Which, in turn, is due to the war.

The main policy failure was the conservative government banning onshore wind for five years. There's less critical issues with pylons and planning that I would actually blame the public for rather than the government.

Other than that, not a lot of other options. People mentioning nuclear will be referred to the build time of Hinkley C.

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throwawayffffas 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Europe in general has failed to adjust to the then obvious risks of natural gas and fossil fuels in general that have now come to pass.

The transition to decarbonization should have started after 2014. The geopolitical risks were crystal clear back then.

As far as nuclear goes there is a western failure to innovate on design presumably due to ossified regulatory requirements and possible contractor malfeasance. In China new clear plants take 5 to 7 years.

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pjc50 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The transition to decarbonization should have started after 2014

Hmm, I wonder what hugely expensive and distracting project the UK engaged in after that time instead? Ah yes, Brexit, which turns out to have been promoted in part by the Russians (with a lot of help from the UK press and local dodgily-funded actors).

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panick21_ 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Decarbonization should have started in 1973 witch is exactly when France started it and by 1990s they had mostly done it.

And nuclear had no chance what so ever in the post market liberalization world. Those sudo-market are not design for that kind of thing.

Nuclear made most sense in the area of centralized utilities, but most nations didn't use it well for various reasons.

We don't really need new technology in nuclear, I mean it would be nice but its not really needed.

France has made an absolutely amazing deal by investing in nuclear. If you calculated all the benefits is actually insane how beneficial it was.

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pjc50 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> France has made an absolutely amazing deal by investing in nuclear. If you calculated all the benefits is actually insane how beneficial it was.

This is all true, and yet somehow, at the end of the day, the UK has a higher per capita GDP than France.

	▲	throwawayffffas 13 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Part of the higher per capita GDP than France is the anglosphere dividend. There is a great deal of preference in all the english speaking world to do business with english speaking countries for obvious reasons.
	▲	panick21_ 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's a strange comment. Electricity provision is a small part of GDP. So of course doing something great in one part of your government doesn't magically mean you have the best overall economy. That said, its also wrong to measure benefits only by capita GDP.

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ZeroGravitas 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Onshore wind was effectively banned for about 10 years, not 5, in England.

The conservatives also appear to have intentionally sabotaged one of the auction rounds for offshore wind.