1 hour ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

 

If we accept a need to move from gas as a domestic heating source...

In NI, 77% of households use oil for central heating, primarily due to the troubles where zero investment was made on new infrastructure. (That figure is 4% for mainland) Now the only real alternative offered here is gas with the widespread catch-up laying of pipes. My own boiler is now 33 years old, and offers plenty of hot heating & water.

Drill baby, drill...

Having mentioned Ed earlier in the thread, I was getting a bit bored with hearing one of his justifications for nett zero, which is that it will reduce dependency on gas imports from unsavoury regimes.

Well, one answer to that as already mentioned is that we have plenty of our own if we choose to use it, but I did a bit of research as to where the imported gas (pipeline or LPG) comes from. I found:

 Norway - 57%

USA        - 26%

Qatar       - 6%

Peru.        - 4%

Other        - 7%

Funnily enough the figures are from the website of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

 

Credit Fastcompany

02-17-2025
IMPACT
Trump has thrown a national EV charging program into chaos. Could he make it disappear for good?

States across the country were slated to receive millions of dollars to expand EV charger access. After a Trump directive, those programs are paused—but not everyone is giving up.
Trump has thrown a national EV charging program into chaos. Could he make it disappear for good?

[Photo: Kindel Media/Pexels]

BY Inside Climate News
long read

For now, Priester’s will have to stick to its famous pecans in Fort Payne, Alabama. But maybe not for long.

Priester’s Pecans, an Alabama staple, is one of more than half a dozen sites across the state slated to receive millions of dollars in federal funding to expand access to chargers for electric vehicles.

Across the country, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law under then-President Joe Biden, is set to provide $5 billion to states for projects that expand the nation’s EV charging infrastructure.

But in a Feb. 6 letter, a Trump administration official notified state directors of transportation that, effectively, they can’t spend it. The Federal Highway Administration rescinded guidance on the funds, which had been allocated by Congress, and “is also immediately suspending the approval of all State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment plans for all fiscal years,” the letter said.
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“Therefore, effective immediately, no new obligations may occur under the NEVI Formula Program until the updated final NEVI Formula Program Guidance is issued and new State plans are submitted and approved.”

POLITICO reported on Wednesday that a DOT spokesman said in an email that states were free to use a small portion of the funding—about $400 million—because that was money the states had already “obligated,” or awarded to subcontractors. But that would still leave close to 90% of the funding up in the air.

Even before the administration had issued its letter, some Republican-led states, including Alabama, had already announced pauses to their states’ implementation of the national EV charging program.

“In response to Unleashing American Energy, one of several Executive Orders that President Trump signed on January 20, 2025, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs has paused the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program as of January 28, 2025,” the Alabama agency responsible for implementing NEVI posted on its website. “In addition, for applications for funding that were originally due on March 17, 2025, ADECA has closed the application window until further notice.”

Despite the announcement by the Trump administration, however, legal experts and those familiar with the electric charging program at issue say the president does not have the power to permanently nix the NEVI program.

“NEVI funding was appropriated by Congress as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law, and it cannot be canceled by the executive branch,” said Elizabeth Turnbull, director of policy and regulatory affairs at the Alliance for Transportation Electrification, a trade group for the electric vehicle industry. “It’s not clear that the secretary of transportation has the authority to revoke states’ NEVI plans, and it’s quite clear that the executive branch lacks the authority to withhold the funding for any sustained period. So, we expect recent executive branch actions to be successfully challenged in court.”

Even under the most aggressive arguments for a strong executive branch, the Supreme Court has stated clearly that the Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate and legislate.

Lawmakers, too, have weighed in on the legality of the Trump administration’s NEVI directive, saying officials acted with “blatant disregard for the law.”

In a letter to administration officials, Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works urged the Department of Transportation to retract its Feb. 6 letter and “implement the law according to your responsibilities.”

The Democrats’ letter also asked for responses to questions about the legal basis for the action and for information about the involvement of individuals associated with Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.” DOGE is not an official department, and multiple reports show that Musk’s team has been dismantling parts or all of some federal agencies.

Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company, currently has the largest network of fast chargers in the country. It’s not yet clear if any new policies on NEVI, or the pause on building out a more robust network for all EV drivers, could benefit Tesla.

The Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration’s parent agency, did not respond to a request for comment.

With or without NEVI, the move toward the electrification of transportation is inevitable, experts say. But they warn that although the administration’s pause of the program will likely be reversed by the courts, even a temporary delay in EV charging infrastructure can harm the nation’s ability to quickly and efficiently transition to electric vehicles. And the Trump administration ignored an earlier court order to lift a broad freeze on federal funds, a federal judge ruled this week.

Meanwhile, Trump’s NEVI freeze has sown confusion across the country, with EV stakeholders and state governments scrambling to figure out what the funding pause will mean and how to respond.

Beyond Alabama, interviews across the country found officials in deep red Wyoming contemplating a possible return of funds, while those in progressive states like Illinois and Maryland remain firmly committed to the EV buildout, with or without federal funding. In purple North Carolina, officials are in limbo, having already spent some NEVI funds, but not sure how to proceed with the next round of projects.
Alabama

In Alabama, officials had already announced plans to fund more than a dozen chargers at sites across the state along interstates and major highways, including installing two dual-port chargers at eight Love’s Travel Stops and another at Priester’s Pecans off I-65 in Fort Deposit.

At the time, state officials, including Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, praised the funding.

“Having strategic electric vehicle charging stations across Alabama not only benefits EV drivers, but it also benefits those companies that produce electric vehicles, including many of them right here in Alabama, resulting in more high-paying jobs for Alabamians,” Ivey said when the funding allocation was announced in July 2024. “This latest round of projects will provide added assurance that Alabamians and travelers to our state who choose electric vehicles can travel those highways and know a charging station is within a reliable distance on their routes.”

In total, Alabama was set to receive $79 million in funding through the program, including $2.4 million to expand training programs for the installation, testing, operation and maintenance of EVs and EV chargers at Bevill State Community College in the central part of the state. The college did not respond to a request for comment on whether the money had been disbursed to the institution before the announced pause.
[Chart: Paul Horn/Inside Climate News]

In an email exchange this week, a spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs confirmed what the agency had posted to its website in the wake of Trump’s inauguration—that the state would pause NEVI projects and await further guidance from the Trump administration.

Even with a pause, however, stakeholders in Alabama and across the country have expressed a commitment to continuing the expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

For its part, Love’s Travel Stops, a 42-state chain that had been set to receive more than $5.8 million in funding for EV chargers in Alabama alone, said it will continue to roll out electric chargers at locations nationwide.

“Love’s remains committed to meeting customers’ needs regardless of fuel type and believes a robust electric vehicle charging network is a part of that,” Kim Okafor, general manager of zero emissions for Love's, said in an emailed statement. “Love’s will continue to monitor related executive orders and subsequent changes in law to determine the next steps. This includes the Alabama Department of Transportation’s Electric Vehicle charging plan timelines.”

The state of Alabama, meanwhile, has its own EV charger program apart from NEVI that has already funded millions of dollars worth of charging infrastructure.

In January, even after its announced pause of NEVI implementation, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs announced the awarding of six grants totaling $2.26 million from state funds for the construction of EV chargers in Huntsville, Hoover, Tuscaloosa and Mobile.

“The installation of electric vehicle charging stations at places like hotels are investments that can attract customers and add to local economies,” ADECA Director Kenneth Boswell said at the time.
North Carolina

In North Carolina, the full buildout of the state’s electric charging network under NEVI is in limbo just four months after the N.C. Department of Transportation announced the initial recipients of the funds.

N.C. DOT spokesman Jamie Kritzer said that based on the federal government’s directive, the agency is continuing with awarded projects but “pausing” the next round of requests for proposals, as well as future phases of the buildout.

If that pause were to become permanent, the state would be forced to abandon $103 million in federal infrastructure money that would have paid for an additional 41 stations to be built as part of Phase 1.

Last September the state announced it had awarded nearly $6 million to six companies to build nine public charging stations. Locations include shopping centers, travel plazas and restaurants, most of them in economically disadvantaged communities.

