Sunday 19 October

Hmm! No sooner had I published my previous post than I came across this: 24% of UK electricity produced by wind. Food for thought?

Germany - Too Successful?

A number of ex-colleagues gathered together the other day - sadly for a funeral - but the talk soon turned to the state of the electricity market, or I should say markets because we strayed into the issue of Germany building new lignite plants. With renewables (some 23% or so of German power production) often base-loading during the day (solar) or in periods of reasonable wind there is a need for back-up generation. Nuclear can't do that and gas in Germany is expensive so lignite plants are kept running as spinning reserve. The result? Germany's CO2 emissions are actually on the rise.This is not a pretty picture; the German's seem to have dug something of a hole for themselves. No to nuclear. No to CCS. No to gas. Is the big German experiment to base an electricity system on renewables about to fail?

The Dreaded Transmission Charges

From way back when I was involved in modelling power station revenues and the like I recall the issue of transmission charges being a significant problem for remote northern-located stations. I must admit that I've rather taken my eye off this particular ball so I was interested to note an article recently suggesting that Scottish Power were not going to enter Longannet PS into the first capacity auction because of "disproportionate transmission charging penalties". This is despite the fact that the latest transmission charging methodology should actually reduce (but not eliminate) the penalty faced by remote stations.

INEOS and Shale

One of my last tasks under the highfalutin' banner of Bawden Consulting Ltd has been to audit a shale gas model being prepared for INEOS.

Now I see that the company has bought a 51% interest in an exploration block in Scotland (which happens to include land around INEOS' Grangemouth refinery and petrochemicals complex). What I find interesting is INEOS' intention to share some of the proceeds with home- and land-owners and communties. It expects to distribute 4% of revenues to home- and land-owners and a further 2% to communities. It claims that the total distributed could amount to as much as £2.5bn over the lifetime of the project.

That's one way to reduce the inevitable anti-shale sentiment.

INEOS is a non-operating partner. The operator is Dart Energy who hold the remaining 49% interest.

Wot - No Understudy?

We recently attended a performance of Anthony and Cleopatra at the Globe for a mere £42 each (plus travel costs, plus food and drink, plus programme). Eve Best (who I admire as a good strong Shakespearean actress) was unfortunately indisposed - sort of thing that can't be helped. But I was amazed that there was no understudy. Instead the actress who should have played Charmian read the part of Cleopatra and another actress read the part of Charmian. This severely compromised the production - especially when players were close to corpsing at times. Come on Globe - surely you can mirror other theatres and manage to properly cover for inevitable absences? Actresses floating around the stage clutching a wad of paper is just not good enough. Pity the Sale of Goods Act does not cover theatrical productions because what was delivered here was decidedly not fit for purpose.

White Rose Gets NER300 Funding

Regular readers will know that I was a tad miffed that the White Rose CCS project got the nod over the one in which I was peripherally involved. However, now that it is going ahead it's good news that the project has captured substantial NER300 funding to top up the support coming from HMG. While there must still be some doubts about the southern North Sea being the best target area for storage I do hope that this project really does prove the potential for CCS.

Energy Policy - Excellent Nick Butler Blog Post

All - please look at Nick Butler's recent post on UK energy policy (or lack of). It should be required reading for anyone interested in the future of UK energy - that's you and me!