Ed Conway Profile picture
Feb 11 10 tweets 4 min read
🚨NEW🚨
- UK govt privately warned it's falling dangerously behind in its plans to build a battery industry.
- Plans nowhere near enough to save the car industry, according to documents seen by Sky News.
- Hundreds of thousands of jobs could be at risk as a result.
🧵
The key chart.
The higher the bars the more battery production capacity.
The leftmost bar is what the UK produces now
The middle one is where we’ll be in 2030, based on current projections
The one on the right is where we OUGHT to be aiming for by 2030.
DOUBLE the current plan. Image
Why does this matter?
Because the UK’s strength in car manufacturing was built in large part on our ability to design & make engines.
The EV revolution turns the industrial rules on its head: the main value-add comes not from engines but from batteries.
Matters for jobs & exports
In other words a lot of high-skill manufacturing/design jobs are at risk as the 2030 deadline for an end to petrol car sales looms.
Hence why there's so much focus on battery production.
This is before one contemplates how central this sector is to eliminating carbon emissions.
The warning, spelt out using data from @benchmarkmin, a leading authority on batteries, was submitted to UK govt this week.
This 2030 target 👇 is predicated on replacing engine production with battery production and assuming UK wants to maintain car output at today’s levels Image
For context…
The red bar is where China is projected to be by 2030.
This is the biggest industrial race of the 21st century.
Right now China, alongside Japan & S Korea, are far out in the lead, much as the US/Europe led the way with the first motor age a century ago. Image
There’s a simultaneous race for battery materials.
Doubtless you’re already aware of this but the scale is nonetheless mind-boggling.
This chart shows you how much the UK will have to increase its supplies of lithium/cobalt/graphite by 2030.
Lithium/graphite up by 9,000%! Image
The great challenge for the UK is how to respond. Do we leave industry to its own devices? That’s the usual MO, but then again most Asian companies enjoy explicit/implicit govt support.
It’s not a level playing field.
So @beisgovuk is being forced out of its comfort zone…
In fairness the cogs are moving: there’s a new advisory committee charged with looking at this (that’s where this data was submitted). There are bodies like @theapcuk. Companies like @BritishvoltUK have enjoyed unusual govt support.
The question is whether we’re ambitious enough.
News story here 👇
I’ve been digging into this a while so I’ll have more in the coming days (some of the details are 👀).
When UK committed to net zero it inherently committed to a new industrial revolution.
We need to discuss what it takes to get there
news.sky.com/story/thousand…

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More from @EdConwaySky

Feb 12
The Humber Refinery in NE England.
This place looks and smells like a ghost of fossil fuel history. It's where they turn crude oil into petrol, jet fuel & many other petrochemical products.
It won't seem the obvious place to start a thread abt batteries.
But bear with me
🧵 Image
Because the gritty reality of how batteries are made is often skirted over in most reports.
But the deeper you go the more fascinating it gets.
So before we get to the stuff u know about - the gigafactories & lithium mines - let's ponder this place. Why? It's the missing link..
Actually before we head in, let's recall the basic chemistry of a battery, which isn't immediately obvious from the outside.
This is a typical cylindrical lithium-ion battery.
A Tesla is a big slab of thousands of these batteries with a car on top. But now let's look inside. Image
Read 30 tweets
Feb 7
This is a long video - much longer than the @skynews explainers I usually make.
But it's about a very big and consequential question - one that deserves consideration:
Is Net Zero and environmental policy responsible for the current energy crisis?
This is my attempt at an answer:
Predictably there are quite a lot of people out there insisting the current rise in prices has nothing to do with net zero policy.
Predictably there are a lot of people out there insisting it’s all or mostly to do with net zero policy.
Predictably, they’re both wrong.
🧵
Let's begin with the big picture, and for the time being let's just look at where we get our electricity from (this being only a fraction of total ENERGY use). In the UK we've reduced our reliance on coal to v low levels. This is an impact of environmental policy.
Read 27 tweets
Feb 6
Do you think, on balance, that the young have been selfish or selfless in their conduct during the pandemic?
Still plenty of time left in this admittedly unscientific poll, but already the answer is pretty clear.
And frankly, that’s the way I would have voted too.
Nearly every piece of statistical evidence suggests the young have been remarkably SELFLESS during the pandemic.
Clearly they didn’t face the same health risks as the elderly during the pandemic, but most young people followed the lockdown strictures and rules.
Even when lockdowns end they remained remarkably committed and considerate.
This is an @ONS survey abt behaviour POST lockdowns:
Read 13 tweets
Feb 3
🚨NEW 🚨
Bank of England says UK households must brace themselves for the biggest annual fall in their standard of living since comparable records began three decades ago, as it:
- Raises interest rates to 0.5%
- Says inflation will surpass 7%
- Slashes GDP forecast
According to the Bank’s calculations, real post-tax labour income - perhaps the best measure of standards of living since it accounts for the rising tax burden as well as inflation and earnings - will fall by 2% in 2022
Biggest fall since comparable records began in 1990
The MPC voted 5-4 in favour of raising interest rates from 0.25% to 0.5%. But those four dissenting members wanted a hike to 0.75%.
So households will have to contend with higher borrowing costs as well as higher taxes, energy, goods and services prices.
Read 8 tweets
Feb 3
Landmark day in the cost of living crisis:
- Ofgem to confirm energy bills will go up by £hundreds from Apr
- @bankofengland expected to raise interest rates further
- New forecasts showing inflation to hit highest level since early ‘90s
- Chancellor to step in with £££ measures
According to my calculations, the rise in the energy price cap to around £2k will push up the energy bill burden (eg share of average household spending going on heat/power) to the highest level since the late 1980s:
If they go up further later this yr, as is widely expected, the energy bill burden gets to the highest level since at least the 1970s. Possibly even earlier. Eg in terms of the immediate domestic impact this could be worse than any modern energy crisis
Read 9 tweets
Jan 19
NEW: UK benchmark inflation rate rises to highest level since 1992. Consumer Prices Index hit 5.4% in Dec, up from 5.1% in Nov and way above @bankofengland 2% target ons.gov.uk/economy/inflat…
Two questions: first, how high will CPI get in the coming months? @bankofengland said 6% but many economists think 7%.
Second, how soon does BoE raise int rates again? Could be as soon as next meeting in Feb (prob up from 0.25% to 0.5% so still v v low by historical standards)
The point here (and this can't be emphasised enough) is that this 30yr high in inflation is happening BEFORE the impact of a record increase in energy bills which, as I ran through in this thread last night, will squeeze households even further
Read 5 tweets

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