mess of the clean energy matter. Commentators make a confusing mess aswell. Keep the thinking simple electricity bills are really GRID RENTAL BILLS. That is why the electricity feedin tariff is dirt cheap. Everyone is misled by the wrong name of the GRID RENTAL bill. 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊 Lets just get 3 facts clear 1, The grid is extremely expensive and more grid is just more permanent expense. 2, Electricity is dirt cheap. 3, No fossil fuels means 6 times more electricity.
71,000 extra tonnes of CO2. Excellent. That is more plant food, food for bones and shells, especially the shells of tiny coral creatures which, allegedly, bleach all the time. Energy from Morocco to Britain isn't possible without vast quantities of copper, which isn't currently available worldwide. Modular Nuclear and gas/oil fired power stations are the only reliable options in the short and medium term.
Running cables underground, and especially under the sea, sucks up so much reactive power. A better option would be to provide free power for those affected as it would certainly offset the reduction in value of a property. There’s never an easy answer. It’s the same as when mobile phone companies want to install masts. People don’t like them - the same people who complain of a lack of coverage.
How many klm in the national grid. How much does the grid cost to build per klm. Why build more than one line of transmission towers. Just use one ? Did the national grid take a century to construct ? If no fossil fuels in the future do we need 5 times more electricity, 5 times more grid capacity and 5 times more generators ??? Great minds discuss ideas.😊😊 Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.😮
When will consumers see the retail price of gas, pegged to the wholesale price, as the difference is 3 or 4 times the latter and the National Grid post profits of£4.6 billion and the standing charge has been increased by Ofgem to £300.00 a year!!!! It makes no sense.
We dont need grid. Solution is to convert electricity to hydrogen at location and develop sypply chain. Problem: The grid monopoly will be lost, and the government will lose control over energy consumers. Same reason Spain is trying to outlaw private solar panels.
so weput in a disput about the cause cancer yet didnt give ius a pueny about and now over th years had the whle state of everyonethere caught caner there
'Redesigning the UK's energy grid for a greener climate' is that like redesigning Doctors contracts and funding in general for a better NHS Jeremy? Because that has worked so well ...
I must inform viewers that the National Grid does not generate any electricity or even own any power stations it is a company that transports the power from the generation site to the consumer, and when it comes to emission free power like nuclear power stations in the UK they are all built and owned by the French government (EDF). The National Grid made 4.9 billion pound profit last year while not producing any electricity so they should use some of that profit to put the cables underground and not spoil the countryside.
Carefully avoided the really huge cost of upgrading the local distribution in areas that are currently using gas heating. In my street all the houses are gas heated and nobody has an electric car. My house rarely pulls more than 20kwh a day from the grid. Going all electric this will be nearer 70kwh a day and the an ev will add amother 35kwh a day. The cbles in the street and the substations will not be able to cope with this. I would bet that the local distibution will costorr to upgrade than the core grid, but its just not sexy enough for anyone to make a film about it.
Do spend loads of Taxpayer money on the Scottish distribution network. It will save us cash when we are a nation again getting ready to be all Electric decades before Brexit England.
And 13:12 “People here say they’re not against power lines”… cut to campaigners standing next to the open wiring cupboard and smart meter in a church hall during the peak evening period with all the lights blazing.
If only the Thames barrier had hydro to store tidal water up stream and release it if every river around the uk had this we would have more that enough power . But the environmental issues take precedent with the EA
Would that be good or bad? Dragging some guy off to stand in the middle of a field and say "this is where the pylon will be" seems pretty pointless to me.
If we have to replace all gas heating with electricity it is absolutely believable. I don't know how we will store or generate all of the extra power for the winter months though.
