It's a throwaway caption, but I think this is actually quite an important point:
"Though I guess it’s quite easy to picture some solar panels in a field"
I generally find people imagine enormous rows of bleak blackness. But having travelled through northern Germany last year, I was surprised at just how unobtrusive many are. They are slightly lifted off the ground, meaning lots of green and biodiversity underneath. But not high enough off the ground to be visible from outside the field.
Mostly agree, but the China point is a serious one worth unpacking.
Unfortunately we've allowed a situation to develop where a strategic adversary has (shock!) behaved adversarialy and reacted to our stated goals by moving to control the supply chain for our green buildout.
Worse, it's not just China in general but Xinjiang specifically in which production has been centralised. With credible evidence of human rights abuses of the Uighur minority (including forced labour) comes a real dampener on any solar buildout.
We need alternative supply chains, but this will take time to build. I'm forced to conclude that your final footnote holds the only credible way forward: i.e. do the massive fission buildout we ought to have done 20 years ago, with the fuel sourced from our close allies (who have it in abundance).
There's an enormous windmill development in the middle of flat nowhere in northwest Indiana, halfway between Chicago and Indianapolis, and if you are driving at dusk just as the lights go on it's an awesome sight.
This reminds me of a drive not a million miles away, when I was driving at night through Iowa. There's a windfarm there, on both sides of whatever road we were on, and it basically pitch black... apart from a single red light on every single windmill, which flashed on and off perfectly in sync with each other (presumably something to do with AC current?). It was absolutely freaky, like the beginning of an alien abduction story, until we realised what it was.
Everyone agrees that the western world's problems include energy production, shaky rural economies, lack of ambition at scale, dearth of beauty. And to think all of those can be addressed with one weird trick.
The key question that the objectors need to answer is "does opposing this development lead to more or less solar power in the UK?" They've decided that pushing for community ownership is more important than getting more solar power. It's a bit everything-bagel.
That’s great - informative, interesting, well written and well researched. It’s nice to go away from an article able to now appear cleverer than I am on a topic. Thank you.
AMOC collapse. Multibreadbasket failure. Loss of fertiliser due to closure of Strait of Hormuz. There are multiple threats to our food system, which is even more important than our energy system, and we should be going flat out to increase sustainable food production within the UK. Fortunately some agriculture is still possible alongside solar panels in fields, but I'm a little shocked by your blithe dismissal of the issue of food security.
Our food security issue is not just about space (directly) as his land allocation % showed. It's about subsidies and incentives for farmers and individuals, as well as diet. Halving food waste and eating less meat would significantly benefit food security without requiring more agricultural land.
Tbf to bbc bitesize, the reason they've talked about food miles (as most schemes of work for primary geography do) is because it's quite a nice way to link in a whole bunch of topics within the national curriculum: you can talk about land usage patterns, you can talk about global trade, you can talk about the distribution of natural resources (e.g. why do we import bananas? because they can't be grown here). Now granted, you don't have to talk about that in terms of "more food miles is bad because more carbon emissions", but that's quite a nice way of helping children to start to apply some of that deeper geographical thinking about "what is the impact of this".
To counterbalance that, you could, in a section on land-use and different types of farming, talk about "pastoral farming is worse for the environment than agricultural farming because of emissions from cows". But then that's probably going too deep into the issue of climate change on a singular topic (and it would probs be too much at the primary level to ask children to compare the impact of food miles vs eating less meat), especially given that (unfortunately) climate change isn't on either the geography or science national curriculum (even though other forms of "human impact" on the environment are: "pupils should explore examples of human impact (both positive and negative) on environments, for example, the positive effects of nature reserves, ecologically planned parks, or garden ponds, and the negative effects of population and development, litter or
Not easily, you'd need to pull data from few different sources, not sure if anyone has done that yet.
The biggest delay (aside from grid connections) is a growing issue not mentioned here; managing overproduction. We are already paying wind farms to NOT product energy at peak times.
Without an acceleration of that infrastructure as well as quickly implementing ideas to turn this issue into a benefit such as moving energy intensive industries near solar / wind farms and converting and shipping energy to energy hungry commonwealth partners.
Also an opportunity to use our expertise to help the very same reach net zero, because UK net zero - whilst great - does little if the planet is not net zero.
