The joint leader of the Green Party is planning to oppose net zero plans backed by the Labour Government to build pylons in Suffolk to transport offshore wind power.
Adrian Ramsay, one of the party’s four newly elected MPs, has said that he will seek a pause to the plans to build a 100-mile corridor of pylons stretching through his constituency of Waveney Valley.
The plans, which are currently under consultation by National Grid, will bring power from wind farms off the coast of East Anglia, and stretch from Norwich to Tilbury.
I think this sort of thing is the reason Dutton decided to push the nuclear option here in Oz.
After all, the country electorates are still staunch supporters of the Liberals or Nationals, and they’re not too happy with endless windmills and transmission lines cluttering up the countryside.
What I consider essential, of course, is that the coal burners be kept operating ‘just for the duration of the emergency.’ I’m sure we can rely on the rabid anti-nukes of Labor and the Greens to hold up the nuclear build until well after hell freezes over.
It’s only hypocrisy if you think their aim is to preserve the environment.
Its not.
Under the cover of “save the polar bears” they want us all impoverished and living in caves because then we’ll be part of nature and in synch with it or something.
For the greens I think that this is because they have a romanticised notion of oldy times, rather than some deep seated psychopathy.
The answer of how to deal with them is simple. Get a large plot of land and give them some basic tools, then let them live a true carbon neutral lifestyle. See how long they last.
Quite a lot of opposition locally. They all want it put underground, which is technically difficult and economically insane. There is long-running opposition to a new line parallel to the existing one from Bramford 400kV switch southward. I think National Grid agreed to put a bit of it underground near some woods to avoid having to cut them down along the route but the rest will be overhead. Perhaps they’ll do some thing similar for these new lines.
Of course, little if this would be required if we didn’t build the unnecessary and destabilising wind farms.
I see no hypocrisy. Quite the opposite. You can have an even more “net zero” by not piping power from offshore wind farms to the filthy polluting pods and hovels of the unwashed proletariat, and filthy polluting factories and farms of the bourgeoise. Indeed that is the end goal of “net zero”.
And the priest stamped his foot and commanded the congregation to practise his religion HIS way!
It’s not hypocritical. It’s perfectly consistent with green goals, that we shall all die early deaths shivering in the dark.
What’s objectionable is that they’re pretending we’re replacing one source of power with another. The point is to destroy the sources we’ve got. And then not replace them.
It just goes to show that all the green nonsense is political theatre designed to cover their real political aims. None of the proponents of it really believe the world is going to end if we don’t stop using fossil fuels. Its just a convenient ruse to get the global communism they want. And these sort of examples show their real views. If the likes of the Green Party really did think the world was going to end if we don’t go ‘net zero’ then they would be telling Nimbys they must have pylons marching through the countryside to save the planet and lump it. But of course placating the middle class idiots who voted for you to get a nice sinecure is more important than saving the planet. Thereby revealing that saving the planet isn’t actually that important after all. A bit like ex-Presidents buying seafront properties – look at what they do, not what they say.
The hours of delay between commenting and others seeing the comment is destroying this site.
Discussion becomes impossible, all the regular contributors spark off each other – not now.
So it’s Kant (“Whoever will the end, wills the means”) versus Cunt.
I don’t know whether it is hypocrisy or just ignorance and stupidity. These people just have no clue how stuff works, it’s just like magic to them. We have a small gas well near our village. Lots of houses still have posters up protesting about it, it got built anyway. These fools are on gas for their heating and hot water.
They don’t want us to have electricity at all.
They tried forcing diesel cars on us because they were slow and noisy, but manufacturers built better diesel cars, so that had to be stopped.
They then tried electric cars because they were slow and had piddling range. Electric cars are no longer slow and range is steadily improving, so notice how the story is changing about how we shouldn’t have them either.
They tried forcing unreliables on us, but domestic-scale battery backup that’s good for a day or two is now marginally affordable and getting cheaper all the time, so the answer is no electricity at all.
If they were interested in the environment rather than making other people’s lives as miserable as their own then they would be out there demanding “more nuclear right now” and would have been doing so for the last 40 years.
CVNT
Your colleague i think, Kristian Niemietz, has a marvellous and funny idea for these hypocrites called the E-Escalator.
