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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

He also removed the effective ban on onshore wind construction that was introduced a month after he lost the election, restarting after a decade of lost opportunity.

This Trump-level idiocy that is just never mentioned, even as people blame the gas burned in england on windy days as a cost of wind curtailment, when the curtailment is more a like a third of the cost. Burning gas to power people who chose not to build turbines is the other 2/3rds.

In the alternate world that is tens of billions of gas costs avoided to date and tens of billions more in future.

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I always blew my mind that people don't mention this more. The UK is blessed with some of the most plentiful and reliable wind resources on earth, and mediocre solar resources at best.

Banning onshore wind turbines was just insanity. Despite the insanity, the UK has made great steps with offshore wind, but offshore wind is expensive and has all sorts of accompanying headaches. Onshore is super cheap and quick to build per unit power by comparison.

Onshore wind turbines are going to be much more important to the future of UK energy independence than balcony solar.

At the same time they are banning wind turbines leaders (Chinese companies) from opening factories in the UK... [1][2]

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c995xjxk97mo

[2] https://www.energyvoice.com/insights/energy-opinion/594763/m...

That seems rather dumb. I wonder why they blocked the Ming Yang thing in Scotland? The UK seems to make quite a lot of dumb energy decisions like blocking UK North Sea gas and then buying North Sea gas from Norway.

Yes it is rather 'dumb'. Apparently the policy is to reset relations with the EU so perhaps selling out to Siemens is deemed preferable, or perhaps they got the usual friendly phone call from Washington D.C, it is difficult to follow. And that's the point: Where is the plan? Where is strategic thinking?

China bad. In case of supply chain attack perhaps. It doesn't matter anyway because the Chinese have basically won by moving forward while others were bikeshedding, focusing on diesel emissions cheat devices, closing down nuclear power stations, burning Russian gas on a windy day, not having a proper grid capacity to move electrons South, delivering brexit and so on.

There's just not much gas left in the UK North Sea.

> Industry body Offshore Energy UK (OEUK) claims that more oil and gas could be extracted by 2050. However, the ‘High Case’ scenario for future production in a report for OEUK would still mean that 92% of production has already occurred.

...

> Compared to the maximum oil production that occurred in 1999, UK output in 2025 was 77% (over three-quarters) lower.

https://eciu.net/media/press-releases/around-90-of-uk-north-...

Once upon a time, Brits could build gensets and reduction gears. In Britain, even.

This factory would have employed (mostly) British staff in Britain.

WHY DO YOU HATE THE COAL BARONS SO MUCH? YOU'RE TAKING MONEY OUT OF THEIR MISTRESSES' MOUTHS

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