NEVI requires EV charging stations in the first phase to be installed every 50 miles along the federally approved alternative fuel corridors, and that they be within one mile of those routes. The state has also prioritized Direct Current Fast Charging (DCFC) stations, which can charge a vehicle to 80% in 20 to 30 minutes.

The NEVI program is structured to reimburse private companies for up to 80% of the cost to construct and operate electric vehicle charging stations for five years, after which the charging stations will continue to operate without government support, according to the state DOT.

The state estimated it would have taken two to three years to finish Phase 1.

Under Phase 2, the state would award federal funds to build community-level electric vehicle charging stations, farther from the major highways, including in disadvantaged communities.

That is particularly important in North Carolina, which has the second-largest rural population in the U.S. in terms of percentage. A third of the state’s residents live in rural areas, which are underserved by electric vehicle charging stations.

There are already more than 1,700 public electric charging stations and 4,850 ports in North Carolina, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center. But they aren’t evenly dispersed throughout the state. Alleghany and Ashe counties, in the western mountains, have just one charging station each.
[Chart: Paul Horn/Inside Climate News]

Vickie Atkinson, who lives in the country between Chapel Hill and Pittsboro in central North Carolina, drives a plug-in hybrid Ford Escape, which is powered by an electric engine or gas, unlike full electric models, which have no gas option. Plug-in hybrids typically have fully electric ranges of 35 to 40 miles.

“I try to drive on battery whenever possible,” Atkinson said. But she’s frustrated that she can’t drive from her home to downtown Siler City and back—a 60-mile round trip—without resorting to the gas engine. There are two chargers on the outskirts along U.S. 64—only one of them is a fast charger—but none downtown.

“I really hope the chargers are installed,” Atkinson said. “I fear they won’t and I find that very frustrating.”

Former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, advocated for wider adoption of electric vehicles and infrastructure. In a 2018 executive order, Cooper established a benchmark of 80,000 registered zero-emission vehicles in the state by 2025.

North Carolina met that goal. State DOT registration data shows there were 81,658 electric vehicles and 24,457 plug-in hybrids as of September, the latest figures available.

Cooper issued a subsequent executive order in 2022 that set a more aggressive goal: 1.2 million registered electric vehicles by 2030. At the current pace of electric vehicle adoption, it’s unlikely the state will achieve that benchmark.

The electric vehicle industry is an economic driver in North Carolina. Toyota just opened a $13.9 billion battery plant in the small town of Liberty and says it will create about 5,100 new jobs. The company is scheduled to begin shipping batteries in April.

Natron Energy is building a plant in Edgecombe County, east of Raleigh, to manufacture sodium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. Experts say they are cheaper and environmentally superior to lithium-ion batteries and less likely to catch fire, although they store less energy.

The global company Kempower opened its first North American factory in Durham, where it builds charging infrastructure. Jed Routh, its vice president of markets and products for North America, said that while “the rapidly shifting market is difficult to forecast and interest in electric vehicles may slow at times over the next four years, we don’t expect it to go away. We believe that the industry will remain strong and Kempower remains committed to define, produce, and improve EV charging infrastructure throughout North America.”

North Carolina does have a separate funding source for electric charging stations that is protected from the Trump administration’s program cuts and cancellations. The state received $92 million from Volkswagen, part of the EPA’s multi-billion-dollar national settlement in 2016 with the car company, which had installed software in some of its diesel cars to cheat on emissions tests.

The Department of Environmental Quality used the settlement money to pay for 994 EV charging ports at 318 sites in North Carolina. The agency expects to add more charging stations with $1.8 million in unspent settlement funds.

Electrify America was created by the Volkswagen Group of America to implement a $2 billion portion of the settlement. It required the car company to invest in electric charging infrastructure and in the promotion of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Electrify America operates 20 charging NEVI-compliant, high-speed stations in North Carolina, using the settlement money. However, the funding pause could affect the company because it works with potential site developers and small businesses to comply with the NEVI requirements.

The company is still reviewing the details in the federal memo, company spokeswoman Tara Geiger said.

