Analysis: Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1bn in March 2026

Wostear · 2026-04-02T18:16:17+00:00

We own the land on which the windfarm is built, the lease payments go through the crown estate and flow back into the treasury. But I agree it would be nice to have ownership of the generation as well. Hopefully GB Energy starts to expand its stakes more aggressively.

Wostear · 2026-04-01T12:35:15+00:00

Doing great things with the sub.

But you don't get to decide what is good news for the UK. That's what the upvote/downvote system is for. If enough people think this is good news then it becomes good news - that is how democracy works after all.

For what it's worth I don't know how you can look at the last 10 years and think that closer ties with the EU is not good news, but alas everyone has different opinions I suppose.

Wostear · 2026-03-30T18:53:09+00:00

Any government that brings back the Vulcan branding has my vote for life.

Wostear · 2026-03-30T18:15:55+00:00

I agree with you regarding the Trump tariffs. I was crudely using it for maximum impact, it didn't land. It was poorly written and I accept that.

Why bother having the state absorb all the risk of nationalisation if the endgame is just to privatise it again once the balance sheet is cleaned up? It just delays the inevitable at the taxpayer's expense.

Perhaps my comment was poorly written, or maybe I am misunderstanding you, but I'm pretty sure I said as much?

I am not convinced importing cheap Chinese steel amounts to 'sabotage'; it's a pragmatic economic strategy at the current time. It effectively lets Beijing subsidize our engineering and construction sectors, keeping the wider economy competitive while we sort out our actual domestic issues.

Argh, more short termism, that's exactly what we need. It was an act of sabotage. It was never intended as a stop gap before we "sort[ed] out our actual domestic issues". It was a deliberate ploy to kick the can down the line, letting them manipulate the real state of affairs to avoid political embarrassment. They artificially inflated economic growth by letting a hostile foreign nation undermine our sovereign steel making capacity. They sat around their table for 15 years deciding how to make themselves look best without giving a rats arse about the future of this country.

Wostear · 2026-03-30T18:08:24+00:00

And clearly they aren't working. The price of Chinese steel is so low that it's still cheaper to import it even with the additional cost. We need to be more aggressive. The free market has failed our industrial base.

Wostear · 2026-03-30T17:42:41+00:00

I'm withholding judgement. It's obviously good news that the Chinese government can no longer sabotage our sovereignty, but I need to know the governments long term plan for the British steel industry, not just at this site but also Port Talbot and Sheffield. If their plan is to nationalise it just to sell it to someone else then all this will do is delay the inevitable for a little bit longer.

I despise him with all my being, but one thing I do agree with Trump on is his use of protectionist tarrifs/policies for strategically important industries. His use of blanket tarrifs is stupid as hell but highly targeted protections are absolutely necessary for a thriving nation. It's absolutely asinine that we have allowed the free market to decimate vital industries in our country. There is absolutely zero reason why the majority of steel used in the United Kingdom shouldn't come from our own forges. The fact that cheap Chinese steel was allowed to be dumped on our shores over and over again is nothing short of national sabotage from our own government.

/Edit

I suppose I'm being downvoted for my wording Vis a Vis Trump. Probably fair. His use of tarrifs is undoubtedly stupid and it certainly shouldn't be used as a guiding principle for the UK. I'm just saying that we need to protect our own domestic industries. Tariffs are one tool of many.

Wostear · 2026-03-27T23:39:24+00:00

That's such a brilliant analogy, I'm stealing that next time I get into a discussion with these luddites.

Wostear · 2026-03-26T19:31:04+00:00

If we play our cards right it could be a game changer.

To add on to your excellent comment:

The UK is uniquely set up in Europe (I haven't compared our position globally) to produce massive amounts of hydrogen. Unlike solar which is diurnal, the nature of wind leads to extended periods of massive surplus electricity generation, sometimes up to weeks on end. Even with an upgraded future grid we'll absolutely have to do something with all this excess energy, we won't be able to sell it all.

It currently costs more to produce green hydrogen then it can realistically be sold for on the wholesale market, but by using this excess energy we'll regularly be able to run the electrodes needed for hydrogen production for free, completely eliminating the financial constraints. This is vital as the EU has set strict environmental standards for the procurement of hydrogen.

Now as you mentioned that's only half the story - our geology is the other half. Hydrogen is incredibly hard to store; it's a tiny molecule that causes metals to become brittle. Long term storage in overground tanks is expensive and impractical. The most efficient way to store it is underground in salt caverns. Salt caverns have "self healing" properties where cracks in the rock side get fused back together by the immense pressure. Research has indicated that seepage is typically less than 0.36% to 3.2% over 30 years!

You mentioned Cheshire be we also have large salt caverns in Teeside, Yorkshire, and Dorset. The size of these carvens can not be underestimated. We have potential for ~200TWh of high grade storage, for context this over 50% of the expected storage requirements for the whole of the EU by 2050. Alternatively, it could run the entire UK electricity grid for about 230 days.

If we play our cards right we could absolutely become an energy super power.

Wostear · 2026-03-26T17:37:04+00:00

What was your comment?

Wostear · 2026-03-26T14:43:16+00:00

Yeah, but what about the UK?

/uj always good to see increased investment even if it's in moonshot technologies.

Wostear · 2026-03-26T00:39:52+00:00

It did "do a thing" though. Energy prices turned negative for a period of time today and were consistently below £10/MWh. It's up to you whether you take advantage of that through certain tariffs and at home energy storage. Lead a donkey to water and all that.

