2 May 2025

Spain and Portugal achieve Net Zero (power)

The headlines

UK

• Kremlin watching

• SNP opposes zonal pricing

• Disunity on the left

• Exeunt stage left

• Bills to rise still further

International

• Dark fruits of decarbonisation

• GISS gallop off

Etcetera

From the blog

• Net Zero Watch warns of growing GB grid instability

• Green NGOs feel the heat

UK

Kremlin watching

Tony Blair said that UK energy policy was irrational and hysterical. Greens were outraged. Others wondered what his purpose was. To put himself on the right side of history? To give Keir Starmer room to change policy? Nobody could possibly know.

Blair’s intervention was welcomed by Environment Secretary Steve Reed, who described it as ‘valid’ and ‘important’, but there was something of a backlash, and hints of the Tony Blair Institute walking back from the subsequent controversy.

SNP opposes zonal pricing

Shortly after appearing to support zonal pricing on the grid, SNP bigwig Kate Forbes spoke out against it. Renewables operators are concerned it would dent their profitability.

Disunity on the left

Trades unions are becoming ever more vocal in their objections to green policy. Unite slammed the Government’s failure to ensure that a key production facility remains operational, while the GMB called Ed Miliband’s GB Energy wheeze ‘a betrayal’.

Exeunt stage left

The Grangemouth oil refinery ceased operation, as did a major pottery firm in the Midlands and a subsea survey company based in Aberdeen. All are victims of the irrationality of the UK’s political classes.

Bills to rise still further

Ofgem announced that electricity bills will have to rise yet again, this time to pay for necessary upgrades to the distribution grid for the Net Zero project. This is an issue that we have been pushing for some years.

International

Dark fruits of decarbonisation

Most of the Iberian peninsula and parts of southern France experienced a total grid blackout. More than 50 million people were affected. There were a number of deaths, mainly due to the failure of home medical devices.

The blackout’s instantaneous propagation to such a wide area is now widely accepted to be due to inadequate grid inertia, as a result of over-dependence on solar power. Grid inertia is an inherent property of fossil fuels, but not of renewables. The source of the initial fault is less clear, but there are suggestions that it was a solar farm tripping off the grid.

Grid stability is an issue that GWPF and Net Zero Watch have been flagging for many years.

Hilariously, the Science Media Centre spoke to no fewer than seven ‘experts’ about the blackouts. Only one mentioned inertia.

GISS gallop off

The Trump administration cancelled the lease for the notorious NASA GISS climate lab in New York.

Etcetera…

It was a very busy media week.

• On Thursday, Andrew was on Talk with Ian Collins discussing Iberian power cuts, and on GB News with Nana Akua discussing Tony Blair’s interventions.

• GWPF’s Harry Wilkinson discussed the same subject on Talk.

• On Thursday, it was the breakfast show on Talk TV, discussing Net Zero divisions in the Labour Party.

• On Friday, it was NTD TV, discussing V2G as way to deal with power shortages.

On of our statutory directors, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, was elected as mayor of Greater Lincolnshire. Another, Lord Frost, said in his Telegraph column that the glory days of Net Zero are over. Let’s hope he’s right.

Our former energy editor Dr John Constable discussed renewables subsidies on GB News.

From the blog

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