“Electrify America continues to engage with stakeholders to understand developments impacting the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program,” Geiger wrote in an email. “We remain committed to growing our coast-to-coast Hyper-Fast network to support transportation electrification.”
Wyoming

In Wyoming, Doug McGee, a state Department of Transportation spokesperson, said the agency is taking a wait and see approach to NEVI moving forward, and is not ruling out a return of funding. About half a dozen people at the department handle NEVI along with other daily responsibilities, McGee said, and it will be easy for them to put NEVI on hold while they await further instruction.

The department was in the process of soliciting proposals for EV charging stations and has not yet spent any money under NEVI. “There was very little to pause,” McGee said.

Across 6,800 miles of highway in Wyoming, there are 110 public EV charging stations, making the state’s EV infrastructure the third-smallest in the country, ahead of charging networks in only North Dakota and Alaska.
Illinois

More progressive states, including Illinois, have explicitly said they will redouble their efforts to support the expansion of EV charging infrastructure in the wake of the Trump administration’s NEVI pause.

The state of Illinois has said it remains committed to the goal of helping consumers and the public sector transition to EVs in 2025 through state funding sources, even if some NEVI projects are halted.

Commonwealth Edison Co. (ComEd), the largest electric utility in Illinois and the primary electric provider in Chicago, also announced a $100 million rebate program on Feb. 6 at the Chicago Auto Show, funds that are currently available to boost EV adoption throughout the state.

The funds are for residential EV charger and installation costs, all-electric fleet vehicles and charging infrastructure in both the public and private sectors.

According to Cristina Botero, senior manager for beneficial electrification at ComEd, the rebate is part of a total investment of $231 million from ComEd as part of its Beneficial Electrification plan programs to promote electrification and EV adoption.

While the $231 million won’t be impacted by the Trump administration’s order, other EV projects funded by NEVI are halted. In 2022, for example, $148 million from NEVI was set to be disbursed in Illinois over the course of five years, focusing on Direct Current Fast Charging to fulfill the requirement to build charging stations every 50 miles, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

“We are still in the process of reviewing the impacts of last week’s order and evaluating next steps going forward,” said Maria Castaneda, spokesperson at IDOT, in an emailed statement.

The NEVI funds were also set to help achieve Gov.r J.B. Pritzker’s goal to have 1 million EVs on Illinois roads by 2030. Officials estimated that at least 10,000 EV charging stations are needed in order to achieve this 2030 goal. Last fall, there were 1,200 charging stations open to the public.

In January, Illinois was awarded federal funds totaling $114 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation to build 14 truck charging hubs, adding to the statewide charging infrastructure.

According to Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs for the Respiratory Health Association, most of that funding is either frozen or at risk.

However, programs like the recent ComEd rebate will not be impacted. “This is at the state level and not dictated by federal policy,” Botero said.
Maryland

In Maryland, state officials are trying to assess the fallout and find alternative ways to keep EV infrastructure efforts alive. The outcome hinges on new federal guidance and potential legal battles over the suspension.

Maryland is allocated $63 million over five years under NEVI. The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) launched the first $12.1 million round last summer to build 126 fast-charging ports at 22 sites across many of the state’s counties. At least some are expected to be operational by late 2025.

In December, MDOT issued a new call for proposals for building up to 29 additional highway charging stations, expecting stable federal support. At the time, senior MDOT officials told Inside Climate News they were confident in the program’s security since it was authorized under law.

But Trump’s funding pause has upended those plans.

“The Maryland Department of Transportation is moving forward with its obligated NEVI funding and is awaiting new guidance from the U.S. Department of Transportation to advance future funding rounds,” said Carter Elliott, a spokesperson for Gov. Wes Moore, in an emailed statement.

The Moore administration reaffirmed its commitment to EV expansion, calling charging essential to reducing consumer costs and cutting climate pollution. “Gov. Moore is committed to making the state more competitive by pressing forward with the administration’s strategy to deliver charging infrastructure for clean cars to drivers across the state,” the statement added.

In written comments, an MDOT spokesperson said the agency is determining its options for future funding needs and solicitations.

Katherine García, director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All program, said that freezing the EV charging funds was an unsound and illegal move by the Trump administration. “This is an attack on bipartisan funding that Congress approved years ago and is driving investment and innovation in every state,” she said.

