Westministenders: Canada Plus and the Transition Phase

[RedToothBrush]

As we approach the 31st January, we slowly tick towards exit and transition.

Things are not yet signed off though the No Deal planning has quietly been stood down with no press release and the government have said they won't talk about trade deals post 31st Jan because the public are bored of them and don't understand.

The new EU president has said that the UK doesn't have time to make a full deal with the EU before 31st December with a deadline which isn't flexible.

We still have no idea what the government plans are. We still have many EU citizens feeling very vulnerable.

Perhaps we should start talking about this rather than Royals for a couple of weeks...

Does the national grid have enough capacity from clean green energy to supply all the charging points required if there was a total switch to electric vehicles ? seems a bit topsy turvey to power electric cars using power from fossil fuel power stations ? Don't we import a lot of our electricity from Europe ? If they go all electric will they have spare to sell us ?
I am not against electric vehicles, I just feel that it is still very much an evolving technology.

Petrol (and diesel for that matter) cars are not going to disappear overnight.

Also, you can look at the carbon intensity of electricity supply here:

www.electricitymap.org/?page=map&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false

While some countries have natural advantages (Iceland ...) in most cases the carbon intensity of national electricity supply is a public policy choice, not one dictated by the availability of resources.

I’m enjoying the discussion on transport and climate and don’t mean to derail but this popped up on my Facebook and made me giggle.

Made me laugh too Ginger.

Thought it was odd when the PM said some people want Big Ben to bong. Was that the first nod to the fact that surveys consistently show that more people now don't want Brexit, than do?

Anyway - hey ho and on we go.

There’s a project announced today to install wireless charging points for electric taxis outside Nottingham Station. It looks very expensive! Are many taxis electric in Nottingham? Around here you sometimes get hybrids, but I’ve never been in a plug-in electric taxi.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-51140689

This was not possible while we were members of the EU

So many of our EU generated laws were ones with a nice few UK embellishments added on. Which then provided a nice, "The EU doesn't allow us to do this" excuse to be trotted out. Without having to enact EU laws in future, this opportunity for a nice lazy excuse is gone.

I look forward to seeing what they do with fishing and farming for starters.

Otherwise, I just feel more and more depressed about it all, when the real crises, like the state of the NHS is not getting attention.

Was that the first nod to the fact that surveys consistently show that more people now don't want Brexit, than do?

I keep telling myself that regimes collapse when enough people stop supporting them. Even in the most repressive states, the Dictator, or Supreme Emperor or however he styles himself can't enforce all the oppression personally, he has to have followers willing to do so.

Boris Johnson's main interest is staying in power so if he sensed the mood in the country had changed, he would change his tune.

How do we get that message across?

Thanks Misti. The article I saw was indeed talking about surplus wind power conversion etc etc.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, it was not I that mentioned ethanol. There's a lot of wooly thinking around energy where some people don't distinguish between energy sources, and energy carriers. Just changing carriers does fuck all to solve the problem of sourcing the energy. It makes fuck all difference what your buckets are made of; when the well is dry, there ain't gonna be more water.

Any ethanol I make is strictly for human consumption

So many of our EU generated laws were ones with a nice few UK embellishments added on. Which then provided a nice, "The EU doesn't allow us to do this" excuse to be trotted out. Without having to enact EU laws in future, this opportunity for a nice lazy excuse is gone.

It depends. I did like the mood music from the EU that we'd be held to those embellishments in future deals. Certainly provides an interesting optic for reportage since the public line was always Brexit was never about lowering UK standards ...

We need to make the most of our natural resources. Hasn’t anyone ever invented a way to make electricity from rain? I’m sure it would do very well in the North West

Just changing carriers does fuck all to solve the problem of sourcing the energy.

Except when it comes to energy storage. Being able to store renewable energy would be a game changer.

Hasn’t anyone ever invented a way to make electricity from rain? I’m sure it would do very well in the North West

I take it you mean directly, not rainfall captured in dams and then used for hydro-electric power.

Except when it comes to energy storage. Being able to store renewable energy would be a game changer.

(looks back on years of my MN postings - under various noms...)

If only someone had said !

Are many taxis electric in Nottingham?

You can't have electric vehicles without the infrastructure to support them. You need to put the horse before the carriage. The other way round doesn't work.

As for the U.K. and it's natural resources. It's an island nation (potential for offshore wind & wave power) with a climate largely dictated by its position in the North Atlantic (westerly fronts = lots of wind). Why is the U.K.'s total power generation from wind less than a third of Germany's? Public policy is the answer.

Letter has just plopped through the door telling me I have been naturalised French as of Dec 30th.

We need to make the most of our natural resources.

Do many people know about the geothermal project up in Newcastle ? (I will ignore the temptation to suggest that if they don't perhaps they're not quite as "up" on renewables as they'd like to think ...). Not quite suitable for expansion into a working model, but I'd rather spunk more money on projects like that then rows of little money (and fuck all else) generators on peoples roofs.

However, once again, we hit the weirdly English point of view that someone, somewhere has to get a juicy paycheque from it. If you want to shut down any avenue of research in the UK, just suggest that it could lead to providing something so cheap it's practically "free" and see how quickly it becomes "unviable".

It would be tempting to paint that as an American attitude, but I recall in the 80s when a lot of US telecoms carriers started providing unmetered (i.e. "free") calls locally. The horror amongst people in the UK - you'd think it was powered by burning fivers.

No, there is a weird insularity about the English which seems to struggle with the idea of "for all". It's what's killing the NHS. It's what's killing education. It's what's killing public transport, and - left unchecked - it's what will kill the human species.

As for the U.K. and it's natural resources. It's an island nation (potential for offshore wind & wave power) with a climate largely dictated by its position in the North Atlantic (westerly fronts = lots of wind). Why is the U.K.'s total power generation from wind less than a third of Germany's? Public policy is the answer.

Do we still have 300 years of coal ?

Storing renewable energy is indeed a technical problem in search of new solutions, but batteries are not the only way of doing this. You can "store" surplus electricity kinetically (hydropower), chemically (eg electrolysis of water) and even physically (storage heaters) as well as by using batteries.

If you have a variety of different renewables in your grid, and particularly if you have a regional grid to compensate for local weather variations, then it is possible to generate a high % of your needs from wind/sun/tidal/hydro.

Do we still have 300 years of coal ?

Not that anyone sane is going to invest in extracting, no.

The fact that a mineral resource exists does not say anything about whether it can be extracted economically now or in the future (esp not if governments force miners to pay some of the social and environmental costs associated with extracting minerals).

@AuldAlliance congratulations!

How do you feel about it? I remember being weirdly proud, and moved, when I picked up the kids' certificates of nationality. It helped that the process (a déclaration process done at the local court) was very rapid, very unbureaucratic and very respectful of applicants. I imagine it's not as easy to feel positive about the naturalisation procedure.

Currently the best way of storing renewable energy is the way nature has evolved to do it. Soak up sunshine and turn it into hydrocarbons. Ultimately 99% or whatever of energy is solar anyway.

If we could artificially leverage photosynthesis, we might be onto a winner too. Although I'm not quite sure how . I did start an experiment in the 1980s growing moss in the back windows of my car, but it didn't seem to add to the power ..

Hasn’t anyone ever invented a way to make electricity from rain? I’m sure it would do very well in the North West

How do you suppose the Lancashire cotton mills were powered in the 19th century?