Could It All Get Worse - The Coming Energy Crisis?

My own comment here is very short because the link to the article from The Oil Drum, “The Coming UK Energy Meltdown” is very long at 4375 words with diagrams.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8146

If you think our troubles are only the current media crisis, the Euro business and sundry bail outs and financial issues, this is not the half of it.

It is even more important than Premiership football or what Wayne did next.

Power From The People

Just how would we in the UK cope with the scale of power reductions and outages that are occurring in Japan at the present time? My view is not very well at all.

With a hat tip to Some Assembly Required of today linked in the item The Road this is a story from The Seattle Times illustrated the effects on the ground:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014616863_quakenergy28.htm

There has been a lot of informed comment recently, largely ignored by the main media about how close the UK is coming to the margins in the productive capacity relative to increasing demands.

Few of us have experienced large scale power problems that last many days or longer.

Could we be about to find out?

Where Has It All Gone?

Another day, another power cut, mercifully only three hours this one and at a time when it was not so much a problem.

Some hasty rearrangements had to be made but nothing critical. The high point when was I did a return to the past and shaved in cold water at the kitchen sink.

Long ago when this was routine, there was a radio show “Round The Horne” in which a country yokel had the catch phrase “The answer lies in the soil.”

At the moment some of the problems we face may be because of that but for the big question at present just take the “s” off the last word.

For a fuller serious discussion of this The Oil Drum has an item on the situation in four countries, Nigeria, Angola, Libya and the UK. Overall it comes to around 1700 words but the part dealing with the UK situation tells us what we are up against.

It is about half way through and describes it as being “riches to rags”.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7582#more

Perhaps I could be shaving in cold water at the sink a lot more often in the near future.

More On The Weather

Hurricane Otto is forecast today to veer in the direction of Spain and Portugal robbing of me my dream of boating on The Strand. There are other weather matters to think about in the meantime.

“Nobody thinks of winter when the grass is green” is a quote by Rudyard Kipling via the net. During the spells of warm weather at the present and with all the debates over other matters, some serious, not many people are thinking ahead.

But, one report in the newspapers is about councils issuing spades to house owners who in the event of snow or ice should clear their own streets and footpaths.

There has been a claim, not much noticed, that we could be in for a hard winter this year. This is from an independent weather organisation, our taxpayer’s Met Office having given up long term public forecasts because of the public’s unwillingness to accept complexity or variability in weather systems.

Personally, it is anybody’s guess as far as I am concerned just how good, bad, wet, windy, cold, mild, icy, foggy, it might be. What I am more concerned about is heating and power supplies if the temperature does drop down to give a period of chill and frost.

I am not talking about anything as bad as some of the winters I have seen in the past, just one with a longish and inconvenient cold spell perhaps with snow but at least with ice and frost around for a while..

Because the UK is importing a good deal of Natural Gas and consumption is exceeding our own production more and more year on year there is a growing deficit. The result is that last winter, it is said, warnings were given by suppliers to commercial users to curtail use to preserve domestic and other power supplies.

This tightness of supply was little reported and for some reason the government departments of energy and the environment did not register any public reactions.

In other words the UK is closer to the margins where either locally or generally the supplies may not be adequate enough to keep the power on. If there is a longer and/or harder spell of cold weather, and again I am not suggesting anything really severe, then we are talking about potential disruption that will be protracted and more damaging.

Power outages of this kind may have been one thing in an age when it was routine to carry larger stocks, especially in winter and when systems were far more localised, flexible and resilient. What could happen now in our highly interdependent, computer driven systems mostly on a just in time basis?

In the USA apparently some pessimist has been pointing out that in their major urban areas there are only five days supply of food in stock or immediate transit. They too like the UK have had a major deficit in energy policy and the renewal of supply sources and infrastructure.

My problem now is where to put all the sacks of potatoes.