By Paul Homewood
If you thought Claire Perry was bad enough, step forward Jeremy Corbyn’s hopeless Shadow Business & Energy Secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey.
From The Mirror:
Britain will struggle to keep the lights on and could face power cuts after the government has cancelled crucial energy projects, Labour have warned.
Labour’s Shadow Energy Secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said the government risked failing "in one of the first duties – keeping the lights on".
The government has scrapped nuclear power plants planned for Moorside, Cumbria, Wylfa Newydd in Anglesey, and Oldbury, Gloucester all in the last six months.
They would have generated enough power for 17 million homes.
Tory Ministers also killed off plans for the world’s first tidal lagoon power plant in Swansea Bay – enough to power nearly 150,000 homes each year.
Ms Long Bailey continued: “When the Wylfa plant was cancelled Greg Clark announced an energy white paper for summer 2019 – six months down the line.
"That’s the sign of a Government absorbed in its own meltdown, not the real issues facing our country.
"Ministers should come clean to the public about the gaping hole in their plans and what that means for our energy security.
“Labour has been consistent in its support for nuclear as part of our energy mix, calling on the government to take a public stake in new nuclear projects. We would end the short-sighted and ideological Tory ban on onshore wind and mobilise huge investments in renewable energy.”
The Government’s ban on onshore wind, introduced in 2015, is blocking nearly 800 shovel-ready onshore wind projects – enough to power more than three million homes each year.
The combined lost capability would have been enough to quarter 20 million homes – or three-quarters of the UK’s households – Labour said.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-energy-failures-raise-fears-14149517
It is hard to know where to start with such a such a load of drivel
For a start, the government has not “scrapped nuclear power plants plans”, as she claims. The Moorside project was cancelled by Toshiba, whose nuclear power division is effectively bankrupt.
Wylfa and Oldbury have been scrapped by Hitachi, who were unable to reduce costs enough to satisfy the government, who it is understood were only prepared to offer a strike price around the level of the offshore wind at the latest auction, which would be about £80/MWh.
Long-Bailey is entitled to criticise the government for not offering more, but she needs to tell the public just how many billions in subsidies she is prepared to pay to get the nuclear capacity she wants.
I asked this very question of our local Labour MP, Angela Smith (before she joined the Second Referendum Party!). I got no answer.
The gormless Long-Bailey might also have mentioned that we are in the current nuclear power mess because Gordon Brown sold off our own nuclear industry for a pittance and Labour themselves kept kicking the nuclear can down the road when in power.
She then goes on to make a series of claims about wind power, which show she is totally unfit to be put in charge of our energy policy.
First she repeats the claim that the government has banned new onshore wind farms. Even her chums at the BBC have been forced to withdraw such fake claims.
As I am sure she knows, the government has simply stopped offering subsidies to new projects. So perhaps she would like to tell us how much she wants to add to our power bills to subsidise new schemes?
According to her, there are nearly 800 shovel-ready onshore wind projects. So why are they not being built, Rebecca? Nobody is actually stopping them. Could it be they cannot afford to operate without subsidies?
Then she compounds her ignorance by claiming that these 800 wind projects are enough to power more than three million homes each year. Unfortunately that is only the case when the wind is blowing hard enough.
It is precisely this problem of intermittency which threatens our energy security. Her plans to add yet more wind power just make the problem worse.
Worse still, her plan of building the nuclear power plants along with thousands more wind farms will create vast surpluses of power when demand is low and the weather is windy. So what does she propose to do with that? Quite apart from the grid problems they pose, such surpluses completely wreck the economic viability of both wind and nuclear power, both based largely on fixed costs.
If she is serious about keeping the lights on and reducing energy bills, there is a simple solution – build more CCGT plants.
Unfortunately, such incompetence is all you can expect from someone who studied Politics & Sociology, and who only got the job because there was nobody competent left.
It is frightening that she could be in charge of the nation’s energy policy in a year or two.
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March 18, 2019 at 12:10PM
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