She said that the NEVI program is helping the U.S. build out the infrastructure needed to support the transition to vehicles that don’t pollute the air.

The Sierra Club’s Josh Stebbins lamented the slow pace of the EV charger buildout across the state. “We are not sure when Maryland's NEVI chargers will be operational,” he said. “States must move faster and accelerate the installation of NEVI stations. It has been frustratingly slow and the public needs to see a return on its investment.”

Maryland EV ambitions are high stakes. Transportation remains the state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and public officials and advocates see EV adoption as critical to meet its net-zero carbon goal by 2045. NEVI is also a key plank of the state’s broader Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Planning initiative, designed to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
What Happens Next for EV charging

As litigation is brought over the Trump administration’s pause on NEVI funds, experts like Turnbull of the Alliance for Transportation Electrification believe the United States remains, despite this bump, on the road toward electrification.

“We are not shifting into reverse,” Turnbull said. “The EV market will continue to grow across all market segments driven by market innovation and consumer demand, both within the United States and globally. By pretending the EV transition doesn’t exist, this administration risks the U.S.’ global competitiveness, national security and economic growth.”

By Lee Hedgepeth, Aman Azhar, Jake Bolster, Lisa Sorg, and Sarah Mattalian

On 2/17/2025 at 6:59 AM, unofix said:

Another Comrade Miliband success 🤣

Parliament Ditches Heat Pumps As They Don't Work!

 

There’s a dribble of brilliance! Someone must have struck him in the head with a bucket full of logic.

Trump is having DOGE go into the agencies and have a look at where exactly the money is going. So far they have found tens of billions in taxpayer money being used, sent, granted to a huge number of countries and organizations that have not been vetted as to what they are doing with the money. This is a great opportunity for the organizations that have been getting funding for at least four years now to show the evidence of their work. Not just the plan, but also what they have completed.

I find it funny that the article above mentioned EV America being affected by the pause in funding. That money to create EV America was from the VW emissions scandal on their diesel not direct taxpayer funding. I actually contacted them about placing a charging station on some commercial property I have in the town I live in. They informed me that they were not doing anything in my area, even though we have no public charging stations in our town and we are within the mileage limit of a major interstate highway. I figured that a charging station would also help the coffee shop and convenience store a few hundred yards away as well when they will have to wait as it charges.

 I would think that the entities involved in this would be happy to show everyone exactly what they have accomplished in almost four years of spending taxpayer money! I strongly suspect that there will be a huge amount of wasted money and inaction!

I would be very happy to be wrong.

On 2/17/2025 at 11:59 AM, unofix said:

Another Comrade Miliband success 🤣

Parliament Ditches Heat Pumps As They Don't Work!

Of course air source heat pumps don't work. It's not rocket science. They're trying to extract heat out of air that may already be below 0°C so they're at their least efficient when the demand is highest (and most efficient when the demand is lowest). It's totally bonkers!

The exact same argument applies to solar farms which produce their lowest output in the short winter days with the sun lowest in the sky. Also if history teaches us anything it's the need for food security so covering thousands of acres of productive farmland with solar panels is utter madness.

There's more of an argument for ground source pumps as the reservoir of heat in the ground is pretty stable all year round.

5 hours ago, mjt said:

 Also if history teaches us anything it's...

Surely the ending of that sentence should be, 'that governments are pretty unknowledgeable, apart from squandering tax payers hard earned cash, as they don't have any money of their own, it's all ours...'

I still will never forgive them for tossing £37 BILLION (£37,000,000,000) out the window for a useless and unnecessary track & trace system during Covid. That would pay for a lot of pensioners  winter fuel allowances. (123 Million roughly!)

2 hours ago, mjt said:

There's more of an argument for ground source pumps as the reservoir of heat in the ground is pretty stable all year round.

On the face of it you would think they might work. In reality they don't.

Thermal dynamics, basic physics and what we used to call good old common sense says they only work for a few hours each day.

As an example lets suppose that the ground temperature is 9^oC on a normal day. You turn on the heat source pump and start extracting the heat out of the ground. The system removes about 5^oC from the water which by the magic of heat exchangers etc. it turns in to heat for your house.

