Centrica To Invest In Fund Backing The Technologies Driving The Energy Transition
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from Centrica.
This is the sub-heading.
Centrica has made a $13.5 million anchor commitment to the first close of ERV Fund II, a new fund from London-based venture capital firm Energy Revolution. The fund is targeting US$50 million and invests at Seed and Series A in energy storage, grid technology and advanced materials.
These two paragraphs add more details.
The electrification of transport, heating and industry, alongside the rapid growth of data centres, is accelerating demand for electricity. That is putting greater pressure on the grids, storage systems, and materials needed to generate, move and deliver reliable power.
Founded in 2021, ERV Group backs early-stage energy technology companies through ERV Fund II and its venture builder, Prosemino. Its technical committee is led by three UK experts: Professor Paul Shearing, Director of the Zero Institute at Oxford University; Professor Chris Howard, Professor of Materials Physics at University College London; and Daniel Brett, CEO of Sention Technologies and formerly co-head of UCL’s Electrochemical Innovation Lab. The firm also has seven full-time PhDs across its technical team.
It looks to me, that this is a good long-term strategy from Centrica.
Andy Burnham Set For Clash With MPs Over North Sea Oil And Gas
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
The prime minister must decide whether to approve the Rosebank oilfield and Jackdaw gasfield but will face opposition from backbenchers if he goes ahead
These are the first three paragraphs.
Andy Burnham faces a potential showdown with Labour MPs after suggesting faster extraction of North Sea oil and gas could help pay for the transition to clean energy.
The prime minister is preparing to decide whether to approve the Rosebank oilfield and Jackdaw gasfield after consultations on both projects closed.
Industry sources have told The Times they believe Burnham will approve Jackdaw but may resist calls to go ahead with Rosebank because of opposition from MPs.
These are my thoughts.
My Boiler, Gas And Jackdaw
Consider.
- This year my boiler died. So I spent several thousand pounds, but I did get a new gas boiler with a 12-year guarantee.
- I am now 79, so can this government, or any for that matter, give me a guarantee, that I will live to 91 to get value from my boiler?
- I know enough about heating, as I have installed a couple of systems for myself, to know that my current house is not suitable for a heat pump.
- But it may be suitable for some type of electric data centre boiler like heata, which was invented by British Gas Research. But, I’m not hopeful yet!
- Meanwhile, Centrica have done a large hand-full of deals to keep the country in enough gas to power us through the winter.
- Some of these are MiQ-certified, which is a bit like Organic for methane, except that emissions are kept to a minimum.
- I covered MiQ-certification in What Is MiQ-Certification?.
So provided we don’t get an extreme-left scientifically-incorrect government, led by someone like the lady with pink hair in Hackney, I should be able to keep myself warm in winter.
But would I vote for any party, that was going to cut off my gas supply?
But Centrica have been clever.
- They have plenty of gas storage at Rough.
- Their press releases show they are buying gas according to MiQ.
- Grain LNG Terminal, which they bought last year has an export facility, so any spare gas they have can be exported to a country to replace coal or Russian gas.
- MiQ-certified gas probably fetches a higher price.
- Centrica would be an obvious purchaser for any North Sea gas.
This gives some dates of the players and Jackdaw
- BG Group and Centrica were demerged from British Gas plc in 1997.
- BG Group discovered Jackdaw in 2005.
- BG Group were taken over by Shell in 2015.
If I was the owner of Jackdaw, I would make sure that my gas had the highest MiQ possible.
If I was energy minister, I’d enforce it.
Will Jackdaw Be A Tie-Back To Shearwater?
I’ve read that it might be, so I asked Google AI and received this answer.
Yes, Jackdaw is designed and developed as a 30-kilometer (approx. 18.5 miles) subsea tie-back to the existing Shearwater platform in the central North Sea.
Project Connection Details
Infrastructure: A multi-phase subsea pipeline links the unstaffed Jackdaw wellhead platform directly to the Shearwater hub.
Processing: Hydrocarbons extracted from Jackdaw will be processed and routed through Shearwater before final export onshore to the St Fergus terminal.
