EROEI (Energy recovered over energy invested) is the dominant factor in all of our lives. This defines the cost of the energy production with energy company profits being decided by supply v demand. The reality is if the green fantasists had their way, we will quite literally be going back to the stone age with massive famines and starvation.
For every calorie of food, you consume, 10 calories are used in producing it. If we go down the limited very expensive renewable energy route then we will need millions of volunteers and their families in the UK to go on to TB's cull list, that way for the more sensible among us we won't go short and starve to death with them!
We have already lost most of our high energy industries to lower energy price countries. This includes glass making (Pilkington were a world leader and are no longer UK company with any UK production), cement making, steel production, our chemical industry and petrochemical industries. All manufacturing are high earning one-to-many industries that could afford to pay much better than the minimum wage. The jobs have been replaced by, minimum wage, one-to-one service ones, like social care, burger flipping, coffee pouring, retail assistant type of jobs. The jobs market is becoming more and more polarised with well-paid degree level jobs and the minimum wage rest.
What I have read about Cardiff Bay boondoggle is that it is taking energy costs and subsidies to a whole new level of absurdity (like biomass madness) and subsidy.
Yes, we will eventually go over to renewable energy, so we don't run out for 3.1billion years, but I suspect to create and mature the technology for a smooth costable transition it will take around 100 years.
If you want to compare the problems, difficulties and cost of variable cyclic energy production, just look at food production, so we can store the energy when it is available to when we want to consume it. This includes canning, bottling, drying, pickling, smoking, freezing, specialist storage, global transportation from where it is in season etc, etc, etc, and the best efficiency we can currently manage is 10:1 against. Saudi oil is the cheapest where about 5% is used in extraction and production, so it has a ratio of 20:1 for. Because of the erratic nature of food production also think about the short, medium and long-term reserves. All of these food issues apply to renewables. So a few immediate awkward questions, that you never ever see being asked let alone discussed are: With current technology what is the projected EROEI including storage? What are the short-term storage technologies and capacity? What are the minimum strategic reserves to stop regular energy famines and with that size of the reserve, how often can we statistically expect an energy famine?
Until there is a coherent, sensible route ahead for affordable renewables, thank goodness as part of #Brexit the next Tory government is committed, to cut right back on these EU energy madness subsidies, so we can create the wealth, so we can afford them as and when they have matured and fallen in cost enough to compete with fossil fuels.
Author
Topic: Interesting interview on the link between electric cars and renewable energy (Read 4299 times)