Suchergebnisse

The UK nuclear strategy today is a muddle. After a brief description, this blog suggests what it should be. The Government claims that it ensures "that any new nuclear power station built in Great Britain meets high standards for:safetysecurityenvironmental protectionwaste management"The process is called the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) which is claimed to take four years, though insiders say the average is nearer six. But that is less than half the time taken to approve the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) plans to connect up to 86 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2035. If one is building just one nuclear power plant every 20 years, these bureaucratic delays may not matter much, but the new small modular reactor (SMR) technology means, if we are to achieve net zero by 2050, building five a year over the next 20 years. No chance of that unless the bureaucrats mend their ways.The three stages of the GDA are: "Step 1 (initiation) which can take around 12 months. At its conclusion, ONR will publish a GDA Step 1 Statement setting out its regulatory position at this point. Step 2 (fundamental assessment) can take around 12 months, after which a GDA Step 2 Statement sets out ONR's regulatory position at this point. Step 3 (detailed assessment) can take around 24 months. ONR will then publish one or both GDA Step 3 Statement and Decision Document."If a developer requires a GDA for the building of an SMR at one site only in the UK then the process can be halted after the successful conclusion of Step 2 followed by a Site Licence application. If the deployment of a particular SMR design is envisaged for multiple sites in the UK then Step 3 needs to be successfully concluded.Although the four issues are supposed to be considered as an integrated whole, they can really be considered as two: safety determined by the Office for Nuclear Regulation and site approval determined by the Environment Agency.  Good progress was made on the former issue by the nuclear regulators in the US, Canada and UK agreeing that safety clearance in any one of the three would be regarded as approval by all three.  The two-way (and hopefully now three-way) transatlantic agreement to harmonise the licensing process has thus far only tackled the administrative landscape work that occupies much of the first 2 years. There are few safety aspects to Stage 1 which could be reduced to 4 months in all 3 countries if a standardised and transportable approach is agreed. Note that activities covered by the various steps and/or stages of the UK, US and Canadian systems do not match precisely at this stage, and some harmonisation is still required. Stage 3 is where the actual design is critically scrutinised and an iterative dialogue with design teams is established. This work can take around 12-18 months depending upon the lineage and degree of novelty in the reactor design. If the applicant has a well-resourced design team that can respond quickly to regulator questions and design modifications, it can proceed quickly. In the case of the AP1000, there were still almost 1,000 issues raised by the ONR that remained (and still remain) unresolved. This is where delays can become significant and where developers may be to blame. Trying to design and license a new reactor on a shoestring budget can result in developers complaining to their shareholders that the regulator is being unreasonable. Institutional shareholders then lobby politicians to influence regulators to be more accommodating of the newcomers.Terrapower has realised the importance of having an FOAK (First Of A Kind) site under development and adequate financial resources to quickly design, build and commission their first reactor. They are now putting pressure on the US NRC to bring the same urgency to their licensing application. There is one other point worth noting. The history of nuclear safety thus far, together with the accidents that have happened, have largely surrounded the use of water/steam as a coolant and transporter of heat energy from the reactor to where it is converted into mechanical and electrical energy. But when it comes to HTGRs and MSRs there is no high temperature and pressurised water in or around the reactor. These advanced SMRs have  much simpler and safer systems and this needs to be reflected in their design processing time.How should it work? We need to distinguish, as the current system does not, between the traditional gigawatt reactors such as proposed for Sizewell C and small or advanced modular reactors (SMRs) which are rapidly coming onto the market. But more importantly we need to distinguish between an FOAK reactor that has never been licensed before and an NOAK (Nth Of A Kind) reactor for which design approval has already been awarded in either the US or Canada, or indeed another country that meets the UK's exacting standards for nuclear licensing. With more than 20 SMR designs likely to make it to the licensing and construction stages in the next decade, the US, Canada and the UK can ill-afford to repeat the administrative and technical procedures given the time, staffing and financial constraints that each regulator is experiencing or is likely to experience once these designs are submitted. The US and Canadian regulators are already facing political pressure to speed up SMR design assessments and to be proportional given the size of these reactors when compared to giga scale reactors. The UK is limiting SMRs to a small number deemed most useful for the UK situation. However, adopting this line risks excluding exciting new technologies and applications from both the UK nuclear industry and the nation's effort to decarbonise industry and power generation.Of the possible new nuclear plants going through the mill in 2010, it was deemed necessary for their sile locations to be approved by 51 separate quangos. It was all a complete waste of time as in March 2011, Energy Secretary Huhne says Britain may back away from the use of nuclear energy because of safety fears and a potential rise in costs after the Fukushima disaster. No new nuclear plants were approved after  Sizewell B and Hinkley Point B in 1967. In other words, the process had become disapproval, not approval.Future strategy: NOAK for NuclearThe UK would be much better off if we abandoned trying to be first of a kind (FOAK) but aimed for Nth (NOAK). The advantages would be:The GDA process could be immensely streamlined as the environmental issues could mostly be taken from predecessor countries and, if Canada and/or the US had already given approval, the safety aspects could be eliminated altogether. Instead of starting from scratch, new GDAs should only have to look at environmental issues that differ from GDAs already approved.  For example, if the radioactive elements of SMRs were sited underground, approval of one should automatically apply to another similarly sited. Hinkley Point C is a glaring example of the risks and costs of trying to be first. The French utility EDF, which is developing Hinkley Point C, has reported a cost increase to £33 billion (30% higher than initial estimates) and potential delays in its start date.Construction and operating skills would have been developed elsewhere first. A Science Direct paper took NOAK build time to be 6 years versus 10 for FOAK.The market would have had time to grow, be competitive and both capital and running costs reduce."The average capital cost of SMR NOAK plants currently under development worldwide is approximately $5,130 per kilowatt electric (kWe), which is estimated to be 30% less than FOAK plants. However, it's essential to note that specific costs can vary based on factors such as design, location, and technology."From these comparisons, we should conclude that both for large Giga Watt reactors and SMRs, the UK should abandon its enthusiasm for being the world leader. NOAK is quicker, cheaper and more reliable. Nuclear skills can be the better learned from other countries as well as developing our own. The car industry has proved not just to be a UK success story, but a NOAK success story too.  Nuclear should learn from that. 

