Electricity prices in the UK are painful, and galling when set by the price of gas, but it’s worth remembering that this model and all this expense has bought a major asset that will only become more important and strategic.
The next milestones to hit are:
* A 10x increase in generation capacity
* A 100x increase in storage capacity
* A 1000x increase in seasonal storage capacity
* Electrification of heating
* Electrification of synfuels and synthetic chemical feedstocks
Full energy sovereignty is achievable within 10 years at wartime-spending levels. Probably 30 years otherwise.
Rehabilitation of nuclear is almost certainly required for the transition and a very good hedge / backstop regardless.
Yeah, we're (UK) only just at the "occasionally cheap 100% renewables" state, and it's maddeningly slow progress. But it seems like a lot of things are suddenly coming online, like battery storage, and the Scotland-England grid upgrade will happen in the next few years. https://eandt.theiet.org/2026/04/02/ps12bn-plan-upgrade-scot...
The transition will probably be quite nonlinear: getting from zero to a few days a year of 100% renewables is about as much effort as going from a few days a year to most of the year.
> and the Scotland-England grid upgrade will happen in the next few years.
I hope not. We're currently getting shafted by National Grid pricing, and this is only going to mean we get to pay even more for electricity where it's generated while the south coast of the UK gets it cheap.
> Rehabilitation of nuclear is almost certainly required for the transition
Using nuclear means electricity prices will be set by the price of nuclear - which is even higher than the price of gas.
Besides, it is economically impossible to operate it as backstop as almost all of its costs are in paying back the construction loan: run it 10% of the time and its cost-per-kWh is increased by 10x, run it 1% of the time and its cost-per-kWh is increased by 100x. With that kind of budget there are suddenly a lot of alternatives to nuclear as generation-of-last-resort.
Electricity prices in the UK are painful, and galling when set by the price of gas
It's painful indeed. Today, I watched the price go negative as wind and solar reduced the gas contribution to about 3% of the mix. As that gas mix rose to 5%, the price turned around and became painfully expensive again.
They do, though I don’t think they max out on energy efficient technology. It’s much easier to cut a deal for cheap electricity with a regional government, much to the chagrin of the locals (who see their power bills go up).
Imagine a future where proofs are discovered autonomously and proved rigorously by machines, and the work of the human mathematician becomes to articulate the most compelling motivations, the clearest explanations, and the most useful maps between intuitions, theorems, and applications. Mathematicians as illuminators and bards of their craft.
> Imagine a future where proofs are discovered autonomously and proved rigorously by machines, and the work of the human mathematician becomes to articulate the most compelling motivations
You've got the wrong idea of what mathematicians do now. There's not a proof shortage! We've had autonomously discovered proofs since at least Automated Mathematician, and we can have more whenever we want them - a basic result in logic is that you can enumerate valid proofs mechanically.
But we don't want them, because most proofs have no value. The work of a mathematician today is to determine what proofs would be interesting to have ("compelling motivations"), and try to prove them.
But in this future, why will “the most compelling motivations, the clearest explanations, and the most useful maps between intuitions, theorems, and applications” be necessary? Catering to hobbyists?
Most mathematicians don't understand the fields outside of their specialization (at a research level). Your assumption that intuition and applications are limited to hobbyists ignores the possibility of enabling mathematicians to work and collaborate more effectively at the cutting edge of multiple fields.
Very far in the future when AI runs everything, of course math will be a hobby (and it will be great! As a professional programmer I'm happy that I now have a research-level tutor/mentor for my math/physics hobby). In the nearer term, it seems apparent to me that people with stronger mental models of the world are able (without even trying!) to formulate better prompts and get better output from models. i.e. as long as people are asking the questions, they'll do better to have some idea of the nuance within the problem/solution spaces. Math can provide vocabulary to express such nuance.
Proofs tend to get generated upstream of people trying to investigate something concrete about our models.
A computer might be able to autonomously prove that some function might have some property, and this prove is entirely useless when nobody cares about that function!
Imagine if you had an autonomous SaaS generator. You end up with “flipping these pixels from red to blue as a servis” , “adding 14 to numbers as a service”, “writing the word ‘dog’ into a database as a service”.
That is what autonomous proof discovery might end up being. A bunch of things that might be true but not many people around to care.
I do think there’s a loooot of value in the more restricted “testing the truthfulness of an idea with automation as a step 1”, and this is something that is happening a lot already by my understanding.
I believe this is what they call yasslighting: the affirmation of questionable behavior/ideas out of a desire to be supportive. The opposite of tough love, perhaps. Sometimes the very best thing is to be told no.
(comment copied from the sibling thread; maybe they will get merged…)
I believe this is what they call yasslighting: the affirmation of questionable behavior/ideas out of a desire to be supportive. The opposite of tough love, perhaps. Sometimes the very best thing is to be told no.
On other hand not being hopelessly outdated in a relatively short time does have perks. It is cheaper to not have to update constantly and still getting decent performance.
The next milestones to hit are:
* A 10x increase in generation capacity
* A 100x increase in storage capacity
* A 1000x increase in seasonal storage capacity
* Electrification of heating
* Electrification of synfuels and synthetic chemical feedstocks
Full energy sovereignty is achievable within 10 years at wartime-spending levels. Probably 30 years otherwise.
Rehabilitation of nuclear is almost certainly required for the transition and a very good hedge / backstop regardless.
reply