Electric cars.

[Rodcx500z]

,

 

[AlBrew]

Just going back to the topic of what to do with excess energy generated...rather than producing hydrogen - which we all know is horribly inefficient, what about pumping water uphill?
Two reservoirs with a hydro leccy generator between them, when you excess energy you pump the water from the lower to upper reservoir and then it drop back down through the gennie when you need top up leccy for the grid.
No idea what sort of efficiencies this would give or even if it's worse than making hydrogen

There is quite a bit of it about, usually where the landscape is favourable.

https://british-hydro.org/hydropower-map/

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Wind provided more electricity than ever last year as the UK moved further away from planet-warming fossil fuels to power the nation, new data shows.
Wind generated nearly 83 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity across Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland), up from nearly 79TWh in 2023, show figures from the National Energy System Operator (Neso), which coordinates electricity distribution.
Electricity generation from major fossil fuel power stations fell to just over a quarter of the total last year as other renewable sources, such as solar, also rose, along with electricity imports.
The government wants less than 5% of electricity to come from polluting fossil fuels by 2030.
Neso - the government's independent system planner and operator for the energy transition - has previously described the government's 'Clean Power 2030 Action Plan' as "achievable" but "at the limit of what is feasible".
The government considers clean electricity to include renewables, such as wind, solar, hydropower and bioenergy, as well as nuclear power.
Together, these sources generated around 56% of Great Britain's electricity in 2024 - a new high, according to preliminary Neso data that will be confirmed this week.
Major fossil fuel generation (mainly gas) fell to 26%, while a further 16% came from imported electricity.
Neso data does not cover Northern Ireland, which has its own electricity transmission system operator, SONI.
The figures only include fossil fuel and biomass generation from major power stations connected to the main transmission network. For these sources, Neso does not include smaller-scale operators that feed in electricity at a local level, although typically these contribute a relatively small fraction of fossil fuel power.
BBC News

 

[Rodcx500z]

What they don't tell you is the true cost of renewables, this is just an extract from the hose of lords libary


Lord Lilley (Conservative), who moved the debate, described the science of global warming as “rock solid” but expressed concern that the financial cost of achieving net zero had not been adequately debated.[79] Lord Lilley argued that proponents of net zero were reluctant to discuss costs because they had “convinced themselves that there are none”. He also argued that estimates of the costs that had been produced by public bodies were optimistic, saying that “it is sad that we do not have the information on which we can have an honest and informed debate”.

Lord Lilley expressed concern that the UK had invested too early in technology before it had reduced in cost:

If renewables are cheaper, why is our electricity more expensive than in other European countries, which have less than us? If renewables are cheaper, why do they need subsidy?
Apologists say that those are the costs of old technologies and that the costs are coming down. The first part is true, although it is a shame they did not tell us at the time. Dieter Helm has calculated that Britain wasted up to £100bn by investing prematurely in immature technology, rather than waiting until it was cost effective.[80]

Lord Frost said he thought that consensus on net zero was “beginning to crumble”.[81] He said he did not believe that there was a climate emergency, he asserted that climate change was a challenge that could be met and did not require “us to upend our entire economy and way of life”. He asserted that the claim that net zero was good for growth and prosperity was “nonsense”. Lord Frost set out what he described as a number of “fallacies”. For example, he said that investing in a new energy system had some “economic spin-offs and does get you an asset”, but he argued that renewables were not a valuable replacement for the current national grid:

In fact, what we are doing today is creating a reduction in wealth: the new asset is worse than the old one. The replacement of the current grid with rickety and expensive renewables is not an improvement; it is a massive reduction in productive capacity—malinvestment of the worst kind. Just think of all the genuinely productive projects that could be funded with the trillions that we are going to spend over the years and how much real wealth could have been created.[82]

Giving her maiden speech in the House of Lords, former prime minister Theresa May (now Baroness May of Maidenhead) said that the debate should not just be about money:

I also think that, if we look at this debate just as a matter of who has the biggest sterling figure on their side of the argument, we are missing something. There is a real human cost to climate change.[83]

However, she believed that “we can reap economic benefit from dealing with climate change”.[84] She argued:

It can bring jobs and prosperity, but it can also help us reduce vulnerability to modern slavery and human trafficking. I urge the government and all across this House to recognise the need to deal with climate change to save our planet and to save our humanity.[85]

Lord Willets (Conservative) said “our free and open economies” had operated without “acknowledging the external costs created by the energy that we were using”.[86] He argued that we needed to move to “honest prices that fully reflect the costs of carbon emissions as part of a belief in a functioning market economy”. Lord Willets asserted that there were benefits to doing this even if the cost of adjustment was high:

If we go through this process, we will end up with a system with enormous benefits: with greater security of supply, with much less exposure to the risks of volatile gas prices and indeed, in many cases, with lower operational costs, particularly for people driving motor vehicles. The costs of adjustment are indeed high. We absolutely need rigorous economic analysis of what those costs are and who bears them.[87]

Lord Browne of Madingley (Crossbench), former group chief executive of BP, said that the UK “probably [had] 50% of the technologies we need to get to net zero”.[88] However, he also said that the UK had the ability to move scientific developments into commercial deployment and could redeploy expertise from the fossil fuel sector:

[…] we also have universities such as Cambridge that are awash with groups that have the potential to take discovery science, incubate it and prepare it for the commercial markets at the scale that we need not just in the UK but also in the world. There is a wealth of engineering and technical expertise among those who have spent decades working in my old industry, oil and gas, that can now be deployed in the wind, solar, nuclear and other energy sectors.[89]

Responding for the government, Lord Hunt, minister of state at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, argued for the importance of political consensus in the transition to net zero. He said “I get [Lord Lilley’s] argument, but I think he would recognise that he had a mixed response even from his own benches”.[90] Referencing Lord Frost’s comment on consensus, Lord Hunt went on to say that he sensed that some of the political consensus on net zero “may be breaking down”. However, he said this would be a “great pity” and would make it harder to explain the importance of net zero to the public:

To pick up the point about the need to take the public with us and to paint them a picture of where we are trying to get to on net zero, a lack of political consensus would make it much harder to get that over to the public, whose support we need for what are often going to be very challenging policies.[91]

Lord Hunt said that whilst he understood that Lord Lilley was critical of levelised cost to compare the cost of energy generation “it does attempt to compare the costs of different generating technologies over different timescales: essentially, over the lifetime of the generator”.[92] On a question raised by Lord Leicester (Conservative) as to whether the UK could afford the transition to net zero, Lord Hunt quoted the OBR, which he said had said in 2021 that the “costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.

Lord Hunt thanked Lord Lilley “for his willingness to raise sometimes challenging issues”, but the government was delivering on a manifesto commitment.[93] Lord Hunt said “we need decisive action on both climate change and energy security” which he argued would “have a big positive impact on jobs and prosperity”.

6. Read more​

• House of Lords Library, ‘Government climate policy: Economic impact’, 17 October 2024
• House of Lords Library, ‘Offshore wind energy’, 4 September 2024
• Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, ‘Energy security’, 30 August 2022
• House of Commons Library, ‘Contracts for difference scheme’, 14 October 2024
• House of Commons Library, ‘Why is cheap renewable electricity so expensive on the wholesale market?’, 14 September 2023
• Cameron Hepburn, ‘Do the economics behind the UK’s climate ambitions stack up?’, Royal Society, 27 August