Is Britain destined for Net Zero power cuts..?

Miliband is on a mission and no one is stopping him.

With news that supermarkets are discontinuing plastic lids for humous, encouraging customers to save the planet by eating tubs in one sitting rather than allowing the contents to discolour in a fridge, you might have missed Ed Miliband’s recent speech about his unabated appetite for the UK’s pursuit of needless Net Zero while the rest of the world ploughs into industrialisation and energy independence with the abandon of a free buffet.

While old humous lids might be fetching unlikely prices on eBay, Miliband told a Labour conference of people who appear to have never done a day’s labour in their lives that: “We can only keep future generations safe if we show global climate leadership, using the power of our example at home to demand that others act too.” It’s unclear when national governments became more interested in setting a global examples than securing dependable energy for their own country, but it’s happened. A glance at this graph reveals how kindly other countries take to Mr ‘I can’t eat a bacon sandwich’ Miliband demanding them to do things.

In the crusade to knee-cap the West, I mean get the ‘first G7 nation to achieve its Net Zero’ badge, Miliband is saying that if we turn our lights off then everyone else in the street will follow this ‘power’ of example, rather than laughing at the sound of people bumping into walls and their own nauseating self-virtue. Any man who has worn cowboy boots with shorts will understand how ineffective the power of example can be. Labour are a party of middle managers telling others how to do things without anyone knowing what qualifications they have to do so. In this case it’s net zero.

That said, as shadow Energy Secretary in 2015, Miliband has some previous as a politician alarmingly true to his word, so it’s it not like we weren't warned about his commitment to Net Zero. The problem is that it’s a pursuit, like collecting Pokemon, that no one questions. The propaganda promoting low emissions is everywhere, in DEI courses, in Coldplay concerts and even with carbon neutral removal companies, presumably with removal men holding their co2 emitting breath as they scoff at how many flower vases it is necessary to own.

In 2015, Miliband announced that “the era of new unabated coal has come to an end” and that all UK coal power stations would close by 2024. It reads better than announcing by 2024 the UK will have stripped its industry of cheap energy and will therefore be unable to compete against China with its 3, 092 coal power stations enabling affordable and competitive power. Labour is a big supporter of green jobs, but neglected to mention they will mostly be overseas other than a few men collecting dead birds from the sea below wind turbines. It’s quite a turnaround from a party still vilifying Margaret Thatcher for closing coal mines, despite her previous Labour administrations starting the process in the early days of globalisation and cheaper coal.

In fact Net Zero is amounting to zero jobs. In response to the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery Miliband said ‘it is deeply disappointing’, as though someone other than him has banned North Sea drilling, meanwhile with the closure of Port Talbot the UK is no longer self-sufficient in steel production, with Germany and China making steel on our behalf using, as is required in smelting, coal. And presumably importing steel from China is far more environmentally friendly than from Wales. Miliband’s oxymoronic department for Energy Security and Net Zero is akin to a policy supporting bath manufacturers and conservation of water while banning the use of plugs. We now have the highest industrial energy costs in the developed world, with reliance on electricity at an all time high. We also have the highest domestic energy costs in Europe thanks in part to an 8% green levy as part of climate change programmes, plus VAT, so we’re winning at that too.

The UK’s last coal power station Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire closed this week, leaving 2 million homes now added to the workload of undependable renewables. The UK is gunning to be the first G7 country to remove fossil fuels from its electricity production by 2030 - which remains replacing the 40% of energy produced by 50 gas-fired power stations, mainly supplied by offshore fields in the North Seas. However, thanks to Miliband, the amount of gas produced by these fields is declining with supplies supplemented through interconnectors from European sources - this imported electricity powers 11 million homes and recently amounted to 13 per cent of our electricity, so much for energy security - and liquefied gas imported by tankers. Apparently other countries are allowed to contribute to the demonised Co2, but not the UK.

EDF director Rachael Glaving has said that grid “stability” was at risk as power stations were shut to make way for renewables. “We will lose our strong foundation of baseload (electricity) generation, which helps support renewables, and which has made it possible to add so much wind and solar.” This is before news of a fire on giant solar farm in East Anglia raging out of control after a lithium-ion battery is believed to have failed, causing an explosion.

With fossil fuels removed, what are we relying upon? On a particularly windy day like 30th September, 39% of energy was produced from wind renewables paid for by green levies, 20% was still fossil fuels (gas) with barely 2.8% solar, despite the huge acreage of solar farms displacing actual farms. Nuclear is a steady and dependable 14%, although Miliband is considering scraping plans to build a large nuclear power station in Wales and the closure of five EDF nuclear plants are imminent. On dark, windless winter days that don’t produce any solar or wind power we’ll be importing gas produced electricity from the continent to compensate, that’s if they have some to spare. But at least Miliband is closer to his Net Zero badge.

Even energy companies are starting to let on that all is not quite well and asking for homes with priority energy needs to let them know, presumably parents with teenagers glued to laptops. The amount of electricity renewables produce varies depending on the weather and in winter demand is higher with longer nights. A German energy company executive said trying to generate solar energy in Northern Europe was like trying to grow pineapples in Alaska.

Zealot Miliband now wants to phase out gas by 2030 and with no opposition from a conservative party also so loyal to Net Zero that it’s hard not to see globalist agendas at play. And all this to reduce the UK’s contribution of 1% of global manmade CO2 emissions, of which 99.99874% is created naturally. Much like Covid the cure is worse than the disease, if indeed there even is a disease. The science is far from settled despite the mantra, that it is. It’s unclear what risks faced by future generations have been averted by the introduction of a disposable film rather than lids on humous, or indeed if we continue with Co2 emissions; after all, Co2 is the gas of life.

In his quest to destroy UK energy security and increase bills in his worship of the Net Zero is now considering scrapping the nuclear plant in Wales, while using crop-grade farmland for unreliable renewable solar panels in Lincolnshire. The only question that now remains is: Is this blind folly to destabilise UK energy deliberate or folly?