Distance: The subsea pipeline spans roughly 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) northwest from the Jackdaw field to the Shearwater installation.
I also found this detailed article on the Chemical Engineer which is entitled Shell To Invest In Shearwater Gas Infrastructure Hub.
Shell certainly seem to be doing comprehensive planning to bring the gas from Jackdaw to the mainland.
- Currently, gas from the Shearwater hub is sent to Bacton in Norfolk.
- After, Jackdaw is connected to Shearwater, the gas will be sent to St. Fergus, which is North of Aberdeen.
- Google AI says that The Shearwater hub is located approximately 140 miles (225 kilometers) east of Aberdeen in the Central North Sea.
It’s probably all in a day’s work for engineers in the North Sea, but it doesn’t sound to be the easiest project to me.
Will The Jackdaw Gas Field Be Used For CO2 Storage?
I felt this could be a possibility, so I asked Google AI, the question and received this answer.
No, the Jackdaw gas field will not be used for CO2 storage.It is an active natural gas extraction project in the North Sea, though CO2 separated from its extracted gas may eventually be routed to external storage.
Field Status and CO2 Handling
Extraction only: The underground reservoirs at Jackdaw contain natural gas and high-pressure/high-temperature hydrocarbons rather than being purposed for carbon storage.
Onshore processing: Gas from the field comes ashore at St Fergus, where carbon dioxide mixed into the raw gas stream is removed during processing.
Broader CCS links: While Jackdaw itself is a producing asset, its operations tie into Shell’s broader involvement with the regional Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage project, which aims to pipe and sequester CO2 elsewhere.
That was a definite no, that Jackdaw will not be used for Carbon Capture and Storage, but the carbon dioxide in the gas may be stored in the Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage project.
Will Centrica Be Applying Just-in-Time-Delivery To Gas Cargoes?
One of the jobs, I was involved in was scheduling container ships for OCL, in the 1970s.
- I’m fairly certain, that ships were speeded up and slowed down, so that ports weren’t overloaded.
- It was all done with my PERT7 project management software, which ran on Time Sharing at Great Portland Street.
I can envisage a clever programmer at Centrica writing a large simulation of all their natural gas deals and calling off gas cargoes, when required.
- Gas tankers would be constantly sailing between the gas fields in the Americas and LNG Terminals like Grain, where the cargo was needed.
- It would be nice to have a local supply of natural gas to fill in the gaps between cargoes, but delaying and speeding up of deliveries would have the same effect.
- I also suspect cargoes could be diverted to Germany, Poland or the highest bidder, when there is a glut of gas.
It could be a classic example of advanced control engineering, but very similar to what OCL were doing fifty years ago.
By applying just-in-time-delivery to gas cargoes, Centrica would reduce the need for storage in the UK.
At least gas doesn’t have a sell-by date!
How Much Liquid Natural Gas Storage Is There At The Grain LNG Terminal?
Google AI gave me this answer to the question in the title of this section.
The Grain LNG terminal on the Isle of Grain in Kent has a total liquid natural gas (LNG) storage capacity of 1.2 million cubic metres (1,200,000 m³) following recent site expansions.
Terminal Storage Overview
Total Capacity: 1.2 million m³ of cryogenic tank space (increased from the original 1.0 million m³ capacity).
Tank Configuration: Consists of massive full-containment cryogenic storage tanks (such as the 190,000 m³ tanks added in phases).
System Throughput: The facility can process up to 15 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), meeting a significant share of the UK’s total gas demand.
It should be remembered that storing gas as liquid reduces the space needed.
What Is The Capacity Of A Typical LNG Carrier?
Google AI gave me this answer to the question in the title of this section.
A typical modern liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier has a cargo capacity of approximately 174,000 cubic meters (m³).
This size has become the conventional standard for new builds, balancing port compatibility with transport scale, though global fleet capacities range widely from small-scale vessels to massive ultra-large ships.
