Solar Panel paper pick up in The Times

Our latest paper looking at the efficiency of Solar Panels in the UK piqued the interest of The Times this week.

The Times reported:

Millions of solar panels installed with a public subsidy produce no power most of the time and have to be backed up by conventional power stations to prevent blackouts, a report says.

Solar power produced more electricity than coal in the past six months after a rapid rise in the number of solar farms but over the year they still account for less than 2.5 per cent of power generation, according to the report by the Adam Smith Institute, the free-market think tank and the Scientific Alliance.

Britain’s 32 million solar panels are highly productive, generating at more than half of their capacity, for only 210 hours, the equivalent of nine days, over an entire year, the report says.

Capell Aris, the author of Solar Power in Britain and a former senior manager in the electricity industry, used ten years of weather data to analyse levels of solar power production in the UK.

SOLAR SO GOOD, BUT PANELS HAVE LIMITED POTENTIAL IN UK

Study reveals extensive renewable energy deficit and recommends a focus on domestic use
 
Solar power produced more energy than coal in April through September this year in the UK, but we shouldn’t expect that to last, claims a new report from neoliberal think tank the Adam Smith Institute and the Scientific Alliance released today.

The paper, Solar Power in Britain, uses ten years of weather data to create a new and comprehensive analysis of the capabilities of solar energy in the UK, and finds it wanting.

The report reveals that solar panels are highly ineffective in UK climates, generating less than a tenth of their possible output over the course of a year. In fact, solar panels produce precisely nothing for over 30 weeks of the year and only manage to muster above 50% of the energy generation they’re capable of for 8 days annually.

Counter to claims that a combination of wind and solar power could smooth out this seasonal intermittency, the report demonstrates that even combined they would only exceed 60% of their capability for a day and half each year, and would be below 20% capacity for over half of the year and need to be constantly supplemented by more reliable sources of energy.

Currently the solar fleet produces less than 2.5% of UK electricity generation, the problem being both that there is insufficient storage for the energy generated in the summer months to provide in winter, and that solar panels are ineffective in the UK climate. The lifetime output of a 5MW solar park could be matched in 36 hours by a nuclear power plant taking up 50 times less ground space.

The paper addresses two effective storage options that could make solar power feasible in the UK, pumped storage and battery storage but demonstrates why these highly expensive and environmentally damaging solutions are unworkable. The author instead suggests that rather than trying to move faster than the technology available, solar energy should focus on providing for local customers’ domestic water and heating, leaving less seasonally affected sources to provide power across the country until a more realistic storage system can be manufactured. 

Ben Southwood, Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, said:

“We know that UK solar panels only generate electricity at 9% of capacity, but our paper shows that even this average level is a mirage. Power comes in stops and spurts and not when we want it.

“If we had ways to store large amounts of energy cheaply then it wouldn’t matter when the sun shines, we could just save up what we’ve generated in batteries. But even combined with the wind fleet, the supply is incredibly intermittent and variable: output is below 10% of capacity 97 times a year, for periods of 6 to 141 hours.

“In the future cheaper and more efficient generation and storage will solve the problem, but for now there is no way of squaring the circle: relying on solar and wind will force us to back up the supply with dirty fossil fuels, or the lights will go out!"

Author of the report, Dr Capell Aris, said:

“This work should convince anyone with an open mind that the current generation of renewable energy technologies is simply not up to the job of providing a reliable, affordable electricity supply.

“I hope that policymakers will take note and help provide the secure electricity supply consumers and businesses need before we find out the consequences of the push for renewables the hard way.”
 
-ENDS-
 
Notes to editors:

For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Flora Laven-Morris, Head of Communications, at flora@adamsmith.org | 07584 778207.

The report ‘Solar Power in Britain: The Impossible Dream’ is live on the Adam Smith Institute available here.

The Adam Smith Institute is a free market, neoliberal think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.

The Scientific Alliance was formed to encourage politicians to make policy on the basis of scientific evidence rather than lobbying by vested interests. Its role is to encourage a rigorous and rational approach to policymaking for the benefit of individual citizens and the economy.

