Beelbeebub

The "render onto foam insulation that is screwed to the wall" method has some risks. In theory a well done ewi solution should protect the building from thr elements and preserve the wall by keeping it warmer and drier. The aesthetic will almost certainly change if you start with brick or stone. There ain't really a way to mimic that - and I'm not sure we should try. Lean into the fact our buikdings are changing to adapt to new circumstances. It has always been so. Structures are extended, modified, uses change, windows are added and subtracted, uses change again etc. Many of our houses were never built with electrical wiring or central heating. A good few didn't have plumbing and some didn't even have indoor toilets. These new technologies were added as circumstance changed. The addition of ewi is just another chapter.

Interesting. This is the sort of thing that should happen. (the grant not the historical standing charges being higher)

Exactly, which makes a mockery of the whole idea of g100 certification. Maybe someone could bring out some sort of 2way breaker - 80/100a incoming (as per normal) but 16a outgoing (or whatever the dno says the limit is) that would provide an extra layer of protection.

I get limiting the export for the reasons laid out in the video, but the idea of limiting the inverter seems to rest on the theory that the export limit might fail and the inverter pump out whatever it's maximum at that moment is. But that seems to assume that the export limit system (a current meter and some software) would fail. Irrc my system just shuts down if the current clamp isn't working. Surely the whole point of g100 export limit certification is to make system the design and implementation is as foolproof as possible. Moreover, if the DNO is worried that you 8kw inverter could lead to severe problems if it were to pump the full 32a or whatever instead of the 16a limit into the local grid, that implies the local grid is running very very close to it's margin, less than 16a in fact, which could easily be gobbled up tomorrow by a neighbour notifying a g98 install. What I'm getting at is: has anyone actually heard of a dno limiting the inverter size for a regular hybrid inverter install with g100 limit certification?

Regional pricing is touted as a solution to this. It does seem a bit unfair though. But there really ought to be some reward/incentive for hosting the infrastructure. Maybe national pricing, as now, but some sort of rebate based on region. So Scottish bill payers would get £££ back for being a net exporter. The idea could be extended down to even smaller areas, so the posrcodes near a wind farm or solar Park or HV overhead line would see a rebate in their bills maybe via lower standing charges.

How did the clamps work out?

😁

argument to emotion Our insanely high energy prices are largely down to geopolitics and in particular our reliance on gas (which has got more expensive). The marginal auction mechanism is a well founded approach, but it may well have put lived it's usefulness and be less able to pass on thr benefits of renewables to consumers. What we replace it with (and I would like to see a good discussion on that) is a much harder question. Your core argument (as I understand it) is that the government shouldn't be witholding licences and should let the companies decide if it is profitable or not. Basically a very free market approach. But I would counter that the government has to put some regulation around licences, we can't obviously just let people drill and mine willy nilly. Things like environmental impact, health and safety, decommissioning etc all need to be regulated. So what is the functional difference between withholding a licence because the government considers drilling in an area might cause local nuisance and damage and withholding a licence because the government considers it will conflict with national and global priorities? There is a choice between renewables and oil and gas investment. There is a finite amount of money available for investors. Banks and funds might choose to lend to an oil outfit or maybe a wind farm. Usually that voice will be dictated by returns (and the interest rates charged likewise on risks). We know oil and gas can be spectacularly profitable, so that is where the capital will flow. If oil and gas isn't an option there will be more capital to flow to renewables. "cracking returns" is merely acknowledging that that the reason to allow more drilling is not To lower bilks To increace enrgy security To reduce carbon footprint The only reason to allow more drilking (to rephrase in a non emotional way) is for oil and gas firms to make larger profits.

