Merry Christmas. Secret Santa really delivered this year. 👍

I've found that gas engineers are always friendly and happy to chat. The leak is coming from a 10 inch cast iron main. His words: "It stinks!" SGN have apparently visited this road many times (pointing to the various new bits of tarmac all over the shared path).

This is one of the reasons hydrogen won’t be piped simply through existing gas lines, despite what fossil gas companies claim. Hydrogen behaves very differently — it can leak through solid metal

If the gas networks still can't contain methane after more than a century of practice, why should we trust them with hydrogen?

If the gas networks still can't contain methane after more than a century of practice, why should we trust them with hydrogen?

Are gas companies marking their own homework? Yes, yes they are.

Spot the issue? Apart from climbing bills...

... then you might enjoy this chart, kindly shared by @twallinjames.bsky.social. It shows how an air-to-air heat pump can heat up a nearly 300 year-old church that is only used occasionally. Source: www.linkedin.com/posts/activi...

RANT: Traffic to windtable.co.uk drops at weekends, so people are clearly using it at work. I've put a "what are you using this for?" form on the site. Do people fill it in? No. Rude.

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗼𝗻 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝘄𝗲'𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝗮𝗱𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. With average install costs running at more than £13k, innovation to reduce cost whilst maintaining excellent installs should be applauded. Business as usual is not going to cut it...

Energy companies injected green hydrogen into Britain's gas grid and generated electricity - a "landmark development for the UK's climate ambitions." So we can just use blended hydrogen to power our old gas turbines? Problem solved? Not quite.

Zack Polanski, "Reform UK's Zia Yusuf was full of b*llocks and I think it was important to call that out on #BBCQT" "What has become clear about Reform UK, they're a bunch of cowards"

In the plots below, I've summed up the total HDD for each year. I've then compared some 30 years periods (1940 to 1969 and 1995 to 2024). It's not just a little bit warmer in the winter. It's significantly wamer. National parks chosen free from the 'heat island' effect that naysayers love.

More evidence of gas leaks at Seabank Power Station Why is £22bn of taxpayers' money being allocated to carbon capture when methane leaks are clearly not under control at our power stations?

In 2005 I spent 5 months in Ecuador investigating oil extraction. Around then German bank WestLB funded a new Andes pipeline despite past spills. What I saw was shocking and mostly unseen. This 2022 video shows just one example of repeated spills poisoning rivers and communities.

Read the correspondence on my FOI between the Environment Agency and seabank power station, you'll see that nothing happens. There's a collective shrug and things continue as they were.

This is a methane plume detected over a seabank power station. I had to extract this image via a freedom of information request. Fossil fuel companies will tell you that they can safely bury carbon dioxide from burning gas. How? They're not even handling methane competently.

Here's a church getting a heat pump. This is my local church. I was married here. The graveyard is filled with names that I know. One day I'll probably join them. Until then, I'll work on decarbonisation.

Oil and biodiversity follow the same discovery pattern. When counting species in an ecosystem, the discovery rate slows as most species are found. Oil exploration works identically.

Here we can see Cadent expertly addressing a gas leak... by throwing sand bags on it?🤪

this all looks extremely hydrogen ready to me

Do some reading on "leveraged buyouts and UK national infrastructure". It's absolutely maddening. Private equity has managed to turn the water and gas networks into interest-only buy to lets, and we're all paying the bills... financially and environmentally.

The rest of the world will learn an important lesson from China. Build out your renewables so you aren't as dependent on imported fossil fuels and the whims of idiots. "China’s imports of three major energy products from the US hit almost zero in June"

𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗶𝗴 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗨𝗞 𝗴𝗮𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘀 After decades of gas networks marking their own homework on leaks, we might finally get independent oversight. 🧵

1/9 🚨 Did You Know HS2 Has Released Hundreds of Tonnes of Methane? HS2 crosses gas networks 22 times. Each crossing = gas pipe diversion. FOI reveals: Cadent (14), National Gas (5), SGN (3).