The ground source water is returned back to the under ground pipes at 4^oC ready to go through the whole cycle again. The problem is that as the system keeps extracting heat, and returning cold water to the ground, the soil starts to cool quite quickly and after only a few hours use the incoming water temperature starts to drop and the system becomes less and less efficient, until eventually the system becomes so inefficient that it uses more energy to run it than it actually extracts !!

The systems may work well in Spain or Florida where there sole use is to heat water for washing, but those places don't use the ground source heat pumps to heat the house.

On 2/19/2025 at 10:29 PM, Scottman said:

Trump is having DOGE go into the agencies and have a look at where exactly the money is going. So far they have found tens of billions in taxpayer money being used, sent, granted to a huge number of countries and organizations that have not been vetted as to what they are doing with the money

It turns out the DOGE is just making numbers up, one of the contracts they stopped and said saved 8 Billion turned out to be an 8 Million dollar contract,

Same with the layoffs, they are desperately trying to rehire many of the people as they realize they simply can't do without them.

Then there is the claim of 50 million worth of condoms for Gaza. It also turns out that at the price USAID pay for condoms, that would be 1 billion of them.

‘Some of the things I say will be incorrect,’ says DOGE chief after reporting reveals that Gaza Strip was mistaken for province in Mozambique

8 hours ago, Mark-UK said:

It turns out ...

In September 2016, Salena Zito, who was then covering voters in the heartland, wrote of then-candidate Donald Trump, in a column for The Atlantic:

“the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally..."

It's easy on this side of the pond to think not to take what the White House says seriously it all just a  bit of a weird laugh, it's not our jobs at stake -yet, it's not our health at stake - yet, it's not our civil rights at stake - yet

21 minutes ago, Mark-UK said:

... it's not our jobs at stake ...

Our own government is taking care of that. With their untold obsession on 'green', they are asking China & India to build any gods amount of solar panels/wind turbines/widgets (which aren't built here in the UK offering home grown jobs), often using good old fashioned coal power to do so 😂

Even the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change seem a little sceptical of plans for "green" jobs:

https://institute.global/insights/news/uk-government-should-adopt-a-new-hard-headed-approach-to-industrial-strategy-to-boost-economic-growth

42 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Even the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change seem a little sceptical of plans for "green" jobs:

https://institute.global/insights/news/uk-government-should-adopt-a-new-hard-headed-approach-to-industrial-strategy-to-boost-economic-growth

Not sure which is more impressive, that article, or that you subscribe to Blair's institute output 🤣

The Bliar crawls out from under his stone again and talks cr`p again.

1 hour ago, StephenFord said:

Not sure which is more impressive, that article, or that you subscribe to Blair's institute output 🤣

Posting a link does not imply endorsement of the contents (or Tony Blair)!😀 Though in this cases the first few paragraphs seem reasonable.

On 2/20/2025 at 6:51 PM, Mark-UK said:

It turns out the DOGE is just making numbers up, one of the contracts they stopped and said saved 8 Billion turned out to be an 8 Million dollar contract,

Same with the layoffs, they are desperately trying to rehire many of the people as they realize they simply can't do without them.

Then there is the claim of 50 million worth of condoms for Gaza. It also turns out that at the price USAID pay for condoms, that would be 1 billion of them.

‘Some of the things I say will be incorrect,’ says DOGE chief after reporting reveals that Gaza Strip was mistaken for province in Mozambique

Not true. But I would say that the likelihood of errors is high. The fact that the auditors are turning up evidence of fraud and misappropriation in the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars is something that is worthy of much more attention. Forty billion dollars for charging stations and a grand total of eight completed is a problem that deserves scrutiny.

Interesting to hear that a group of BP investors are attempting to pass a motion for them to drop their net zero targets, and return to their core business of processing oil, and making money! The worm is definitely turning.

Drill baby, drill...

That is why they exist, after all. The thing that always bothered me about this insane drive to eliminate the fossil fuels industry was that the  environmental movement has always despised natural gas. It is very clean burning and plentiful. But because it is a product of the fossil fuels industry it is not considered to be clean energy. I’m much less concerned about natural gas than nuclear energy for some obvious reasons. 