Yes, that's the exact report this thread has been based on. The trade body spin is "extra 3.2b barrels" and "double production" and "meet half of demand" But that leaves out some important points from the same study they quote 3,200 million barrels sounds alot but the UK consumes 1.5million a day. So that is a little under 6 extra years of consumption. That 3.2b extra is the absolute wildly optimistic case that the study says is unrealistic vs the very lowest case, even lower than the official NSTA projections. If you take the more realistic by still optimistic valve vs the middle of the road official estimate the figure drops to less than 1.5bn Again, putting co2 aside and purely looking at energy security and stability, oil and gas is not the future and all the extra drilling we can do barely moves the needle. I don't disagree but I also don't really think we should be bothering to drill more. It does very little, it sends the wrong signals and the capital invested in it could be better invested in renewables. It is complex, I think some politicans have got their head round it. The ones that haven't (or won't) are the ones advocating for more drilling as a way to reduce bills and improve energy security. People get hung up on deindustrialisation but I'm not so sure it's as bad as people think. Manufacturing has generally been growing since WW2, albeit with reversals during things like the 90's crash, 2098 crash, covid etc. What has happened is it's become less visible (fewer giant factories with belching smokestacks - you can drive past a muti million dollar manufacturing facility and not be able to distinguish it from a warehouse now) and a smaller part of the economy as other sectors grow faster. Cheaper power would be a boon to manufacturing sure and renewables can provide that.

There was an analysis by "uplift" (which is pro renewables for full disclosure) that indicated all the licencing by the last government from 2010 to 2024 had yielded about 40 days more oil and gas than would otherwise have been extracted. Again the point being that it really doesn't help with energy prices or security.

Agree, though I think the logic was that A) almost everyone has electricity but not everyone has gas. B) at the time the grid was very co2 heavy and gas was cleaner. I looked into heatpumps back in the late 00's and iirc the grid was. Over 600g/co2 per kwh, so a 3:1 heatpump would be about 200g (assuming you could achive that with heatpumps then) which is about the same as a gas boiler. So there was almost no co2 saving and a very considerable extra install and running cost. Now the grid averages well below 200g, so you are actually greener (but poorer!) using a 3 bar fire than a gas boiler.

Why do you suppose that governments are not experts, or don't have access to experts? Governments should absolutely be able to say "no you can't do this even if it would make you money" Advertising cigarettes Selling personal data Crash safety and emissions for vehicles Minimum building standards Sugar in drinks All of these are profitable things companies have decided are practical and profitable and the government has stopped. The argument that allowing more drilling would lower bills and increace energy security is BS. The argument it may reduce CO2 vs burning imported gas is a red herring. We are left with "it will allow investors to make a cracking return" - which isn't super strong. They could invest the same money into renewables.

I'm not actually arguing against drilling new wells. The title of the thread was about why we needed net zero policies - because we were running out of gas and oil regardless of how much we drilled. I would say that, given how vital gas and oil are to the petrochemical industry eg plastics, maybe we shouldn't extract it just to be burned in a vain attempt to keep the old model going. Maybe we should either wait or extract it, but use it for industries that aren't burning it. This would require a different model from the current "here's your licence, do what you want with the oil" approach. It would require a much more integrated approach, which I doubt will be viable at the moment, but might be in decades to come. Overall, our best bet is to go even quicker on the switch away from burning oil and gas to move and heat things. That will reduce CO2 (again, not actually he original point of the thread) even faster than burning locally sourced oil.

Again, the whole point of the thread is that drilling for more O&G in UK territory doesn't actually add meaningfully to our supply. There simply isn't much left. The argument that it would replace the imported gas is partly true. There is a graph showing that Aby 2040 (or something) we could be importing over half our consumption via LNG(*) but of we drilled for more we could replace that with UK gas (the rest being Norwegian) What that leaves out though is A) that scenario is the most wildly optimistic oil and gas industry projection. It is likely we still would need imported LNG, just a tiny bit less. B) that demand in 2040 {or whenever) assumes we have massively reduced demand by implementing the current net zero policies (energy efficency plus electrification of transport and heating). So we could replace that imported LNG by drilling or by pushing net zero a bit harder to reduce demand for gas even more. The last bit (pushing net zero harder) also generates even more jobs in those industries. *the LNG import picture is a little nuanced. Yes we import a lot but if you look at our national consumption, the LNG is basically extra. That is to say the UK imports about as much LNG as it exports gas via pipeline. Effectively the UK is acting as Europe's LNG terminal (at the start of the Ukraine war, thr UK had the lions share of European LNG terminal capacity so lots of the extra LNG Europe imported to replwce Russian gas via pipeline cam via UK LNG imports that were gasified and exported via pipeline)

The idea of shifting the carbon tax up and down as the O&G moves effectively gives a fixed price for O&G So the uptake of renewables is driven at a constant rate as the fixed o&g price would always be higher than the "floating" price, assuming that the tax rate will never go negative. Which is great but that is just as much tinkering with the supply side as just not granting any licences.