Irn-Bru production under threat as UK faces carbon dioxide shortage

Twitter kindly gave me a heads up on the UK CO2 shortage a few days ago, maybe on account of the algorithm being aware that CO2 is one of my interests.

This carbon dioxide shortage, experienced by a beverage company, is caused by fertilizer plants shutting down, on account of natural gas prices being too high, on account of the wind not blowing and the weather turning cooler.

The real CO2 storage problem will be with the lack of CO2 to slaughter chickens and pigs.

I speculate that food grade (clean) CO2 is easier to source from the fertilizer factory than by capturing it from the flue of a power plant.

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/20/co2-crisis-...

Until we manage to source supplies at a better price point this will continue, potentially until spring returns.

Alternatives are very expensive and has long lead times.

We also lost a 1GW supply from France because they ran it 50% overloaded, no doubt to make the most of it, but unfortunately that overheated the oil cooling transformers.

Replacing that and adding new interconnectors is going to take months or years.

I wonder how much of this can be traced back to Brexit. These kinds of shortages and price spikes were predicted by the "stay" side. I suspect many impacts of Brexit will end up like climate change - impossible to conclusively prove a direct link, but clearly an indirect cause.

Irn Bru hasn’t been the same since the formula change anyway.

Missing that Irn-Bru taste? Crack open a battery and suck out the paste inside.

The pandemic supply chain disruption has been fascinating to watch unfold. Unfortunately, we don’t have abundant energy to take advantage of and mitigate the effects (which would only have been possible had the previous generation expanded nuclear utilization).