The Telegraph
Major wind farm was paid £65m to cut power output by three quarters
Matt Oliver
Fri, 21 February 2025 at 5:54 pm GMT 5 min read
Wind farm
Wind farm - Andy Buchanan/AFP

One of Britain’s biggest wind farms was handed £65m to slash its output by nearly three quarters last year, amid warnings that the country’s “staggeringly inefficient” power grid is pushing up household bills.

The Seagreen offshore wind farm in the North Sea – the largest of its kind in Scotland – had its output curtailed for 71pc of the time it was due to operate in 2024, grid data show.

This meant that of 4.7 terawatt hours of power its turbines generated, 3.3 terawatt hours were effectively discarded – with owner SSE paid by grid operators each time this happened.

SSE also owns the Viking wind farm in the Shetlands, which had 57pc of its output curtailed last year at a cost of £10m. It was only switched on in August.

The two sites have been paid another £1.5m so far this year for cutting output.

Grid operators pay wind farms to switch off when they are generating but there is not enough network capacity to transport their power.

But these curtailment payments ultimately go on to bills, in the form of network charges, and are paid by millions of households and businesses.

Last year, separate analysis by the Renewable Energy Foundation charity found that wind farms were paid almost £400m to turn off their turbines.

On Friday, SSE said grid upgrades were coming that would result in “more and more of this power flowing into the economy, powering homes and businesses for decades to come”.

A spokesman said: “Seagreen and Viking wind farms are incredible assets that give Britain the ability to harness huge volumes of its own clean, homegrown energy that can drive economic growth while reducing reliance on volatile imports.”

It came as the Government on Friday announced a slew of changes designed to attract more wind farm investment in the UK.

The proposals will make it easier for developers to secure contracts for difference (CfDs), the main mechanism used to support renewable energy schemes, and will extend their duration beyond the current 15 years.

But the figures will fuel a row that is raging in the energy industry over controversial proposals to introduce regional electricity pricing in the UK, replacing the current national price system.

Greg Jackson, the chief executive of Octopus Energy, compared the existing arrangement to “every region being forced to charge London house prices” and warned it would add £5bn to bills by the end of this decade.

Writing for The Telegraph, he said: “Britain suffers from a staggeringly inefficient market, reminiscent of the wine lakes and butter mountains of the old European Common Agricultural Policy.

BP now in serious problem due to errant 'green' fanatical aims! I hope they don't go bust, I have about £15 of points on my loyalty card! 😂

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/23/bp-the-oil-industrys-biggest-loser-on-net-zero/

I was always dubious of BP's previous plans because of the name of their former Chief Exec, Mr Looney!😀

Still some good news from BP. 

https://forecourttrader.co.uk/latest-news/bps-all-electric-forecourt-in-london-to-open-soon/699058.article

🤣🤣

"Shell has already established a market for this electric format – with 10 ultra rapid chargers on its site nearby at Fulham Road, a prosperous part of the capital where electric cars are likely to be popular, but at-home charging is not always available because of high-density terraced housing..."

and therein lies the rub - for pottering around town, EVs are perfect, just like the old fashioned milk floats of yesteryear. However, if like many who live outside a city/town, and enjoy the rural life - EVs are as useful as solar panels at night...

On 2/10/2025 at 12:08 PM, Eric Bloodaxe said:

As discussed before, I'm not happy with the level of subsidy at present considering all the other demands on the public purse. Certainly don't see why private buyers should be subsidised. To me, it's just like any other product - if it's good and suits your requirements, you'll buy one, as many have.

Just zapped off an email to my MP on those lines - realised he's not heard from me so far in 2025 and don't want him feeling neglected!😀

 

Well, just got a response from my MP. He (or some minion) has completely missed my point and has sent a long response (which looks like a cut and paste job) listing all the incentives the Government (more accurately, us) are providing with yet more to come. Which is what I was complaining about!

A bit sad really. My previous MP (Conservative) did at least give the impression he'd actually read your points. And the guy before him (Labour) was great. He'd send a reply along the lines of "Well, this is the official response from the Department, and this is what I think!"

 Anyway, I've sent a (polite) note back telling him he's got it wrong and reiterating my point.