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Rewiring Britain for an Era of Clean Energy

Published

8 months ago

April 14, 2025

Rewiring Britain for an Era of Clean Energy

In a career spanning more than 30 years, John Pettigrew has seen big changes in the electricity industry. He started out in 1991, working to introduce natural gas-fired power plants to the grid, gradually replacing polluting coal plants. .

Now, once again, he is managing a tectonic shift to an electrified economy that runs on renewable energy like wind and solar power. But these sources of power generation are far trickier to manage than their coal and gas predecessors.

“Effectively, what we’re doing is reconfiguring the whole network,” said Mr. Pettigrew, chief executive of National Grid, which owns and operates the high-voltage electricity grid in England and Wales.

Mr. Pettigrew was emerging from a tunnel nearly 20 miles long that National Grid has bored deep underground at a cost of about 1 billion pounds (about $1.3 billion). The shaft, which workers ride through on bicycles, will carry new cables to feed the power-hungry offices and residential communities of London.

Mr. Pettigrew and his company are in the spotlight these days. The Labour Party government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which came to power in July, is taking a close interest in the electric power system, which it sees as a primary vehicle for delivering political and economic goals.

A more robust, versatile grid will be crucial not only for tackling climate change but for securing Britain’s place on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, which requires vast amounts of power to run data centers.

The government aims for 95 percent of Britain’s electricity to come from what it calls “clean” sources like wind and nuclear by the end of the decade, up from about 60 percent in 2023. At the same time, demand for electric power is expected to surge.

“We haven’t started to think about how seriously we need to invest in our core infrastructures for the resilience of our economy in a digital world,” Dieter Helm, a professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford, said in a recent podcast.

The price tag for an electricity system that can handle such changes is around £40 billion a year from 2025 to 2030, according to the government. National Grid alone has filed documents with regulators to spend as much as £35 billion over five years.

National Grid was founded in 1990 when the Central Electricity Generating Board, which managed the power network in England and Wales, was broken up in an era of privatization. (The company, which is listed in London, also has a large business managing power networks in the United States.) Mr. Pettigrew has run National Grid for nearly a decade, but he may be facing his greatest challenge, industry experts say.

“I think there’s a big question about how can they build rapidly enough all this new infrastructure at the same time as maintaining the same standards,” said Edgar Goddard, a former National Grid executive and now a director of EPNC Energy, a consulting firm.

An electrified economy will require a highly reliable grid for a host of reasons, including national security, analysts say. At the same time, critics of renewable energy say that relying on sources of power like wind and solar, which are by their nature variable, creates new challenges for the system.

On April 2, a parliamentary hearing on the Heathrow outage became a venue for executives from the airport and power companies politely dodging blame. Electricity executives said that there was sufficient power available. Alice Delahunty, National Grid’s president for transmission and a key aide to Mr. Pettigrew, conceded that the fast-changing demands being made of the power system called for a careful rethinking about it’s resilience.

Britain’s high-voltage network, like those of other countries, used to be relatively simple, bringing electricity from large generating plants — often near where the coal burned in them was mined — to London and other cities.

Now Mr. Pettigrew is extending National Grid’s tentacles toward the coasts, sometimes through scenic areas, to capture new sources of electricity like the giant offshore wind farms now being built in the North Sea.

He also must make sure the system can carry a lot more power.

Demand for electricity, which has been sluggish in recent years, is expected to double in the coming decades as more drivers take the wheel of electric vehicles and data centers spring up to handle everything from financial services to artificial intelligence.

There is already a long line of wind farms, battery storage facilities and data centers waiting to hook up to the grid — sometimes with increasing frustration. “Their connections process is very poor,” James Basden, a founder of a power storage company called Zenobe Energy, said about the large power operators.

A small industry has sprung up to advise companies on how to navigate the gauntlet of securing access to the grid. “We’re seeing huge demand,” said Simon Gallagher, managing director of UK Network Services, one of those firms.

The government is betting that installing swaths of wind turbines — both on land and in the seas off Britain’s coasts — as well as thousands of miles of high-voltage cables will attract investment, nurture clean tech jobs and reduce the country’s vulnerability to price swings in energy like those that occurred after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine that led to reduced supplies of natural gas.

Since that invasion, high energy costs have been a major issue in Britain and across Europe, where governments have been forced to spend heavily to help households pay their bills.

Some analysts, though, say the huge costs of installing a new energy system may at least partly cancel out the low running costs of wind and solar. “There’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built and that’s going to be paid either by taxes or electricity prices,” said Chris Wilkinson, a senior analyst at Rystad Energy, a consulting firm.

Much is at stake for Britain and the wider clean energy industry. If the government’s ambitions prove unrealistic, that could be a blow to the industry, which is already under fire from the Trump administration in the United States.

