As France is threatening to cut energy supplies to Britain, Boris Johnson is warned that his renewable energy plans pose a severe and growing danger to national security and grid stability.
A short note published by the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) today highlights these serious dangers to national security resulting from the Prime Ministers’ blinkered commitment to still more wind farms that rely heavily on backup power from interconnectors with Europe.
The Prime Minister will today give his conference keynote speech, the contents of which have been widely anticipated in a series of interviews with the press.
Mr. Johnson is expected to repeat his pledge that “we can get to complete clean energy production by 2035,” and his claim that “this Government is going to fix [the energy crisis] for the long-term by making investments in renewable power that we can rely on in this country.”
The unreliability of weather-dependent renewables is, of course, a byword, but the dangers of over-reliance on these technologies have been put into the spotlight by recent events in Ireland.
On the 9th of September, low wind power in the Republic of Ireland took the Irish system to the brink of blackouts, which were only prevented by the provision of emergency power over the East-West interconnector from the UK at a huge cost.
This is the reality of interconnection. The UK was fortunate in this instance to be on the right side of the problem; in the future, when it is deeply dependent on supplies from the European network, it may not be so lucky.
As the latest threat by the French government demonstrates, the risk of political leverage and blackmail is real and should be a major concern.
Dr. John Constable, GWPF’s energy editor, said:
“The extraordinary naivety of the Prime Minister’s plans for still more renewables by 2035 confirms growing fears that his weak grasp of the economic and technical aspects of energy now presents a risk to national security.”
For more details see: Boris Johnson’s renewables fantasies are a national security problem
Just what has Johnson been puffing on these days from his Hookah?
Britain is a leader in using renewable energy and must import power from France. In the United States California is a leader in using renewable energy and imports 30% of its power from neighboring states. There is definitely a lesson here, but climate activists will ignore it.
You are right David, especially regarding California where they have closed nuclear power plants. It seems to me that the only way the activists will learn that they are wrong about fossil fuels and nuclear power generation is when many lives are lost due to blackouts. That day is coming in some countries and this winter in Europe and North America could be the start of many rolling power shortage disasters.
Energy independance shoud be a central plank of any government’s policy. Relying on others for such an essntial part of modern living is lunacy.
Bring on THORIUM reactors and Rolls Royce mini-reactors!
Johnson is as efective as trying to put out a Bonfire with thimble full of water