Offshore infrastructure such as wind turbines, interconnectors & undersea grids are extremely vulnerable to interference by rogue nations. Recent actions and activity by Russia & China in the Baltic and in the North Sea, the latter around UK infrastructure, should be a stern wake up call. Yes, if we are to replace fossil fuels with electricity we need higher rated grid and distribution infrastructure but the sooner this obsession with wind turbines & interconnectors to everywhere the better. The only sane answer, is as always is to build nuclear, everywhere, with higher power density, in fewer locations and longer lifetimes it’s a significantly better use of resources by orders of magnitude over widely dispersed wind and solar, it needs less grid infrastructure and the infrastructure it needs is far better utilised. Then we can stop burning fossils for heat and electricity, that preserves the extremely precious fossil fuels for where they are really, really needed and for which there is no viable alternative (chemical feedstocks) once all that is done deep decarbonisation genuinely becomes achievable. Every other ‘solution’ is very wasteful in time and resources & is just playing the subsidy game.
How does the cash benefit of this 'saner system' get retained within the public purse that pays the bills, when the private few who operate the Nuclear stations are trusted to do the counting
Regarding the cable routing across the countryside to feed London: Doesn’t the wind blow nearer to London? Why not a huge array of WTs and sub-stations up the Thames estuary?
There are already (amongst other smaller windfarms) the London Array offshore windfarm and Thanet OWF in the Thames Estuary which connect at Cleve Hill and Ramsgate respectively. An application to extend Thanet was rejected a few years back due to shipping concerns and I think there's limited scope for further expansion of existing or new projects due to that and environmental sensitivities.
@@pooonapiece I worked on the London array and many other OWFs around our islands, and all happened to be in environmentally sensitive areas. The East Anglian coast and its countryside are no exception but it’s coasts shallow water depth and mainly arable flat land is appealing to the money people. Cheaper to develop. The root problem seems the same as with everything else that is wrong with this planet. Money and greed. If an asteroid was on root to destroy us, the monetary cost to try to intercept it would not be considered would it. Bankers! ?ankers
What are we planning to do with UK gas grid? We're bothering people with gas boilers and tailpipes, but the power capacity of the UK gas grid is far greater than that of UK electricity grid. Why not get excess North Sea wind energy onshore, convert it into net zero methane, and fill the gas network with it? We need to do that (Royal Soc says "hydrogen" but that needs new everything) from store to generate net zero electricity in poor wind. We could transport energy around the UK as gas, additional to electric grid, and run all those tricky-to-electrify applications on net zero gas. There is also the prospect of methane-to-fuel for motors. No petrol/diesel tankers on roads, just a "fuel machine" at the garage free of climate change concerns *because all its supplies are net zero*.
Good thinking. however 'net zero' origin gas probably has leak issues as shown by carbon capture and storage tech. To my knowledge 60% is the best average containment
@@petewright4640 terrible, possibly? The only way we can use UK gigantic North Sea wind is to have a plan for what to do with "over production" in good wind. We currently 'throw it away' while paying for it at the same time. "Curtailment" it's called. That's essentially 'negative priced energy', so we could pay someone to convert it into storable form. It must be difficult to correctly account for negative-price, intermittent commodities when deciding whether a thing is worth doing or not?
If the efficiency is really bad then it's probably best to look at other approaches to the over production problem. Green hydrogen for example. Or how about heat. Remember storage heaters. If every house had some and they heated when power is very cheap then we'd be half way there. There is a whole area that is under explored. It's called Demand Side Management. If industry and consumers were exposed to the wholesale price of power they would soon adapt to use more when it was cheap, or even negative, and less when it was expensive.
@@petewright4640 the scale of the problem is the reason why Royal Soc suggest "store it as hydrogen" and I say "methane". Everything else is several orders of magnitude too small/expensive to be the backup for (worst case) several months of intermittency trough supply at national demand. Demand management is good for hours at best? Our electricity grid is around 20GW average, but our all-kinds energy consumption is around 200GW, which must all be borne by our non-fossil power fleet, in the ideal case. There are more and less efficiency power processes, but only a few we can use at that scale. Perhaps only 1 if we say "stored gas power station" and don't specify the "gas"
I would love everyone to have their own solar panels. However it takes around 8 years to break even. Many people are already in debt. Also I live in a flat.