Out and proud, the ASI are neoliberals now

Coming out as the first self proclaimed neoliberal think tank this week the ASI saw write ups across the media.

The Telegraph published an op-ed from Dr. Madsen Pirie:

Most neoliberals are optimistic, thinking the world is better than it was and will become better still. They have confidence that human ingenuity and determination can solve most problems if left space to do so.

Sometimes names become bywords for unpleasantness – it happened to Boycott and Quisling, and might yet happen to Corbyn. But sometimes insults become commonplace descriptions. "Tory" once referred to Irish bandits, but the party now embraces the name, and the same could work for neoliberalism. The Adam Smith Institute has just taken the first step by calling itself a neoliberal, free-market think-tank.

Sam Bowman wrote for Conservative Home:

It has become fashionable on the left to describe anyone who has a fondness for markets as a neoliberal. The fact that almost nobody calls themselves a neoliberal makes it powerful: if the world is indeed neoliberal, and nobody is willing to stand up and defend neoliberalism, then that’s a pretty damning indictment of the current state of affairs.

We at the Adam Smith Institute think that the world is an excellent, successful, prosperous, happy place. Incomes grew strongly for every income group in the UK over the period 1988-2008, most of all for the bottom 10 per cent, and we’re now returning to growth after the Great Recession. Violence is at an all-time low in the history of our species.

Guido Fawkes picked up on the news:

Guido’s friends at the Adam Smith Institute are re-branding as neo-liberals. Many decades ago when Guido briefly interned at the ASI they self-defined as “libertarian“, nowadays that is apparently too radical a term, or so argues executive director Sam Bowman. He argues “libertarian” in Britain has a rigid meaning – “someone who is opposed to all but the tiniest night watchman state in every case”. The dictionary says libertarians uphold the principles of individual liberty, especially of thought and action.

Embracing neo-liberalism as your ideological descriptor might be good marketing, given it is so widely used pejoratively by teenage lefties to save them having to think matters through. They view neo-liberalism as akin to the political economy of Satanism. Bowman rightly points out that the words Tory, suffragette and Whig all began as insults but were adopted and appropriated by the people they were used against. The ASI setting themselves up as the defenders of neo-liberalism will guarantee plenty of attention.

And Ben Southwood explained the decision to CapX:

The fall of socialism and the return of market-driven policies has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty across the world. In the West, we are repopulating our cities, and creating the wealth that allows for beautiful things. Free marketeers often deny responsibility for the system we live under because it is not their ideal setup – but they shouldn’t. They should take the credit, and do so ostentatiously, by embracing the insult, as Whigs and suffragettes did before them. Which is why, as of yesterday, the ASI officially calls itself neoliberal.

Read more on the thinking behind the ASI rebrand here, here and here.

Leftwing pro-public sector Polly Toynbee agrees with the ASI

As the world continues to turn on its head the Guardian's Polly Toynbee agreed with the Adam Smith Institute this week, citing our Borders after Brexit report in her article "Take back control? Our Border Force is in no fit state to do its job,"

The piece noted:

Visa checks on people from non-EU countries are weaker, they claim, now visa offices abroad have been closed. “There are no standard interviews for student or visitor visas now. But you can’t rely on written references and qualifications,” says one officer who has worked overseas. “You need to see applicants to detect people who are not what they say they are.” During the present “surge”, there is only one forgery specialist each shift, instead of two or three: “They’re run off their feet.”

This isn’t just staff grumbling: the rightwing, anti-public sector Adam Smith Institute reported last month that the Border Force is “starved of funds and neglected”. Responsible for screening 225 million passengers a year arriving in the UK, it claims about 4,000 “high-risk” flights are landing without proper security checks.

You can read the article in full here if you don't believe us.

