Our mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, MAD world !!

We should not be burning coal...gotta save Mother Earth even if her children freeze to death.  Don't you know that  as long as Mother's okay, all's cool and dandy !

Energy supplies in some parts of the UK are heading 'downhill fast' but the mad insane project to gradually close down all coal power stations, is in full swing.   Something in the water we drink or in the air we breathe is driving a lot of people walking the corridors of power, people  who make these decisions, go stark raving mad.

Laura Kuenssberg writing at ITVNews:
The warnings from the energy regulator  about the risk of the lights going out are not new, but the sense of urgency is.
On a typical day like today, 40 percent of our electricity is being provided by coal power stations that are due to be closed down in the next few years. That process has now begun.
Many different plans to fill that huge gap are in place. They are complex and they are fraught as we have discussed here before. And they will only plug the hole in the long term, leaving a big gap in the next few years.
Alistair Buchanan, the boss of Ofgem, today warns that the inevitable consequence is a rising reliance on sometimes risky gas imports, and even more price rises on our already expensive bills.

 ....So what is behind the new urgency in the warnings about keeping the lights on? The boss of Ofgem, the energy regulator, has just been telling me it is because coal power stations like Kingsnorth in Kent are closing earlier than planned.
Curiously the reason they are doing so is not because they haven't been making money, but because they have been making too much.
Power stations are only licensed to run for a certain number of hours, and the market for coal power has been so good that they have burned through their allotted life span faster than expected.
At the other end of the market, Ofgem says the Government will have to look at subsidising new nuclear, renewables and gas one way or another to make it financially viable to build.
Although demand is certainly there, the upfront costs of new infrastructure are so enormous that it is unlikely the power stations we desperately need can be built without it.........