Even after recent reductions, the UK end-user price of electricity is high by international standards. In January the price per KWh was 40.7 euro cents, compared to France c€29.1, Spain c€22.0, and the US c€16.3. High electricity prices damage UK competitiveness.The lack of competition in the electricity market is the main reason for this. And things can only get worse. For years, electricity has been only 20% of the energy market, so there is at least some competition from other sources. Soon, Net Zero 2050 policy implies that electricity will be nearly five times bigger.The problem stems from the fact that in 1989, Margaret Thatcher only partially denationalised the electricity market. A key element, the National Grid, remained a monopoly structure and the regulator Offer (which later became Ofgem), kept government in control.Today, both Labour and the Conservatives intend to return electricity to monopoly. Labour's argument is that we will need a central planning authority, 'Great British Energy'. This is supposed to save households £92. But how? Certainly not from a reduction in bureaucracy: it seems highly unlikely that this nominally independent but publicly owned authority will replace the 4,000+ Department of Energy Security and Net Zero's core staff. We can confidently expect greater bureaucracy as well as less competition in the sector under this plan.To the Conservatives, going green and expanding the power transmission infrastructure are the priorities. The UK presently spends hundreds of millions of pounds in constraint payments to energy generators, simply because the existing grid infrastructure to absorb all the energy produced; with increased reliance on electricity, better infrastructure is needed. But the Conservatives have no coherent plan on how to produce that extra electricity. They talk up nuclear but have made no commitments to any new reactors.If we are to reduce prices, secure supply and improve customers' experience, however, we need to complete the original aims of privatisation and introduce more competition within the electricity sector. Here's how.The National Grid should be replaced by privately-owned Distribution System Operators (DSOs), which would buy from generators and sell to households and business. Although DSOs would be largely regional, each customer location should be entitled to buy from any DSO nationwide. Fuel poverty payments should be funded by the Department of Work and Pensions, not the operators.In effect, each DSO would be a regional grid selling direct to consumers anywhere in the UK. They would balance electricity in and out, normally by buying and selling from/to each other, though national shortages/excesses would be traded with IMPEX (buying from/selling to) Europe. IMPEX would also be a grid, buying and selling to UK DSOs and European distribution companies. It would need to balance purchases with sales and breakeven or make a marginal profit. The best regulator is competition, and with greater competition in the electricity market, the Competition and Markets Authority should take over from Ofgem (but not set prices as Ofgem does).With these reforms, the original objectives of electricity privatisation — a competitive and consumer-focused industry — would finally be realised. This would give consumers a better deal and boost the UK's international competitiveness.

The sources of our future electricity are really quite simple but Whitehall, with the best of intentions, is doing their best to mess things up. Renewables, largely wind and solar, will provide the lion's share at best value – or something close to that. But what about the rest?In 2022, a record 41.5 per cent of electricity came from renewables. "Around 72 per cent of renewable fuels are used for electricity generation, a third of which is lost in the conversion process." This illustrates the care that must be taken in distinguishing renewables' capacity from contribution to demand. The former is the nameplate output from an energy source like wind, if the wind blew at an optimal level all year long and it could all be used for electricity generation with no wastage. Politicians, when discussing renewables, like to talk about capacity, which they can control by commissioning more windfarms, rather than share of demand which depends on weather and which they therefore cannot control.Even estimating 2020 needs care: UK electricity demand fell 4.7% in 2020 to 281 TWh due to Covid and "UK total electricity generation in 2020 was 312 TWh" but the former figure is demand and the latter is generation. In 2019 "primary electricity" was 11.6 per cent of UK energy consumption so if total energy consumption in 2050 remains about the same but has become 100 per cent electricity, the electricity market will need to have grown by eight times. To maintain its 40 per cent share, renewables would need to match that growth.An eightfold increase in the size of the 2050 electricity market may be too high. The Government estimates that the total electricity demand in 2050 could range from 370 TWh to 570 TWh, depending on the level of electrification and energy efficiency. This is clearly too low. McKinsey's predicts that the electricity demand could reach 800 TWh. Nearer the mark.National Grid ESO, in one of their future energy scenarios for 2050, think that the range of capacity required for electricity will be between 285 and 387 GW to deal with annual demand up to between 570 TWh and 726 TWh. They estimate that the wind and solar capacity will be between 149GW and 239GW which leaves between 135GW and 148GW to supplied by nuclear and fossil fuels with carbon capture.That compares with government expectation that the 2050 electricity capacity will total 96GW with nuclear supplying 25 per cent of that. About 6.4GW of that will be provided by Hinkley Point C, approved 2016, and its twin Sizewell C, frequently announced but still not approved.  24GW is too small a target for nuclear and would leave over 100GW to be supplied by fossil fuels, deeply unpopular even with carbon capture. Industry sources, that cannot be quoted, reckon that 48GW would be a far more realistic target. Hinkley was supposed to be built by 2020 at a cost of £12 billion; the latest estimates are completion in 2031 and a £44.3 billion bill.  Apparently "there were 7,000 substantial design changes required by British regulations that needed to be made to the site, with 35% more steel and 25% more concrete needed than originally planned." Of course we fully understand that, seven years after approval, the designers could have had little idea how much steel or concrete was required or what the regulations would be.Sizewell C was touted as costing a mere £20 billion because of the savings from being the Hinkley Point C twin.  Professor Thomas of Greenwich University thinks £40 billion is more likely with a 10 – 12 year construction time, i.e. 2036 if a decision is made this year.It is astonishing that the government is hell bent on continuing with these monsters. They are planning another six large reactors (albeit smaller at around 1 GW) after Hinkley and Sizewell. Assuming this plan for the larger reactors is implemented, then we would need about 120 SMRs @ £300 million each to be up and running by 2050.  No sign of that in government plans.Large reactors take at least 10 years to build and will be providing electricity to the Grid at a price which is estimated to be at least 50% more expensive than the forecast price for electricity from Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).  SMRs should take about 6 months to build in a factory or shipyards and about 2 years to install for the first unit of a multi-SMR facility with installation times falling to 12-18 months per subsequent unit. The reason Sizewell C took so long to gain approval was that no one but HM Treasury was stupid enough to invest in it. Even the French who own the EDF company responsible for Hinkley and Sizewell are trying to back out of paying for them.SMRs will typically cost in the range £2.1 million to £3 million per MW to build compared with the current estimate of £14.4 million per MW for Hinkley point C. Thorcon quotes £800 million per GW, i.e.£240 million for a 300 MW SMR. Rolls Royce leads the UK race for reasons good and bad and is offering SMRs here for rather more than Thorcon's offer. Poland has already ordered 30 SMRs. Yet this government plans not to make any decision on the first SMR until 2029, presumably to avoid having to undertake the required value for money comparison between SMRs and Sizewell C. It claims to be a world leader but actually it will be last in the queue. "To recover the UK's global leadership in civil nuclear" could be irony or could be evidence that some distant corner of HMT has a sense of humour after all.                                                                 

When Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, had responsibility for the civil service, it was agreed that the numbers would be cut down to pre-Brexit levels,  i.e. 65,000 or 13%.  In October, "Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced civil service 'expansion' would be 'frozen' and a plan would be put in place to return to its size before the Covid-19 pandemic." Apparently it would be the 'most ambitious public sector productivity review ever'. The reality is that the civil service continues to increase in size. Footnote 25 in the Chancellor's 2023 Autumn Statement says "According to the latest ONS official statistics on public sector employment in the UK, there were 457k FTE in June 2023, compared to 391k in March 2019, excluding devolved administrations. If the size of the civil service remained at June 2023 levels, instead of increasing at the average 2016-2023 growth rate, up to £1bn could be saved by March 2025."The word "could" is significant here as we currently don't know how the government plans to achieve this. He has asked departments to come up with some ideas for reductions sometime next year- probably through ceasing new hires and using artificial intelligence. But in last year's Autumn Statement when he declared that was not the way to do things. Meanwhile, in July 2022, Government announced that a civil service "Governance and Accountability review will be led by former Cabinet Office Minister Lord Maude, who will chair the work and recommend ways to make government more efficient in autumn."  This 140 page document was sneaked out earlier this month with so little fanfare that most of us failed to notice it.  The more controversial aspects seem to have been removed. In particular, the aim now seems to be efficiency, rather than a reduction in the size of the civil service.  In fact, the size of the civil service and number of civil servants are not mentioned in the published report. The 57 main recommendations are about structure and HR. The report does, at least, make many good, often amusing, criticisms of the civil service institution, as distinct from the civil servants themselves. And he is right to say that ministers and their special advisers are part of the problem.  Churn is excessive and neither receive any training for their roles. Recommendation 45 says: "Ministers should generally stay in post for longer and there should be an element of continuous professional development (CPD) for all serving ministers." But otherwise, the report complicates matters.In February 1988, the government approved the Ibbs Next Steps report which proposed that the civil service be reduced "to a small 'core' of policy makers and 'transferring' other officials to work under free-standing agency boards" which we would now call "Executive Agencies". In other words, the civil service structure would be simplified to two types of unit: each department would have one small team advising ministers on policy and as many Executive Agencies as were necessary to ensure policies took affect.  The latter would have annual reports showing performance against objectives. Needless to say, it never happened.There is no doubt that this model of the civil service would produce better government than the new more complex one, especially if Maude's recommendation 45, reducing ministerial churn and adding training for ministers and social advisers, was included. What will actually happen? Frankly, probably very little.

