Why we need "Net zero"

[Beelbeebub]

11 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

One basic question I have at the moment is why are we in the UK trying to drive this at the expense of our economy and national security when China and the US are contributing to most of the emissions. 

The question then becomes "do the policies of electrfying hearing and transport whilst increacing renewable production negatively affect the UK economy and security?" 

 

It boils down to do we think uk renewable power is going to be cheaper and more reliable than importing oil and gas from the world market?

 

I think, and studies on the overall cost per Mwh of the various technologies bear this out, that renewable power is cheaper and is much harder to disrupt. 

 

Bear in mind the cost to the economy of transitioning to the NZ position is less than the cost of one oil/gas shock like either of the two we have already had this decade. 

[Beelbeebub]

12 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

Now to fund this we need to get rid of this woke fad. We need in my view to start drilling, exploring and selling our good sweet oil, to fund UK renewables. 

 

To make a point. The UK has never been bombed since the second world war. I was born in the 60's, my mum who is 95 remembers getting evacuated. We have been very lucky in the UK to have avoided that to date... so far. It's going to come as a major shock to the woke if Putin cuts our undersea internet cables!

Can you explain what exactly "woke" is? It seems to be thrown around alot as an insult. 

[-rick-]

14 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

One basic question I have at the moment is why are we in the UK trying to drive this at the expense of our economy and national security when China and the US are contributing to most of the emissions.

 

Two points:

1. The basis of this thread was that if you ignore emissions, it is still a national security priority to get off fossil fuels as we don't have enough and we can easily generate enough power using renewables if we just built them.* I tend to agree that the way that we have implemented the drive to renewables has done some damage which could have been avoided if the programs had been structured differently, but that's a different argument.

2. Emissions are cumulative, so even if our emissions are low now, we are one of the highest emissions countries in history because the industrial revolution came to us first and for a lot of that time we were responsible for a very large percent of the worlds emissions. You may say it's woke to consider history when considering energy. I think of it as taking responsibility for our actions and trying to lead by example.

 

* The argument that China controls a lot of the supply chains for renewables has weight. But so long as we are installing solutions that work without a live connection to China then if anything happened with the supply chain the installed base keeps going for at least a decade. Compared to fossil fuels which if the imports stop of those we are utterly screwed within a matter of weeks renewables wins.

Edited Saturday at 11:01 by -rick-

[SimonD]

3 hours ago, Beelbeebub said:

Can you explain what exactly "woke" is? It seems to be thrown around alot as an insult. 

I'm sitting back waiting for the explanation. I was tempted to ask what "being 'awake' which turned into slang 'woke' to social justice, more specifically racism and discrimination" has got to do with policy decisions regarding renewables and fossil fuel extraction by the UK government, but you beat me to it.

[saveasteading]

16 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

need to get rid of this woke fad. We need in my view to start drilling, exploring and selling our good sweet oil, to fund UK renewables. 

What have you been reading?

Woke is the go-to term for trump and co for whom it means ' not extreme right wing'. I am therefore woke to them.

 

UK oil would be extracted if it made economic sense. Anyway, It isn't any use for fuel but would be sent across the ocean to make chemicals. 

Certain parties either don't understand this or choose not to acknowledge it.

[SteamyTea]

2 hours ago, SimonD said:

I'm sitting back waiting for the explanation.

Try these two.

 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001jc1l

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001vldk

 

 

[Beelbeebub]

Let's just pretend we are all die hard fossil fuel enthusiasts and are not gkig to have anything to do with renewable generation. 

 

Even then, bring gas in a power station, sending it down the network and using a badly installed heatpump at the other end uses 25% less gas than burning it in a gas boiler on site. 

 

So out limited gas reserves will go further. 

 

But heat pumps are "woke" (but not fridges obviously, they are very traditional and manly because you can store raw meat and beer in them) so real men can't use them. 

[SimonD]

22 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Try these two.

 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001jc1l

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001vldk

 

 

 

Thanks! It's good someone is looking into it and making good content about it. In case it was missed, my comment was sarcastic as my second sentence was a nod to its origin, but like all these things the term has a messy history. It isn't just that it's been hijacked for certain political ends, but even in the origins of social justice, it's been hijacked by some schools to frame others as less worthy etc. etc. so in many ways it has ended up as a word that is so much more meaningless than it started. 

