Ben Wray from Scottish think tank Common Weal has the best summary on Johnson's infrastructure plans that I have read today. As he puts it:
The big infrastructure project that Scotland and the UK needs right now is not high-speed trains to London, or bridges to Ireland. It's ripping out every gas boiler in the country and sticking in district heating schemes in its place. It's making cities car-free by establishing high-quality and if possible free public transport systems and active travel routes. Decarbonisation within a decade is the infrastructure project of our lifetime - but don't expect Johnson to get that.
Ben is right.
Johnson has got it wrong, which is a phrase we will have to get very used to.
And we will all pay the price for this mistake.
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And there’s me thinking the whole bridge announcement was to steal column inches away from Gove’s announcement…
Politicians like big infrastructure projects. It’s part and parcel of the mindset. All fur coat and no knickers. 🙁
Andy: sorry to spoil the story … but the Irish Sea crossing will be done, and the better public transport – it’s a matter of when. And all of this, the passif haus, the roof over everybody’s head, the creation of new jobs – all has to be worked out in terms of the urgency, the real need and the economy, and I submit must be thought through with ALL stakeholders in a Scotland National Master Plan. We have too many “ cannae
dae that” and “we hae t’hae this” without looking at the big picture. This is like the (Holyrood) politicians arguing for a railway here, a hospital there and saving a shipyard yonder without knowing or worrying about the context of such investments, investments which by definition take many decades to bring to fruition. We now have to sit down and prepare 25 and 50 Year Plans which will give direction, budget accuracy and economies from implementation on tome.
Shot gun development we know costs billions, encourages delays and the people get the hurt.
50-year plans
Even Stalin didn’t go that far
Girdon Benton says:
“Andy: sorry to spoil the story … but the Irish Sea crossing will be done”
Aye mebbe. By the Scottish government in order to join up the EU ?
If Boris does it he’ll want to plant dahlias on the central reservation….. 🙂
Is no-one concerned about Beaufort’s Dyke..?
1M tonnes of obsolete munitions including:
14,500 tons of artillery rockets filled with phosgene gas
PLUS
Two tons of concrete encased drums filled with radioactive waste…!
That’s more than a fireworks display…. !
They’re going to float right over it….
The dangers presented by the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery did not stop him banging on about his estuary airport. (Yet another white elephant to go with the Dangleway and the Garden Bridge),
“Only” £15 billion or £20 billion for a S-NI bridge looks cheap compared to HS2. I’d like to see a fully worked up proposal. The engineering challenges are formidable and it could easily end up being several times that.
I would agree with this – apart from ripping out gas boilers. I understand the logic, but there would be a huge backlash when this goes horribly wrong. District heating schemes should be much more efficient – but it seems that many have not worked out very well. Costs have been very much higher for residents and with much less control.
I would support well considered projects where residents are given cost guarantees – perhaps as a %age of current gas usage at whatever rate it becomes.
In the meantime, some serious education about how homes function and respond to differing uses e.g. many are afraid to open their windows because the house is already cold, not understanding the need to remove/reduce moisture internally so that you can happily live in a room with a lower temperature.
Also, recent research indicates that those people who get out into nature are more willing to engage in e.g. recycling and caring for environmental issues.
I disagree
There is no way around boiler replacement
It has to be done
Hmm, hydrogen boilers could be an alternative.
A friend of mine who is a plumber recently mentioned a training day he attended which demonstrated installation and operation of a hydrogen boiler. Pretty cool stuff really and the only hydrogen combustion by-product is water :).
I guess the storage and transmission of hydrogen could be viewed as an issue, but really is not much more dangerous than the currently used natural gas (albeit a little bit more leaky). Is it Mike Parr who often advocates here for conversion of gas to hydrogen? It sounds like a good idea to me, but I’m not sure of the details regarding hydrogen-tightness of the existing networks.
And excess wind power – and yes it can exist – can be used to create hydrogen
All buildings need to be built to passive house standards and they may not need a boiler.
Here is a company that builds to passive house standards and they are based in Norfolk:
http://www.beattiepassive.com/
They can even retrofit properties to a near passive house standard too.
Probably better than a district heating system
Retrofitting e.g. ASHP (air source heat pumps) which is the most likely ‘solution’ has to be done very carefully – good study here: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/enterprise/calebre/project-calebre-summary.pdf They had to do a lot of work and monitoring to get it right.
Those that have had oversight of their own installations have had real success implementing the new systems mainly because of their interest and ‘buy in’ to what was being done.
Those who have simply bought from the salesman seem to have some pretty poor outcomes.
My point is that although we must move away from fossil fuel systems, the way we do it is important. Part of that is the education process (installers and residents) and well considered home improvements both of which can yield benefits quite quickly in reduced fuel consumption.
To get a useful large scale roll out, you need to keep joe public on board – push the boiler replacement idea too quickly and we will waste a lot of: goodwill, money and time.
Massive expansion of offshore wind capacity, with surpluses used to make hydrogen, is the big infrastructure project Johnson should be considering. The hydrogen could be used as a fuel for trains and ships, and to convert back to electricity when wind and solar output is low, AND for central heating.
This would require new gas boilers to be hydrogen ready, and the gas network to be updated – not a big ask compared to the conversion from town gas to natural gas back in the 1960s.
Chris Goodall’s latest book, What we need to do now for a carbon-free future, is good on this. Whether this Government is capable of the joined-up thinking that would be required to link investment in wind energy, electrolysis, transport, and gas supply is another matter.
@ Richard
Yes, absolutely. Hydrogen seems to me to be the obvious chemical storage option, alongside batteries. Explosion risks aside, there’s not much to dislike.