Sam Bowman defends immigration in the Daily Telegraph

Tom Ough's spoke with ASI Executive Director Sam Bowman for his piece in the Daily Telegraph, 'Radically increasing immigration? There couldn't be anything more Conservative'. The article reported:

What’s in it for the Shires? First, it is well-established that immigrants, because they tend to be younger, make a net contribution to our economy. We all benefit from this. There will be concerns that increased immigration will dilute British culture; Sam Bowman, the executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, is persuaded enough of this point to advocate significantly expanded rather than unlimited immigration.

"We can do things to mitigate that issue though," he says, "because we have evidence that freer labour markets make immigrants integrate more quickly. We might also look at the US Green Card system, which is careful to only let a certain number of people in from each country so you get a mix, rather than any single group coming in and ghettoizing."

The old argument of immigrants taking jobs is on the one hand unfair – immigrants create demand for labour as well as supply, their presence puts a premium on English speakers, and the jobs will simply go to another country if not here – and on the other at odds with a party of merit rather than internal economic protectionism.

Green light on fracking will help tackle unpredictable suppliers and high energy costs

Horizontal fracking can go ahead, the BBC has reported, in a landmark ruling for the UK shale gas industry.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has approved plans for fracking at Cuadrilla's Preston New Road site - yet more good stuff from the MP this week following his pledge to tackle the supply of houses in the UK.

Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute, said:

Theresa May has complained about high energy prices. Producing more gas through fracking is a good way to keep prices down. It also makes us less dependent on oil and gas imports from unpredictable suppliers such as Russia and the Middle East. With all the world’s uncertainties, and with North Sea production running down, this is a good time to be exploring new energy sources, and making ourselves self-sustainable in energy.

Fracking is happening in other countries, with very few problems, and can only get better as technology and expertise improve. It will create and sustain employment and boost our productivity.

Twenty years from now everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about.

Bowman's eyebrows get a thorough workout during PM address

Sam Bowman's comments on Theresa May's conference address have been covered across the national media and 200+ regional titles.

The Sunday Times covered Sam's comments thrice, reporting:

Some of the Tories’ traditional free-market allies are alarmed. Sam Bowman of the Adam Smith Institute laid into the policy, which he said had fostered a toxic culture at Volkswagen that ultimately led to last year’s emissions scandal, and reduced the value of German companies by 26%. “Academic evidence suggests that board representation is just about the only bad way of giving workers more say in how their firms are run,” he said. “So why on earth is this the policy that the supposedly pragmatic May is proposing?”

Secondly that:

If the test of being in the centre ground is that you get attacked by both right and left, Theresa May achieved her aim at the Tory conference. The Adam Smith Institute (ASI) and the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the latter the spiritual home of the Tories under Margaret Thatcher, both spluttered after finding much to dislike in the prime minister’s speech.

The ASI called on her to “abandon her ideological attachment to interventionist economic policies, look at the evidence, and accept that it tells us that markets, not the state, are the solution to our problems”. The IEA agreed, saying: “This was an alarming attack on free markets and the prime minister’s pledge for more state intervention in business completely disregards the evidence that competition, deregulation and a light-touch approach breeds the best results.

And the third article noted:

Think tanks normally supportive of Tory policy, such as the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, have railed against the promised revival of state intervention.

A Tory conference that should have been a celebration for Britain’s second female prime minister, with all her political opponents in various states of disarray, helped to send the pound tumbling. Markets interpreted the prime minister’s remarks and those of her ­colleagues as pointing firmly towards an unsuccessful Brexit that will leave the economy holed below the waterline.

City AM reported on their front page:

Prime minister Theresa May was lambasted by business groups and policy wonks yesterday for a speech that laid bare an interventionist economic policy and a heavy-handed approach to business reform.

Adam Smith Institute executive director Sam Bowman said: “We call on the Prime Minister to abandon her ideological attachment to interventionist economic policies, look at the evidence, and accept that it tells us that markets, not the state, are the solution to our problems.

And again in City AM later in the week.

The Guardian reported:

Theresa May’s speech, and her criticism of the Bank of England’s monetary policy, has gone down rather badly with that beacon of free market ideology, the Adam Smith Institute.

