"Just stop oil"

Soldato
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They'll only be worth it if the cost of electric becomes much cheaper than the cost of gas.

If the ~g10p/e30p balance we have now shifts to a g30p/e10p balance, then heating via electric will catch on very quickly.

But that will never happen, especially as electricity demand increases. It's self defeating.
 
Soldato
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One resouce is finite, the other isn't. Never is a long time.

Edit, and by 30/10 - I mean proportionally. So in reality the price of gas will continue to rise faster than the price of electricity.
 
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Soldato
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Talking about heat pumps.

It is estimated that we need to double our electricity production to at least 120GW, by 2050.

40% of our power comes from Gas. Hinckley Point C is set to produce 3.2 GW.

We have a problem.

 
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Soldato
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It's been long acknowledged that electrification for Net Zero would lead to a doubling of electricity demand. Which is why people like myself think we should commit to building 5 EPR's like Hinckley C and get 17GW. Whilst we're getting on with that start designing a molten salt reactor and aim for at least 30% nuclear by 2050, if not more. I worry renewables aren't going to scale much further.
 
Soldato
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I'm of the stance "we shouldn't be burning it at all" not "if we're burning it, may as well burn the stuff closer to us" though so I don't see any justification for opening new fields when we should focused on reducing consumption really

I’m of the view that we shouldn’t be burning it as well, I’ve been very clear in my view on this.

I just live in the real world where I recognise that even with all the technologically viable alternatives (not necessarily economically viable for everyone) that we can deploy right now like electric cars and heat pumps are taken up in significant numbers, we will still be using fossil fuels for decades to come. That’s not even taking into account we have literally nothing for aviation and shipping right now.

Get past the ideological feels and get to the evidence. 23 million gas boilers need replacing with something, the vast majority of those are suitable for heat pumps but we currently install 30,000 heat pumps a year. Even if we ramped over the next 5 years to 1,000,000 installs a year, we will still be doing it in 2050. Pigs will fly before we are doing a million heat pump installs a year before 2029. Particularly when a retrofit costs a serious amount of money.
 
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Man of Honour
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It's been long acknowledged that electrification for Net Zero would lead to a doubling of electricity demand. Which is why people like myself think we should commit to building 5 EPR's like Hinckley C and get 17GW. Whilst we're getting on with that start designing a molten salt reactor and aim for at least 30% nuclear by 2050, if not more. I worry renewables aren't going to scale much further.

Either that or we are going to have to get innovative and actually invest into developing next generation alternatives to renewable power (and/or storage and transmission) - I see a lot of activists banging on about stuff like tidal and MGES and so on but the simple truth is often they aren't suited to where they need to be, don't work at scale or have other undesirable environmental impacts as a knock on effect and/or the requirements to develop and implement them outweigh the environmental benefits vs continuing with what is already in place, etc.
 
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Soldato
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I worry renewables aren't going to scale much further.
I'm not so sure if these claims of room temp superconductor are legit


It could change a lot of things within energy generation
I’m of the view that we shouldn’t be burning it as well, I’ve been very clear in my view on this.

I just live in the real world where I recognise that even with all the technologically viable alternatives (not necessarily economically viable for everyone) that we can deploy right now like electric cars and heat pumps are taken up in significant numbers, we will still be using fossil fuels for decades to come. That’s not even taking into account we have literally nothing for aviation and shipping right now.

Get past the ideological feels and get to the evidence. 23 million gas boilers need replacing with something, the vast majority of those are suitable for heat pumps but we currently install 30,000 heat pumps a year. Even if we ramped over the next 5 years to 1,000,000 installs a year, we will still be doing it in 2050. Pigs will fly before we are doing a million heat pump installs a year before 2029. Particularly when a retrofit costs a serious amount of money.
I get what you're saying but allowing more oil fields, just sends the completely wrong message that it's still okay to be burning FF's and not beginning to start making the hard sacrifices of reducing consumption, neither position is really "wrong" depending on points of view
 
Soldato
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Talking about heat pumps.

It is estimated that we need to double our electricity production to at least 120GW, by 2050.

40% of our power comes from Gas. Hinckley Point C is set to produce 3.2 GW.

We have a problem.


A problem that parliament has known about for 20-25 years. We need more nuclear generation, a modernised grid better housing stock and lot more of it.

Government will open coal and cracking again plants soon. Just after the nation paid to have them ripped out and be made redundant.
 
