Britain’s Energy Disaster & How Innovation Could Turn It Around | Matt Ridley
Institute of Economic Affairs 
In this IEA Podcast, Andy Mayer, COO and Energy Analyst, interviews Matt Ridley, former businessman, conservative peer, and author of books including “The Rational Optimist” and “How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take to Change the World.” They discuss the recent power grid failure in Spain and Portugal, exploring how increasing reliance on intermittent energy sources like wind and solar may contribute to grid instability. Ridley explains the technical challenges of maintaining grid frequency when traditional “spinning” power generation is replaced by renewable sources.
The conversation shifts to Britain’s energy policy and high electricity costs, which Ridley claims are now the highest in the developed world for both industrial and domestic users. They examine nuclear power’s potential role in energy security and the regulatory barriers that have made nuclear plants increasingly expensive and time-consuming to build. Ridley advocates for small modular reactors that could be manufactured at scale rather than the current approach of building nuclear plants as “one-off” projects.
Ridley also discusses his theories on innovation and evolution, drawing parallels between biological evolution and technological development. He argues that innovation flourishes in environments with regulatory freedom, faster decision-making, and “permissionless” systems that allow ideas to develop from the bottom up rather than through top-down government planning. Despite his criticisms of current UK energy policy, Ridley maintains his identity as a “rational optimist” about global technological development and human progress, while lamenting the lost opportunities from what he sees as misguided energy transition strategies.
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About The Author
Rooftop solar is potentially problematic as it can create too much energy in local areas and put strain on substations. My rooftop can be feeding in 8kw in the middle of a summer day and the average consumption of houses in my road is around 400w. So I am single handedly providing power for 20 of my neighbours at times. If all of the houses in my road had solar, then there would be a huge surplus of power. This is very difficult for the local grid operator to manage so I think we will be seeing a lot more substations catching fire.
A masterclass of explanation regarding the idiosly of net zero.Pity the brain dead morons running the Country will not listen.Oh dear Oh Dear!!!!
These rooftop schemes are all ok as long as they do not connect them to our grid. Anyone with solar should have batteries and not destabalise the grid.
What about localising generation and storage?
Apropos the Iberian blackout, energy (of cosmic origin) of electrically charged particles struck the Gibraltar area where the magnetosphere was weakened according to the data from US NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Centre’s GloTEC division; the vulnerability of a Renewables-reliant grid did the rest, and Spain reached their net zero target 25 years early.
The loss of large rotating steam turbines with massive inertia is VITAL to grid stability. All of the inverter connected systems react to glitches and therefore fall over. Yes, I am a Chartered Engineer not an AI idiot. It’s time politicians and reporters listened to we professionals rather than what they read on google.
Since Christmas, China has built more coal fired stations than we ever had in this country, oh, and so has India ! Whatever UK plc does contributes half of nothing to pollution. Meanwhile we are running out of power which in any case is more expensive than all other forms of energy. Another example of rip off and idiotic UK. We could generate a lot more clean hydro, with loads of rotating inertia, but the tree huggers dont want our rivers daming. Better go and stock up on candles.
Energy analyst and investor Lars Schernikau covers the whole in greater detail on Tom Nelson Channel.
When considering matters surrounding the current ‘Net Zero’ political narratives of the day, we should bear in mind the wise words of past figures of some merit; the American man of letters Henry Brooks Adams observed that 'Practical politics consists in ignoring facts'; Churchill famously noted that 'United wishes and goodwill cannot overcome brute facts; panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is'. Burns was a little more frank: 'Facts are chiels that winna ding, and downa be disputed'.
I’d like to see the scientific proof or evidence that man-made carbon dioxide emissions (globally accounting for 18 of the 425 odd parts per million found in the atmosphere, or roughly 4% of the 0.04% of our atmosphere, the remaining 99.996% being entirely of natural origin) are somehow more injurious to the prospects of the planet wellbeing than the remaining 407ppm of entirely natural origin – carbon dioxide (comprised of one atom carbon and two atoms oxygen) is an ESSENTIAL TO LIFE gas, the steady and slight increase (appx 1.6 ppm per annum) of which has been reckoned to increase crop yields globally, and also helped to ‘green’ the periphery of desert regions globally, as observed by satellite imaging these past six decades. The plankton inhabiting 71% of the planetary surface and myriad other marine life also benefit accordingly (it’s not all about chemistry in isolation of the rest).