When it comes to announcing its targets without the slightest idea of how to achieve them, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is world beating. Wisely or otherwise, DESNZ set its key target for net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Initially, emissions fell, largely because the UK exported carbon-emitting industries. In March 2022, the Public Accounts Committee report concluded: "The government has unveiled a plan without answers to the key questions of how it will fund the transition to net zero, including how it will deliver policy on and replace income from taxes such as fuel duty, or even a general direction of travel on levies and taxation. The government has no reliable estimate of what the process of implementing the net zero policy is actually likely to cost British consumers, households, businesses and government itself." In other words, it had no plan. In July 2022, Mr Justice Holgate ruled, in effect, that DESNZ had no plan to achieve its objective and they should prepare and publish one by 31st March 2023. In the event, no plan emerged and on 15th November 2023, the Public Accounts Committee reported on how DESNZ was managing innovation and its contribution to achieving net zero carbon 2050. It found it to be short-termist, muddled and had no central management.DESNZ has published numerous aspirational papers on what might be achieved but none bring the whole picture together or explain what the overall energy/electricity needs will be or how they will be generated without carbon emissions. On low wind and sun days, renewables and nuclear will be inadequate and so fossil fuels, with carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) will be needed into the foreseeable future.  For example this month, wind  generation reached a low of 0.4GW (1.7% of demand). Nominal installed wind capacity is over 27GW. As of now, CCUS is commercially unproven in the power sector, so it is all a bit speculative. At the 8th November Oral Evidence session with the ESNZ Select Committee, the Secretary of State claimed "we're now spending £20 billion on carbon capture and storage". Clearly net zero carbon will be impossible without CCUS. DESNZ claims the UK will be the world leaders in that and has set up a council to achieve it: "Commissioning of the first CCUS facility from the mid-2020s would help the UK to meet our ambition of having the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently."  The £20bn is possible in the future, but not currently and needs clarifying. It is not clear whether this should be government funding.  Surely the responsibility for, and costs of, decarbonising fossil fuel emissions should lie with the fossil fuel generators.The creation of the UK's CCUS market lies with its Council, inaugurated in 2018. Its last meeting was on 27th June. Some 45 or so members, including the Director, CCUS, DESNZ and his five deputies, discussed bureaucratic matters, like reporting lines, with little evidence of practical haste. The idea of having "a timeline to understand industry progress" was introduced.  Fancy that! Things would move a lot faster if they were left to the fossil fuel companies.The overall picture is that DESNZ in inadequate. What do its 8,498 staff actually do? Probably around 44% work from home.  The ESNZ Select Committee held a brief Inquiry into what DESNZ actually does. The new Secretary of State was not asked how the 2050 targets might be achieved, so it might be described as a soft ride but other ESNZ Committee inquiries are addressing those issues and will be reporting next year. The bottom line is that we have this vast number of people in DESNZ, their main target is achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and, after years of prodding, have still not produced a plan, never mind a decent one, to achieve it.UK industry is back-peddling on CCUS as they wait to see how tough the post-election Government will be on CO2 emitters. The current Government seems to be supporting this by allowing the Emissions Trading Scheme to decline in effectiveness as evidenced by the UK's falling carbon price, in sharp contrast to the rising carbon prices in other countries. The Sunak Government seems to have thrown in the towel on tackling climate change and will, I imagine, keep a low profile at the upcoming COP.                                                                     

One King's Speech puzzle was the absence of the promised pensions reforms. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are an essential part of the answer to providing electricity when the wind does not blow nor sun shine – especially in winter. Germany, for example, estimates only 50% of its electricity can come from renewables. The UK government announced, in 2021, that Great British Nuclear would steam ahead with SMRs with fancy (but unnecessary) competitions and all that, but the reality is that HM Treasury have been blocking progress ever since, essentially because they do not want to pay for them and the 2050 net zero costs for consumers are already too high. Government is committed to Sizewell C, which it estimates should cost £20bn and take 12 years to build by the French company EDF who have warned that the current cost of Sizewell C's twin (Hinkley Point C) is £32.7 billion and that this is likely to increase to £40 billion on completion. "Stephen Thomas, a professor at Greenwich Business School, said the average forecast  put the cost at £35bn over 15 years." FOAK (first of a kind) SMRs are more expensive but as the UK will need 200 300KW SMRs, we can take a long-term cost of £2M each.  The 3.2GW Sizewell C output is the equivalent of eleven 300MW SMRs. But £22M for eleven SMRs is way less than the £32,700M now expected cost of Sizewell C, never mind £40,000M. The projected output costs for Hinkley is about £10.7 per MW compared with £1.8 – £4.3 per MW for SMRs. So why is Whitehall so keen to finance Sizewell C and not SMRs?Apparently, clearing the way for the private sector to invest in SMRs requires a change in legislation because Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act limits the extent to which funds may invest in a particular asset or in particular asset classes, and prevents excessive concentration risk. The Treasury has published final amendments to Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act, which protects retirement fund member savings but there was no indication in the King's speech that the changes would be enacted.  