A long way to go to catch up with the City of Sydney. Few cities have been as dedicated in getting traffic out of sight. Sydney currently has well over 60 miles (100km) of publicly and privately owned underground road tunnels and is still busy boring away. Some of the tunnels are enormous. The city has very nearly the same length in underground metro rail tunnels.
Far left hahahaha! She's already committed to keeping most of this far right Tory government's economic policies, so not going to be much different when Labour inevitably get in next year.
There is nothing at all wrong with the grid. The percieved and seemingly accepted view that renewables can replace fossil fuel generation is misplaced. Practically and technically renewables are not suited for large scale grid supply and sooner or later, when the grid fails with this unstable technology we will see some sense. A large scale grid failure is very serious and takes very many days to restore. It cannot just be switched back on.
Major infrastructure projects are always locally unpopular.
The UK wouldn't have an electricity grid at all if we'd been so fixated by local objections in the past.
Objections contributed towards making HS2 pointless trying to satisfy them cost the taxpayer nationwide so much.
Compensate and build.
Jenkin claiming not NIMBYs when they literally are campaigning on not having the infrastructure near them is pretty funny, too.
The modern day Luddite fraternity never smile.
Why should people be displaced for peanuts just so these international renewable companies can cash in millions? I’m sure you’d feel differently if your home was going to be uprooted .
Why not subsidise rooftop solar big time, combined with electric cars which also double as grid storage when plugged in. And start using energy depending on the weather, by varying the price in real time. Many loads can wait until the sun’s shining or there’s a drop in demand, like Economy 7 works now.
Same reason Spain makes Private solar illegal. Grid is Monopoly and easily taxed. Conversion to hydrogen at production could be a good solution, but it will allow for consumers' energy independence. Big No No..
These people are demanding poverty for others so they can have a nice view.
The UK has a link to Norway for pumped hydro excess . If the Morocco link goes through Plus the fact we have the top 2/3 biggest wind turbine farms . I think we are on a good path . But I also think each county should either generate their own power or have a battery within its borders to store from another source then under ground cables linking to each other . UK government must pass a law like they have in France where all petrol forecourts must have solar on the roof. Same with schools and car parks hospitals etc .
Electric is the modern fuel the age of burning stuff is gone.
Not yet. We're just better at burning stuff out of sight. A lot of industrial heating uses natural gas because it's cheaper than electricity - just about every industrial furnace, smelter and heater runs on it.
So yet again nimbies stopping progress!
2:59 I keep hearing this 4x by 2050. But UK power demand has done nothing but fall since 2007. From 375twh down to 306twh in 2022. Wake me up when demand actually starts going up.
In the segment where inertia from gas generators was covered, the fact that batteries can provide inertia was not mentioned. It was jarring to hear the National Grid spokesman say that they needed to run generators instead of using batteries in order to get the inertia required. Sounded like hogwash to me.
Appallingly contrived interviews 🤮
Does tidal power create inertia?
Relying on electricity from Morocco to provide back up doesn’t sound like long term security for our countries vital infrastructure.
That's not back up plant.
That's actual plant
The back up would be reactive load shedding (IE turning down industrial and commercial air conditioning units), stationary batteries, Domestic batteries and Electric Vehicle charge/discharging
If it is relied on to generate base load surely that would be an even greater risk to our energy security? as we have witnessed with the Russian situation it can have a big impact on energy prices and the cables would be vulnerable to attack as was the case with the gas pipelines.
Im not surprised they favour gas, National Grid own 20% of National Gas !
Unfortunately pylons are necessary if we want to have electricity.
it's possible to put them underground, but that's crazy expensive.
No we can send electricity via the Internet instead
@@miles5600agreed! Also undergrounding cables have far worse ecological impact compared to overhead lines
@@halfmug3087 wdym by ecological impact?
@@miles5600It’s also much harder to find faults, takes much longer to fix those faults. .