It should also be borne in mind that global manufacturing giant China alone is calculated to have pumped more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere within the last five years than has been produced GLOBALLY by the rest of the world since the Industrial Revolution began, (even in 2003 they emitted three times as much as in 2002). This has yet to show up in increased overall carbon dioxide levels however, and nor will it, as this carbon dioxide is simply absorbed by oceanic algae, phytoplankton and land based vegetation.
Carbon dioxide only acts as a warming agent to the planet in concentrations between 50-100 parts per million and, crucially, across only a very narrow bandwidth of the spectrum; this extremely low concentration – about half of what is required to enable the most basic plant life to even begin to grow – was exceeded some six hundred million years ago, i.e. long, long before the evolution of dinosaurs, etc, by which time levels were orders of magnitude greater than today, ranging between 2000-7000ppm, resulting in a superabundance of vegetation for the herbivores of their day, and ALL of that without any industrial process aiding the beneficial to all forms of life change…
This CO2 warming effort (constituting around 10% of the planetary total, the other 90% is provided by water vapour and clouds, which we are of course neither able to reduce nor even control, much less set a pretend tax or levy upon) is now saturate, and helps to keep the planet some thirty-two degrees Celsius warmer than it would otherwise be, thus rendering Earth much more agreeably habitable than would otherwise be the case – cold kills far more people than warmth; were we to double, triple or indeed increase by tenfoldcabon dioxide levels – to typical tolerable ‘submarine-level’ concentrations – it would hardly raise the global temperature by a single degree Celsius.
Levels of carbon dioxide beyond 100ppm do not have any significant propensity to increase global temperatures, and in any event increased levels are as a CONSEQUENCE of temperature increases, NOT the cause of same. The temperature rise of the early medieval period some 800 years ago is the cause of present day carbon dioxide level increases – steady away at around 6ppm per annum – despite the industrious efforts of China.
To splurge tens of billions on such a clown initiative (- trees and vegetation absorb for free practically all of our human activity-generated CO2 , along with the 96% remainder, which of course is identical but of natural origin) is indicative of the lunacy of the calibre of idiots running the show; perhaps Climate Clown-in-Chief Ed Milliband could advise us of the difference his imbecilic efforts to reduce Man-made carbon dioxide (making up but 4% of the 0.04% of our total atmosphere, remember) will make to the incoming variable but cyclical energy levels of the Sun, which are the true cause of the temperature fluctuations of the planet; a perfect correlation between the monthly mean sunspot number and the mean seasonal temperature variation clearly demonstrates that solar activity is the principal driver of global warming/cooling, depending on solar activity levels – in short: it's the Sun, not us.
Well over one thousand scientific, peer-reviewed papers have been produced demonstrating the link between Earth’s climate (which produces no heat to speak of sufficient to drive its own climate) and the Sun – our SOLE meaningful means of warming the planet. It has furthermore been comprehensively proven by the two Professors, Dr. William Happer- chief Scientific advisor to three US presidents – and Willem Van Wijngaarden, both at Princeton, USA that carbon dioxide does not and indeed cannot warm the planet in the way that the scammers and charlatans would have us "believe", and yet despite ALL of this, rather than ‘looking up’ and finding out basic facts for ourselves, a global con/industry has been created around this foolish notion; they persist with the myth, trusting in the supposition that no one else was paying much attention to physics and chemistry in school…
Shakespeare wrote, ‘What a terrible era, in which idiots govern the blind’..
Ask yourself too: IF higher carbon dioxide levels are indeed so very dangerous, how come the planet did not simply ‘burn up’ last time they were over 2000 ppm? Or 7000 ppm?
For further scientific proof of the absolute nonsense of ‘danger’ concerning anthropogenic global warming via carbon dioxide, please see the excellent YouTube presentation 'Atmospheric Carbon, London, 18th July, 2016’. Watch at least the first and last ten minutes. Don't be a 'bloodletter'…..
