The looming electricity crunch: Dark days ahead (Economist)

SingleSue

My attempts at humour never goes down well either...I think my delivery is a little too straight for people to get it, they always think I am being serious!

PasturesNew

Re power cuts/Sue's car battery ... I couldn't rig up a car battery to make lights, it'd make me too nervous about acid spills, getting it wrong, a fault, fire ...

As it's coming to the end of summer, there'll soon be some great bargains to be had in garden solar lighting... could probably pick up a couple of packs of those at bargain basement outlets and put them out in the garden, bring them in at night for light during powercuts.

Benefits of this:
- it's easy
- it's safe
- kids can carry one or two to the loo/bathroom/bed
- next summer you can re-use them in the garden anyway

amcluesent

Now the Scots have let Al Megrahi go back to Libya, that'll enable supplies of their oil and hopefully let BP/Shell etc. undertake further exploration in Libya.

The next 10-20 years will see all manner of political 'fixes' to sustain continued access to oil, after which nuclear power may be available. Note how the French have capitulated on all fronts to retain access to oil AND have hugely expanded nuclear provision.

In France, you have to inform the power people of how many kW/Hrs you're property will draw so they can adjust the baseline power of their nuclear stations to match. Take more, and you get hammered with an excess fee.

michaels

Cart before horse I am afraid - NuLab has slapped so many arbitrary tax increases on North Sea production that oil companies are loathe to invest in pumping it out as they know the govt will try to tax any profit they make hence rapidly falling production - another good example of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs in the name of populism.

tesuhoha wrote: »

This is very hard to understand. I saw a documentary recently which reported that contrary to popular belief Britain's North Sea oil is not running out, in fact there are still billions of barrels left as much if not more than what has already been extracted.

I'm not sure where this is all going, probably being exported and sold at a profit by the City. Certainly ordinary folk are not benefitting from it unless it pays for all the benefits of course. In which case the ordinary hard working person does not as usual get anything

Britain is an oil nation but you wouldn't think it to look at us. Its laughable to be having power cuts. The Government is made up of a bunch of idiots.