"The biggest piece of energy legislation in the UK's history has become law today… laying the foundations for an energy system fit for the future." That will surprise anyone involved in the gas and electricity privatisations between 1986 and 1990. The truth of the matter is that the government will now be messing about with our energy supplies more now than they were before, increasing regulation and reversing the tide of privatisation. The six claimed benefits are:The introduction of new business models for Carbon Capture and Hydrogen (CCH), which would create 50,000 jobs in Carbon Capture and 12,000 in Hydrogen.We would become world-leaders in nuclear fusion regulation.Energy network competition would be enabled through the introduction of competition to onshore electricity networks. This is predicted to save consumers up to £1 billion off their energy bills by 2050.The expansion of heat networks through Ofgem, creating better pricing for consumers and businesses.Better regulation of energy smart appliances.The extension of smart metre rollout to 2028, saving consumers £5.6 billion.There is no doubt that fossil fuel electricity will still be needed for a considerable period- in essence because the wind does not always blow nor sun shine. Current policy expectations for Net Zero means CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) must be upscaled and extended until fossil fuels are mitigated by a sufficient baseload of alternatives. The fossil fuel providers should be expected to take care of this problem with its costs, and supply, in effect, green electricity to the national networks. What is puzzling, and, frankly, nonsense is the idea that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has to discover how that should be done and show helpless private companies how to do it. Of course, the fossil fuel generators are happy enough for DESNZ, and therefore the taxpayer, to take charge and pick up the tab.Hydrogen is a more subtle issue. Contrary to popular belief it will not be efficient for heating homes (ever) or blending with natural gas for electricity generation (sometimes) except when it is virtually free because wind farms and / or solar are producing more than consumer / business demand needs. It also has uses for heavy goods vehicles but, because hydrogen's storage space to power ratio is poor, not for aircraft- except the smallest. In short, the DESNZ claims for hydrogen are wildly exaggerated.And so are its claims for fusion. Nuclear fusion, as distinct from fission, was discovered in 1922 and its use for commercial electricity generation has been receding ever since. There is no harm in government investing in scientific research, but the May 2022 Science Select Committee agreed there would be no commercial use by 2050.  It might be commercialised in the next century, so why is it in the Act now?DESNZ is correct in outlining that previous attempts towards energy market privatisation were only skin-deep. As energy analyst Ronan Bolton outlines: "The eventual market model and regulatory framework introduced in 1990 was a compromise. This was dictated by concerns about the risks that competition would pose to the coal and nuclear industries, along with concerns about the share price of the privatised companies if they were exposed to too strong a competitive threat." Yes, consumers had a choice of retailers but Ofgem and the National Grid, which bought the electricity and resold it to retailers at standard (wholesale) price, pretty much continued what the Central Electricity Generating Board had long done. Where DESNZ is wholly incorrect, is in moving the electricity market back to central control and regulation, rather than towards the full competition it claims.  The ways of achieving that include those suggested to the 2023 Energy Select Committee. One of them recommended that genuine competition nationwide (including Scotland) be introduced by distribution system operators (upgraded from today's local "retailers") whilst Ofgem and the National Grid retreated to simply balancing the books. In other words, DESNZ, having correctly identified the problem, recommends precisely the opposite of what is needed. Domestic energy is about 40% of energy consumption and home heating (neighbourhood hot water – popular in Iceland) is 2% of that. 0.8% is not a large enough part of the UK's energy problem to justify 17% of DESNZ targeting, though it clearly has room to grow, notably from local small modular reactors. In the five years to 2022, the number of people in government interested in home heating has doubled which may explain its appearance in the Act.Finally, the Act addresses smart metres. In 2019, it became clear that only half of domestic energy metres were "smart" and the target to make 100% smart should be shifted from 2020 to 2024. By the end of March 2021, things were not going much better: a 1% drop since the previous quarter and 44% overall. Smart metres were turning dumb, installation costs were rising and being passed on to consumers. The 100% target date is now 2028. Thus claimed £5.6 billion saving per annum does not follow reasonable assumptions.The Energy Act does, and does not, apply to Scotland and Northern Ireland which have their own legislation. The extent to which devolution applies is unfathomable. English and Welsh (presumably) consumers and businesses may save up to £16.6 billion but, as DESNZ has provided neither arithmetic nor rationales, their figures have the credibility of jingle bills. Absolutely no attention seems to have been given to dividing issues between what the free market can, and should, do for itself and where it is only the government that can bring some necessary public benefit.Instead, the Energy Secretary, a.k.a. Santa Claus, claimed: "The Act also supports our new approach to make sure that families don't feel a disproportionate financial burden as we transition to net zero, and forms a central part of our efforts to keep people's bills affordable in the long-term." In fact, as can be seen above, it does nothing for those objectives at all. And where are Chris Skidmore's recommendations?

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is enthusiastic about wasting taxpayers' money. It allowed, and arguably caused, consumer energy prices to fly out of control by tying the wholesale price of windfarm electricity to Russian gas with which it should have had no connection. It failed to supervise the National Grid infrastructure so we may have blackouts this winter. So much for "security". No decision has been made on any nuclear electricity generator since Hinkley Point C nine years ago which is now running three years late (operational 2026 maybe) and 50% over budget (so far). Not being in the business of learning from experience, DESNZ is keen to build its twin at Sizewell. Britain needs over 20 times The Sizewell capacity that if it is to reach net zero by 2050 and its costs will be about 5 times higher than the small modular reactors (SMRs) now available.If that catalogue of failure is not bad enough, DESNZ is hastening slowly down the SMR path, whereas it is now about to spend £650M on fusion reactors. That was announced a year after telling us that there was no guarantee fusion would work – not on a commercial scale that is. Con-Fusion will cost taxpayers £650M, two thirds the cost of one of the SMRs we badly need."Nuclear fusion was 'discovered' in the 1920s and the subsequent years of research focused on developing fusion for nuclear weapons. In 1958, when the United States's war research on fusion was declassified, it sent Russia, UK, Europe, Japan and the US on a race to develop fusion reactions for energy provision."One of the questions is the availability of fuel. On 16th October 2023, DESNZ said "Fuel abundance: the fuels used in fusion reactions are effectively inexhaustible. Deuterium is readily extracted from seawater, and tritium is produced using lithium." Just over a year earlier, Science magazine claimed "A shortage of tritium fuel may leave fusion energy with an empty tank."No one thinks fusion can make any contribution to net zero 2050. When Graham Springer MP asked, at the May 2023 Science and Technology Select Committee, "would it not make sense to put some of the money going towards fusion into more small modular nuclear reactors?" Dame Sue Ion agreed 3 or 4 SMRs should come first (they aren't) and argued fusion was a relatively small amount for the basic science by comparison. That is what fusion enthusiasts have been saying for 100 years. The truth of the matter is that they want to keep up with their opposite numbers in other countries which is the exact opposite of DESNZ policy on SMRs. Con-Fusion?