Lots of roof top can make a difference and in many states in Australia they have introduced a system (Australia has massive amounts of roof top solar) whereby the energy market operator stops you exporting to the grid when there is too much, but you can still use the energy in house.
So we have solar/wind and backup fossil fuel powers stations. All fine, as it provides a continuous supply. As the backup plant may not be used for most of the year. As these backup plants will be used little they will last far longer. Matt Ridley seems to think this bad. How odd.
Net Zero is the new COVID. It’s a hoax being forced on the population against our will by a corrupt establishment.
South Korea have cracked the nuclear problem using 4th generation design and sensible regulation. The energy problem has already been solved and modular is the way to go.
The Japanese have up and running high temperature nitrogen cooled reactors. The high temperatures produce hydrogen very cheaply. The Japanese say that only hydrogen can replace fossil fuels for industry. Hence Japan is moving to a hydrogen society. Notice that Toyota have been cool on EVs.
If in summer solar and wind are producing a surplus of electricity the electricity can be used to produce hydrogen and stored. The hydrogen can be used for zero emission trains, and making electricity in high demand periods. Also natural gas can be a 20% mix without any adverse effect on existing burners. so emission of natural gas are reduced. Gas does not have road and rail transport costs, which also pollutes at present.
But wouldn't batteries be perfect for balancing imbalances in the grid because they can respond instantly?
This is an easy fix. Waste of time this episode.
The ultimate reality, as expressed by Matt Ridley, is that Britain has sacrificed its' future on the altar of the foolish green revolution. The interviewer could still not move his head past the current narrative, still bleating about emissions, whilst failing to accept the truth. that is that emissions will occur anyway, even more of them, and another economy will be the beneficiary. The extra CO2 is wholly beneficial, however, the fool Millibang will spend our money on attempting to remove it from the atmosphere, making this country plant nutrient, and cash, poorer. Go figure!
Accumulators do not and never have stored electricity, think about it.
Grid scale batteries to buffer energy spikes and provide 4 hours of supply during peak demand aren’t that expensive.
So flawed and biased in so many ways. Guy is a clown😅
How does innovation address exponential growth?
Totally free clean zero point and anti gravity energy has existed for eighty years,WAKE UP.President Eisonhower and Paul Hellyer the Canadisn minister warned humanity about this evil cabal inbedded in all governments,Its agenda is your death globally.
The illegal industrial military complex has hidden totally free clean zero point and anti gravity energy for eighty years,Its inbedded in all governments.Its called the illegal industrial military complex causing chaos and murder all over this planet.
I agree about rooftop energy for last December in the UK. Octopus Energy credited me exactly £0.00 for 0.00 kWh generated from 5 December until 31 December.
November was better:
5 Nov 2024 – 4 Dec 2024⚡40.34 kWh We credited your account £5.30, and even the last few days of Xmas in January made me 50p for 3.76 kWh
Spot on.
To quote another Engineer.
"Where he's wrong is IF (and its a big in the
charging station has a large capacitor bank
that can rapidly discharge a heap of energy
and then slowly build up before the next car,
So in other words if charging stations are
built to dump a heap of power into your car
it can work
HOWEVER he's dead right that if 5, 10 or 20
cars suddenly pull up together then there's a
major issue
He's also dead right that if you suddenly
had a bunch of cars trying to rapid charge in
a suburb at once there'd be a major issue
The thing is most people's homes DO NOT
have that sort of capacity and will never
have that capacity. What they could have is
again a large capacitor bank that charges
up when power is cheap and then dumps it
into the the car when needed "
Most vehicles are parked 23hrs every day and all night long 😴 🙃 🙄. Doing nothing 😴 😑
Full battery will be the constant, grow up.
Pull your finger out and be useful.
Grids are $TRILLIONS and handle 4% of fossil energy.
$TRILLIONS ÷ 4% = $26 TRILLIONS for grid electricity capacity to stop CO2 emissions.
BS qualifications are a waste of space on this topic.
