Gargantuan Silicon Valley tech firm OpenAI has paused a major UK infrastructure project. Blaming energy costs and regulations…
Stargate is being paused:
“We see huge potential for the UK‘s AI future… AI compute is foundational to that goal — we continue to explore Stargate UK and will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment.”
The project was announced in September when Trump visited the UK. Disaster for Miliband and Labour…
Spare a thought for energy minister Michael Shanks this morning, who’s had an tricky start to the year. During energy questions in the Commons, he was asked by Tory MP Harriet Cross what the price of oil and gas is today. He couldn’t answer…
After some waffling, Cross eventually put Shanks out of his misery, informing the House that oil is at $62 a barrel and gas at 72p a therm. That’s around a third lower than what the government itself deems “windfall” prices, despite Labour hammering the industry with punitive windfall taxes. Chin up, Shanks. Maybe 2027 will be your year…
ExxonMobil Chairman Paul Greenwood has directly hit out at Labour over its business-bashing policies. Last night the global energy giant announced plans to close its manufacturing plant in Fife, putting hundreds of jobs at risk…
Greenwood pinned the blame squarely on Labour, saying their policies have stripped the UK of the low-cost operating environment and competitive market conditions needed to keep the site viable. He said on the Today Programme:
“I will be blunt – I have one of those keys to success in place, and that is a brilliant workforce. Two of those keys I deliberately do not have because of Government policy. You know what’s happening in the North Sea, we’ve had windfall taxes, we’ve had a ban on production licences – I need cheap sources of abundant ethane and I do not have them, because the North Sea – because of Government policy – is declining rapidly and that ethane is increasingly high price. I have to have a burden put upon me of CO2 taxes – we paid £20 million last year in CO2 taxes, that will double in the next four or five years. My international competitors do not have those costs. I also have to deal with high energy costs and those kind of things, so these are deliberate Government policies that are undermining us.”
Yesterday GMB Union’s Scotland Secretary Louise Gilmour wrote to Reeves telling her to cut the windfall tax on oil and gas firms -which Reeves increased in the last budget. The Treasury has been briefing that she has been weighing up cutting the levy. Not so hot for Miliband. Something he can reverse when he enters No10…
Ofgem has this morning announced a rise in the energy price cap of 6.4% from £1,738 to £1,849. More than the 5% expected…
That’s the third consecutive hike in the cap, which is reviewed every three months. Analysts blame low winter wind levels. The UK grid was reporting a 0.1% wind power share last month…
The Tories say the £111 bill hike from April is a “betrayal to the families who Ed Miliband promised to save £300 on their bills.” Getting further away from that pledge…
Another cold day, another example of Red Ed’s climate crusade proving to be a vanity project the UK can’t afford. Over the last 18 hours, wind farms supplied between 0.1% to 3.7% of the UK’s electricity, while solar hit a low of 0%. Gas has been providing between 59% to 70% of electricity. No surprise that wind and solar farms are effectively useless when it’s a cloudy, windless day…
Meanwhile, due to renewable energy sources not providing enough electricity, UK power prices have jumped to their highest level in more than two years, with the day-ahead price reaching £241.49 per megawatt-hour as the country imports electricity from Europe at record levels. Just a few weeks ago, Britain was on the brink of blackouts because unreliable renewables failed to supply sufficient energy. Yet Miliband is still pushing to reach 95% ‘clean energy’ within five years…
The UK’s electricity grid came worryingly close to blackouts yesterday – just 580 MW shy of the lights going out – in what independent energy consultant Kathryn Porter described as the “tightest day since 2011 or before”. National Grid ESO had to issue its first Electricity Market Notice of the winter, along with a third Capacity Market Notice, though the latter was quickly binned. No surprise that cold weather means more heating and energy…
A sharp drop in wind output combined with limited electricity imports from Europe left the grid scrambling to keep the lights on. Yet Red Ed is still pushing to fast-track planning permission for a wave of new wind farms — despite the inconvenient truth that these turbines have to be switched off when there’s too much wind and the grid can’t handle it. Meanwhile Labour is ploughing ahead with their plan to make wind and solar the backbone of our energy system to hit 95% renewable energy by 2030. Never mind that they’re effectively useless when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”