Derrill Water is a great example - funded by a co-op share issue through Ripple Energy, who shortly after went bust because the business model didn't work. Thankfully the co-op structure meant the board could step up and take it to completion. The next project Ripple were working on, not so much. Lots of investors left out of pocket.
I'm sure you know this, but the *actual* reasons people object to solar farms being built near them is because people prefer the look of farmland, and because they think it will lower the resale value of their house (there's also a few people on the loony right who think renewable energy is woke, or some kind of WEF plot or something).
What is the argument for building solar instead of nuclear? It naively seems to me that if one were to build nuclear power stations instead of solar farms, one could generate the same amount of electricity, while using far, far less land. And land is pretty valuable - as well as growing food on it, one could build housing, build infrastructure or amenities, or "rewild" or plant trees. In addition, nuclear power would be a more reliable and flexible source of electricity than solar.
You describe nuclear as a "get-out-of-jail-free" card in your footnote 13. But you don't advocate for building it instead of solar. So what is your position on nuclear? It seems from that footnote that you think it would be good in theory for the UK to build more nuclear power, but that people shouldn't advocate for doing so because ignorant leftists object to it? But you are happy to advocate for solar despite ignorant leftists objecting to it . . . I don't understand?!
So... here's the bigger question a) what do we do about it ('it' in this sense being general objections to things being built), and b) what does it mean? Is there a viable route to Net Zero as things stand?
It's a throwaway caption, but I think this is actually quite an important point:
"Though I guess it’s quite easy to picture some solar panels in a field"
I generally find people imagine enormous rows of bleak blackness. But having travelled through northern Germany last year, I was surprised at just how unobtrusive many are. They are slightly lifted off the ground, meaning lots of green and biodiversity underneath. But not high enough off the ground to be visible from outside the field.
Great article. Definitely worried about the First Australian War and the consequent London bar staff shortage now though.
Mostly agree, but the China point is a serious one worth unpacking.
Unfortunately we've allowed a situation to develop where a strategic adversary has (shock!) behaved adversarialy and reacted to our stated goals by moving to control the supply chain for our green buildout.
Worse, it's not just China in general but Xinjiang specifically in which production has been centralised. With credible evidence of human rights abuses of the Uighur minority (including forced labour) comes a real dampener on any solar buildout.
We need alternative supply chains, but this will take time to build. I'm forced to conclude that your final footnote holds the only credible way forward: i.e. do the massive fission buildout we ought to have done 20 years ago, with the fuel sourced from our close allies (who have it in abundance).
Couldn't agree more!
There's an enormous windmill development in the middle of flat nowhere in northwest Indiana, halfway between Chicago and Indianapolis, and if you are driving at dusk just as the lights go on it's an awesome sight.
This reminds me of a drive not a million miles away, when I was driving at night through Iowa. There's a windfarm there, on both sides of whatever road we were on, and it basically pitch black... apart from a single red light on every single windmill, which flashed on and off perfectly in sync with each other (presumably something to do with AC current?). It was absolutely freaky, like the beginning of an alien abduction story, until we realised what it was.
Everyone agrees that the western world's problems include energy production, shaky rural economies, lack of ambition at scale, dearth of beauty. And to think all of those can be addressed with one weird trick.
The key question that the objectors need to answer is "does opposing this development lead to more or less solar power in the UK?" They've decided that pushing for community ownership is more important than getting more solar power. It's a bit everything-bagel.
Thanks James- enjoyed this.
The "at scale" bit is so important. The old coal fired power stations on the Trent were 2000MW, so we need a lot of wind and solar.
Also, if you've been close up to a solar farm, you'll notice lots of wildlife underneath the panels. RSPB has done some work on this.
Great piece.
Cheers!
That’s great - informative, interesting, well written and well researched. It’s nice to go away from an article able to now appear cleverer than I am on a topic. Thank you.
Cheers!
AMOC collapse. Multibreadbasket failure. Loss of fertiliser due to closure of Strait of Hormuz. There are multiple threats to our food system, which is even more important than our energy system, and we should be going flat out to increase sustainable food production within the UK. Fortunately some agriculture is still possible alongside solar panels in fields, but I'm a little shocked by your blithe dismissal of the issue of food security.