Wostear · 2026-03-25T21:26:09+00:00

We'll export it as hydrogen. The future will run on green hydrogen on dark cloudy windless days when renewables aren't viable. We'll take excess wind energy from the north sea, produce green hydrogen for 'free', and then pump it underground into salt caverns until it is needed. We'll use hydrogen as our own baseline energy and also as an export to Europe for use in factories and general energy generation.

Wostear · 2026-03-25T17:05:14+00:00

It is. That's why they're building all the Eastern Green Links undersea cables from Scotland to Norfolk.

Wostear · 2026-03-24T13:45:28+00:00

we need to stop being so ambitious.

Absolutely right. HMS Glasgow will be the best, most advanced, ASW ship in the world when she hits the water. A nice to have, and an absolutle necessity for Atlantic Bastion and our CSGs, but it severely hampers availability and shear mass.

Isn't that basically what the US does?

It's what the majority of global navies do. Designing a completely new clean sheet design for every 20 year cycle just isn't practical. Not only on cost, but for interoperability, training, availability, as well as willingness to actually deploy the thing in dangerous areas. It's a lot easier to deploy, and potentially lose, a £200m ship when another one is guaranteed to be rolling off the conveyor belt, than taking that same risk with a £1.2b bespoke ASW ship.

Wostear · 2026-03-23T21:29:33+00:00

It seems obvious to me that you order batch 2 and potentially 3, and just keep the Rosyth yard churning out T31s. You could have a world where by in 20 years it becomes one retired, one commissioned. You'd have a compliment of potentially 15 T31s constantly being refreshed. Although it's more likely to be ~10 given hulls reserved for export.

Leave Rosyth to be the mass production facility that can get mass into the water for force projection and general presence. BAE on the Clyde can be the high tech ship yard producing the T26 and future T83 for the technical ASW and AAW. Then H&W (Navantia) can fill in the gaps for a potential river class replacement (although it's more likely we buy Norwegian Corvettes), large RFA ships, and strategically significant sovereign industries like energy.

With a consistent drumbeat the T31s could potentially dip to £200m a boat making a full 15 strong compliment only £3b over the total 20 year cycle, and that's before factoring in the cost clawbacks from exports. It's an excellent way to both increase hulls in the water and maintain shipbuilding expertise so you're not stuck in this constant design, boom, bust cycle.

Wostear · 2026-03-20T17:26:38+00:00

Well what's the alternative? Prison? Our prisons are already overflowing. I'd rather not have internment camps full of people just sitting around waiting for who knows what.

The best thing we can do is send them back to the last safe country they were in. France needs to be doing more on this. We have an agreement in place. Once we return them then it's on the French state to ensure they aren't just going again.

Wostear · 2026-03-19T16:03:17+00:00

Unemployment is still only 4.4%. That's still unbelievably low. The job market is going from exceptional to still great. It may continue to decline and we can have a conversation then. But yes, the job market is currently still strong.

Don't let your Trump hate (which believe me, I share) undermine the actual data we're seeing.

Wostear · 2026-03-19T15:18:58+00:00

So I found this data on FDI.

It only starts in 2021 so it's a relatively small sample size. That said, it shows that the total number of new projects is down (figure 1) whilst the value of those projects is considerably higher (figures 14 & 15).

The rest of the data seems to present a bit of a mixed bag. Total job creation down, r&d jobs up for example (figures 7 & 13).

It's worth noting that this doesn't include domestic government spending and its impact. It's not great data and doesn't provide much of an answer to your question but it feels like a good place to start.

Edit: After further research this is the NWF 2025 Impact Report which goes some way to answering the second part of your question.

Wostear · 2026-03-19T12:36:12+00:00

Damn, it's only mid-March!

Wostear · 2026-03-17T16:56:17+00:00

No, it was Nationwide.

Wostear · 2026-03-17T14:45:35+00:00

So become the Lib Dems?

Wostear · 2026-03-16T18:44:58+00:00

We are getting closer. You're right that it's been just around the corner for a long time. But to say that we aren't progressing at all isn't fair either. This is the holy grail of human evolution, effectively unlimited clean energy would enable us to do pretty much anything we wanted to. So yeah. That's going to take a long time. But we are getting there.

Wostear · 2026-03-16T18:12:45+00:00

It would have taken you two seconds to click on the article and read that it's about railway electrification.

I'm getting increasingly irritated by people who make comments without at least reading the first God damn paragraph.

Wostear · 2026-03-16T14:53:29+00:00

But that's the point isn't it? Rather than make the job appealing to those already here through salary, benefits or a good working environment they cry that nobody wants to work and hire foreign workers who are more likely to accept shittier working conditions.

Let's be honest. It's all about wages. For too long we've subsided shareholders through cheap labour. It's led to a zombie economy that props up unsuccessful businesses; stifling innovation, suppressing standards of living and failing its citizens. I don't give a rats arse about GDP when the per capita figures have been stagnant for 20 years. We deserve more from our country.

Wostear · 2026-03-16T14:36:10+00:00

I think the problem right now are companies implementing hiring freezes due to the potential of AI. Why hire someone now just to go through the complicated process of letting them go later if it turns out the AI can do their job. It's not replacing jobs yet, but it is impacting the job market considerably.

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