{"id":226844,"date":"2022-11-01T22:07:57","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T21:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=226844"},"modified":"2022-11-01T22:07:59","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T21:07:59","slug":"uk-trapped-in-the-green-energy-cul-de-sac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=226844","title":{"rendered":"UK Trapped in The Green Energy Cul-de-Sac"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francis Menton<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often, I have referred to the situation that the UK, Germany, California and others have set themselves up for as \u201chitting the green energy wall.\u201d But now that the UK has actually gotten there and has begun to deal with the consequences, I\u2019m not sure that \u201chitting the wall\u201d is the best analogy. A better analogy might be \u201cdriving into the green energy cul-de-sac.\u201d After all, when you hit a wall, you can probably just pick yourself up and turn around and be on your way. In the cul-de-sac you are trapped with no evident way of getting out. You might be in there for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where the UK finds itself today. For well more than a decade, they have been aggressively and intentionally pursuing the green energy fantasy. The Net Zero emissions target was made mandatory by legislation in 2019<\/a>. They have built hundreds of wind turbines and solar panels, while at the same time closing almost all of their coal mines and coal power plants<\/a>. That has left them largely dependent on natural gas to back up the intermittent renewables. They have plenty of natural gas right under their feet in a large shale formation, but for years they dithered about allowing fracking to produce the gas, and then in 2019 they imposed a blanket moratorium on fracking<\/a>. With production from their North Sea gas fields declining, they must buy gas on the European market. And although they don\u2019t buy much gas directly from Russia, the European market has been driven to great heights by the cutoff of Russian supplies. Result: average annual residential energy bills in the UK, which were around \u00a31000 as recently as earlier this year, went up to about \u00a33000 this month, and have been projected to go as high as \u00a35000 by this coming April <\/a>absent some sort of government intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And only now has it become apparent that there is no good exit strategy. That would be true even if everyone in the UK were on board with exiting from the green energy delusion, but of course that is not the case either. For years they have been prohibiting the things they have needed to do to maintain a low-cost energy system, and now they are facing years if not a decade or more to get back to where they were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider some possibilities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n