I think the points made by the engineers contributing to this discussion are vitally important. This is a highly technical area and although politicians and members of the public will always have an opinion I wish we could have some proper technical experts on these discussions explaining what the pros and cons are of the various generating systems and the relative costs to the UK. We all know that the UK is particularly vulnerable to gas price fluctuations because most of it comes from overseas and our interconnections with the continent are pretty expensive. Most of the research done by academic and technical bodies in the UK eg the UKERC (UK Energy Research Centre) says we need to continue our move away from gas powered electricity and change the funding model of energy such that it is no longer more costly than other countries but what should be the mix between the various sources so that energy is cheaper and resilient and less damaging to the environment. Can we have technical experts on these podcasts taking us through the options rather than it becoming a political football which populists can exploit?
What's wrong with his jacket collar? So distracting.
Scientific papers can be a challenging read, many refer to other papers that should also be read in order to understand the principles tested so can take days to plough through. Most of us don't have the time to immerse ourselves to fully understand them. The conclusions however are usually crystal clear and readily understood, viz:
"The greenhouse effect predicted by the Arrhenius greenhouse theory is inconsistent with the existence of the CRE (Chandrasekhar-type radiative equilibrium). Hence, the CO2 greenhouse effect as used in the current global warming hypothesis is impossible. Let us emphasize the overall conclusion:
The Arrhenius type GE (greenhouse effect) of CO2 and other non-condensing GHGs (greenhouse gases) is an incorrect hypothesis and the CO2 greenhouse effect based global warming hypothesis is also an artifact without any theoretical or empirical footing. Without scientific proof the debate on the CO2 GE based catastrophic AGW (anthropogenic global warming) should be abandoned and policymakers should focus on the more urgent environmental and social issues of humanity. The recent worldwide energy crisis is a warning sign that the promotion of the so-called green energy is neither solving energy shortages nor helping to protect the environment from pollution. The climate does not need protection, but the clean environment does."
Ferenc Miskolczi: Greenhouse Effect and Climate Change
THERE IS NO CASE FOR NET ZERO, EV'S, HEAT PUMPS, 'RENEWABLES' OR ANY OTHER 'GREEN SOLUTION'. THERE IS NO 'CLIMATE CRISIS'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP7MYf0T9VY
IMPORTANT NOTE:
With reference Andy Mayer and the IEA
In this case this is NOT the International Energy Association, it is the Institute of Economic Affairs.
What keeps grid electricity at the correct frequency is the proper design and management of the Technologies used to generate that electricity, it does not have to be large lumps of spinning hardware. You need the right tools for the job, conventional generation is just one way to do it. It's a bit like trying to get from Heathrow Airport to East Midlands Airport, you don't have to fly, and in this case it's probably even not the best solution.
The Renewables industry needs people interested in finding Solutions for problems, not trying to use problems to support the status quo.
Copenhagen Atomics
At least one of the energy experts Andy Mayer mentions, I would say based on what I've heard and read of their opinions, is a self-proclaimed energy expert, I certainly wouldn't say they were an expert on the technologies required for the energy transition. The real experts are those who actually build an operate the system.
Also, the reason UK electricity is vastly more expensive than electricity in the US is primarily to do with the cost of fossil fuels, the UK is no longer sitting on vast reserves oil and gas, and even the ones we are I'm not owned by the UK so we have to pay market prices for the energy, and dividends to the shareholders of the companies that convert that energy into electricity and distribute it, thanks to past governments setting off the family silver. 9:35
Solar output being the square root of sod all winter is probably a reasonable description (insolation in the UK is about 0.5Wh/m² in December and 4.6Wh/m² in June/July) but it is certainly not a technical term, it is a non-technical term. You can only have the square root of actual numbers, sod all isn't a number. Is his book was a serious discussion anbout solar he would have actually used real numbers, not pejorative terms like 'sod all'.
Meyer has a PPE degree from Oxford, which I would suggest is is probably not a particularly good basis for giving opinions on the highly technical subject of the viability of Renewables on the electricity grid.
If we had 100% gas generation the electricity would be even more expensive than it is now.
It takes about 2-3KWh of gas to make 1KWh of electricity. Gas is currently about 100 P perfume which is about 3.5p/kwh, making the fuel cost for gas generation about £90/MWh. By the time you add on the cost Of the generation equipment and all the other extras you're probably MWhlooking at at least £120/MWh if not £150/MWh, and that's without any carbon abatement. The current average wholesale price for electricity is about £100/MWh, so it would be interesting to know what is pulling the price of electricity down from a fully gas powered generation price.
