February: Living with Covid; travelling again; the green energy transition

Early in February a director of the World Health Organisation said that Europe is entering the "plausible endgame" of the pandemic, and last week all Covid laws in England ended, including the need to self-isolate after a positive Covid test. Cynics would say that, with infection rates still high, this is a political move to divert attention from Downing Street parties. The move took many experts by surprise, with one describing it as either brave or stupid. Time will tell. 

Also last week, on the 21st, Australia reopened its international border to all fully vaccinated travellers, two years after the border closure. Three days later I took the train from Truro to London, on the day on which Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. 

The front page of The Times says it all

A day later, after taking a Covid-test at Heathrow I at last boarded a plane again, bound for the USA, and now here I am in Utah at the SME Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City.

The 'new normal'

With socialising in England now back to 'normal', the day before the mining sundowner in Camborne I met up with Mike Joll, who hosted me in Ipoh, Malaysia, when I visited the alluvial tin mines in 1981 (posting of 25 May 2020). Mike worked for the tin mining company Osborne and Chappel, and he is co-author of a book on Malaysian tin mining.

Dinner with local miners in Ipoh in 1981 (Mike Joll is 4th from left)

Mike left Osborne and Chappel in 1982 and worked at the now abandoned Mamut open pit copper mine in Sabah, Malaysia, before returning to Ipoh, sourcing ilmenite for a titanium plant. Subsequently he was in Indonesia, West Africa, Philippines and Laos involved in alluvial mining/prospecting for diamonds, gold and tin. After such an interesting life he is now retired in Callington, east Cornwall and we hope to see him at future mining sundowners.

41 years on, with Mike in Truro

Energy was very much in the news last month, particularly the rising gas prices, partially caused by resurgent global demand, and which will soon be exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia, a major supplier of gas to Europe. Despite major oil companies declaring huge profits, many people are struggling to heat their homes, and there have been calls for a windfall tax on these companies. 

Someone tweeted that now is the time to switch to renewables, and this immediately went viral with thousands of likes. If only it were that simple, but it isn't of course. Even the Government at last are beginning to realise that fossil fuels will be needed for the transition to green energy and Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said he wants to encourage more investment in new fossil fuel drilling, with reports that six new oil and gas fields are to be approved in the North Sea this year.

"Bring back fracking", said the newly appointed Brexit opportunities minister, the ludicrous Jacob-Rees Mogg, in one of the few sensible statements he has ever made. This is unlikely to happen, however, as this controversial method of extracting shale gas was banned in November 2019 amid concerns that it was causing earthquakes. Cuadrilla, the company involved with the project near Blackpool in Lancashire are to plug and abandon two shale gas wells as many protests took place at the site. 

Wind energy did come to the fore, however, on the 18th of the month when the UK was hit by the worst storm in 30 years. Storm Eunice caused havoc and wind turbines produced 39% of the UK's energy on that day; this compares with 19% over the course of last year.

Central to the transition to green energy is the move to electric vehicles, and the UK has a target of ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. However the government has been warned it is falling dangerously behind in its plans to build a British battery industry, with manufacturing capacity forecast to be barely half the needed level by the end of the decade, according to data produced by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, one of the world's leading authorities on the battery industry. The report shows that the UK will have to increase the supply of lithium, cobalt and graphite, critical ingredients in battery production, by staggering amounts, as much as 90 times the current level, to have any hope of supplying that industry. With hundreds of thousands of jobs dependent on the transition, this raises deep questions about Britain's economic trajectory in the coming years. The figure below shows how much the UK will have to increase its supplies of lithium, cobalt and graphite by 2030.

There was some good news on energy, however, as for 5 seconds a laboratory in Oxfordshire became the hottest spot in the Universe, breaking the world record for the amount of energy produced by nuclear fusion (see Visions of the Future). There is a long way to go, however, before fusion becomes a viable commercial operation, and it certainly won't solve the current energy crisis, and is unlikely to contribute to the goal of zero carbon by 2050 (posting of 21 July 2019).

And finally, on a personal note, get well soon Jon. He has been hobbling around on crutches after tearing a calf muscle in a cycling accident in late January, ironically after some serious skiing in Oregon a couple of weeks earlier.

@barrywills