There are moments when we need good news. The Guardian has one with this report this morning:
The world is on the brink of a breakthrough in the climate fight and fossil fuels are running out of road, the UN chief said on Tuesday, as he urged countries to funnel support into low-carbon energy.
More than nine in 10 renewable power projects globally are now cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. Solar power is about 41% cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternative, and onshore wind generation is less than half the price of fossil fuels, according to a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency.
They added:
Costs have been driven down by the increasingly widespread use of the technologies, a huge focus on low-carbon manufacturing in China, and burgeoning investment in the sector, reaching $2tn last year – which was $800bn more than went into fossil fuels, and an increase of 70% in the last decade.
And they noted:
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “We are on the cusp of a new era. Fossil fuels are running out of road. The sun is rising on a clean energy age.”
Why note this? I think that there are at least three good reasons to do so.
First, this makes clear that fossil fuel companies are going to be dead in the water. BP, Shell and others might all be turning their backs on renewables, and the stock market is getting very excited about them because they are, but that just shows:
- They are acting irrationally.
- They are not profit maximising.
- They are misallocating resources.
- Share values are being driven by far-right political dogma and not rational valuations
- That market is heading for a crash as a result.
- Stock markets are not the place to invest pension funds.
Second, our government, by backing away from most of its green commitments and instead focusing on the most expensive fuel generation option available to us in the form of nuclear power, is being recklessly irresponsible with regard to ur well-being and our future, again for entirely dogmatic reasons that will cost us nothing less than a small fortune.
Third, Reform's policy of abandoning net-zero makes no sense at all when net-zero is now the only rational course of economic action to pursue. I hope they pay a heavy price for their folly.
In 2008, when I co-founded the Green New Deal Group, all of this seemed like a pipe dream. Now it is reality. We now need to do three things as a result.
One is to celebrate that we have reached this point.
The second is to act on the fact that we have, and abandon the wasteful investment in fossil fuels and nuclear power that is still taking place.
The third is to reject politicians who do not accept this reality, from Trump to Starmer and onwards.
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Signing up to Sizewell C is not only insane- another ever growing black hole of a budget which we are obliged to start funding with an extra £1 on our energy bills starting now, but they are also trying to keep us in the dark about the true cost and environmental impacts. https://jonathonporritt.com/sizewell-c-flood-risk-and-edf-silence/
Meanwhile Ed Miliband has snuck out a statement saying Sizewell C will now cost 38 billion and all UK citizens will pay through energy bills including Scotland whom will not see any of the energy.
Yet again more cack-handery from LINO
It is important not to be mislead by overly optimistic press releases.
In June the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy[1] was released and they were similarly keen to highlight the positives:
“Since 2010 the world has avoided using 1,371 exajoules of fossil fuels and emitting 110 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions through renewables and nuclear”
And in the report we can see that solar and wind consumption is up by 16% from 14.4 to 16.8 exajoules globally. Great.
But what it also shows is an *increase* in fossil fuel usage from 505.1 to 512.7 exajoules globally. The “Green Transition” is a scam.
Chris Smaje has an excellent article on this here:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2025-07-22/go-solar-go-vegan-and-still-collapse-beyond-the-global-environmental-problems-framework/
Techno-fixes and tinkering around the edges will not solve the polycrisis. We need to fundamentally change our way of life.
[1] https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
We need to reduce energy use without a doubt, but your negativity really does not help.
As I understand it, the empirical evidence is that new energy sources rarely replace the old ones straight away. Think wood to coal to gas to electricity. Rather they supplement, at least in the first instance. And then economics of cost might drive the older more expensive less efficient alternatives out of use, particularly when then need repair or replacement. Few people heating homes or running industrial or commercial processes in the UK now are using wood or coal as three primary energy source.
This runs up against Jevons paradox, that making a process more efficient to use less resources does not necessarily reduce demand for the resource. Rather, as the cost of using the resource deceases, demand can increase, if demand is price elastic (say, reducing price by 1% increased demand by 2%). To put it another way, increasingly more people can use it more often because each use is less expensive. That is the theory at least. And in this case I think demonstrated in the empirical evidence.