Overhead cables can be thinner as the air cools them and they don’t need insulation on the conductors.
Capacitive reactance is also a huge problem when conductors are close together and especially when run under the sea.
The wants of the few should not be put before the needs of the many.
I get so fed up with these NIMBY’s. Happy to use the power, so long as all the pylons and generators are up north. Just concerned about their over valued houses, as opposed to the long term competitiveness of the U.K. and lower power bills. Frankly, I’d just do as the French do and go ahead and build, without forever consulting. Or else, cut of their power supplies and then see how they feel a month later.
Yeah that really annoyed me so selfish. I used to liver across a road from a masive substation a little hum in the damp and a few cats went bang but nobody got hurt or any ill health.
Rich people object, poor people accept...
And the deference to rich people is staggering , never pressed on why their stance is not sustainable for starters .
Modernising Thucydides’ famous quote
Perhaps we could mitigate the problem by lowering the load on the grid by simply disconnecting the NIMBYs. I just watched a BBC report about wind turbine blades being transported through Hawick town centre, and yes! the complaints about being stuck in traffic an extra 20 minutes rolled forth. There's nothing people won't complain about. We really need to start giving them something real to complain about to distract them.
If the government opted to install a compulsory 1kw of solar on every new house being built, they would add infrastructure at the point of use at no cost to the economy or the public. Every year, the infrastructure would increase in capacity. The solar wouldn't need to be metered. It could simply be connected to the houses electrical infrastructure. What isn't used by the household could go back into the grid. Th3 cost per new house would be small. The increase in capacity of the grid would be substantial over time
Many of us have been saying this for years. Bob-the-builder's reply: "Talk to the finger".
Couple of years back we started a major refurbishment and extension to our 1935 property and I had quite a Net Zero journey with it the additional cost for these over standard building was around 10-15%
Solar Thermal tied to a large new type hot water tank provides 75% of hot water of your energy bill about 20% is spent on water heating.
Double insulation using a product called SuperQuilt and all the floors had insulation + Floorquilt heating went off in April didn't come back on till end of November
Underfloor heating runs at low temperatures uses around 40% less energy than a radiator system would especially given the main extension has a vaulted ceiling
Replacement windows all with the latest glass technology
All the stuff I've listed should be in new builds the Regs are still C+ standard
@SlowhandGreg we have an 1860s sandstone property with 2 foor thick sold walls. The property is tightly jointed dressed sandstone. Internally, it's all ornate cornices and 10" skirting boards. External or internal insulation would destroy the character of the property. There is no easy fix. We have good double glazing, insulated external doors. A loft conversion with 6" of kingspan insulation. The extension has fully insulation and underfloor heating. Doing any other insulation work is hugely expensive. Solar is relatively cheap by comparison
@@timevans8223 but he said these things should be required in new builds, so they wouldn't apply to your 1860's building
The UK is not known for being sunny. Wind however is in constant supply. By 2030 energy production from wind power will be 98GW 170% of todays household demands.
The battery in electric cars could be reimagined as some forms of city wide “grid”, and those home with solar as millions of mini power plants, however, the inertia of keeping grid stable as 50Hz is indeed a big challenge. Thanks Sky for illustrating the deep challenge for transitioning to renewables.
The country should have stronger laws to make critical infrastructure smooth. People will always object to everything but do they even understand the impact of climate change?
If it costs double, and hence double the payback period, 'government' will always go for the cheaper option. Why not put the cables out to sea where that is feasible? We really don't want to double the number of pylons around the country, so worth spending extra now to avoid the eyesore.
@@RussTillling Being an eyesore is not a good enough reason. Devaluing houses is not a good enough reason. SOMEone will have to make those sacrifices, exceptionalism is simply not good enough, there IS no choice to the transition.
Every year the fossil fuels are responsible for 4-8million deaths -thats more than the total of covid deaths. Such selfish responses clearly indicate a lack of understanding of the situation, a misbelief that nature can be negotiated with, that reaching net zero can come about without sacrifices. People have lost their sense of social responsibility.