Vessel Size Categories
Small-scale carriers: Hold roughly 1,000 m³ to 40,000 m³, used for regional distribution and bunkering.
Medium-scale carriers: Range from 40,000 m³ to 80,000 m³.
Conventional large carriers: Standard modern designs cluster around 140,000 m³ to 180,000 m³, with 174,000 m³ dominating recent ship orders.
Maxi-size carriers (Q-Flex and Q-Max): Specialized ultra-large vessels reach capacities between 210,000 m³ and 266,000 m³, primarily built to service long-distance routes out of Qatar.
Grain LNG Terminal can hold about four cargoes from the largest LNG Carriers.
My extensive experience of writing scheduling algorithms, which go back to one I wrote at ICI Mond in 1968, feels that by scheduling the arrival of the ships, there may well be enough storage at Grain LNG Terminal to keep the UK in gas.
I wonder, if for some time, Centrica have known, that they don’t need Rough for natural gas storage, which is why they have ambitions to turn it into hydrogen storage.
How Much Does Each Ride On The Silvertown Cycle Shuttle Cost Taxpayers?
This post was suggested by an article in the Daily Express, which was picked up by one of my Google Alerts.
Google AI gave me this answer.
The Silvertown Cycle Shuttle costs taxpayers between £43 and over £100 per passenger ride, depending on fluctuating daily usage data.
Because the zero-emission shuttle is a free service, the entirety of its operational funding is subsidized by Transport for London (TfL).
Cost Breakdown
According to official figures scrutinized by the Greater London Authority and London Assembly members, the service features the following financial profile:
Total Annual Cost: Approximately £2 million per year (£1,967,010 contractual cost).
Daily Running Cost: Roughly £5,400 per day to operate the buses on a continuous 12-minute frequency.
Average Cost Per Ride (£43): Calculated when the shuttle sees a typical baseline demand of 100 to 130 cyclists per day.
Peak Cost Per Ride (£100+): Triggered during low-demand periods, such as select winter weeks when numbers plummeted to just 51 cyclists per day.
Context of the Subsidy
The shuttle service was launched to provide a river-crossing alternative because bicycles are strictly prohibited from riding through the motor-vehicle-only Silvertown Tunnel.
Despite ongoing criticisms from assembly members regarding low passenger turnout and value for money, TfL is legally required by a Department for Transport Development Consent Order to maintain the service until at least 2028. To maximize utility, TfL has explored opening the shuttle to pedestrians.
Conclusion
This post shows how easy it is to use AI to check a fact and then post it.
Hopefully, as more people get familiar with simple AI systems, governments around the world will be called to account.
Great Portland Street – 22nd July 2026
Out of curiosity, I went back to Great Portland Street, this morning.
I took these pictures.
Note.
- I used to visit the area a lot in the 1970s, to see Time Sharing Ltd., who were a computer company, that I did a lot of work with.
- Time Sharing Ltd has a Wikipedia entry.
- I don’t think there were buses down Great Portland Street in the 1970s.
- The area is dominated by the buildings of the Portland Hospital.
- The Mason’s Arms has changed its name to The Lucky Saint.
- The Mason’s Arms, was where we all drunk.
The area has much changed.
Spain v France – I’m Looking Forward To The Match, But Not The Inane Adverts!
I have just watched the most inane, irrelevant and time-wasting adverts on ITV before the 2026 World Cup semi-final between France and Spain.
They’ve even started up again.
I want to watch football not adverts.
- I do hope some clever geek is devising a TV, that automatically cuts out adverts, using Artificial Intelligence!
- I would even pay extra to watch an advert-free feed.
If the second option made more money for FIFA, we might see that.
One Of The Jobs I Did, That I’m Most Proud Of
In the early 1970s, I developed and attempted to market a simultaneous differential equation solving program called SPEED, which stood for Simple Program for the Efficient Evaluations of Differentials or something like that.
It wasn’t very successful, but two companies asked me to write some for them.
- For Time Sharing, I put the central algorithm into their simultaneous differential equation solver to move the program up to the next level.
- WS Atkins, asked me to install it on their computer.