You would think after the massive cost and time overuns with the still not finished HinckleyC nuclear plant that they would have second thoughts on the crazy Sizewell C. Don’t mention rising sea levels or the impossibility of dealing with the ever increasing radioactive waste.
You seem to base your argument on price, and thus support renewables above fossil fuels. Excellent. I agree with you.
You also state that nuclear is the most expensive, and must therefore be discounted. Nuclear is expensive, but it shouldn’t be discounted.
This is fine from an economic standpoint, but unfortunately does not stand up in terms of the functionality required of a power grid for a country.
A country’s infrastructure requires 24/7 supply with the availability to cater for surges in need. CURRENTLY, such a system can not EASILY be provided by renewables alone.
In the future, it may be possible to provide backbone grid support from such things as tidal power or static hydro batteries, but currently there is only 1 tidal experiment in Scotland powering a few houses, and a hill somewhere which has been hollowed out to pump water up and down it. But using today’s technology, only nuclear really fits the bill.
Thus, you should not look at this problem from the economic standpoint alone, but consider the functional requirements as well.
I understand, from infrastructure experts that understand such things, that a modern, renewables based power grid requires about a 20% capacity of instant-on, surge or background capability. In today’s technology, this is best provided by nuclear.
Please answer me the question that I asked my father in 1971 when he was responsible for designing the powerlines out of Sizewell A, and which will in future carry the power from Sizewell C, and which he was never able to answer before he died, and which no one has ever answered, whoch is what will you do with the waste? Until you know the answer to that question then you are a threat to humanity by proposing nuclear power. That’s my simple straightforward point, and you cannot deny that it is true. As a consequence, nothing you say makes any sense whatsoever.
“what will you do with the waste? ”
Perhaps we should ask the French and Swiss? They’ve had nuclear power for decades. In France . Around 96% of the spent fuel is recycled into new fuel (MOX – Mixed Oxide Fuel) at the La Hague plant. Around 4% is vitrified and France is developing a deep geological repository (Cigéo project in Bure) for permanent disposal.
Switzerland is similar. A deep geological repository (Nördlich Lägern), set to open in the 2050s.
France and Switzerland seem sure this is a long-term workable solution. What is your expertise in the nuclear industry that you have come to a different conclusion?
Tell me why we have never found a way to manage waste then?
Precisely, please.
Let’s face it, in this disposable world of ours, no one wants to acknowledge nuclear waste at all, it is nuclear energy’s blind spot and always will be. How can the cost of managing the waste not be factored into its production and affect the price of what it generates?
Oh here’s how – get the private sector to ‘invest in it’ and watch them cut corners like they have done with water, the railways and see the death toll coming in.
There is one final thing to say about nuclear and it is this: the power of the sun does not belong on the earth. It should be kept as far away outside the earth as possible just as the universe and our galaxy was created, giving life. Nuclear is unnatural in my view and symbolises mans arrogance more than anything – science without reason.
Much to agree with
“France and Switzerland seem sure this is a long-term workable solution. What is your expertise in the nuclear industry that you have come to a different conclusion?”.
France and Switzerland “seem sure” isn’t evidence they are right, and it certainly isn’t proof. The immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies come to mind: “They would say that, wouldn’t they”. There is a lot of radioactive waste they produce that requires disposal. Once you have built all these nuclear power stations, candidly you are stuck with the problem of waste disposal; with for radioactive waste, half-lives from a few decades to tens of thousands of years.
Sticking radioactive waste in a deep hole in the ground sounds reassuring, but possesses an element of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The problem here is not just the stability of the geology, or the amount of concrete, but this. Let us suppose that in principle, if left alone it is secure. The management and controL problem remains. The word ‘disposal’ here doesn’t mean it has disappeared. It is still there. It requires monitoring and control over the waste sites, for thousands of years. What does that mean? Nothing for wich Mr Mansfield has an answer.
Who is going to monitor the waste? For how long? What is the cost of keeping control over access to the site, and monitoring and protecting the site, over say even a paltry 100 years? What are the costs? What are the costs of continuing to increase the volume of waste disposed of in this way? Is it one site, or many sites. Commercially, I am reasonable confident that looking at a nuclear power plant, and factoring in proper disposal and protection of the site or sites for 100+ plus years would render them financially unviable on any commercial basis; except through guaranteed funding from Government. In other words – the game isn’t worth the candle.
