The UK energy policy debate seems to reaching some sort of political break point. The Labour government is continuing to push net zero, but the right of centre view is that it, and renewables, are undermining the UK economy by pushing up energy costs. And, instead, coal, gas & nuclear are favoured, as in a new report from Tory-leaning think tank Onward, backed by shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho . But there were bitter green responses. And the Onward report was challenged by Carbon Brief - gas won’t be cheap. Neither will new nuclear. However, Labour also has another, slightly separate, problem. It is under pressure from industry and some unions to support more gas drilling, even though few see new drilling as very helpful economically, and some say it could be disastrous in climate terms. Or would it? Some say not, if carbon capture and storage (CCS) was backed as a compensatory measures . But CCS is still unproven at scale an...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is booming, but it’s still not clear what its net impacts will be in energy/carbon terms- views differ. However, it is clear that there is a growing drive to use it more and more- with big profits to be made by whoever powers the growth. Not surprising then that all the usual suspects have turned up for a share in the proceeds – most obviously power plants powered by fossil gas, but also nuclear and renewable energy. AI data centres are not exactly popular, since, ideally, they need to be near centres of population, where data processing demand is large. Although AC power can transmitted over long distances (a few hundred miles) without too much energy loss, digital data info is more sensitive - there are latency (delay) effects over long distance. And rather than the use local mains grid power, it’s common for AI centres to set up their own local dedicated power units. Such is the scale of the AI boom that all ...