The transition has to be done in such a way that it is fair and timely. From the video, it is known that the sea route would take too much time and cost the taxpayer much more. This at a time when councils are going bankrupt because the gov is unable to give them the central money they need these last 15-odd years, at a time when people down the road are surviving without beds, without more than one meal a day. But because it's an eyesore, its suddenly okay to make other people's lives so much worse.
@@RussTillling We already have a substantial undersea grid around the generating sites in and around the North Sea coast. The problem is where those cables land onshore, the power has to come inland somehow, and that requires pylons.
Lol we're not NIMBYS! We just dont want them in our backyards
They have to go somewhere and after the poverty I've seen in the UK I'd have them all in my backyard if I could
Possibly a way to placate the East Anglia folk ( ugly pylons ? ) is to convert the electricity to DC ( Direct Current ) .... this can be sent via a deep buried cable with VERY LOW losses , at the London end a giant Thyristor converter will turn it back into synchronised AC for the grid ... this is how we send electricity back and forth with France ! ! ........ DAVE™🛑
Is it impossible to build more hydro power stations in the UK ? Maybe they cannot get enough graft by using them ? they are pollution free and can run for over 40 years that I know of, there are hundreds of Lochs in Scotland that I'm sure can be utilized with modern technology but maybe they can't siphon off enough cash from them to fill their pockets. Maybe the main suppliers Centrica and Genie will hold too much power for that to happen?
It is not easy to manage a deeply complicated welfare society - and satisfy everyone with various necessary (unpopular) decisions. By the way, a good interesting video. 😉
Excellent report by Ed Conway and Sky News. Growing complexity against a background of an exponentially increasing mineral resource extraction requirement and collapsing net energy from indigenous oil and gas makes this approach to energy transition very challenging indeed.
The fact that the control room featured is in the National Grid HQ in Warwick is not a secret. The location of the back up facility is less well known though.
With conventional power generation we have energy on demand. Flick a switch electricity flows. With solar or wind we have intermittent supply. We can’t make the wind blow harder when we want more power. Too much wind turbines shut down, too little wind no power, wind too gusty grid can’t cope. And we can’t make solar panels that work at night, or when it is cloudy. No prospect of having enough energy storage to cover a winters day with no wind and little sun. With wind and solar we cannot match supply to demand. We will have to match demand to supply. Some politician will decide who to cut off when the wind drops. Who are they most likely to switch off Westminster or Wigan? Islington or Inverness? Cambridge or Coventry?
They should calculate the cost of above ground pylons and the extortionate cost of underground cables, and then offer to increase the NIMBYS electric bills to make up the difference.
Put wind turbines in London and see if the locals complain. Nimbies in London want everything at other peoples costs.
Being an eyesore is not a good enough reason. Devaluing houses is not a good enough reason. SOMEone will have to make those sacrifices, exceptionalism is simply not good enough, there IS no choice to the transition.
Every year the fossil fuels are responsible for 4-8million deaths -thats more than the total of covid deaths. Such selfish responses clearly indicate a lack of understanding of the situation, a misbelief that nature can be negotiated with, that reaching net zero can come about without sacrifices. People have lost their sense of social responsibility.
The transition has to be done in such a way that it is fair and timely. From the video, it is known that the sea route would take too much time and cost the taxpayer much more.
This at a time when councils are going bankrupt because the gov has reduced the central money they need these last 15-odd years, at a time when people down the road are surviving without heating, bed poverty, without more than one meal a day. But because it's an eyesore for these wealthy rural people, its suddenly okay to make other people's lives so much worse. I'll bet they call themselves patriots and voted to kill the uk's economy
The ones who object to increased power infrastructure should be detached from the National Grid.
Nice electrical appliances in her kitchen. Well electricity comes down cables, hence the need for pylons. Sorry but they have to be built!
