The East Anglia campaign commissioned their own survey and the results are even more dramatic. They designed the questions but the polling company selected participants to represent the U.K. demographics
This is what lies behind Rayner's local government reorganisation. By eliminating district councils in favour of unitary authorities with at least 250,000 residents, she is ensuring that urban voters outnumber rural voters in almost every authority.
This 'survey' reminds me very much of the feedback questionnaires that are put out by windfarm developers during the course of their 'not-a-real-consultation' public consultations.
Having looked at all of the questions that were asked on the YouGov/KPMG survey, it is clear to me that they were all lacking in necessary detail and were based on an assumption that those tasked with answering them had some level of understanding in respect of the subjects they were being questioned on. Similarly, the answers are all variations on 'agree' or 'disagree', with no opportunity to make comments or raise queries.
For example, The first question; 'To what extent, if at all, do you support or oppose the UK transitioning to renewable sources of energy?' This seems straightforward enough at first glance, but what is the question actually asking?
- First - What do they mean by 'renewables'? Does it include all of them, such as hydro, or biodigester/methane generation, ( to mention just a couple of the other types of renewable technology that currently exist)? Looking at the questions that follow reveals the fact that they are only interested in wind and solar.
- Second - Is the question asking if you agree with the current aim towards 100% renewables in the future? - Or is it asking if you agree with a much smaller percentage within the overall generation mix? It is not clear what they are asking, especially as we have done a great deal of 'transitioning' already, so they must be referring to the prospect of our having even more than we already have.
Immediately, based on my own hard-earned levels of understanding of the 'renewables' state-of-play with regard to Net Zero/global warming/climate change crisis/panic scenario that we have all been subjected to for many years, I am unable to work out how I could possibly answer even this first question honestly.
I agree in our using all the different types of renewables appropriately and as part of an overall mix of generation technology, but I can't possibly support the UK transitioning to 100% dependency on large-scale wind and solar. You only have to look at what happened in Spain recently to get some idea of how bad that would be for the reliability and security of our electricity supplies. But this is exactly where Net Zero policy is designed to take us.
I would support genuinely sustainably produced solar panels being put onto the roofs of existing and new buildings wherever possible, but I cannot accept massive solar farms, using Chinese panels that have been manufactured without proper regard for the environment and workers ethics, being located on greenfield sites of any kind. Does this make me 'for' or 'against' solar panels in general? - All I know, is that it is not as simple as just putting a cross in a box as an answer.
And I'm not even going to mention the massive wind farms, BESS storage facilities etc. etc, because literally everything to do with the 'renewables' they are talking about in this survey, -right through from planning policy, to harms to the environment, to undergrounding of cables, to CO2 reduction claims, to community benefits, to man-made CO2 being the main cause of global warming, is fraught with inconsistencies and misinformation.
And that is just the first question!
Whatever the purpose for this survey having been carried out is purported to be, I can only see the 'results' as being indicative of how dismally low the level of understanding about Net Zero, renewables v fossil fuels and global warming/climate change really is within the general population of the UK as a whole.
Too many people are not questioning enough, and they are not doing research of their own - otherwise the results of this survey would have been very different.
As a nation, we desperately need to be having an extensive, thorough, well informed, scientifically unbiased, and truthful period of proper public debate on this whole subject.
This has never happened before and if things continue in the way they have done for so many decades now, it is never going to.
The unorganised and lack of design criteria being applied to the expansion of wind and particularly solar is a folly and detrimental to the grid.
This point is rarely, if ever publisised, and the assumption by the public and such as KPMG that it is necessary and desirable is assumed due to this lack of information.
The current government's policy is the result of ideology and an almost total lack of knowledge by the technically illiterate government and civil service. It is extremely expensive and will not make one iota of difference to the climate.
The recent black out in Spain should be a warning that we are reducing dispatchable generation capcity on the grid which is very risky, with the summer months being worse due to reduced demand.
Should a similar occurence happen with the U.K. grid (And it is getting more and more likely) it will take much more than acouple of days to restore power as we are not synchronised to the European grid as Spain is.
The current Government’s strategy (Clean Power 2030, but actually 95% clean) is identical to the previous Government’s strategy (100% clean by 2035) which are both aligned with NESO publications going back at least five years, so is not new and not without extensive technical and economic evaluation. The only subtle difference is onshore wind in England is now possible, but in practice will contribute little by 2030 (see the figures in the connections reform annex to the Clean Power Action Plan)
The recent IEA figures show that just over 90% of all new generating capacity built globally were renewable. Not because of some ideology from Miliband, but because renewables are cheaper
We don’t yet know what caused the issues in Spain, so I’ll save commenting on that until some facts are available
I know it has long been planned, but accelerated under the current government.