@ Prentii
I think we’re singing from the same hymnsheet :). An advantage of hydrogen is that it is a direct substitution for gas and, as such, should be easily sold to the general public.
Richard Murphy says:
“There is no way around boiler replacement”
Hmmm…. that does rather depend on the hydrogen alternative and that probably depends in turn on whether the natural gas network is fit to carry it. I gather there are technical doubts about that. Mike Parr will have a reasonable idea, I suspect whether there’s a realistic prospect of generating enough Hydrogen in the foreseeable future. Some of the energy investment prophets are getting very excited about it.
I sigh as I see gas installations going into the all electric council/housing association flats around me. Quite a lot of them over the past two years.
Yes, hydrogen gas is being looked into as an alternative – a guy on the radio said the research had already been done into using hydrogen, that it can be used for heating & it just needed to be tested – production, distribution, use of existing networks and equipment etc. I know of a few current projects around Scotland that are doing just that, testing the practicalities (I can’t share because I know it through the company I work for, and I don’t know if it’s public knowledge), and I’m sure other companies are doing the same. I’ll see if there is anything in the public domain on it, but it would be huge if we were able to use the existing gas networks with just minor upgrades – and maybe extend it to rural areas (they often use ‘oil’ heating) – and this line of enquiry seems to be moving on fast. I’m not throwing out any boilers any time soon!
I don’t think Johnson even means it, Richard.
He doesn’t mean anything.
He doesn’t believe in anything, except what is best for him.
He licks his finger and sticks it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, and churns out the appropriate rhetoric.
I think you’re taking him too seriously?
It isn’t about a bridge or HS2 or whatever, its about Johnson.
He’ll say anything, literally anything, to get what he wants.
There’s a suggestion that this is a Johnson get-out to enable him to cease any support for Heathrow 3rd runway…. Not that he has been any support so far… Wasn’t he going to lie in front of a bulldozer..?
Mr Johnson’s plans are formulated mwith one idea in mind: to ensure that in a hundred years time, his name will be rembered in history books along with Churchill, Lloyd George, Disraeli, Gladstone, Peel and Pitt. as one of the “Truly Great Prime Ministers”. Blair, Cameron, May, Wilson, MacMillan, even Thatcher and Attlee, will (he believes) be as forgotten as all the other “minor” PMs that the great bulk of the people would have a job naming – Baldwin, Grey, Chatham, Salisbury, Campbell-Bannerman. Great Leaders – the truly great leaders (I am being ironic) leave behind them monuments to their greatness, reminders to future generations of the magnificence, the energy, the genius, the utter omnipotence, of themselves. So Herod built the Temple of Jerusalem. Ceasescu built his vast structure. Nero his golden palace, and Kublai Khandecreed his stately pleasure dome, Cyrus Persepolis, Hitler the (never completed) vast urban magnificence of Berlin the capital of the Thousand Year Reich. And Mr Johnson plans the Bridge, what in future centuries will surely be named the Boris Johnson Bridge It is to stand, a vast and imposing structure, a monument to his greatness, and perhaps on its pedestal, these words shall appear: “My name is Boris, King of Kings. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (Aplogies to Shelley). He is driven to build this by his own gross ego, and is prepared to spaff £20 billion (to start with – it will escalate) on a bridge in the far remote south west of Scotland across a oft raging sea and an ammunition riddled seabed with supporting piers standing on the seabed the height of the Eifel Tower. He must continue with HS2 because how could he cancel that on the grounds of excessive cost yet at the same time urge the spaffing of billions on a monument to himself? So he will have this great monument built for future generations to wonder at and worship the name of BOJO, and they in turn will, looking at this folly, perhaps remember Ozymandias:
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
I’ve a feeling the bridge is never going to happen: Sturgeon may well be right in saying it’s a diversionary tactic to take the heat off bad news, like the messages about customs checks at borders for goods of all types (coupled with potential tariffs on top) which can only result in reduced export volumes and increased prices on imports. As Richard notes elsewhere today, they simultaneously protect the City by seeking equivalence with Europe for services. However if the bridge ever does get built, far from admirers reciting Shelley’s resounding words, they’re more likely to ponder the folly of spending many billions on a Union-saving project to link two countries who, in time, are likely to leave the Union.
Agreed
I’ve no objection to exploring the idea of better communication with Ireland. But I have a little list of things I want done first:
– land reform
– 180,000 new houses
– universal income
– improved infrastructure – especially in rural areas
– better schools, hospitals, police stations, ambulance equipment, etc
– more jobs
Then we can talk bridges between Scotland Ireland across a dangerous stretch of water.
Jean Nisbet
Combine and refine basic income to work alongside Job Guarantee and I’ll vote for you. 🙂
That’s a sensible list.
Perhaps we’ll have time for a rubber of bridge when we’ve done that. 🙂
Current wind farms being proposed and built onshore are including hydrogen and storage.
But, communities are being short changed in regard to benefit, as operators are all walking back from giving any financial incentives to those being disadvantaged by claiming less financial rewards/profits!
If this direction of travel continues communities will become alienated and understandibly reticent to agree to more turbines.
mogabee says:
“Current wind farms being proposed …..
….. communities will become alienated and understandably reticent to agree to more turbines.”
Having been brought up in a landscape of mining spoil heaps, with coal wagons hurtling along the road past the house driven by maniacs trying to get an extra run into a day, and then for decades in the crazy economy of a nuclear reprocessing plant, ……..and all my life anywhere I’ve lived in a landscape littered with miles of electricity pylons I’m afraid I have no sympathy whatsoever for for nimbies with a precious, selfish demand not to be inconvenienced by the sight of a wind turbine. My heart bleeds for them.
I like wind turbines
I think they’re attractive and meditative