Gareth Simkins

That was an archived tweet from 2012.

That would certainly be a good start - although it would ignore systems put in by cowboys without notifying the DNOs.

One way to do it would be to use AI and satellite imaging. If that sounds a little far fetched, it really isn’t. I know a chap who worked out how to do it for illegal waste sites - much harder to recognise than PV!

Indeed so. Superb news but only 1.2GW (and I can’t quite believe I wrote ‘only’ there) looks rather small compared to the discrepancy between the official UK #solarsky figures and what we think are the real ones. Still, progress is progress.

Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Has Accepted £2.3 Million from Fossil Fuel Interests, Climate Deniers, and Polluters Since 2019 Election Reform UK has received more than £2.3 million from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers since December 2019, amounting to 92 percent of the party’s donations...

Every day is a good day to point out that 92% of Reform's donations were found to come from figures and groups linked to the fossil fuel industry. @desmog.com

That was from seven years ago - an archived tweet that I transferred over to this abode of relative sanity.

It’s is clear another effort to distract from what we all know Trump was doing with Epstein.

On vaccines - in the 1940s my father saw three school friends die from diseases now unheard of in the UK. I shudder to think about the same thing happening again, to unvaccinated kids.

Given that the fellow is 73, I would have my doubts.

What's Nigel Farage's problem with solar panels?

Here Comes the Sun: Bill McKibben on Solar’s Breakout Moment Why getting most of our power from solar and storage is no longer a distant hope but the fastest, cheapest, most common-sense way to power our world.

Conversation with Bill McKibben, whose new book *Here Comes the Sun* is just coming out.
www.douglewin.com/p/here-comes...
One take-away: solar panels produce 28x as much electricity per acre than biofuel (ethanol).

A guy who doesn’t like immigrants becomes an immigrant without appreciating the several hundred tons of weapons-grade irony, in other words.

I forgot that I put this together:

I did that.⤵️ The Telegraph’s figures for how many #solar #solarsky panels needed by 2035 were an order of magnitude out, due to some frankly silly maths that assumed solar farms are a flat sea of glass. Breaking news: they aren’t.

Bar chart showing heat-related deaths in several European cities from 23 June to 2 July 2025, distinguishing between numbers due to human-caused climate change and those due to natural variability Milan: 317 from human caused climate change, 182 natural Barcelona: 286, 54 Paris: 235, 138 London: 171, 92 Rome: 164, 118 Madrid: 108, (then some relatively small number not given) Athens: 96, 79 Budapest: 47, 24 Zagreb: 31, 25 Lisbon: 21, 71 Frankfurt: 21 (then some relatively small number not given) Added text says two-thirds of heat deaths in London were attributable to climate change Guardian graphic, source: World Weather Attribution, Grantham Institute, Imperial College London

Yes climate change is already killing people

www.imperial.ac.uk/grantham/pub...

Ah, close enough. There will always be the odd circumstance where PV doesn’t make sense (like a house in permanent shade) and the rules will accommodate that.

More than four in ten new homes in England built with solar power More stringent rules on energy efficiency has driven a surge in residential solar panel installations

Fortunately, the existing Building Regs are making more and more newbuild homes go solar. It was ~42% at the end of last year and likely rather more now, even before the Future Homes Standard kicks in. solarenergyuk.org/news/more-th...

More details here: bsky.app/profile/gare...

More details here: bsky.app/profile/gare...

More details here: bsky.app/profile/gare...

Roadmap seizes ‘once-in-a-generation’ opportunity of the solar revolution A new era of clean energy independence dawned today, with the publication of the long-anticipated Solar Roadmap

Delighted to say that the UK's government-industry Solar Roadmap was published this morning, describing dozens of practical measures to boost the supply of cheaper, greener power, deliver new industries and create skilled jobs. #solarsky #solarenergy solarenergyuk.org/news/roadmap... #solarenergy

Ed Miliband says Labour will ‘win fight’ against UK net zero critics Energy secretary speaks at launch of £1bn investment scheme to bolster jobs in offshore wind supply chain

Now this is what I like to see. Ed Miliband said: “We’re going to win this fight... The forces that oppose #netzero will have to reckon not just with the government. They will have to reckon with all these companies that are creating jobs.” 💪☀️🔋⚡ www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I was working on selling quantum cryptography systems 20 years ago, intended to protect against the ability of quantum computers to crack conventional codes in an instant. I thought then I might have been a bit too early. Turns out that I wasn’t half right.

a statue of a monster is standing in a forest ALT: a statue of a monster is standing in a forest

I vote Mothra.

Gareth Simkins on X: "@Nigelrefowens Dear Nigel, I run media relations for the trade assoc @SolarEnergyUK_. I’m also a half-Welsh rugby union fan & ex-player. I would be really happy to discuss solar farms, food security and why they are built where they are. I can understand your concerns - but they are misplaced." / X @Nigelrefowens Dear Nigel, I run media relations for the trade assoc @SolarEnergyUK_. I’m also a half-Welsh rugby union fan & ex-player. I would be really happy to discuss solar farms, food security and why they are built where they are. I can understand your concerns - but they are misplaced.

I wrote a massive thread on this subject last summer, in response to a question from Rugby Union referee Nigel Owens strangely enough, before I left Twitter in disgust. It all boils down to grid access, both this side (UK) and the other side of the Atlantic. x.com/GarethSimkin...

⚡Offshore just leveled up 🌊☀️
World’s first offshore wind-solar hybrid kicks off in the Dutch North Sea .

🔗Wind + solar = 5x output
⚓Anchors deployed
🏗️Shell & Eneco joint project

We track the #EnergyTransition — end to end. See how at enkiai.com
#Energy #CleanTech

Yes, it boils down to informed guesswork and a lot of maths. But they should all be saying the same thing.

Well, I certainly had a few grazes from falling over. It wasn’t here though - I was on holiday somewhere, either in France or perhaps Switzerland in the summer, around 1990. I would have been about ten years old.

A few years later, I think I saw a scarab on hols in France. It was huge.

But there are only so many hours in the day.

As a kid, I was once knocked over on my bike by a flying stag beetle. I thought I had got on the wrong end of a stray tennis ball until I saw it on the ground - it was quite a wallop.

Looks like the BAT Conclusions for large combustion plants were published post-Brexit, so GB regulators will not have implemented them. I’m too rusty on this to know if there will be any practical impact on the gas generation sector, though.