Indeed, there is another problem, that is out of mind. What is the half-life of our society, the stability of our way of doing things? What security do we have that we will be in any condition to control what happens to that waste, even a few hundred years from now? Or does that not matter? Ou of sight, out of mind.
Mr Mansfield you have simply demonstrated that financial short-termism (the core of our finance system) cannot work for radioactive material. Or, Mr Mansfield you time principle the old Scots complacency: “it’ll see me oot”. What then?
Excellent questions, John.
Thank you.
Your experts are currently correct that a base load is necessary, but where does the 20% figure come from? The grid needs modernisation and there are at last plans for this https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/01/great-britain-energy-networks-investment-bills-increase-ofgem which should include improving the ability to cope better with drops in supply from renewables.
As for nuclear being the ‘best’ solution to the base load issue, how about freezing air? There are currently four plants using this technology under construction in the UK https://highviewpower.com/projects/#uk-projects They are likely to come into use many years before Sizewell C and even Hinkley Point C – 9 years under construction and no end in sight.
The ‘hill somewhere which has been hollowed out to pump water up and down it’ you mention is probably Dinorwic in Wales. Pumped storage hydro power is also a viable option (the water is only pumped up the hill, gravity sees to the down bit). There are also projects to expand the use of this proven technology https://www.scottishrenewables.com/news/1295-six-pumped-storage-hydro-projects-to-create-up-to-14800-uk-jobs-new-report-finds
I was not aware of nuclear reactors having a surge function. They usually provide baseload and if run partially loaded suffer from neutron poisoning. Backup to renewables is needed. Candidates now include, demand response, batts and gas turbines burning h2. Spain provides a good example of how “well” nukes fit with RES.
Is it really best provided by nuclear? I’m definitely not an expert in this field, but do know that nuclear can’t be switched on and off at a whim. If you look at summers for example. Europe’s got now practically enough solar from 11am till 5pm to cover the electricity needs on most days. With more solar coming, there’ll be huge surplus. What to do with nuclear during this time? The same with wind on quite a few days. With more power installed, this will again happen more and more often. Aren’t storage batteries the answer to this – and from what I’ve been reading the development here has been extraordinary and really fast. 30 years ago people were saying that sun and wind will never make more than 5 per cent of the electricity mix – and now they are on well over 50 per cent (not in small, but some bigger European countries). With batteries it’s the same – what doesn’t seem possible now, will be possible in 5 years. With Sizewell C starting running in 25 or 30 years time, who will be buying that extremely over-priced electricity if there will be alternatives present?
All very good questions.
Nobody has ever overestimated the cost of a nuclear power station or the time to build it (eg Hinckley Point). Sizewell B is fuelled by Russian uranium. This method of generation should only be used when there is no alternative. And it’s too late to make any difference.
Sellafield is leaking into the Irish Sea. What are we leaving the next generation.
Think what could be done for the money in alternative ways. For example, the rollout of V2G technology in EVs, grid batteries (they don’t need lithium!), grants for heat pumps, induction cookers, insulation etc, etc.
Fossil fuels, fossil thinking…
That Russian link is almost never mentioned
Mark,
Your comments are an excellent example of the techno-fix bullshit to which I alluded in my other post in this thread. Please allow me to remove you from a state of ignorance 🙂
Nuclear power is not a long term option. There are only enough proven reserves of uranium for 90 years, and that is at current usage levels.
MOX reprocessing is only effective for plutonium and most certainly does not involve “96% of spent fuel”, it only recovers 96% of the plutonium, which is a small fraction of the total amount.
From the World Nuclear Association (added emphasis):
“A significant amount of plutonium recovered from used fuel is currently recycled into MOX fuel; *a _small amount_ of recovered uranium is recycled so far.*”
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/processing-of-used-nuclear-fuel
The MOX fuel can only be used once and afterwards is even more toxic than the waste from which it was derived because of the high levels of plutonium.