Director Sam Bowman sounds like a man whose eyebrows got a thorough workout during the PM’s speech, saying:

[There isn’t] any evidence that clamping down on EU immigration will help British workers, but we will have to borrow more if immigration falls because they pay in more than they cost. Or that quantitative easing has made us worse off – the evidence suggests that without it the post-crisis recession would have been deeper and longer.

Mrs May’s speech was the opposite of pragmatic. We call on the Prime Minister to abandon her ideological attachment to interventionist economic policies, look at the evidence, and accept that it tells us that markets, not the state, are the solution to our problems.

And quoted Sam again on the Guardian later that week.

Buzzfeed reported:

A similarly outraged response came from the free market Adam Smith Institute, which once influenced the policies of Margaret Thatcher: “We call on the prime minister to abandon her ideological attachment to interventionist economic policies, look at the evidence, and that it tells us that markets, not the state, are the solution to our problems.”

The New Statesman reported:

Classical liberals feel increasingly homeless. Adam Smith Institute director Sam Bowman ordered May to “abandon her ideological attachment to interventionist economic policies, look at the evidence and accept that it tells us that markets, not the state, are the solution to our problems.”

The Daily Express reported:

Her speech sparked fear in the Big Six energy suppliers - British Gas, EDF Energy, nPower, E.On UK, Scottish Power and SSE.

Sam Bowman, executive director of the free market libertarian think tank Adam Smith Institute, said: "If only Theresa May was serious about ditching ideology in favour of pragmatism and evidence – she’d have to abandon most of her main policy planks.

May must accept that markets are the solution to our problems

Following PM Theresa May's closing Conservative Party Conference address, Sam Bowman takes a critical look at her claims of pragmatism.

Sam Bowman, Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute, commented:

"If only Theresa May was serious about ditching ideology in favour of pragmatism and evidence – she’d have to abandon most of her main policy planks.

"Take energy price caps. We have evidence that these will lead to lower investment, lower production and more brownouts or even blackouts. Eventually, these policies may lead to electricity rationing and nationalisation. High energy prices are mostly caused by high wholesale prices, and energy firms are not generally more profitable than other large firms.

"Or look at the employee representation on company boards – which is better described as union representation. Here, the evidence is that giving unions this sort of power can turn boards toxic, as happened to Volkswagen, and these rules have reduced the value of German firms by 26%. Other academic evidence suggests that board representation is just about the only bad way of giving workers more say in how their firms are run. So why on earth is this the policy that supposedly-pragmatic May is proposing?

"Nor is there any evidence that clamping down on EU immigration will help British workers, but we will have to borrow more if immigration falls because they pay in more than they cost. Or that quantitative easing has made us worse off – the evidence suggests that without it the post-crisis recession would have been deeper and longer.

"Mrs May’s speech was the opposite of pragmatic. We call on the Prime Minister to abandon her ideological attachment to interventionist economic policies, look at the evidence, and accept that it tells us that markets, not the state, are the solution to our problems."                   

For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Flora Laven-Morris, Head of Communications, at flora@adamsmith.org | 07584 778207.

Ben Southwood makes the case against HS2 on LBC at party conference

Ben Southwood, Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, trounced plans for HS2 on LBC radio this week. Listen to the full clip here.

Creating a buzz around the Border Force

It was standing room only at the ASI's event 'The Border After Brexit: Securing Britain's borders' with panel guests Charlie Elphicke, MP for Dover, James Kirkup of the Daily Telegraph, and Ed West of the Spectator.

Buzzfeed news reported:

"A Conservative MP has suggested that there would be no border controls between England and an independent Scotland. Speaking to BuzzFeed News on Tuesday after an event on what the UK’s borders would look like once the country leaves the EU, Charlie Elphicke MP said the question of an independent Scotland’s border was “exactly the same” as Northern Ireland’s.

Prime minister Theresa May has previously ruled out the prospect of border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which is inside the EU, saying: “Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past.”

Elphicke was clear that he didn’t expect Scotland to become independent in the near future and that the “best situation” would be for the UK to stay together, but suggested an independent Scotland would get the same treatment as Northern Ireland."