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has just announced the winners in the competition to select suppliers of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).  GB Nuclear is supposed to be the driving force, independently choosing the latest and the best, but DESNZ has stepped in and included some of the least modern or qualified.  The six are: EDF, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy International LLC, Holtec Britain Limited, NuScale Power, Rolls Royce SMR and Westinghouse Electric Company UK Limited.  These are all old tech: no advanced modular or molten salt reactors. They are high pressure and low temperature.  They are all low temperature despite DESNZs claim a couple of years ago that high temperature reactors are the future. DESNZ hopes to get around to ordering the first SMR by 2029 and actually having it running six years later. Four of the six are a long way from receiving design approval and EDF, for example, has no SMRs and has to go back to the drawing board. This should give them time to do so. None of those chosen is "rampable", i.e. output can be varied by the Grid to match demand.  Modern ones are. Three companies (Terrestrial, Arc Cleantech and Kairos) already have design approval in the USA or Canada or expect to receive it this year and have good high temperature / low pressure designs. They can also ramp up and down to meet demand. It would seem these and other companies have been put off entering the UK market for SMRs because of the slow decision-making process. This is disputed by GB Nuclear. The Americans and Canadians are linking their SMR technical approval systems so that either regulatory authority's approval is automatically deemed to be approval by the other. approval by the other.[4]  The UK was invited to join but declined.  Approvals are slow so that will automatically ensure the UK falls even further behind.This timeline means that the UK will be trailing the US, Canada, Poland, Romania and the Baltic States in SMR development.

The government, and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) in particular, is concerned with health inequalities and it believes women in particular are unfairly treated. Women, worldwide live longer than men so why is that unfair to women? The August 2022 DHSC policy paper claimed "this country's health and care system belongs to us all, and it must serve us all. However, sadly, 51% of the population faces obstacles when it comes to getting the care they need." The DHSC policy paper was, naturally, wholly unbiased. As the paper puts it "It's brilliant that we have received almost 100,000 responses from women [sic] across the country."According to the DHSC: "Although women in the UK on average live longer than men, women spend a significantly greater proportion of their lives in ill health and disability when compared with men." Strangely the Office for National Statistics figures, which it cites, do not support this claim: "Female HLE [healthy life expectancy] increased for those aged 10 years and over between 2011 to 2013 and 2018 to 2020, with the increases being statistically significant in those aged 20 years and over (Figure 2)." Disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) remained the same for men vs. women throughout the five years 2015 to 2020 (Figure 4). Shame the figures are not what the DHSC would like them to be.On 25th September 2023, the DHSC ministers wrote to the chief executives of integrated care boards (ICBs). By then the Minister for Women's Health had been joined by the Women's Health Ambassador and her deputy and the Chief Nursing Officer. The letter said that £25M was being made available for "Women's Health Hubs" (at least one per ICB): "Hubs bring together healthcare professionals and existing services to provide integrated women's health services in the community, focusing on improving access to care and reducing health inequalities." Each hub would cost £595,000, but see below, the DHSC cannot know how the money should be spent of why a hub in Darlington should cost the same as one in Mayfair.Equalling the treatment (health cost) given to women and men means they have to be treated for the same health problems.  The flaw in this equality idea is that they don't actually have the same problems.  The male menopause is joked about but, of course, there is no such thing.  One might think assessing the value for money or performance of these hubs would require quite a bit of discussion and serious contemplation so it was hardly generous of DHSC to require 16 questions on the template plus 11 questions on the data sources page to be answered within a week, i.e. issued 22nd September response by 29th September. Template question 16 for example: "Q16. What is the best way for DHSC to access data from your hub to measure or evaluate the implementation and performance of hubs models? If you think a combination of the approaches listed is best then select multiple responses."The interesting thing about Q16 is that the DHSC clearly has no idea what these hubs, or removing the non-existent health inequalities, are supposed to achieve. Shocking.  

In 2020 it dawned on government that transitioning from mostly fossil fuel energy to zero carbon, i.e. electricity, by 2050 was a big deal and something should be done. What that needed, of course, was a strategic plan but we did not get one and still haven't. Instead, we got the 2020 White Paper which became the Energy Bill originally devised by the House of Lords. On Tuesday 5th September, the Bill had its last examination in the Commons. MPs were given three hours to debate and decide the 397 page bill they received from the Lords plus the 69 MPs' amendments and 180 from the government. And then they had 117 pages of explanatory notes prepared by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and its (entirely inadequate) 39 page Impact Assessment (IA). IAs are supposed to consider additional costs and whether they are value for money. It doesn't. Whitehall is renowned for its farces and these 680 pages is the script of one of them. The great majority of the 279 clauses are exactly the type of red tape and regulation any Conservative government should be seeking to eliminate, not enact.







A sane government would work out first how to achieve the energy goals (the strategic plan) and only then add the legislation necessary to bring it about. Trying to do it the other way about pretty much guarantees the current confusion. This is Big Government interfering in what a free market should mostly do. An energy strategic plan requires just six main components: the three principle sources of post 2050 electricity (renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage (CCS)), other energy sources where electricity is not viable, e.g. sustainable aviation fuel, transmission from generation to users, and storage of surplus renewables to help fill deficits gaps. The Energy Select Committee is running two Inquiries into exactly these matters. As the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) does not seem to know the answers, perhaps it should await the findings of these Inquiries.







Government should next consider how much of the necessary action should be left with the private sector, usually better value for money, and how much requires new legislation, not just to secure the energy but to do so as cheaply as possible. Older readers will recall that electricity was supposedly privatised with that in mind. Government may wish, for example, for cornflakes be available for our breakfasts at competitive prices but it does not need to legislate, beyond ensuring that the market remains competitive.







Renewables, per se, are not mentioned in the Bill but off-shore wind is covered by clauses 245 – 269 mostly addressing environmental effects and decision devolution. No mention either of this being Great Britain's primary source of electricity by 2050. That contrasts with no offshore contracts being sought in the latest bidding round. Capacity now is 29GW and needs to be 50GW by 2050 according to government and with total electricity requirement at the more likely 209GW, wind capacity will probably need to be closer to 100GW by 2050.







Offshore wind may or may not be the cheapest source of electricity but, round the world, those markets with the highest share of renewables also have is the highest consumer prices. This is due to government interference in the market and this Energy Bill is a classic example.