If you object to a 275KV transmission line, then you get a 400KV one through the field at the back instead. If the maximum is already scheduled then East Anglia One (100 turbines offshore planned) gets moved to your constituency to save costs and time.
Or it ain’t a crisis.
Tim The Coder
I’d second that – not sure what the solution is but for sure it destroys a lot of the rapidfire discussion
V_P, TtC – Just so.
The answer of how to deal with them is simple
Immurate them in their homes with no electricity, running water or food for 6 months and see what happens.
Chernny,
“For the greens I think that this is because they have a romanticised notion of oldy times, rather than some deep seated psychopathy.
The answer of how to deal with them is simple. Get a large plot of land and give them some basic tools, then let them live a true carbon neutral lifestyle. See how long they last.”
Most Greens are soppy women who live off the backs of civilisation that they are unaware of. Whether that’s civil servants whose worthless job only exists because of how rich we are, or wives whose husband pays the bills by being an executive at Shell.
The average eco feminist just has no idea about the conflict between those two things. How you get away from cars, transporting food, refrigeration. You have to have a pantry, which means shopping every other day, from a shop you walk to, so good luck going to work.
I have no time for the Greens, but this is not hypocrisy. You can be for or against wind power and still oppose carving up the Suffolk Heritage Coast – with its AONB status, SSSIs and national nature reserves – by building landing sites, interconnectors, pylons etc. There are other viable options – and the power is for London, not for Suffolk.
Western Bloke
That’s so spot on. Any number of discussions with demented Green women and almost to a tee they are utterly, utterly useless – scarcely able to peel an orange without recourse to the user manual.
However, the only snag is the prevailing zeitgeist seems to be very much in their favour, with the deleterious consequences that sadly stick with us to this day.
What are the “other viable options”, Theo?
National Grid has said that seven times more new grid infrastructure, including pylons and substations, will need to be built compared to the last 30 years, in order to meet the Government’s plans for a green electricity grid by 2030.
Does anyone here believe the British government will build 700% more electricity infrastructure in the next five and a half years? Lol.
The plans have been dismissed by some energy experts as unfeasible, due in large part to the difficulty of quickly building grid infrastructure to transport electricity from offshore, and onshore wind farms in Scotland.
No shit.
The Norwich to Tilbury pylon plan has been the subject of controversy in the local area, with campaigners saying the proposals for 110 miles of cabling using 50m high pylons will “destroy our historic landscapes and will require huge loss of trees”.
Yes, your historic landscapes will be destroyed. Enjoy them while you can.
Campaigners including Mr Ramsay have called for an offshore grid, which they argue could save money.
Apparently an “offshore grid” is “clusters of offshore wind farms with fewer cables connected to the shore that can route power to two or more national grids.”.
They still need cables and pylons since we don’t live in the middle of the sea, and building a Europe-wide house of cards out of unreliables only saves money in dreams.
Not In My Back Yard.
NIMBY has always be the true battle cry of environmental leftists.
“You can be for or against wind power and still oppose carving up the Suffolk Heritage Coast – with its AONB status, SSSIs and national nature reserves”
Of course you can, especially if you or your constituents live near the Suffolk Heritage Coast with its precious AONB status and all that good stuff that the riff-raff elsewhere haven’t been able to get. Mind you, if you favour wind power you have to build the transmission lines somewhere, but that’s OK, just tell the locals *there* that it’s objectively speaking much better to have *their* environment carved up than your AONB. They couldn’t possibly disagree with such sound, closely argued facts.
“There are other viable options”
Of course there are. Build the transmission line across somebody else’s garden. After all, their environment isn’t very important and yours is.
” – and the power is for London, not for Suffolk.”
It is of course an inviolable law of politics that nothing should ever be done in Suffolk that benefits anybody who doesn’t live in Suffolk. The same applies to everywhere else.
@Theophratus: So Όχι στην αυλή μου is ok, then?
Having read the green party energy policy document I do wonder if they are malevolent rather than simply incompetent. Either they don’t have any grasp of where we would end up if their policies were followed, or they are expecting to kill millions of people.
Hanlon’s Razor gives us “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. Unfortunately they have gone beyond the boundaries of stupidity just as Pol Pot did in Cambodia. I’m convinced they are plotting to kill us. The green party is the Khmer Vert.
