Charge of the Motor Brigade

Victoria Street, SW1 

“You know, Humphrey, I’m getting a bit worried by this Net Zero Carbon 2050 thing.  The chaps at the club don’t think it stands a prayer.” 

“It is indeed a challenging target, Minister, but the British people have the will and the creativity to achieve it.” 

“Really? The chaps round the bar think that’s the government’s job and they are wondering what rabbits we re going to pull out of what hats.” 

“I admit we are a bit short on rabbits, Minister, but one of them will undoubtedly appear. The Scots have so much wind that they export more electricity than they import. I read the other day that Scotland’s generation of electricity was 97% renewable and net exports of electricity (exports minus imports) in 2020 was its highest to date at 19.3 TWh, a 21% increase compared to 2019.” 

“Of course, Scotland is windier than the rest of the UK, Humphrey, but we cannot be sure they’ll even be part of the UK by 2050. What is UK electricity consumption and how much of that is from renewables?” 

“Last July, we announced that ‘Electricity generated from renewable sources in the UK in 2019 reached a record 37.1 percent of total UK electricity generation, up from 33.1 per cent in 2018. This increase reflected a 6.5 percent rise in renewable generation capacity to 47.2 GW.’” 

“Steaming ahead but that is based on current electricity consumption. A Net Zero world implies that energy will be virtually all electricity and in the same announcement we said renewables were only 12.3 percent of energy as a whole, i.e. including fossil fuels.” 

“Yes, I admit that multiplying current renewables by a large factor is difficult and we also have to address variation. The sun does not always shine, nor wind blow, so we will need renewables to produce well over our needs when they do shine and blow. We can then store the surplus for when they do not.” 

“Oh yes, Humphrey, and how are we going to do that?” 

“The motor car is going to come to our rescue, which makes a change from it being the villain.  I’ve called it the ‘Charge of the Motor Brigade’.” 

“I suppose we’re going to turn off the electricity in our homes and go to bed in balaclavas?” 

“Funnily enough, that’s about right, Minister.  Only electric cars will be sold after 2030 and we reckon 50 percent of cars on the road in 2050 will be electric out of the Ministry of Transport total estimate of 37M. That compares with 31M now.” 

“20 percent more traffic is going to burn up a lot of traffic idling in ever greater traffic jams.” 

“I think you’ll find, Minister, that electric cars use no power when they are stationary.” 

“Right, so we have 18.5M or so electric cars on the roads. That may prove optimistic.  Just a couple of weeks ago “a report by the Commons Transport Committee found that taxpayers face an eye-watering £35 billion bill to plug the gap created by the switch to electric cars.” They may be the biggest scam since Gordon Brown sold us diesels. The spokeswoman for this drainage scheme was more realistic: ‘That means one million electric cars could provide 4,000 megawatt hours to the grid at peak times – roughly the same as 5,000 onshore wind turbines.’”  

“That’s four TWh, Minister, and I expect you will tell me that’s only just over 1 percent of what the Grid needs a peak times and a lot smaller percent in 2050.  Not a big help.” 

Anyway, where do the balaclavas come in?” 

“Well that’s the clever bit. Because we’ll mostly be working from home, the cars will not actually be on the roads but in our garages or in our drives. The National Grid and the Octopus electricity company are working on a scheme which would allow the Grid to recycle the electricity, when it is not windy or sunny, by draining it from the batteries of our parked cars. Our bedrooms will be getting colder too because we will be using heat pumps – hence the balaclavas.” 

“Right, so the quarter of the UK population which then owns electric cars are going to buy charging units that not only charge the vehicle, but drains it?” 

“That’s it, Minister.  The car owner installs a smart two-way charger which can transfer up to seven KWh back to the Grid when it is needed but probably only about four as the average household needs three KWh. The Grid pays 15p per KWh for what it takes.” 

“Humphrey, according to the aide memoire in my desk drawer, the average domestic electricity price in 2021 was 18.9p per KWh. So I buy the electricity to charge my car at 18.9p per KWh and sell it back to the Grid for 15p and on top of that I have to buy a smart two-way charger at God knows what cost?” 

“Well, if you took the car down to the supermarket, they’d charge it without charge, so to speak.”  

“Do they do comedy lessons at the Civil Service College now, Humphrey?” 

“The Civil Service College does not include humour among its core values but it does have a strong partnership alliance with the Mongolian National Academy of Governance. I admit, Minister, that the economics of this do look unattractive today but a lot can change in 28 years.” 

“The last statistics I saw were October 2021 when we said 25,927 public electric vehicle charging devices available in the UK of which 4,923 were rapid chargers. I haven’t seen any data on private ownership and use.” 

“Minister, I agree the market will be limited by the cost of chargers and the need to have garaging or off-street parking.  Most people live in flats or houses with no off-street parking space. Councils can be difficult about running cables across pavements.  They are considered hazardous to elderly people with shopping trolleys.” 

 “So to sum up, Humphrey, we don’t know how many electric chargers there will be, whether allowing the Grid to help itself to the electricity the car owner has stored will make economic sense to the owner, how much electricity can be stored that way, whether that will meet the needs of the Grid when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine and, most of all, who will have control.” 

“What do you mean by ‘control’, Minister?” 

“I can go to bed when there’s a nice wind blowing and then there a lull.  If the Grid has control, it can simply drain my car battery, so when I am ready to go to work next morning, the car has no juice.  Or does the Grid have to ring all potential providers in the middle of the night to ask their permission? Or do I have a drain/no drain switch on my charger, so that the Grid discovers it cannot have my electricity when it needs it? And how does it find me when I am not at home?” 

“All good questions, Minister.” 

“You remember what happened to the brigade that smart-charged during the Battle of Balaclava in 1854?  Disaster.  Lord Cardigan commanded the brigade, a nice enough chap, despite being arrogant and extravagant. Obviously nothing like our current Cabinet ministers, Humphrey.”