On the other hand, the Energy Bill incentivises onshore wind through community energy organisations – 89 so far- but the numbers are growing fast and would grow faster still with user discounts for accepting adjacent onshore turbines. One onshore turbine services, on average, 6,000 households. The Bill however (clauses 272 and 273) requires every participating community group to be more than 150,000 households but using less than500MW supply. The Hornsea offshore wind farm was expected to generate 1.3GW of green energy from 165 8MW wind turbines, enough to supply 1.4 million homes. Or about1,000 homes per MW or about 8,000 wind turbines for 150,000 homes or 300,000 homes for a single 300MW small modular reactor. SMRs are not even mentioned in this Bill. Onshore wind is a thoroughly good thing, especially when it is incentivised locally as government now proposes, but the same logic applies to SMRs.







Extraordinarily, though Explanatory Note 90 claims "Nuclear power has an important role to play in domestic energy security and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in 2050" the Bill says almost nothing about it. There are a few references to sites, the constabulary, setting up Great British Nuclear and other administrative matters but nothing about the 56GW, or so, we will need to back up renewables. For example, most countries are having to finance the first of a kind (FOAK) SMRs centrally and that will require Parliamentary approval. Our need for SMRs, maybe up to 200, was announced by Prime Minister Johnson three years ago and yet it is now considering ordering just two in the next six years.







Yet the claim is "In order for the UK to reach net zero by 2050 and achieve independence from imported fossil fuels the Government will fully decarbonise the electricity system by 2035, subject to security of supply." Fat chance! Alongside this, the Government expects electricity demand to double by 2050, when increasing by seven times is more likely.







While the UK government has been asleep at the nuclear wheel, the USA and Eastern Europe have been pushing ahead.







The third of the main power sources, fossil fuels, will be essential for dunkelflaute days when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine but requires CCS- the costs and feasibility of which are entirely unproven at industrial scale. Government should step away from this problem and leave it with the private sector. Those whose generate carbon, post 2050, should pick up the tab for getting rid of it and recover the costs through the pricing of their electricity.







On transmission, the Bill seeks to transfer responsibility to the Independent System Operator and Planner (ISOP), a new public corporation, but without any indication of how it will work, what it will cost and how that huge expenditure will save money, as it claims, for consumers. Why will it be shunting gas around the all-electrified country? The Bill discusses the monopolised regional transmission system, recognises that regulation has been ineffective in bringing competition about but gives up on how to deal with it.







Finally, hydrogen will indeed be useful as storage to bridge renewables surpluses to deficits but the "hydrogen grid" proposed to take the place of natural gas is nonsense. So what is to do? We have an immense Bill, the product of three year's work, just about to receive the Royal Assent but it is mostly a heap of junk. DESNZ should put together, by end November, the long overdue Energy Strategic Plan using submissions to the Select Committee Inquiries as needs be. A new, slimline Bill, based on that and containing just the essential new legislation, should be made available by the end of January 2024.

The new Energy Secretary has only had a few days in the job but long enough to discover that her department's nuclear strategy, if it has one at all, makes no sense. This critique has three parts: what we know, rumours, and why we are in this situation.We know that, in a net zero carbon 2050, Great Britain's energy needs will be at least as high as now and they will almost all have to be met by electricity. Based on average demand, electricity capacity will have to increase by 6 times to 226GW. Total energy demand in 2022 was the equivalent of 1,968 TWh of electricity, and electricity only supplied 320.7 TWh, i.e. 16.3%. However capacity will have to be even higher than this to deal with periods of peak demands which can be 50% above average demand.Renewables are all very well but the wind does not always blow nor does the sun always shine. Existing nuclear supplies about 6.5GW, but that will shrink to 3.26GW as Hinkley Point C comes on stream and all other reactors close. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero(DESNZ) thinks 25% of electricity needs for nuclear would be 24GW, which is clearly too low. 25% of 226GW would be 56.5GW, a more reasonable 2050 target for nuclear, or 53.2GW of new nuclear excluding Hinkley Point C.DESNZ now recognise that small nuclear reactors (SMRs) are cheaper and better value for money than the traditional big Giga-reactors and they refer to the former as "low cost nuclear". With a capacity of about 300MW each, we would need about 177 SMRs to be operating by 2050, an average addition of 6.8 per year.Contrarily, the DESNZ approach is "too little, too late." A competition to select SMRs has been set up with a view to deciding on which two SMRs (one of each of two types) should be ordered over the next six years, specifically expressed as "the government's commitment to take 2 Final Investment Decisions next parliament". The two needs to be 41.Contributing to the confusion is the DESNZ's "hire a dog and bark yourself" policy. "Great British Nuclear" (GBN) was announced three Prime Ministers ago, and confirmed by successors. GBN has a chairman and CEO, autonomy and "is responsible for driving delivery of new nuclear projects." Meanwhile DESNZ, no doubt playing games with HM Treasury, appointed "a Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) of Phase 2 of the Low-Cost Nuclear Programme with effect from 8th February 2021 (the "Effective Date)", directly accountable to Jeremy Pocklington under the oversight of the relevant Minister of State." Whilst Pocklington has doubtless told his new Energy Secretary that this is merely oversight or liaison, the memo makes it very clear that the SRO is in charge, i.e. it duplicates the GBN Chairman's.What is probably correct but not independently verifiable must be described as "rumours", One is that while GBN is doing its best to run the run competition fairly, DESNZ has rigged it so that Rolls Royce, as the only British SMR manufacturer, is bound to win. The SRO appointment letter only mentions Rolls Royce. As some degree of apparent competition must emerge, General-Electric-Hitachi will also win. This decision is remarkable as the latest date for entering the competition was 23rd August. Several leading SMR developers are believed not to have bothered because certain failure is not good for business.The UK seems to be breaking ranks with the US and Canada on SMR support and licensing. The North Americans are adopting a non-prescriptive, all ideas welcome, approach. They provide licensed land for prototype development and encourage utilities to build FOAKs (first of a kinds). They are doing this in the full knowledge that some technologies will fail and that those investors will lose money. But at the end of the day they will have a smaller number of the best value SMRs. We could learn from SMR developers setting up in Britain and we should. Chasing away nuclear investment at this stage is daftThe last question, "why?", is simply baffling. We need all the help we can get and not artificial barriers created by Whitehall civil servants keeping out the best and the best value SMRs. Doing so is bad for Britain and will prove expensive for energy users if the government is serious about a net carbon zero 2050.