@Theo
I tend to agree
Ramsay is representing the interests of his constituency, not his party and as you say I am sure there are other options – I expect this is the cheapest one
“There are other viable options “
And what would they be then? Assuming your magic money tree cannot afford an underground cable (and the enormous land area required for such) in a line across the SE?
I read an analysis of burying a HT (225 or 400k, I forget) cable in the New Forest. It was barely less damaging.
The most viable solution is to build the power station near the city and burn gas or coal and leave windmills for the Middle-Ages where they belong.
“ I have no time for the Greens, but this is not hypocrisy. You can be for or against wind power and still oppose carving up the Suffolk Heritage Coast – with its AONB status, SSSIs and national nature reserves –”
What’s the price of a nice view against the “climate crises”?
And if a few snails, newts and various insects are going to die surely that’s a small price to save the billions of them that will die because of the “climate crises”? After all, they seem quite happy to chop up birds and bats in wind farms.
He was elected on the Green Party manifesto and promises and should be telling his constituents that there’s a “climate crises” and they have to make sacrifices and quote Burke.
A friend was almost on the point of completing the sale of his shop when the council announced plans for a bus lane opposite. This would have knocked (at best) 10 seconds off their journey time, but stopped passing trade from parking outside his shop. Both him, and the neighbouring bakers, spent long hours trying to fight the plan, but he found the local Green councillor was the only one to offer any help. Quite why that should be I have no idea – you’d think encouraging public transport instead of private cars would be right up the Greens street…
Thank you AndyF
Ardal O’Hanlon’s principle is a new one to me, but it’s a rather good one as a first attempt at explaining.
Once you become an MP there is no CPD – say a significant new economics paper, or threat or technology comes along, you don’t have to show you’ve understood it to keep your job. Stupidity is a good first guess at explaining anything politicians do.
I’ve said this elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating – nobody in government seems capable of drawing up a coherent energy strategy.
At Dunford bridge in the Peak District the National Grid has just spent a good deal of time and effort removing seven pylons and nearly a mile of power cable as part of its Going Underground project. Meanwhile unsightly bird mincers are being erected just down the road, and now as Steve reports in his post, “National Grid has said that seven times more new grid infrastructure, including pylons and substations, will need to be built compared to the last 30 years, in order to meet the Government’s plans for a green electricity grid by 2030”.
Just what is going on – and who benefits?
andyf – I’m convinced they are plotting to kill us. The green party is the Khmer Vert.
Who needs the Green Party?
The Official Cost of Net Zero is £1.4trn by 2050.
I didn’t think we had a spare £1.4trn down the back of the couch, do you? But we have to find the money somehow, to fight the Global Climate Emergency to which, if it exists at all, the UK’s contribution is also Net Zero, according to The Science. (Praise be The Science!)
And Nota Benny this is the official cost estimate, from exactly the same kind of people who assured you HS2 would only cost £37.5bn, and who optimistically assure you most of the eye-watering costs of Net Zero will be offset by mysterious “savings”, primarily the “saving” of no longer using fossil fuels. (Why switching from cheap fuels to expensive energy sources will save you money is something you need an Oxbridge degree to understand I reckon)
Right now, coal and gas are generating 57% of the UK’s electricity. Wind is only 10.1%,
Now, according to Wikipedo:
By 2023, the UK had over 11 thousand wind turbines with a total installed capacity of 30 gigawatts (GW)
As I write, that 30 GW installed capacity is only generating 2.8 GW of power.
Back of a fag packet maths: we will “only” need another 46 thousand massive gold-plated wind-powered subsidy burners to replace fossil fuels at *current* rates of leccy demand (which will only go up as we add a million immigrants a year and force everyone into electric cars.).
“Dad, what was it like having electricity 24/7?”
Whee! “¯\_(ツ)_/¯ “
TtC
One of the alternatives is to bring the (intermittent) electricity ashore on the brownfield/industrialised parts of the Essex coast, closer to London where the electricity is needed. Essex would also require a shorter UK-Netherlands interconnector.
Chris et al
As I don’t live on or even near the Suffolk coast, I can’t be a NIMBY. Duh! I simply want, as far as possible, to preserve the most beautiful parts of our country.