Pylon’s don’t hurt bats or birds. But I agree an undersea grid study needs to be completed.
We may need more power in the future but we currently use x10 amount of gas very inefficiently. And the amount of power currently be wasted in for example in refining petrol can be used instead in heating our homes.
we can cut usage by upgrading buildings with insulation and new windows
I've just refurbished a 1935 house and took up all the floors insulated under them and installed a low temp underfloor system saves a fortune in running costs
At least pylons can be easily removed in the future if needed.
We could have 24-7-365 days a year cheap safe clean tidal and wave power electricity generation all around our beautiful islands 🎉
Wave power also has some negatives. Firstly moving electrical parts in water is not a good combination. The force of storms can be magnificent but requires over-building. Floating things have a low profile which is good for scenic views but not so much for shipping. Anything that affects sea currents also affects erosion. I prefer wind turbines and solar, but I would accept nuclear. Coal power plants are not green, but they are greener than petrol, so provide a small advantage.
Not enough resource available. Extremely difficult environment. Intermittent if more predictable than wind/solar.
I think people do not comprehend the enormous quantities of energy involved.
What about tidal ? reliable predictable and never ending
Agreed but at what cost?!
@@paulgreen7906Perhaps direct cost isn't everything.
Both parties are making a mess of the clean energy matter.
Commentators make a confusing mess aswell.
Keep the thinking simple electricity bills are really GRID RENTAL BILLS.
That is why the electricity feedin tariff is dirt cheap.
Everyone is misled by the wrong name of the GRID RENTAL bill.
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
Lets just get 3 facts clear
1, The grid is extremely expensive and more grid is just more permanent expense.
2, Electricity is dirt cheap.
3, No fossil fuels means 6 times more electricity.
Why don’t we just nationalise the National Grid?
71,000 extra tonnes of CO2. Excellent. That is more plant food, food for bones and shells, especially the shells of tiny coral creatures which, allegedly, bleach all the time. Energy from Morocco to Britain isn't possible without vast quantities of copper, which isn't currently available worldwide. Modular Nuclear and gas/oil fired power stations are the only reliable options in the short and medium term.
Running cables underground, and especially under the sea, sucks up so much reactive power.
A better option would be to provide free power for those affected as it would certainly offset the reduction in value of a property.
There’s never an easy answer. It’s the same as when mobile phone companies want to install masts. People don’t like them - the same people who complain of a lack of coverage.
How many klm in the national grid.
How much does the grid cost to build per klm.
Why build more than one line of transmission towers.
Just use one ?
Did the national grid take a century to construct ?
If no fossil fuels in the future do we need 5 times more electricity, 5 times more grid capacity and 5 times more generators ???
Great minds discuss ideas.😊😊
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.😮
When will consumers see the retail price of gas, pegged to the wholesale price, as the difference is 3 or 4 times the latter and the National Grid post profits of£4.6 billion and the standing charge has been increased by Ofgem to £300.00 a year!!!! It makes no sense.
National Grid rips off Scotland
We dont need grid. Solution is to convert electricity to hydrogen at location and develop sypply chain. Problem: The grid monopoly will be lost, and the government will lose control over energy consumers. Same reason Spain is trying to outlaw private solar panels.
Hope those NIMBYs sell their home. Cry me a river.
so weput in a disput about the cause cancer yet didnt give ius a pueny about and now over th years had the whle state of everyonethere caught caner there
get me back on them ducting routes , forget the towers
'Redesigning the UK's energy grid for a greener climate'
is that like redesigning Doctors contracts and funding in general for a better NHS Jeremy? Because that has worked so well ...
logical fallacy -go look them up^
Ed Conway way to con
I wonder how this will affect the cost of living and the well-being of ordinary people?
higher/worse
And the alternative is?
It'll make us all poorer
Like any investment, poorer today and richer tomorrow.