[saveasteading]

16 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

not fridges obviously, they are very traditional and manly

Made me laugh.

What if it is low alcohol Peroni or vegan?

[JohnMo]

19 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

What if it is low alcohol Peroni

Have tried it not ice cold - yucky 

[sgt_woulds]

On 15/05/2026 at 21:42, Gus Potter said:

It's going to come as a major shock to the woke if Putin cuts our undersea internet cables!

 

Personally, I think that would be a godsend 🙂

 

 

[-rick-]

1 hour ago, sgt_woulds said:

Personally, I think that would be a godsend 🙂

 

I doubt cutting internet cables would be a big enough shock (there are too many). But a week without working internet would likely do most people some good. (Any more and logistics start to break in really bad ways)

[Gus Potter]

On 16/05/2026 at 10:08, Beelbeebub said:

Can you explain what exactly "woke" is? It seems to be thrown around alot as an insult. 

I grew up in Africa, travelled widely in the middle east, probably long before you were born. Of course it's not a compliment!

 

Grow up and read more widely. If you do it will add weight to comments you make.

Edited 15 hours ago by Gus Potter

[Beelbeebub]

7 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

I grew up in Africa, travelled widely in the middle east, probably long before you were born. Of course it's not a compliment!

 

Grow up and read more widely. If you do it will add weight to comments you make.

So, No, you can't define it then? 

 

Here is the official definition 

 

"to be aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)" 

 

So throwing "oh look at you - so aware of important facts and issues" as as insult says more about the mindset of the insulter than the insulted.

 

But more importantly to this thread - it has absolutely bugger all to do with net zero policies except as part of the wider right-wing culture war. 

 

On 15/05/2026 at 21:42, Gus Potter said:

Now to fund this we need to get rid of this woke fad. We need in my view to start drilling, exploring and selling our good sweet oil, to fund UK renewables

I'm all fornsunding renewables. But here are some "important facts and issues" 

 

The annual tax receipts from north sea production are about £5bn and as we have established production (and hence tax revenue) *will* fall. So the effect of drilling for that "good sweet oil" will be marginal. Revenue might be (at best) 1/4 rather than 1/4 of that in a decade. So say £1.5bn difference. 

 

That's chicken feed at this scale. 

 

We have also established that increacing out NSea output would not have made any difference in the current crisis. Our volumes are too small to affect world price. 

 

But the cost of staying on oil rather than electrifying our cars (for example). 

 

In April it was estimated uk motorists paid £2bn more for fuel. 

 

It would be better to pay for the renewables from the potential £2bn a month saved than the £1.5bn a year raised. 

 

So the "woke" NZ policy of transport electrification that seems to so enrage certain political segments well beyond any rational arguments would be saving motorists billions a year as well improving air quality.

 

 

[LnP]

@Beelbeebub your points are all well made and I agree that criticising an energy policy as "woke" is unhelpful. It seems to me though that politicians are making energy policies based on culture rather than market forces driven by science and economics. I guess that's just democracy.

 

I think we all agree that we are going to continue to need fossils as we make the energy transition, the question is where should the fossils come from. The current UK administration has decided that they are going to prevent them coming from the UKCS by restricting new licences. That's a cultural decision responding to expectations of parts of the electorate who  haven't been presented with an alternative way of dealing with the climate change aspects.

 

An alternative approach would be to manage the transition by reducing fossil consumption using carbon taxes, including a carbon border adjustment mechanism, rather than constraining supply by not issuing licences. We should grant licences with fixed prices for fossils (like renewables CfDs) which are required to be landed in the UK. That would avoid our exposure to geopolitical upheavals, albeit on an admittedly possibly small contribution. Regarding how much is there to be extracted, let the oil companies take the risk on that. Regarding how much of it has suitable quality (mainly sulphur content I think) to be refined in the UK, again let the oil companies take the risk. If the price and volume is right and with the certainty of the CfDs,  they will modify their refineries to handle it (install hydrotreaters).

 

This would allow market forces to help us through the transition in a way which possibly reduces the cost and even reduces climate impact by avoiding shipping fossils around the world.

 

Apologies that I'm to some extent repeating something I said before, but now with a different emphasis 🙂.