Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
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UTILITY WEEK | 24TH - 30TH APRIL 2015 | 31 Community Editor: Ellen Bennett, t: 01342 332084, e: ellen.bennett@fav-house.com; News editor: Jillian Ambrose, t: 01342 332061, e: jillian.ambrose@fav-house.com; Associate news editor: Mathew Beech, t: 01342 332082, e: mathew.beech@fav-house.com; Insights editor: Jane Gray, t: 01342 332087, e: jane.gray@fav-house.com; Research analyst: Vidhu Dutt, t: 01342 332026, e: vidhu. dutt@fav-house.com; Reporter: Lois Vallely, t: 01342 332080; e: lois.vallely@fav-house.com; Business development manager: Ed Roberts, t: 01342 332067, e: ed.roberts@fav-house.com; Business development executive: Sarah Wood, t: 01342 332077, e: sarah.wood@fav-house. com; Publisher: Amanda Barnes, e: amanda.barnes@fav-house.com. General enquiries: 01342 332000; Membership subscriptions: UK £577 per year, overseas £689 per year, t: 020 8955 7045 or email membership sales manager Paul Tweedale: paultweedale@fav-house.com. ISSN: 1356-5532. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Printed by: Buxton Press, Palace Road, Buxton, Derbyshire SK17 6AE. Published by: Faversham House Ltd, Windsor Court, Wood Street, East Grinstead, West Sussex RH19 1UZ 3,580 Average circulation Jan–Dec 2014 Membership subscriptions: UK £577 per year. Overseas £689 per year. Email: paultweedale@fav-house.com 3WhitehallPlace @3WhitehallPlace Today we're writing a paper for the next energy secretary on how Vincent de Rivaz likes his eggs. Phil Hewson@PHewson17 Ukip is essentially going to 'abolish' the Department of Energy and Climate change to save <£0.5b. Absolute mouth breathers. #UKIPManifesto William Marchant @richonlyinname We have seen conceptual arms races between regulators – between Ofwat and Ofgem on cost of capital. Lose a regulator, lose that tension. Chris Kendall @ottocrat Ukip's energy policy: "We are against wide- spread use of wind and solar." How can they be against it? Policy driven by petulance? Marina Hyde @MarinaHyde Not saying I'm depressed at life's journey, but I attended a rave in the space in which I'm now waiting for the Lib Dem manifesto launch. Elizabeth Windsor @Queen_UK The Lib Dems unveil their manifesto today. One wonders if it's called Promises We Will Break? Trillion Fund @TrillionFund The world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil combined. Martyn Williams @MartynWilliams2 Ukip manifesto promises to cut energy bills by scrapping all schemes that insulate homes to, erm, cut bills. LGA Enviro & Housing @lgaenvironment "60 per cent of global wind energy is gener- ated in the UK" – Lord Krebs #ClimateLocal jo abbess @joabbess Dear Labour Party, your manifesto places unfounded confidence in the power of nuclear energy. This is a mistake. #GE2015 Energy Department @ENERGY #TBT: Edison worked on electric vehicle bat- teries in the early 1900s. Yes, really. Top Tweets Disconnector A news dry spell The end is nigh! We're all doomed! No, Disconnector is not talking about the Daily Mail's predictions of what will happen to our green and pleasant land should the people have the temerity to vote in sufficient numbers for Red Ed Miliband (his Dad Hated Britain, you know). Oh no. We're talking about a spell of sunshine, of course. We Brits seem profoundly suspicious of any weather that isn't a grey drizzle (in which case we can return to our default setting of happily depressed). It wasn't too long ago that we were worrying about the generation industry being unable to cope with a dark and bitterly cold winter and leaving us all sitting, blinking in the dark – if the bliz- zards didn't get us. In the event, it turned out to be quite mild. Now we've had a fortnight of clement weather and the doom merchants are already turning to drought. The Daily Telegraph was worried at official figures showing that we have only had 35 per cent of our average rain- fall for April despite being half way through the month. It was a dry winter too, we were told, which has compounded "fears". The scribes at the Barclay brothers' Tory broadsheet couldn't find a way to suggest how matters might be worse under Labour, but Disconnec- tor is not sure their hearts were really in this one in the first place. By the closing paragraph Disconnector of the story the writers felt duty bound to report that experts at the Met Office said "fears of a drought were unwarranted" because it would "have to get much drier for longer before water levels become a concern". Which begs the question, whose "fears" were they report- ing in the first place? French killer hornet invasion! The truth is that the drought story didn't get much traction last week beyond the pages of The Daily Telegraph. This was not because the rest of the media felt a social obligation not to report scare stories of course. That would be ridiculous. It was because they had a much better scare story in their sights: killer hornets. Oh yes. The prolonged sunny spell means that the conditions are favourable for killer hornets to migrate here over the channel from the continent (via a car ferry, for instance). They origi- nate from China, but they come via France, so we can legiti- mately label them French killer hornets, which makes them even more unwelcome. The 3cm-long nasties look like wasps dressed in body armour and they have a particu- lar penchant for bees. Northern European bees have no defences against the giant Asian predator and relatively small numbers of hornets can decimate bee colonies. Defra was reported to be on alert with the necessary chemi- cals to kill the hornets, but that sounds like standard disaster movie hubris to Disconnector. Be prepared for the price of honey to go up. …and spiders! In the long term, of course, it's not the hornets we have to worry about. It's the spiders. Apparently climate change does not just mean that humanity will end its days on a hot, parched rock fighting it out for control of the world's diminishing water resources, but we will do so chased by spiders. It's long been known that spiders like hot climates and that we can therefore expect spiders everywhere to get big- ger as the climate warms up, but now it appears they're also going to be faster. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology found that because spiders don't use muscles to move their legs but fluid, and this fluid becomes more viscouse when warm, the same spider moves much more quickly in hotter temperatures (40 C) than when it is cooler (15 C). Up to three times faster, in fact. Disconnector thinks something must be done. How about our egghead boffins get themselves into the lab and develop something useful like a genetically modified hornet- eating spider of some sort? What could go wrong?