Our food security issue is not just about space (directly) as his land allocation % showed. It's about subsidies and incentives for farmers and individuals, as well as diet. Halving food waste and eating less meat would significantly benefit food security without requiring more agricultural land.
True but UK is nowhere near being food independent. We have a lot of work to do.
Tbf to bbc bitesize, the reason they've talked about food miles (as most schemes of work for primary geography do) is because it's quite a nice way to link in a whole bunch of topics within the national curriculum: you can talk about land usage patterns, you can talk about global trade, you can talk about the distribution of natural resources (e.g. why do we import bananas? because they can't be grown here). Now granted, you don't have to talk about that in terms of "more food miles is bad because more carbon emissions", but that's quite a nice way of helping children to start to apply some of that deeper geographical thinking about "what is the impact of this".
To counterbalance that, you could, in a section on land-use and different types of farming, talk about "pastoral farming is worse for the environment than agricultural farming because of emissions from cows". But then that's probably going too deep into the issue of climate change on a singular topic (and it would probs be too much at the primary level to ask children to compare the impact of food miles vs eating less meat), especially given that (unfortunately) climate change isn't on either the geography or science national curriculum (even though other forms of "human impact" on the environment are: "pupils should explore examples of human impact (both positive and negative) on environments, for example, the positive effects of nature reserves, ecologically planned parks, or garden ponds, and the negative effects of population and development, litter or
deforestation.").
Is there an estimate anywhere of what percentage of the required net zero infrastructure is already built/still to be built?
Not easily, you'd need to pull data from few different sources, not sure if anyone has done that yet.
The biggest delay (aside from grid connections) is a growing issue not mentioned here; managing overproduction. We are already paying wind farms to NOT product energy at peak times.
Without an acceleration of that infrastructure as well as quickly implementing ideas to turn this issue into a benefit such as moving energy intensive industries near solar / wind farms and converting and shipping energy to energy hungry commonwealth partners.
Also an opportunity to use our expertise to help the very same reach net zero, because UK net zero - whilst great - does little if the planet is not net zero.
I'm curious about this: "At 11:30am, the share of gas fell to just 2%."
Where do you get this information?
Ah balls, it was from Josiah – link got lost in my endless 1am revisions:
https://bsky.app/profile/josiahmortimer.bsky.social/post/3mk42ikfagc2c
Ah, OK. I was hoping there was a dashboard or something that I could obsess over 🙂
Derrill Water is a great example - funded by a co-op share issue through Ripple Energy, who shortly after went bust because the business model didn't work. Thankfully the co-op structure meant the board could step up and take it to completion. The next project Ripple were working on, not so much. Lots of investors left out of pocket.
I'm sure you know this, but the *actual* reasons people object to solar farms being built near them is because people prefer the look of farmland, and because they think it will lower the resale value of their house (there's also a few people on the loony right who think renewable energy is woke, or some kind of WEF plot or something).
What is the argument for building solar instead of nuclear? It naively seems to me that if one were to build nuclear power stations instead of solar farms, one could generate the same amount of electricity, while using far, far less land. And land is pretty valuable - as well as growing food on it, one could build housing, build infrastructure or amenities, or "rewild" or plant trees. In addition, nuclear power would be a more reliable and flexible source of electricity than solar.
You describe nuclear as a "get-out-of-jail-free" card in your footnote 13. But you don't advocate for building it instead of solar. So what is your position on nuclear? It seems from that footnote that you think it would be good in theory for the UK to build more nuclear power, but that people shouldn't advocate for doing so because ignorant leftists object to it? But you are happy to advocate for solar despite ignorant leftists objecting to it . . . I don't understand?!
I'm extremely pro-nuclear! I am an "all of the above" guy, when it comes to clean energy.
https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/why-i-changed-my-mind-on-nuclear?utm_source=publication-search
Why are you an "all of the above" guy? Why not build nuclear *instead* of building solar?
Not James but cost, speed and complexity - see Hinkley Point C.
At least no one has suggested that energy efficiency will solve all the problems…
So... here's the bigger question a) what do we do about it ('it' in this sense being general objections to things being built), and b) what does it mean? Is there a viable route to Net Zero as things stand?