It certainly won’t be easy to rewire Britain. National Grid is working on 17 large power projects. Some of the schemes involve laying cables for miles offshore to transfer electricity from clusters of wind farms planned for Scottish waters to consumers in England.

Others involve new power lines marching through rural areas on enormous pylons — a prospect that riles up local residents against both the government and National Grid.

The government is taking advantage of its large majority in Parliament to push through legislation curbing the options of opponents of power projects to pursue what it recently called “meritless cases” in court. The government is also planning to offer up to £2500 in compensation over 10 years to people living near the new pylons.

It often takes many years to push projects through the planning system in Britain. Mr. Pettigrew says that process needs to speed up so that Britain can meet its green energy goals.

To achieve anything close to the government’s targets will require an abrupt change in Britain’s leisurely pace of building infrastructure. Offshore wind capacity, for instance, will need to roughly triple. To bring this clean power to consumers will require adding around 3,400 miles of new power lines to the grid, about twice as much as was constructed in the previous decade.

“The way I would describe it is that everybody has to play their part perfectly over the next five years,” Mr. Pettigrew said.

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Business

U.S. Space Force awards $1.6 billion in contracts to South Bay satellite builders

Published

3 minutes ago

December 20, 2025

Press Room

U.S. Space Force awards .6 billion in contracts to South Bay satellite builders

The U.S. Space Force announced Friday it has awarded satellite contracts with a combined value of about $1.6 billion to Rocket Lab in Long Beach and to the Redondo Beach Space Park campus of Northrop Grumman.

The contracts by the Space Development Agency will fund the construction by each company of 18 satellites for a network in development that will provide warning of advanced threats such as hypersonic missiles.

Northrop Grumman has been awarded contracts for prior phases of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a planned network of missile defense and communications satellites in low Earth orbit.

The contract announced Friday is valued at $764 million, and the company is now set to deliver a total of 150 satellites for the network.

The $805-million contract awarded to Rocket Lab is its largest to date. It had previously been awarded a $515 million contract to deliver 18 communications satellites for the network.

Founded in 2006 in New Zealand, the company builds satellites and provides small-satellite launch services for commercial and government customers with its Electron rocket. It moved to Long Beach in 2020 from Huntington Beach and is developing a larger rocket.

“This is more than just a contract. It’s a resounding affirmation of our evolution from simply a trusted launch provider to a leading vertically integrated space prime contractor,” said Rocket Labs founder and chief executive Peter Beck in online remarks.

The company said it could eventually earn up to $1 billion due to the contract by supplying components to other builders of the satellite network.

Also awarded contracts announced Friday were a Lockheed Martin group in Sunnyvalle, Calif., and L3Harris Technologies of Fort Wayne, Ind. Those contracts for 36 satellites were valued at nearly $2 billion.

Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo, acting director of the Space Development Agency, said the contracts awarded “will achieve near-continuous global coverage for missile warning and tracking” in addition to other capabilities.

Northrop Grumman said the missiles are being built to respond to the rise of hypersonic missiles, which maneuver in flight and require infrared tracking and speedy data transmission to protect U.S. troops.

Beck said that the contracts reflects Rocket Labs growth into an “industry disruptor” and growing space prime contractor.

Business

California-based company recalls thousands of cases of salad dressing over ‘foreign objects’

Published

12 hours ago

December 19, 2025

Press Room

California-based company recalls thousands of cases of salad dressing over ‘foreign objects’

A California food manufacturer is recalling thousands of cases of salad dressing distributed to major retailers over potential contamination from “foreign objects.”

The company, Irvine-based Ventura Foods, recalled 3,556 cases of the dressing that could be contaminated by “black plastic planting material” in the granulated onion used, according to an alert issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Ventura Foods voluntarily initiated the recall of the product, which was sold at Costco, Publix and several other retailers across 27 states, according to the FDA.

None of the 42 locations where the product was sold were in California.

Ventura Foods said it issued the recall after one of its ingredient suppliers recalled a batch of onion granules that the company had used n some of its dressings.

“Upon receiving notice of the supplier’s recall, we acted with urgency to remove all potentially impacted product from the marketplace. This includes urging our customers, their distributors and retailers to review their inventory, segregate and stop the further sale and distribution of any products subject to the recall,” said company spokesperson Eniko Bolivar-Murphy in an emailed statement. “The safety of our products is and will always be our top priority.”

The FDA issued its initial recall alert in early November. Costco also alerted customers at that time, noting that customers could return the products to stores for a full refund. The affected products had sell-by dates between Oct. 17 and Nov. 9.

The company recalled the following types of salad dressing:

Creamy Poblano Avocado Ranch Dressing and Dip
Ventura Caesar Dressing
Pepper Mill Regal Caesar Dressing
Pepper Mill Creamy Caesar Dressing
Caesar Dressing served at Costco Service Deli
Caesar Dressing served at Costco Food Court
Hidden Valley, Buttermilk Ranch

Business

They graduated from Stanford. Due to AI, they can’t find a job

Published

1 day ago

December 19, 2025

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They graduated from Stanford. Due to AI, they can’t find a job

A Stanford software engineering degree used to be a golden ticket. Artificial intelligence has devalued it to bronze, recent graduates say.