Like con vid place your bets
Absolute tosh
I must inform viewers that the National Grid does not generate any electricity or even own any power stations it is a company that transports the power from the generation site to the consumer, and when it comes to emission free power like nuclear power stations in the UK they are all built and owned by the French government (EDF). The National Grid made 4.9 billion pound profit last year while not producing any electricity so they should use some of that profit to put the cables underground and not spoil the countryside.
Carefully avoided the really huge cost of upgrading the local distribution in areas that are currently using gas heating. In my street all the houses are gas heated and nobody has an electric car. My house rarely pulls more than 20kwh a day from the grid. Going all electric this will be nearer 70kwh a day and the an ev will add amother 35kwh a day. The cbles in the street and the substations will not be able to cope with this. I would bet that the local distibution will costorr to upgrade than the core grid, but its just not sexy enough for anyone to make a film about it.
Do spend loads of Taxpayer money on the Scottish distribution network. It will save us cash when we are a nation again getting ready to be all Electric decades before Brexit England.
6:11 I like the subtle dig at the girl by showing the real danger to birds and bats.
And 13:12 “People here say they’re not against power lines”… cut to campaigners standing next to the open wiring cupboard and smart meter in a church hall during the peak evening period with all the lights blazing.
"The biggest untold story..."
Untold? Hardly!😊
they are really grasping at straws with trying to stop those pylons!
Warm pumps is what they should have said.... they are heavily dependant on power to run, not really green in any way....
If only the Thames barrier had hydro to store tidal water up stream and release it if every river around the uk had this we would have more that enough power . But the environmental issues take precedent with the EA
Smart Grid.
Great reporting
Swear BBC Newsnight would cover this with more graphics, less on the ground footage; less linearly
Would that be good or bad? Dragging some guy off to stand in the middle of a field and say "this is where the pylon will be" seems pretty pointless to me.
System resilience needs baseload. Challenging as we use more renewables.
4 times more electricity by 2050 that's unbelievable
If we have to replace all gas heating with electricity it is absolutely believable. I don't know how we will store or generate all of the extra power for the winter months though.
Offshore infrastructure such as wind turbines, interconnectors & undersea grids are extremely vulnerable to interference by rogue nations. Recent actions and activity by Russia & China in the Baltic and in the North Sea, the latter around UK infrastructure, should be a stern wake up call.
Yes, if we are to replace fossil fuels with electricity we need higher rated grid and distribution infrastructure but the sooner this obsession with wind turbines & interconnectors to everywhere the better.
The only sane answer, is as always is to build nuclear, everywhere, with higher power density, in fewer locations and longer lifetimes it’s a significantly better use of resources by orders of magnitude over widely dispersed wind and solar, it needs less grid infrastructure and the infrastructure it needs is far better utilised. Then we can stop burning fossils for heat and electricity, that preserves the extremely precious fossil fuels for where they are really, really needed and for which there is no viable alternative (chemical feedstocks) once all that is done deep decarbonisation genuinely becomes achievable.
Every other ‘solution’ is very wasteful in time and resources & is just playing the subsidy game.
How does the cash benefit of this 'saner system' get retained within the public purse that pays the bills, when the private few who operate the Nuclear stations are trusted to do the counting
Regarding the cable routing across the countryside to feed London: Doesn’t the wind blow nearer to London? Why not a huge array of WTs and sub-stations up the Thames estuary?
There are already (amongst other smaller windfarms) the London Array offshore windfarm and Thanet OWF in the Thames Estuary which connect at Cleve Hill and Ramsgate respectively. An application to extend Thanet was rejected a few years back due to shipping concerns and I think there's limited scope for further expansion of existing or new projects due to that and environmental sensitivities.