SPEED had a few advantages over typical simultaneous differential equation solvers of the time like IBM/CSMP.
- IBM/CSMP needed at least an IBM 360/50 computer, which I ran it on at ICI in Welwyn Garden City, where I was a general mathematical dogsbody. But SPEED could run on a dial-up line to a time-shared computer like a PDP-10.
- The time-shared computers as used by Time Sharing and WS Atkins, gave the big advantage, that as the size of the computer increased, the size of the problem, that could be tackled in proportion.
- IBM/CSMP and SPEED both had a simple column-oriented report writer, which unsurprisingly ended up in Artemis, which I wrote a few years later.
- I can’t remember, who at ICI gave me the tip, but I used a sophisticated version of the Runga-Kutta algorithm, that everybody used and some probably still do today. The version, I used was called Runga-Kutta-England, where like me England, was a graduate of Liverpool University.
This summary by Google AI described the algorithm.
The England version of the Runge-Kutta method (developed by R. England) is a highly efficient 4th/5th order embedded numerical integration formula. By reusing intermediate slopes across two methods of differing orders, it provides a highly reliable built-in error estimate for adaptive step-size control.
Does anybody still use Runga-Kutta methods? I suspect not!
A breakthrough of sorts came, when WS Atkins asked me to produce a larger system of the SPEED software, that could handle several tens of thousands of equations.
- Atkin’s client was the Water Resources Board and they were modelling the water distribution system for a large part of the UK.
- Prominent in the project was a Dr. David A, Dimeloe and we became friends and had dinner with our wives a couple of times.
- But I never received a copy of the report, that was written or heard any more since about 1975.
- But judging by the fact, that we seem to have adequate supply of water in the UK and problems seem to be all about sewage, politics, management and finance, I feel that David and his team, must have done a good job.
- I was also never asked to fix any bugs in the software.
I did have some trouble getting the money I was owed from the intermediary in the deal, but I eventually retrieved it through the County Court without a solicitor.
The Former Unilever Site At Warrington – 6th May 2026
I went past this site twice yesterday on my way to and from Blackpool.
I took these pictures going Northwards.
And I took these pictures going Southwards.
A quick search of the Internet on my phone revealed.
- It was a former soap works, that had previously been owned by Unilever.
- The site was now going to be developed as a data centre.
This OpenRailwayMap shows the railways through the area.
Note.
- Warrington Bank Quay station is indicated by the blue arrow in the middle of the map.
- The Unilever site is to its North-West.
- Warrington Bank Quay station is a major station on the West Coast Main Line and will probably be on High Speed Two, which will share tracks with the West Coast Main Line.
- The two East-West lines are not electrified.
- Warrington West is a relatively new station, that I wrote about in 2020, in The New Warrington West Station.
This OpenRailwayMap shows the railway lines between Liverpool and the coast in the West and the West Coast main Line in the East.
Note.
- The Merseyrail third rail network shown in lilac.
- Electrified tracks shown in red.
- Tracks without electrification shown in black.
- Warrington Bank Quay station indicated by the blue arrow.
- The West Coast Main Line (WCML) runs North-South at the Eastern edge of the map.
- Wigan North Western station is in the North East corner of the map.
- Wigan North Western and Warrington Bank Quay stations are both on the WCML.
Five lines connect the Liverpool local network to the WCML.
- The top unelectrified line connects the new Headbolt Lane station to Wigan Wallgate station.
- The most Northerly electrified line connects Liverpool Lime Street and Wigan North Western stations via Huyton station.
- The second electrified line connects Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester via Newton-le-Willows station.
- The most Northerly of the bottom pair of unelectrified lines connects Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester via Warrington Central station.
- The final line is a freight line between Liverpool and Manchester along the Mersey. This line runs under the WCML
The last line is likely to be upgraded to become Northern Powerhouse Rail between Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester via Manchester Airport.
This picture shows a freight train passing under Warrington Bank Quay station.
This OpenRailway Map shows how the lines cross to the South of Warrington Bank Quay station.