“Deep geological repositories” sound fantastic until you start to consider the material and energy resources required for construction, which is a limitation that also applies to most “renewable” energy sources. And can you imagine if terrorists managed to get hold of some of that waste? They could make dirty bombs very easily.
Breeder reactors pose a similar problem, and even they could only extend the uranium supplies for about a thousand years, which just postpones the inevitable.
Hope this helps.
Many thanks
Appreciated
I think there is a basic misunderstanding here. We keep talking of base load as if It has to be a means of generating power from scratch very quickly to make sure we can meet rapid changes in demand. For instance those of you old enough, think half time in 1966, and while the players sucked oranges you put the kettles on in their millions. What a surge you naughty people.
But here is the thing. It doesn’t have to be generated from scratch. It therefore doesn’t have to be nuclear. If we made use in the UK of the thousands of suitable sites for closed loop pumped hydro we could store surplus electricity from wind and solar. No more wasted renewable energy. All stored. And the price of renewable energy falls further as it becomes more efficient simply by cutting out waste.
Not only that, but storing locally means less strain on the grid. Electricity gets used locally. Build enough and we could even store electricity across seasons I have read that there are around 6000 such possible sites across the UK. If I can find the reference I will post it later. Oh, and they can be hidden, perhaps buried or masked by trees.
So what are they? Essentially two sealed tanks at different heights. Each tank is the size of an Olympic Swimming pool, give or take and not including the swimmers. (World Cup to Olympics! Well I have to keep your attention somehow) Non toxic fluid flows down in very large pipes to the low tank from the top tank, generating fuel as it goes at peak demand times. I am certain you will know the times it will be pumped back up the hill by either Jack or Jill, using site machinery to save wearing out their pails I might add. The serious point is this is simple technology. It’s clean. It’s doable and durable. And we can do it quickly. By avoiding wasted energy we will ultimately need fewer solar and wind projects. Oh, and before I go, I have no financial interest in any of this. I just know I won’t live long enough to see nuclear projects through to completion. I might with pumped hydro if we hurry. But we really do need to hurry. To achieve this somebody is going to have to set the very misguided Ed Milliband right on this. He’s bright, he will get it. He just needs it spelling out to him. Any volunteers?
Meanwhile, in this comedy of errors David Solomon, CEO Goldman Sachs is worried about tax and regulation affecting the status of the City: “London continues to be an important financial centre. But because of Brexit, because of the way the world’s evolving, the talent that was more centred here is more mobile” (Sky News). What that sentence means is that the City is in decline, but he doesn’t like the idea that a City that doesn’t produce the golden goose any more, doesn’t lose its special privileges and advantages; because without special privileges, he hasn’t a clue what to do. Solomon is a machine operative. Don’t look for answers there.
The problem here is that this financial machine operative has no idea how to change the trajectory of decline on which history has set the City; nor has he or Goldman Sachs ever done anything to change it; although, let us be frank, they have done very well operating a machine designed and serviced by Government to look after them first; and, surprise, surprise, lots of Goldman Sachs executives have advised government over the years; and surprise, surprise these British governments have performed notably badly. Connect the dots. Solomon is a functionary, and all he knows is in the machine manual instructions that define his task.
Thanks
Thank you and well said, John.
Further to John pointing out that the government looks after the like of Goldman Sachs (GS), let me add three examples involving GS from my regulatory policy experience, 2007 – 16 (about 2010 for these three):
An FSA official saying he ran policy proposals past GS as a make sense check before publicising them.
A (UK) Treasury official ambushing me on another issue after I asked why GS was not compensating British clients after GS compensated German clients.
(Young) US bank examiners (regulators) sharing their CVs with GS when on site, in the US and overseas, to check what’s happening.
Having been stuck behind a delegation from GS at the Treasury’s reception, hearing the official hosting my manager and me say the delegation visits (ministers and officials) monthly and gains an insight into policy and even financial dealings.
As the first wave of the pandemic receded in the summer of 2020, the European Commission invited financial institutions to discuss a reboot of the EU economy. Most, but not all, invitees were from the US.
Please note that, one evening in 2019, when talking to Islington Labour Party about Big Finance’s, including Goldman’s, malign influence on the government, I was shouted down as an anti-semite.