There is universal agreement that greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced as soon as possible. How that should be achieved lacks consensus.On 18th July 2022, Mr Justice Holgate ruled: "the UK government's plan for reaching net zero emissions was unlawful because it provided insufficient detail for how the target would be met."In other words, the government did not have a plan at all. The judge's ruling that one should be produced by 31st March 2023 produced a flurry of documents from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) labelled "strategy" and "plan", but none had substance.On 23rd June, the Public Accounts Committee reported:"the Department should bring these together in a coherent delivery plan so that it can understand how realistic its ambition is, and coordinate and sequence its interventions to best effect."DESNZ does not do arithmetic. It may recognise that almost all energy in 2050 will take the form of electricity and that our growing population will need at least as much as we use now- about 2,000 TwH. The number of days when wind failed to supply 4 GW at some stage of the day or night fell from 196 days in 2020 to 183 days in 2022. So never mind how many renewables they build, about half the year they won't work.Their plan should show how the energy shortfall will be covered. That is, how large the baseload of nuclear plus tidal power needs to be and, when that is insufficient to cover demand, how the surplus demand will be covered by fossil fuels (presumably made clean by carbon capture and storage).  The general expectancy is that the baseload provided by renewables will be 30% of electricity demand, meaning that fossil fuel energies will fulfil 70% of electricity demand during dunkelflaute (dark) days.The DESNZ's failure in the arithmetic department is matched by HM Treasury's failure to understand nuclear and tidal energy. Hinkley Point C was the last nuclear plant approved, but that was nine years ago. Before that was Sizewell B, 27 years earlier.Modern nuclear plants, called 'Small Modular Reactors' (SMRs) are the subjects of similar unjustified hesitancy. In 2015 Chancellor George Osborne recognised SMRs as better value for money, running a selection competition. Yet, eight years later, not a single one has been ordered or built. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) recommended tidal power to be properly considered, yet DESNZ has ignored that. And when the supply of renewables and nuclear power are inadequate, we maintain the status quo - fossil fuels - proven by the latest interview with the CEO of Shell, Wael Sawan:"The reality is, the energy system of today continues to desperately need oil and gas"A related issue is the unnecessarily absolutist thinking that the UK, which causes 1% of global emissions, can solve global warming through unilateral action. This is not only fanciful, but delusory.To conclude, the DESNZ is failing to do the basic arithmetic on the need for renewable energy to cover the nations' baseload energy demand; HM Treasury continues to evade commitments to nuclear energy; and activists like Just Stop Oil demand a ludicrous cessation of the mining of fossil fuels. This is a tragic state of affairs, and the responsible institutions would do well to heed the ASI's advice, and commit to the nuclear agenda. In the meantime, we simply continue burning the fuels destroying our planet.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of tables -- Foreword -- PART I -- 1. The road to Cathay -- Research before the first visit -- Market facts -- General knowledge and sensibilities -- Options for visiting -- Finding business partners -- The decision to enter -- Notes -- 2. Through a glass darkly: China from a Western perspective -- Geography -- History -- Ethnicity and language -- Culture -- Government and the political situation -- Economy -- Chinese attitudes to the West -- Why all this matters -- Appendix -- Notes -- 3. The furniture of the mind -- Philosophy -- Values -- Economics -- Strategy -- Overseas Chinese -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 4. Relationships and regulations -- Guanxi -- Guanxi and business -- Guanxi substitutes for institutional frameworks -- Guanxi builds strong organisations -- Government -- The Army -- Commercial relationships -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 5. Business and the law -- Law-making -- Courts and judges -- Lawyers -- Contracts -- Mediation and arbitration -- Intellectual property -- Conclusions -- An ethical interlude -- Notes -- PART II -- 6. Creating harmony: Establishing businesses in China -- Distribution and focus -- Agencies and licensing -- Joint ventures -- Wholly foreign-owned enterprises -- Identifying and negotiating with partners -- Berry Bros. in China -- Making the choice -- Notes -- 7. The marketing mix -- Looking back -- Marketing strategy -- Products, branding and packaging -- Pricing -- Promotion and advertising -- Place, channels and distribution -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 8. The marketing process -- Market research in the PRC -- Other information -- Planning -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 9. Rightness and correct form -- Hierarchies -- Lack of specialisation -- Decision-making and leadership -- Management by relationships

Looks at the evidence from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK that marketing of junk foods is responsible for child obesity, and surveys the FSA website. Queries the soundness of the FSA's claims to be authoritative in matters of food and healthy diet, focusing on the "comprehensive review of research" which the FSA commissioned from the Centre for Social Marketing (CSM). Criticises the approach and methodology of the CSM report as being biased against advertising: for example, it ignores research which shows that advertising of alcohol has negligible effect on overall alcohol consumption, it uses loaded language, circularity of argument, unclear criteria for assessing the "relevance" of the literature selected, and fails to explain why obesity is increasing when advertising on food brands is falling. Concludes that the taxpayer's money is being wasted on such uninformative research.