The elite students are shocked by the lack of job offers as they finish studies at what is often ranked as the top university in America.

When they were freshmen, ChatGPT hadn’t yet been released upon the world. Today, AI can code better than most humans.

Top tech companies just don’t need as many fresh graduates.

“Stanford computer science graduates are struggling to find entry-level jobs” with the most prominent tech brands, said Jan Liphardt, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. “I think that’s crazy.”

While the rapidly advancing coding capabilities of generative AI have made experienced engineers more productive, they have also hobbled the job prospects of early-career software engineers.

Stanford students describe a suddenly skewed job market, where just a small slice of graduates — those considered “cracked engineers” who already have thick resumes building products and doing research — are getting the few good jobs, leaving everyone else to fight for scraps.

“There’s definitely a very dreary mood on campus,” said a recent computer science graduate who asked not to be named so they could speak freely. “People [who are] job hunting are very stressed out, and it’s very hard for them to actually secure jobs.”

The shake-up is being felt across California colleges, including UC Berkeley, USC and others. The job search has been even tougher for those with less prestigious degrees.

Eylul Akgul graduated last year with a degree in computer science from Loyola Marymount University. She wasn’t getting offers, so she went home to Turkey and got some experience at a startup. In May, she returned to the U.S., and still, she was “ghosted” by hundreds of employers.

“The industry for programmers is getting very oversaturated,” Akgul said.

The engineers’ most significant competitor is getting stronger by the day. When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it could only code for 30 seconds at a time. Today’s AI agents can code for hours, and do basic programming faster with fewer mistakes.

Data suggests that even though AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring many people, it is not offsetting the decline in hiring elsewhere. Employment for specific groups, such as early-career software developers between the ages of 22 and 25 has declined by nearly 20% from its peak in late 2022, according to a Stanford study.

It wasn’t just software engineers, but also customer service and accounting jobs that were highly exposed to competition from AI. The Stanford study estimated that entry-level hiring for AI-exposed jobs declined 13% relative to less-exposed jobs such as nursing.

In the Los Angeles region, another study estimated that close to 200,000 jobs are exposed. Around 40% of tasks done by call center workers, editors and personal finance experts could be automated and done by AI, according to an AI Exposure Index curated by resume builder MyPerfectResume.

Many tech startups and titans have not been shy about broadcasting that they are cutting back on hiring plans as AI allows them to do more programming with fewer people.

Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei said that 70% to 90% of the code for some products at his company is written by his company’s AI, called Claude. In May, he predicted that AI’s capabilities will increase until close to 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs might be wiped out in five years.

A common sentiment from hiring managers is that where they previously needed ten engineers, they now only need “two skilled engineers and one of these LLM-based agents,” which can be just as productive, said Nenad Medvidović, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California.

“We don’t need the junior developers anymore,” said Amr Awadallah, CEO of Vectara, a Palo Alto-based AI startup. “The AI now can code better than the average junior developer that comes out of the best schools out there.”

To be sure, AI is still a long way from causing the extinction of software engineers. As AI handles structured, repetitive tasks, human engineers’ jobs are shifting toward oversight.

Today’s AIs are powerful but “jagged,” meaning they can excel at certain math problems yet still fail basic logic tests and aren’t consistent. One study found that AI tools made experienced developers 19% slower at work, as they spent more time reviewing code and fixing errors.

Students should focus on learning how to manage and check the work of AI as well as getting experience working with it, said John David N. Dionisio, a computer science professor at LMU.

Stanford students say they are arriving at the job market and finding a split in the road; capable AI engineers can find jobs, but basic, old-school computer science jobs are disappearing.

As they hit this surprise speed bump, some students are lowering their standards and joining companies they wouldn’t have considered before. Some are creating their own startups. A large group of frustrated grads are deciding to continue their studies to beef up their resumes and add more skills needed to compete with AI.

“If you look at the enrollment numbers in the past two years, they’ve skyrocketed for people wanting to do a fifth-year master’s,” the Stanford graduate said. “It’s a whole other year, a whole other cycle to do recruiting. I would say, half of my friends are still on campus doing their fifth-year master’s.”

After four months of searching, LMU graduate Akgul finally landed a technical lead job at a software consultancy in Los Angeles. At her new job, she uses AI coding tools, but she feels like she has to do the work of three developers.

Universities and students will have to rethink their curricula and majors to ensure that their four years of study prepare them for a world with AI.

“That’s been a dramatic reversal from three years ago, when all of my undergraduate mentees found great jobs at the companies around us,” Stanford’s Liphardt said. “That has changed.”