We can all hear the roar already:
The Green Investment Bank — set up with taxpayer funds but controversially sold off four years ago — racked up bumper profits last year in the race to net zero, raising fresh questions about its sale.
Launched in 2012 by the coalition government to help spur investment in green projects such as wind farms, the bank was sold by Theresa May’s government to Australia’s Macquarie for £2.3 billion five years later.
The UK Green Investment Bank reported a £144 million profit for the year ended March 2021, compared to a £34 million profit the year before, according to accounts filed at Companies House.
That led it to pay a £39 million dividend following a £135 million payout to Macquarie in 2020 — its first since it took over the bank in 2017.
Should’a kept it, think of the profits for the taxpayer!
Which is exactly and precisely the wrong observation of course. When state owned the Green Bank did piss all. Putting it into the private sector is what led to the rise in value add and thus profits. A better proof of the simple fact that government is shit at doing things would be hard to find.
What’s its business model? Subsidy harvesting? Stupidity mining?
£174m in four years for a purchase price of £2.3bn is, back of a fag packet, a 1.9% annual return. Sounds like the government got pretty full value up-front there as well
If it’s so profitable what’s stopping the government setting another one up.
Meanwhile, green investments paying dividends:
https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/europes-power-crunch-shuts-down-factories-as-prices-hit-record
Re the French Nukes:
Other than market manipulation, why would a winter-peaking utility like EdF plan to shutdown 40% of their fleet in January? It’s a pretty obvious question, and the article doesn’t even sniff at it: safety issues, equipment failures, other?
‘ Re the French Nukes:
Other than market manipulation, why would a winter-peaking utility like EdF plan to shutdown 40% of their fleet in January? ’
Government policy. French Nuclear power has always had overcapacity, some of the fleet are elderly – back to the 1970s so need to be decommissioned – and CLIMATE CHANGE!
France must move to ‘sustainable’, ‘renewable’ energy, so nukes are being replaced by wind and solar, because nuke is not on the ‘green’ approved list.
How much electricity can be generated is no longer a priority anywhere, just how you attempt to generate some. Better to have half as much as you need from ‘renewables’ than as much as you need from fossil fuel and nuke.
It’s the new logic.