Extensive technical and economic evalutaion, if you can find one iota of that I will be very surprised, unless you are talking of the Climate Change Committee's pie in the sky estimates.
The International Energy Agency has been an advocate for wind and solar but when looked at, capacity and what the actual output is puts those figures into perspective.
It also shows that all the recent extra demand has been met by fossil fuelled generation.
Renewables are not cheaper, that is another and easily destroyed myth and when you look at value rather than cost their extremely expensive power has very little value at all.
When looked at objectively there is no real merit in renewable generation, and if the planned nuclear expansion over two decades ago had been followed we would be in a far better position and have cheaper electrcity to boot.
Best if you speak to the Future Energy Scenarios team at NESO. I’ve always found them to be extremely helpful
The planned nuclear expansion didn’t happen for good financial reasons, and as NESO show in FES2024 we are unlikely to have significant nuclear. Not even the nuclear industry are expecting to build much, given their comments to the Parliamentary Select Committee a couple of years ago. The lack of flexibility and high cost still holds it back
The glimmer of hope is with siting being less restricted now, SMRs can be put where the waste heat can be usefully used, and the Welsh Government has already selected 16 possible locations
Simple objective assessement of renewables and all their deficiencies against their positives.
That should have put a stop to them there and then.
Nuclear costs should be balanced by both the bureaucracy of the British and the long term running costs. South Korea builds quickly and relatively cheaply.
No one questioned their recommendations when they were owned by National Grid plc, but now nationalised everyone wants to question them
South Korea might build nuclear quickly and cheaply but we don’t so it’s an interesting but somewhat academic point. We can watch Canada get going with SMRs
If we tried to reach net zero with only nuclear we would need another 30 Hinckley C’s, and we haven’t finished one yet
we also owned the National Grid, and I questioned them some years ago when they were talking about all this renewable power.
I asked how will they make up for lulls in generation, how will they balance the grid, how will they provide reactive power and provide short circuit current level support.
I received a telephone cal from someone who's name I forget but the answers,
1 and 2, didn't want to talk about them and much waffle for the last three. Even my wife, who could hear the conversation, wasn't impressed. His continual phrase was 'It will be challenging'
it is beyond the bounds of logic to make our grid less secure and stable for a hypothesis about climate.
Academic, it means it is possible, perhaps we should find out how!
SMR we have dragged our feet, again.
We don't need 93 gigawtts of capacity, double our existing maximum demand, but that is academic, and our construction rate is abysmal.
Short term we need quite a bit more CCGT gas staions, located where possible at closed power staions so grid connection will be easy, and planned sensible nuclear for the longer term.
The Climate Change Act needs repealing, it's a monumental act of self harm to this country that nobody else is copying, worse it was nodded through, with no real scrutiny, very quickly by parliament at the time. Dereliction of duty to put it very mildy.
I’m in favour of wind and solar power but the current plan for Wales is short sighted and risks causing more damage to the environment and economy than any possible benefits.
I’m in favour of wind and solar, but Wales can generate vastly in excess of 2050 demand using only offshore wind, so as long as Wales remains connected to the GB grid no onshore generation is actually needed
The grid requirements to get power in to the Welsh interior for 2050 are much, much lower than the grid requirements to get power out, so while upgrades will be required I imagine most of those will be at voltages below 132 kV (wires on poles)
DESNZ publish their public attitudes data which shows the majority support wind turbines, even near their homes, but critically the questions asked gives no hint at how big wind turbines are
The dangers of designing such questionnaires from central London!
Yes, I agree. I've observed that campaigning in more built-up areas here in Wales lack the support we have in the rural areas surrounding the developments.
The East Anglia campaign commissioned their own survey and the results are even more dramatic. They designed the questions but the polling company selected participants to represent the U.K. demographics
Has that been published?
If it’s not on their web site I have a spreadsheet of the raw data somewhere
Only 1 in 3. Well our countryside is doomed then.
This is what lies behind Rayner's local government reorganisation. By eliminating district councils in favour of unitary authorities with at least 250,000 residents, she is ensuring that urban voters outnumber rural voters in almost every authority.
