Harbinger

It is interesting to hear a man who has spent his life in electrical power generation give a sort of 'where are we' review of the industry. We got a bit of historical context: Faraday, Edison, Tesla, Armstrong... Who? William Armstrong, Victorian industrialist and inventor, whose house - Cragside, Northumberland - was the first in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity

After a thorough review of how he watched technology change, develop and grew over the years (and shrink - the UK peak electricity consumption was in 2005 and has been declining since then), he turned to renewables and CO2. The UK story is largely upbeat. We closed our last coal fired generator last year, we produce as much power from sun and wind as from gas, there is much more to come and it is coming 

He was a bit down on heat pumps and EV charging infrastructure, but you could feel him - a man who spent his whole career with the old technology - wanting the change, wanting something to be optimistic about. He spoke endearingly about his children's children and his concern for them

But he's a realist too. The punch in the gut is the global picture. The explosion in power consumption over 80 years; the explosion in coal and oil to generate it, with no sign of any change in direction in the charts he showed; the tiny narrow line that is renewable generation shown on the same chart; the utter insignificance of any UK success in this global context. He signed himself off, sheepishly and with genuine bewilderment, I think, as a "grumpy old pessimist". He's not alone

A day that whispered the word 'spring'. I searched for colour and found the very first heather flowers. We call two different genera of plants 'heather' - Calluna, that turns the uplands purple in late summer (and generates glutinous honey), and Erica that starts flowering now. They both like acid soils and open ground with lots of sun. This one thrives in a heavily shaded corner on our alkali, limestone land. Sometimes things work out

Late PS: interesting thoughts in the same arena of complex dilemmas