The persistent myth that green energy is expensive has been shredded by the revelation that windfarms will be built around Britain’s coast far more cheaply than new nuclear reactors.
New power stations in the UK today are usually only built with the certainty provided by subsidies paid through energy bills,
What we want to know is what is the cost of not subsidised power so that we’ve a baseline…..
That everything is subsidised shows just how badly this sector has been cocked up by government. It also shows how right Nick Stern was way back when. Don’t try to manage the process, just slap on the carbon tax and see what happens. No, not even because climate change is a big worry but because the idiots are going to do something so at least make sure they do something that will work if climate change is that problem.
You have to laugh at the headlines saying ‘Subsidies are down’. What the story means is that subsidies are going UP because the effects are cumulative. Generation that doesn’t get a subsidy or strike price is being elbowed out in favour of generation that does.
How about the cost of maintenance? Its not like the middle of the sea is a harsh environment…
I bet you their expected lifespans and maintenance costs are pie-in-the-sky.
If offshore wind in cheaper than nuclear (lets assume its true for the sake of argument), that implies onshore wind is more expensive. How so? Surely its cheaper to build a wind turbine on land than in the middle of a sea (and maintain it too)? Is the difference that the wind blows more at sea, thereby increasing the amount of time the turbine is generating? But equally we are often told that onshore wind has to be be taken off grid (and compensated for) when the wind blows too much at the wrong times, so surely that will be even more common for offshore turbines?
@ Jim
The *cheapest* offshore wind in the future – but *none* of those already built – will be cheaper than the *most expensive* nuclear power station planned but *not* than any single nuclear power station already operating in the UK.
“No, not even because climate change is a big worry but because the idiots are going to do something so at least make sure they do something that will work if climate change is that problem.”
The goal is not to fine a solution to climate change. The goal is to make people poorer, climate change is just a tool to justify the process. There is no other explanation for the way the issue has been tackled.
The headline is the killer. The retarded fool who wrote the article really seems to believe that “cheaper” and “more expensive” are synonymous
I think it’s all a Western middle class guilt trip. The rest of the World is happy to go along as we send them our wealth. Noticeable from all this masturbatory self congratulation amongst assorted greenies is any word of whether this will reduce our bills. Rationality has long since left the building.
I read somewhere that onshore turbines were struggling to make half their design life. Hang on…
Here we go.
Ian Reid
“I think it’s all a Western middle class guilt trip.”
There is a large degree of this, no doubt.
So the big criticism of Nuclear here is the subsidy is it? Because for decades you have been demanding a subsidy for ‘renewables’ . When you got that subsidy, you proclaimed how cheap renewables were. You demanded taxes on fossil fuel generation to prove how cheap renewables were. When the renewables subsidy fed through to higher household bills, You simply denied the facts.
Now you flip 180 degrees. Fucking shameless.
Slap regulations on windies just like nuclear. Like, make it illegal to kill birds. Wait . . . what?
Windies should be arrested and locked up, until they provide bird protection for their turbines. The overt failure to enforce law on the windies is the grandest subsidy of all.
@ Gamecock
“The overt failure to enforce law on the windies is the grandest subsidy of all.”
Are you factoring in the multiplication of the electricity price by the cost of the excessive regulation on western nuclear power stations? No-one has yet been killed by western civilian nuclear power (“more people were killed at Chappaquidick that at Three Mile Island” but Three Mile Island got closed down).
It would be really helpful if we had a baseline price for unregulated, but still safe, nuclear power. Post-TMI regulations tripled the cost of nuclear and most of those regulations were overreactions. Add another nearly four decades of FUD regulations and it is safe to say we could probably do nuclear for 10% of the current costs, once regulations are removed.
Engineering friends tell me of whispers that the corrosion resistant steel used in their construction was sourced ‘low bid’ from China, and turns out to be not quite as corrosion resistant as they thought.
Chris Miller
“Engineering friends tell me of whispers that the corrosion resistant steel ”
Any engineer who puts the words ‘corrosion resistant’ and ‘steel’ together with an offshore installation is in for a rude shock, Chinese steel or not.