Energy

The UK government looks set to embrace a new fleet of nuclear power plants as the solution to Britain’s growing energy predicament according to Alan Tovey at the Telegraph: “Ministers are ready to approve the swift development of a fleet of ‘mini’ reactors to help guard against electricity shortages, as …

Listeners to the BBC Today programme this morning will have heard the interview with Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), about the company’s plans to introduce several new lines of electric and electric hybrid cars.  In the course of the interview, Speth dropped three bombshells that threaten to …

Oil and Gas UK – the industry trade body – has its annual report out today.  The report seeks to put a gloss on the future of an industry whose stay of execution is only temporary.  According to Oil and Gas UK: “Almost $6 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions …

So-called ‘green energy’ is shaping up to be a wannabee Ponzi scheme reminiscent of the US fracking bubble.  It began with crowd-funded nonsense such as the idea that putting solar panels on the road so that cars and trucks can drive over them might be a good investment.  Since then, …

The supposed silver lining in the large storm cloud that is global ice melt, was that in the absence of the Arctic ice cap, oil companies would be free to drill into virgin seabed. Nowhere was this more so than the Barents Sea above Norway’s North Cape, which was promoted …

Taken alongside the Paris climate targets, the UK government decision to ban new internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) from 2040 implies that almost all of the cars on Britain’s roads will be electric by 2050. Insofar as anyone has focused on the impossibility of achieving this aim, they have tended …

  Nicole Foss famously compared the oil industry to a late night drinking binge.  The early oil found in pressurised deposits just 70 feet beneath the ground was the best booze.  The North Sea was the cheap stuff.  Hydraulically fractured shale oil and tar sands, though, are the last-ditch equivalent …

The UK is the latest in a growing list of countries to announce bans on petroleum vehicles.  This has led to understandable concerns about the ability of national electricity grids to cope with the massive demand for additional electricity that such a ban implies.  The thinking appears to be that …

As British frackers struggle to drill a handful of test wells, the US ‘shale revolution’ on which their efforts are predicated looks to be coming to an end. The reasons for its demise will send shivers through UK investors as they realise that it has nothing to do with the …

The UK government review of energy costs is unlikely to result in pleasant reading for anyone.  This is because the chosen reviewer, Oxford University professor Dieter Helm, has a long track record of telling unpleasant energy truths about the cost of renewable electricity while overlooking the equivalent problems with gas. …