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Soldato
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I worry renewables aren't going to scale much further.
Sorry this was very unspecific of me. My concern is that in the UK with 26GW of Wind and 10+GW of solar and dwindling nuclear and fossil thermal it's hard to expand the renewables on the grid without increasing risk of grid instability or black outs. Neither battery technology nor hydrogen have really been attempted at the scale necessary to smooth out increasing intermittent renewables and increasing electrification. Hence why I think nuclear with a thick baseload capacity is essential as it underpins a low carbon future reliably.
 
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Associate
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I’m of the view that we shouldn’t be burning it as well, I’ve been very clear in my view on this.

I just live in the real world where I recognise that even with all the technologically viable alternatives (not necessarily economically viable for everyone) that we can deploy right now like electric cars and heat pumps are taken up in significant numbers, we will still be using fossil fuels for decades to come. That’s not even taking into account we have literally nothing for aviation and shipping right now.

Get past the ideological feels and get to the evidence. 23 million gas boilers need replacing with something, the vast majority of those are suitable for heat pumps but we currently install 30,000 heat pumps a year. Even if we ramped over the next 5 years to 1,000,000 installs a year, we will still be doing it in 2050. Pigs will fly before we are doing a million heat pump installs a year before 2029. Particularly when a retrofit costs a serious amount of money.

Don't worry : you can just apply the patented Just Stop Oil logic to this predicament:

You heat your house with electricity or you don't hest your house.

Problem solved.
 
Soldato
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Don't worry : you can just apply the patented Just Stop Oil logic to this predicament:

You heat your house with electricity or you don't hest your house.

Problem solved.

It's going to go one of these ways at some point anyway irrespective of climate concerns. There's only so much of it going and far from all of it is in the hands of reliable allies.
 
Soldato
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Global oil demand will increase, in 10 years it will be higher than now.

To maintain current levels of production, we need to exploit new areas continuously.

Stopping new licenses in the UK is just effecting the UK industry/employment, and shifting it elsewhere.

If however you stop new licenses globally, then what you will do is increase the cost of energy to such extreme levels you'll cause the greatest economic collapse in all of human history.
Global oil demand is expected to peak this decade and then decline the UK has significant licensing already in place issuing hundreds of new licenses this year that won’t be exploited for 10-15 years isn’t necessary it is just a political stunt to convince the gullible that our government are going to bring bills down.
 
Soldato
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Global oil demand is expected to peak this decade and then decline the UK has significant licensing already in place issuing hundreds of new licenses this year that won’t be exploited for 10-15 years isn’t necessary it is just a political stunt to convince the gullible that our government are going to bring bills down.

And it should be emphasised that, as this will all be traded globally and sold at market values, you'd be hard pressed to notice any difference in your bills at all.
 
Soldato
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So what is the point of it then.. we're still going to use oil in 10 - 15 years' time, they just want us to be more reliant on imports? How is that beneficial?
We have licensing already in place allowing the exploitation of significant oil reserves it’s not like the North Sea stops producing tomorrow if we don’t issue licenses combined with which we export the vast majority of the oil we produce. The big oil companies hold significant licensing that isn’t even being currently exploited. I’m not a just stop oil supporter but what they are asking is perfectly possible and not totally irrational which is what many people seem to think. Our domestic crunch point for pricing is gas and most of the licenses being granted currently are for oil which we will export as we don’t/can’t/won’t use it here and it won’t even get pumped for a decade or two!
 
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Soldato
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One resouce is finite, the other isn't. Never is a long time.

Edit, and by 30/10 - I mean proportionally. So in reality the price of gas will continue to rise faster than the price of electricity.
Especially once we finally break the price link between green electricity and coal/gas production. We pay vastly over the odds for green electric as the price is tagged to the others.
 
Soldato
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And people wonder why sunak granted the licences.

Wow, that's quite "sleazy" as the press would normally put it, in fear of using the much more appropriate and yet conveniently difficult to use in public from a legal standpoint word. We're basically being robbed blind.
 
Caporegime
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We have a problem.

Indeed, many won't admit it but humans are a virus. There is a very simple solution but most won't like it, or adhere to it: 1 kid a year max for every family for the next 50 years.

Or alternatively...


AlarmingPracticalBluebird-size_restricted.gif
 
Soldato
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Global oil demand is expected to peak this decade and then decline the UK has significant licensing already in place issuing hundreds of new licenses this year that won’t be exploited for 10-15 years isn’t necessary it is just a political stunt to convince the gullible that our government are going to bring bills down.

Yes but what do you not understand if oil is going to decline at the end of this decade, then they will only drill the cheapest/best sites, writing 100 new licenses, or pushing a law that removes the need for licenses, does not make any difference.

The problem is only if you restrict the license, granting infinite licenses does not increase oil use
 
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