What we do need to consider though is firstly how do we reduce our energy demand in particular things we can only do with fossil fuels eg aviation and secondly how we deal with an energy supply dominated by renewables
No UK govt will ever rule out nuclear – its seen as essential to our ‘great power’ status. It is inextricably tied up with the nuclear weapons industry – and we have now decided to break international treaties by increasing strategic nuclear weapons , and also lowering the threshold for nuclear war – by acquiring air-launched ‘tactical nukes.
Over the last thirty years nuclear power has been withering on the vine, but is now costing the public astronomical figures to be resurrected. The 100 plus years clean up and disposal of waste from legacy decommissioned stations is only part of it. Nuclear is uninsurable, but if the latest iteration of the ‘too cheap to meter’ mantra – – the small modular reactors – are what they are claimed to be, let the private sector get on with it. But of course dunderhead Labour shovelling money down the ‘infrastructure investment’ black hole.
Sir Brian Flowers – chair of Environment Commission decades ago and a nuclear physicist recommended no more nuclear unless the waste disposal problem had been solved.
Flowers was right
I was going to make the same point to another comment. Instead I will put it here. Our civil nuclear power stations provide training activities for technicians to develop skills required for weapon programmes. That is their function. Power generation is just a bi-product. When US neo-conservatives look at Iran building a civil nuclear programme, they do don’t think that this is a “green energy transition”. When our government wants to expand its nuclear weapons programme, it looks to train more nuclear scientists by building more nuclear facilities.
Governments always say that they do not want to leave the mess to be cleared up by their children and grandchildren. They sometimes even say by future generations.
Why does this not apply to nuclear power?
People at Sellafield are voting on whether to go on strike because they are not being given a sufficient payrise. These are the people whose jobs do not matter, the cleaners, caretakers, etc., run by Mitie. They really ought to pay more. It’s the one place that needs to be kept meticulously clean for a few thousand years.
https://www.europeanmovement.co.uk/one_earth_one_team
A webinar last week by Caroline Lucas.
“Our legacy is in the DNA of The Green New Deal.”
Oil companies have another string to their collective bow: if they can’t burn the product directly they turn it into plastics which end up in landfill or the sea or incinerators.
We have to wean the world off never ending growth.
There’s a company near where I live that turns plastic bottles into seats and fencing, etc.
It just happens to be in Tanfield Lea, where they have just voted in the deputy council leader, Darren Grimes, a Reform councillor.
Not sure how this factory will fare under his stated reforms to scrap the climate emergency declaration. I wonder if any of his friends work there.
Yes, there are a few examples of good practice but plastics recycling is largely a con. I wonder who would have figures for the quantities of plastic entering our homes and the corresponding domestic recycling. And the amount that actually makes it to the recycling plant is allegedly a small proportion of that.
My apologies for the contradiction Richard, but I suspect fossil fuels will be with us for quite some time yet – Likewise the nuclear zealots, a bit like the undead, burial doesn’t really work, you would still hear muffled incantations “energy so cheap to produce it isn’t worth billing for” from beneath for thousands of years…
I’m far removed from being a climate sceptic, but consider the slogan ‘Net Zero’ inherently self-defeating and wholly unrealistic, we’re actually painting a target on our backs for the wealth abstractors, Farage et al.
I’m acutely aware I’ve bored the arse off everyone with my banging on about insulating homes – IIRC domestic energy use in the UK was ca 23% in 2023 (?) – Even were the entire UK to do as I have and get a 70% saving on gas, it will still remain tiny compared to the consumption by ‘industry’, but how do we change focus from the ordinary punters to them ?
From a Scottish context – The State of a Secretary for Greggs Ian Murray is still trying to punt untested SMRs on the populace despite it taking 20+ years to build and knocking out say another 6 wind turbines in 20 years time – It’s desperate stuff when Scotland can’t get rid of what it already produces let alone what is capable of from renewables, yet with BBC Scotland’s ‘impartial’ suport, the lies prevail.
Southern England has serious issues to deal with over power and potable water in the coming decade despite being warned about it 50 years ago and it being batted away – I don’t know what the answer is for England in all seriousness , but will rewatch ‘V’ later for clues…