Without the reliable flexible worker (gas), the factory owner is unable to respond to either volatility of demand or supply (of unreliable workers). It ends up needing either to over-invest in the expensive inflexible workers (nuclear) or in general employ far more workers overall than needed, with no guarantee of being consistently adequately resourced.
The cost of this duplication of resource in building a “renewable grid” is passed on to British consumers through higher electricity bills.
To mitigate the loss of flexible gas, we will likely see the Government continuing to pretend that burning wood (biomass), despite its higher CO2 content and deforestation consequences, qualifies as “renewable”.
At higher market shares of wind power, with more electricity needing to be stored for longer on nosebleed, expensive, industrial scale batteries, unable to store power for longer than a few hours, it is easy to see how building an electricity grid powered solely by renewables would end up costing the UK more than 100pc of GDP, rendering it insolvent.
A renewable grid will produce abundant electricity for a few days annually and prohibitively expensive, unreliable power the rest of the time, requiring a blank cheque of consumer subsidy, resulting in demand destruction, supply rationing and deindustrialisation.
Reeves to ‘manage’ the economy
To her credit, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves at least has some real-world business experience, having spent six years on the Bank of England graduate programme, followed by two years at Halifax Bank of Scotland, before it was rescued from insolvency in 2008 by Lloyds.
Alarm bells rang, however, earlier this year when she claimed that this combined eight years of experience as a twenty-something before entering politics means she “know[s] what it takes to run a successful economy”.