Spiro Ozer
These installations don’t have to be built across anyone’s garden, as there are plenty of brownfield sites on the Essex coast. And, given the loss of amenity and damage to the East Anglian tourist industry, and given that there are alternatives, bringing the electricity to London across so much land – with coastal landing sites, numerous substations and 180km of pylons – doesn’t make sense.
In disussion with a silly Green woman- a Lib Dem parliamatary candidate, but I repeat myself- I noticed a rhetorical flourish that gives them a shred of self-justification.
Her reply included “I’m not a scientist, but…” followed by some wibble.
It amounted to “I’m not a scientist, but my feelings are as valid as what scientists think”.
It;s effectively placing science as a religion among other contradicable religions- something people are entitled to believe if they want to, but others can dismiss without discussion or comment.
Song for those of you that remember:
Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust (yeah)
Australia has measured the Great Barrier Reef every year since 1986 & the last 3 have unprecedented high coral cover, 2024 the record since 1986, Read this Greta!
–tex
–tex
People don’t become green candidates because they are worried about the environment. They do so because they believe they stand a chance of actually winning and being put into some sort of power because the general voting public have a rosy eyed view of the green party – witness that ethnic in the recent locals shouting allahu ackbar after winning a council seat – think he’s really interested in the planet? This latest MP sounds like the same – using the green party as a suit. Lets not forget Caroline Lucas who flys regularly to visit family in the states (son if memory serves) .
Burying high power cables multiplies the costs massively. Above ground you sling a cheap aluminium cable between pylons. Below ground you need a MASSIVE insulation around the core and you need to dissipate the heat too. All in all a much more complex tax. The IEEE point out you need an excavation site 65m wide to replace the power from a 400kva pylon (if I read it correctly). That’s a lot of land to dig up!
Ah Bongo,
You are mixing it up with the other one
“These are very small
Those are far away.”
Or
Αυτά είναι πολύ μικρά, αυτά είναι μακριά.
* Below ground you need a MASSIVE insulation around the core and you need to dissipate the heat too. »
Indeed. The ground is literally earth in an electrical sense, a so by putting the live cable in the ground you need to prevent shorting. Air is a great insulator, if you want some idea of what it needs to provide insulation that those voltages have a look at what is used to insulate the line at the pylons, it’s not a bit of plastic like on a power cable.
Our village is currently having a 115kV cable installed under the middle of the “Main Road” (that’s what it’s called 🙂 ) to supply a new bit barn a few miles away. We’re in an AONB, so it has to be buried.
The contractors first dig a complete trench, lay pipes along the length, and then back fill. They then open a ‘keyhole’ (about 2m x 10m) every km, and thread the (pretty massive) 115kV cables* through the pipework – first a little robot takes a string through, then the string pulls a large rope through, then the rope pulls the actual cable. Jointing is carried out, and then the first keyhole closed and a new one dug a km up the road. It’s actually quite impressive how fast they can do this.
* 6 of them, for reasons I’m not sure about, but then I’m no electrical engineer.
As I understand it (and this is far from my area), the biggest issue with underground transmission isn’t shorting, but inductive losses. An AC circuit creates alternating magnetic fields in the earth – and the earth is full of conducting materials (like moist soil), and the magnetice fields then create earth currents (which act against the magneitic fields), and this inductance acts as a resisitor and makes it hard to push the power where you want it to go. Above-ground circuits create the same alternating magnetic fields, but the air isn’t quite so full of conductive materials as the earth, so the problem is dramatically lessened. Probably get around it with HVDC – but that’s another cost to be borne.
dcardno,
Yes, inductive and captive reactance is a serious problem and requires careful design and compensation using inductors and capacitors. Whether it’s the biggest problem is hard to judge, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the most expensive to fix.
As it’s 40 years since I did electrical engineering as a module on my Electronics and Telecoms HND I’m open to being corrected.
I recall the National Grid celebrating how they overcame the problem of high voltage sub-sea DC transmission lines crossings when the East Anglia to Denmark interconnect was completed. There was a Norway to Netherlands interconnect to cross and as anyone familiar with Lorentz/Fleming and what happens when one DC cable crosses another at right angles, bad things are going to happen.
The solution was blooming expensive.
There are pylon crossing points which are incredibly cheap in comparison, but the Greens want to shift all this problem solving into the sea where it’s more expensive.