He's right to, he's definitely not an economist, but he should be because he's got a PPE degree.
Just because you retire something before the end of its working life might be wasting an asset, but that might be cheaper/better than keeping it running, you need to look at the cost of operation and maintenance going forward vs the alternative Solutions.
If you're going to spend the next 10 years paying £100/MWh plus cost of carbon sequestration vs £70-80/MWh for wind generation, you're economically better off closing down the gas generation early.
Mayor's arguments about how you drive down the cost of nuclear are exactly what is driven down the cost of solar and wind. But even if we go for smrs the UK is never going to use thousands of them comma as we do with wind turbines, millions of them as we do with solar panels, and probably also batteries.
You can't treat risk and benefit in the same way, they're not just logical opposites. If there is risk in a venture then it is customary to take out insurance against that risk, you don't have to insure against benefits, you would probably invest in these. If a beneficial venture goes wrong, then you might lose investment, and you might end up back where you began. If a risky venture goes wrong, you can end up in a far worse position than where you started.
I completely agree with Mayer that the decision making process, especially in the UK, is far too slow and cumbersome. Interestingly, going back to the start of the conversation, this is one of the main reasons why we are paying so much/too much for electricity, the government have been looking at the 'electricity market reform' for over 3 years now.
This is a beat up by the far right, ideologically opposed to renewables when their alternative of new nuclear / SMRs and continuing with fossil power generation are unrealistic. New large scale nuclear, as are SMRs are expensive to build, too late to help reduce climate impacts and too dangerous eg a terrorist target in an industrial estate near you, radioactive emissions each time refueled (note ingestion not included in IAEA dose calculations), consequences of catastrophic failure in densely populated areas.
Renewables are now the vast majority of new build generating capacity world wide. New offshore wind in the UK has 60% capacity factors.
Yes, running an electrical grid is complex and will be more difficult with variable renewables or any other energy source that can quickly fail e.g. a substation terrorist attack, steam turbine failure.But frequency response and oscillations are being tackled with more and better measuring tools eg transmission wire heat management, increasing frequency response thresholds on grids and for renewable generation (often not optimised), rotating mass Synchronous Condensers and new inverter designs with fast frequency response eg Grid forming invertors** + batteries/ultracapacitors which can provide synthetic inertia. These allow time for other dispatchable generators to come online. Batteries with new chemistries are becoming more reliable, longer lasting and cheaper and will move from 2 to 4 hour operation to 24 hour operation. Keeping some fueled generation eg existing CCGT and new OCGT at ~5% generating capacity for Dunkelflaute and emergencies at present are the cheapest solution (better if the government owns them as no subsidised profit for private enterprise) with very low CO2 emissions depending on the fuel (renewable or nonrenewable).
Renewable fueled backup engines with clutched flywheels (inertia frequency response) and clutched heat pumps (District Heating) at 11kVa substations could offer further local resilience (more expensive but useful in times of conflict).The high energy costs in the UK are mostly self-inflicted by neoliberal obsessed politicians and economists e.g. marginal pricing instead of fair pricing.
** Grid Forming Inverter with energy storage and with instant Active Phase Jump Power will, after a Grid Power transient, supply instant Active Phase Jump Power to stabilise the Grid followed by extra Follow Up Power with no change in its frequency.This happens as the Grid Forming Inverter's energy store's DC bus voltage will change but this is not linked to the Grid Forming Inverter's AC voltage. So the Grid Forming Inverter acts like a source of infinite inertia.
UK should stay away from solar and wind power to protect their grid. British empire should stay with fossil fuels for electricity.
Rooftop solar will weaken the grid if they are connected to the grid.
Surely batteries are the way to go for back up.😊
Full of flawed and unbalanced arguments and a bit of mis information for good measure.
As an engineer, Domestic Solar & Battery is a great way to become self sufficient and avoid having to rely on the either the government or the energy industry. My first attempt was only 50% self sufficient last winter, but planning to add more and will be 100% self sufficient in winter and earning a lot from from surplus export in summer.
Listen to the guy from octopus energy.
He will explain why all this scape goating of renewables is of is a load of crap.