As COP 28 closes without a definitive direction of travel for future energy production either way, here's my take on why we Need Fossil Fuels.

Wednesday 6th December 2023.

A typical winter morning with freezing fog and low wind.

As at 8.20am the demand for electricity was 40.9GW. This was being supplied as follows.

Closed Cycle Gas Turbine          24.63GW        60.2%

Nuclear                                         4.74GW          11.6%

Wind                                              4.22GW          10.3%

Biomass                                        3.0GW             7.3%

Miscellaneous                              1.72GW           4.2%

Coal                                                0.96GW           2.3%

Pumped and Gravity Hydro       0.79GW           1.9%

Open Cycle Gas Turbine             0.48GW           1.2%

Foreign interconnects                 0.4GW             1%

Solar                                               0GW               0%

TOTAL                                           40.9GW            100%

Note: We are receiving 1.3GW from Holland and France and delivering 0.9GW to a Europe interconnect and Ireland.

When the wind isn’t doing much and the sky is overcast, so called renewables aren’t going to keep the lights on. They can NEVER replace fossil fuels, only be an addition to them. It is duplicate infrastructure, which is quite expensive despite the lies, and uneconomic without the government subsidies. Our bills would be much lower without them.

Even if the 10,000 onshore and offshore wind turbines were quadrupled, which is the government’s intention, it would cost as much as 3 more nuclear power stations the size of Hinckley Point C and couldn’t be relied on to add more than 12GW at a time like this.

The lifetime of onshore wind turbines is 20 years, the offshore ones due to the hostile environment not as long and at a high ongoing maintenance cost. Nuclear power stations coast along without high maintenance cost and like our remaining fleet of 3 or 4, built in the 1960’s and early 1970’s to last 40 years, are still limping along after 53-60 years.

There is enough coal under the UK to keep us going at 10GW 24/7/365 for 400 years. There is a huge resource of gas under the land and under the North Sea, and crude oil there too.

Don’t underestimate the use of oil. From it is derived Liquid Petroleum Gas for heating, Petrol for vehicles, Naphtha for plastic, Kerosene for aeroplanes, Diesel for vehicles, Fuel Oil for ships and industry, Lubricating Oil without which nothing rotates and Bitumen for our roads.



Let’s keep Oil and Fossil Fuels!

Antony Nailer

UK Independence Party Spokesman for Energy