@@pooonapiece I worked on the London array and many other OWFs around our islands, and all happened to be in environmentally sensitive areas. The East Anglian coast and its countryside are no exception but it’s coasts shallow water depth and mainly arable flat land is appealing to the money people. Cheaper to develop. The root problem seems the same as with everything else that is wrong with this planet. Money and greed. If an asteroid was on root to destroy us, the monetary cost to try to intercept it would not be considered would it. Bankers! ?ankers
@paulmarjoram2258 haha very good points! Can't help but think that greed will be the eventual downfall of our species :(
What are we planning to do with UK gas grid? We're bothering people with gas boilers and tailpipes, but the power capacity of the UK gas grid is far greater than that of UK electricity grid. Why not get excess North Sea wind energy onshore, convert it into net zero methane, and fill the gas network with it? We need to do that (Royal Soc says "hydrogen" but that needs new everything) from store to generate net zero electricity in poor wind. We could transport energy around the UK as gas, additional to electric grid, and run all those tricky-to-electrify applications on net zero gas. There is also the prospect of methane-to-fuel for motors. No petrol/diesel tankers on roads, just a "fuel machine" at the garage free of climate change concerns *because all its supplies are net zero*.
Good thinking. however 'net zero' origin gas probably has leak issues as shown by carbon capture and storage tech. To my knowledge 60% is the best average containment
How efficient is the conversion.
@@petewright4640 terrible, possibly? The only way we can use UK gigantic North Sea wind is to have a plan for what to do with "over production" in good wind. We currently 'throw it away' while paying for it at the same time. "Curtailment" it's called. That's essentially 'negative priced energy', so we could pay someone to convert it into storable form. It must be difficult to correctly account for negative-price, intermittent commodities when deciding whether a thing is worth doing or not?
If the efficiency is really bad then it's probably best to look at other approaches to the over production problem. Green hydrogen for example. Or how about heat. Remember storage heaters. If every house had some and they heated when power is very cheap then we'd be half way there. There is a whole area that is under explored. It's called Demand Side Management. If industry and consumers were exposed to the wholesale price of power they would soon adapt to use more when it was cheap, or even negative, and less when it was expensive.
@@petewright4640 the scale of the problem is the reason why Royal Soc suggest "store it as hydrogen" and I say "methane". Everything else is several orders of magnitude too small/expensive to be the backup for (worst case) several months of intermittency trough supply at national demand. Demand management is good for hours at best? Our electricity grid is around 20GW average, but our all-kinds energy consumption is around 200GW, which must all be borne by our non-fossil power fleet, in the ideal case. There are more and less efficiency power processes, but only a few we can use at that scale. Perhaps only 1 if we say "stored gas power station" and don't specify the "gas"
Do we need a grid system? Homes could be off grid.
I would love everyone to have their own solar panels. However it takes around 8 years to break even. Many people are already in debt. Also I live in a flat.
Yes we do need a grid! Homes being off grid is not practical for most people
A long way to go to catch up with the City of Sydney. Few cities have been as dedicated in getting traffic out of sight.
Sydney currently has well over 60 miles (100km) of publicly and privately owned underground road tunnels and is still busy boring away. Some of the tunnels are enormous.
The city has very nearly the same length in underground metro rail tunnels.
What on earth was the shadow chancellor doing in this report, I expected an interesting piece on redesigning the grid not far left propaganda!!
Far left hahahaha! She's already committed to keeping most of this far right Tory government's economic policies, so not going to be much different when Labour inevitably get in next year.
Shadow Chancellor, give her the keys and the money will be the shadow!?!
@@thomasherrin6798 Yes it will be Bollingers all round champagne socialists
The "birds and the bats" that the little girl cares so much about would say "build the f**king pylons" .
They wouldn't even be bothered by them. Pylons pose no danger to birds or bats.
@@vylbird8014I suppose that if there are pylons then there are turbines. Even so climate change is a far bigger threat to wildlife than wind farms.
There is nothing at all wrong with the grid.
The percieved and seemingly accepted view that renewables can replace fossil fuel generation is misplaced.
Practically and technically renewables are not suited for large scale grid supply and sooner or later, when the grid fails with this unstable technology we will see some sense.
A large scale grid failure is very serious and takes very many days to restore. It cannot just be switched back on.