Re: If it's really 2015 we're stuffed no matter what happens...
>Renewables are secure, in that we aren't beholden to other countries, but they aren't reliable because they can't be despatched (scheduled to run on demand), and when they do run you can't store the power, meaning that they destabilise the grid and the market.
Er - actually you can.
What you can't do in the UK is build sustainable storage. Because markets. And drip-feed levels of investment, maintained for decades, as a tiny, tiny fraction of the tax breaks and investment benefits given to Dirty Energy.
And because of industry bigots who don't want anything to do with that hippy shit.
Meanwhile countries like Germany - not exactly in the tropics - are finding that renewables are beating all expectations, and decent mixed mode schemes, combined with efficiency improvements, smart grids, and storage, mean blackouts are as unnecessary as fracking.
Were your colleagues the same ones who decided to reduce the UK's gas storage to the lowest percentage of demand of any European economy (except Belgium?)
Were they the ones who pissed away the money from North Sea oil on gambling instead of using it to expand the UK's energy infrastructure?
Are you counting the millions in fines clocked up the enercos over the last decade - imposed by a largely toothless regulator, no less - in your hand-wringing about the dreadful costs of green energy?
How about the cost of the free market tax? Even Newbwerry and Pollitt (1997), which is trotted out regularly as proof of the success of privatisation, admits that most of the benefits were a direct result of two cancelled power station projects, and without them electricity for residential consumers became more expensive - a trend which has continued, to no one's surprise. (Except yours, I guess.)