£25 an hour for my new cleaner who started yesterday Doctors on £17 are striking to get £23 The fact that Wes Streeting and Labour are pushing the 'doctors are greedy' narrative while my cleaner charges £2 more, is absolutely shameful

If Ed Miliband really has decided against zonal pricing, he has just cost Labour 100 seats at the next election. Zonal could be introduced by 2028 and would instantly stop natgas setting wholesale power prices across the UK 96% of the time. Should be a no-brainer. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

At @fightingdirty.bsky.social, we sued over this issue, and lost on the grounds that the Environment Agency couldn't be in breach because the government had issued no direction. An absurdity, which means that poisons continue to be spread on farmland every day. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Increase in methane emissions from fossil fuels has been underestimated. Our new PNAS paper just published today: www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....

Post-Spending Review: Govt prioritises £9.4bn for CCUS, but 26% of UK gas is high-emission US LNG. Billions spent burying emissions, ignoring methane leaks & gas production damage in the USA. Is our current gas network good at handling gases? Short answer: No.

Gas networks seem to already struggle with methane - so how can they hope to safely handle hydrogen? Here's a plot of reported gas leaks overlaid with the proposed hydrogen network. Food for thought for the residents of Newcastle, Middlesbrough, or Bishop Auckland.

Do you think the emissions for gas heating are solely from burning the gas delivered to your home? Think again. Gas networks leak; as you can see in the footage. 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide is equivalent to almost 600,000 return flights between London and New York.

The world according to the Tony Blair Institute:

Does the electricity market by design induce frequency oscillations? Think about it. 1) Demand is a continuous curve. It is inherently driven by random human behaviour. 2) Generation is generally dispatched in blocks.

Here's a zoomed section of Cardiff's gas leaks over 2 years from 2023 to 2025. Gas engineers look very busy don't they?

𝗙𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗹 𝗳𝘂𝗲𝗹 𝗯𝗼𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟮𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗖𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲 (𝗘𝗣𝗖) 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰. Meanwhile, EPCs recommended 𝗭𝗘𝗥𝗢 heat pumps.

Please watch this over the weekend and help spread the word. It's the story of a solar power project helping to save several hundred babies' lives each year in Sierra Leone. More than ever we need good news stories about clean energy, and people looking after each other. youtu.be/yMxJzLNc214?...

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗮 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿 𝗴𝗮𝘀 𝗽𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝗽𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲. This happened in Claydon in August 2024.

Between 2023 and 2025, over 23,000 gas leaks were reported in #Cardiff postcodes. Leaks that led to more expensive bills and pollution. You can make data like this publicly accessible by submitting a freedom of information request to your gas network.

I found a gas leak on Wallingford Bridge. If you smell gas, you’re probably not imagining it. Gas leaks on the distribution networks are a totally unquantified problem. The networks do not know how much gas leaks from the local networks. Don’t believe me? Follow for more.

We should be talking more about gas leaks... One Didcot leak was so powerful it "broke the road up" yet went widely unreported. Gas companies don't measure or report these methane emissions (80× worse than CO2) so you can make them by filing a freedom of information request:

This is footage of a major gas leak that happened near Romsey in July 2024. Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. I’ve filed a freedom of information request to understand how much gas leaked out. I’m not expecting SGN to know but we’ll see. Follow me to keep updated.

Over the weekend I figured out that you can roughly derive the carbon intensity of the electricity grid from the way it 'sounds' or 'rings'. code here: github.com/JamesTwallin...

In 2023, 26% of UK Gas was imported LNG from the USA (source: DUKES 2024).

Over 20 years, methane (fossil gas) traps 82 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide

Over 20 years, methane (fossil gas) traps 82 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide

I've a public performance tracker for wind farms! windtable.co.uk Very beta still, but keen to get feedback.