This 'survey' reminds me very much of the feedback questionnaires that are put out by windfarm developers during the course of their 'not-a-real-consultation' public consultations.
Having looked at all of the questions that were asked on the YouGov/KPMG survey, it is clear to me that they were all lacking in necessary detail and were based on an assumption that those tasked with answering them had some level of understanding in respect of the subjects they were being questioned on. Similarly, the answers are all variations on 'agree' or 'disagree', with no opportunity to make comments or raise queries.
For example, The first question; 'To what extent, if at all, do you support or oppose the UK transitioning to renewable sources of energy?' This seems straightforward enough at first glance, but what is the question actually asking?
- First - What do they mean by 'renewables'? Does it include all of them, such as hydro, or biodigester/methane generation, ( to mention just a couple of the other types of renewable technology that currently exist)? Looking at the questions that follow reveals the fact that they are only interested in wind and solar.
- Second - Is the question asking if you agree with the current aim towards 100% renewables in the future? - Or is it asking if you agree with a much smaller percentage within the overall generation mix? It is not clear what they are asking, especially as we have done a great deal of 'transitioning' already, so they must be referring to the prospect of our having even more than we already have.
Immediately, based on my own hard-earned levels of understanding of the 'renewables' state-of-play with regard to Net Zero/global warming/climate change crisis/panic scenario that we have all been subjected to for many years, I am unable to work out how I could possibly answer even this first question honestly.
I agree in our using all the different types of renewables appropriately and as part of an overall mix of generation technology, but I can't possibly support the UK transitioning to 100% dependency on large-scale wind and solar. You only have to look at what happened in Spain recently to get some idea of how bad that would be for the reliability and security of our electricity supplies. But this is exactly where Net Zero policy is designed to take us.
I would support genuinely sustainably produced solar panels being put onto the roofs of existing and new buildings wherever possible, but I cannot accept massive solar farms, using Chinese panels that have been manufactured without proper regard for the environment and workers ethics, being located on greenfield sites of any kind. Does this make me 'for' or 'against' solar panels in general? - All I know, is that it is not as simple as just putting a cross in a box as an answer.
And I'm not even going to mention the massive wind farms, BESS storage facilities etc. etc, because literally everything to do with the 'renewables' they are talking about in this survey, -right through from planning policy, to harms to the environment, to undergrounding of cables, to CO2 reduction claims, to community benefits, to man-made CO2 being the main cause of global warming, is fraught with inconsistencies and misinformation.
And that is just the first question!
Whatever the purpose for this survey having been carried out is purported to be, I can only see the 'results' as being indicative of how dismally low the level of understanding about Net Zero, renewables v fossil fuels and global warming/climate change really is within the general population of the UK as a whole.
Too many people are not questioning enough, and they are not doing research of their own - otherwise the results of this survey would have been very different.
As a nation, we desperately need to be having an extensive, thorough, well informed, scientifically unbiased, and truthful period of proper public debate on this whole subject.
This has never happened before and if things continue in the way they have done for so many decades now, it is never going to.
Renewables would include …
On and offshore wind
Solar - PV and thermal
Tidal - flow and range
Biomass
Biogas
Geothermal
There is no intention of relying on only wind and solar. But offshore wind will be the single largest source
This is worth a read
https://www.neso.energy/document/321041/download
Well said! I'm delighted this blog post has stirred people enough to leave comments.
The unorganised and lack of design criteria being applied to the expansion of wind and particularly solar is a folly and detrimental to the grid.
This point is rarely, if ever publisised, and the assumption by the public and such as KPMG that it is necessary and desirable is assumed due to this lack of information.
The current government's policy is the result of ideology and an almost total lack of knowledge by the technically illiterate government and civil service. It is extremely expensive and will not make one iota of difference to the climate.
The recent black out in Spain should be a warning that we are reducing dispatchable generation capcity on the grid which is very risky, with the summer months being worse due to reduced demand.
Should a similar occurence happen with the U.K. grid (And it is getting more and more likely) it will take much more than acouple of days to restore power as we are not synchronised to the European grid as Spain is.