Note.
- The electrified North-South line is the West Coast Main Line (WCML).
- There is quite a good amount of space.
Could the junction be designed, so that HS2 trains could go between Manchester and London?
Record Public Transport Growth To The Lake District As Keswick Added To National Rail Network
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on Rail Technology Magazine.
This is the sub-heading.
Record numbers of visitors are travelling to the Lake District by public transport after Avanti West Coast introduced a “virtual railway station” at Keswick, according to newly released figures.
These two paragraphs add more detail.
By adding Keswick to national rail journey planners, passengers can now purchase a single, fully integrated ticket covering both train and bus travel. From today (27 April), the ticket will be available year‑round following a successful two‑summer trial.
The initiative allows passengers to travel on Avanti West Coast or TransPennine Express services to Penrith – the gateway to the North Lakes – before continuing to Keswick on Stagecoach’s X4 and X5 bus services, all using one ticket.
This paragraph describes the impact of the initiative.
The impact has been significant. Over the past year, Avanti West Coast, TransPennine Express and Stagecoach have all reported record-breaking passenger growth, underlining growing demand for seamless, car‑free travel to one of the UK’s most popular visitor destinations.
That looks like a good result all round.
I have some thoughts.
Buying A Ticket
I have just tried to book a ticket between Euston and Keswick for tomorrow, using my normal ticket retailer.
- The destination was Keswick Bus.
- It was just like buying a ticket between Euston and Liverpool Lime Street.
- I could have entered my Senior Railcard.
- The only thing that is needed would be to ask if you have a bus pass and adjust the ticket price accordingly.
I think one day in the summer, if I’m at a loss for something to do, I might visit Keswick.
I also found Keswick Bus on this ticket machine at Kings Cross.
Someone is getting the Ticketing Act together.
Getting To Events
In 2011 I visited all 92 English League Clubs in alphabetical order and some were difficult to get to from the nearest station.
Perhaps if a club has a bus between the local station and the ground, a virtual station could be added, which might be called say York Football.
There would be details instructions at the exit to the station about where to catch the bus or how to walk there if it were close.
It would obviously work for other sports and what about events like Glastonbury, Glyndebourne, The Suffolk Show and racing of both horses and horsepower.
Testing The Viability Of Possible Stations
It is very difficult to test the viability of a new station before a large sum of money can be allocated to build the station.
But supposing Merseyrail wanted to test the viability of a new station at Skelmersdale.
- Skelmersdale Bus would be added to the Rail Ticketing System.
- A bus route would be created probably between the new station at Headbolt Lane and Skelmersdale.
Done properly, it could give a reasonable estimate of the viability of the new route.
Conclusion
I can see this being a very popular and successful development.
Lumo Targets Drivers With ‘Pump-Primed’ Campaign Showing How To Travel To London For Less
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Rail Business Daily.
These three paragraphs outline the story.
Motorists driving to London are being shown how taking the train could save up to half the cost of their journey – as they fill-up at the fuel pumps.
Lumo has launched digital screens at a filling station to display real-time travel information and ticket prices.
Lumo believes the bold new trial, a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Smart Outdoor digital advertising firm, will give motorists a timely reminder of a greener and often more affordable alternative to driving between Scotland and England.
Note.
- Displaying real-time travel information is done regularly all over the transport network, for buses and trains.
- Adding ticket prices would not be difficult.
- All filling stations must have good enough broadband.
- I suspect, it could work best, where the train operator sells good value walk-up tickets. This is done at LNER stations on the East Coast Main Line and in An Affordable Trip To Doncaster, I told how I went to Doncaster for the day for £46.45 with a Senior Railcard, buying the tickets on a walk-up basis.
But who knows, where this technology will lead?
As a non-driver, if anybody sees the system in action, I’d love a comment and a photo.
A Ticket Buying App
I also think, I could specify a ticket buying app for trips someone needs to make.
The app would keep a list of train journeys you want to make.
Every day, it would look up the best prices available and if you wanted to go somewhere, you could buy a ticket.