The current Government’s strategy (Clean Power 2030, but actually 95% clean) is identical to the previous Government’s strategy (100% clean by 2035) which are both aligned with NESO publications going back at least five years, so is not new and not without extensive technical and economic evaluation. The only subtle difference is onshore wind in England is now possible, but in practice will contribute little by 2030 (see the figures in the connections reform annex to the Clean Power Action Plan)
The recent IEA figures show that just over 90% of all new generating capacity built globally were renewable. Not because of some ideology from Miliband, but because renewables are cheaper
We don’t yet know what caused the issues in Spain, so I’ll save commenting on that until some facts are available
Jonathan,
I know it has long been planned, but accelerated under the current government.
Extensive technical and economic evalutaion, if you can find one iota of that I will be very surprised, unless you are talking of the Climate Change Committee's pie in the sky estimates.
The International Energy Agency has been an advocate for wind and solar but when looked at, capacity and what the actual output is puts those figures into perspective.
It also shows that all the recent extra demand has been met by fossil fuelled generation.
Renewables are not cheaper, that is another and easily destroyed myth and when you look at value rather than cost their extremely expensive power has very little value at all.
When looked at objectively there is no real merit in renewable generation, and if the planned nuclear expansion over two decades ago had been followed we would be in a far better position and have cheaper electrcity to boot.
Best if you speak to the Future Energy Scenarios team at NESO. I’ve always found them to be extremely helpful
The planned nuclear expansion didn’t happen for good financial reasons, and as NESO show in FES2024 we are unlikely to have significant nuclear. Not even the nuclear industry are expecting to build much, given their comments to the Parliamentary Select Committee a couple of years ago. The lack of flexibility and high cost still holds it back
The glimmer of hope is with siting being less restricted now, SMRs can be put where the waste heat can be usefully used, and the Welsh Government has already selected 16 possible locations
Johnathan,
who owns NESO?, No bias there of course.
Simple objective assessement of renewables and all their deficiencies against their positives.
That should have put a stop to them there and then.
Nuclear costs should be balanced by both the bureaucracy of the British and the long term running costs. South Korea builds quickly and relatively cheaply.
We own NESO
No one questioned their recommendations when they were owned by National Grid plc, but now nationalised everyone wants to question them
South Korea might build nuclear quickly and cheaply but we don’t so it’s an interesting but somewhat academic point. We can watch Canada get going with SMRs
If we tried to reach net zero with only nuclear we would need another 30 Hinckley C’s, and we haven’t finished one yet
Johnathan,
we also owned the National Grid, and I questioned them some years ago when they were talking about all this renewable power.
I asked how will they make up for lulls in generation, how will they balance the grid, how will they provide reactive power and provide short circuit current level support.
I received a telephone cal from someone who's name I forget but the answers,
1 and 2, didn't want to talk about them and much waffle for the last three. Even my wife, who could hear the conversation, wasn't impressed. His continual phrase was 'It will be challenging'
it is beyond the bounds of logic to make our grid less secure and stable for a hypothesis about climate.
Academic, it means it is possible, perhaps we should find out how!
SMR we have dragged our feet, again.
We don't need 93 gigawtts of capacity, double our existing maximum demand, but that is academic, and our construction rate is abysmal.
Short term we need quite a bit more CCGT gas staions, located where possible at closed power staions so grid connection will be easy, and planned sensible nuclear for the longer term.
The Climate Change Act needs repealing, it's a monumental act of self harm to this country that nobody else is copying, worse it was nodded through, with no real scrutiny, very quickly by parliament at the time. Dereliction of duty to put it very mildy.
Perhaps we need an occurrence to wake people up to the reality of intermittent renewable energy.
Annie,
I don't think it will be pleasant but you are probably right.
There is so much misinformation, much of it from government.
I’m in favour of wind and solar power but the current plan for Wales is short sighted and risks causing more damage to the environment and economy than any possible benefits.
I’m in favour of wind and solar, but Wales can generate vastly in excess of 2050 demand using only offshore wind, so as long as Wales remains connected to the GB grid no onshore generation is actually needed
The grid requirements to get power in to the Welsh interior for 2050 are much, much lower than the grid requirements to get power out, so while upgrades will be required I imagine most of those will be at voltages below 132 kV (wires on poles)
Totally agree.
Only 1 in 3?
Results perhaps compiled from places remote from the communities being exposed to the installation of these projects?
DESNZ publish their public attitudes data which shows the majority support wind turbines, even near their homes, but critically the questions asked gives no hint at how big wind turbines are
The dangers of designing such questionnaires from central London!
Yes, I agree. I've observed that campaigning in more built-up areas here in Wales lack the support we have in the rural areas surrounding the developments.
Because built up areas will never see the infrastructure