This, too, is turning out to be a pretence. It’s true that in the past seven or eight years, the notional cost of renewable energy has plummeted. The price of offshore wind output has, for instance, fallen by around two thirds, from £100 per megawatt hour to less than £40. There you go, say ministers in response to net zero sceptics; it’s cheaper than coal.
Would that it was, but the claim is in fact a statistical illusion. The manufacturing, installation and maintenance costs alone have been surging since the war in Ukraine. To these we must also add the costs of upgrading the National Grid to bring the new sources of electricity from where they are generated to where they are used.
Littering the countryside with pylons is understandably running into local opposition. Billions may have to be forked out to compensate affected communities, or in finding alternative, more expensive, transmission routes. It could make HS2 look cheap by comparison.
But to gain a proper understanding of the real costs of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar, we need to factor in another of their characteristics – that they are intermittent.
In order to function effectively, the grid needs a constant balance between supply and demand; if the wind isn’t blowing, or even if it is blowing too strongly, thereby overloading the grid, there is a problem.
Lots of conventional backup capacity is required to deal with the shortfalls that result from intermittency – capacity that can be brought online quickly at the flick of a switch when needs arise.
The upshot is likely to be a high degree of duplication in generating capacity. This will obviously very considerably add to the costs of the renewable element. It’s disingenuous to say wind is cheaper than fossil fuels.
This is why a simple carbon tax is so much better. Because you can;t play games like that when everything is already in the one price.
Carbon tax? Bugger that, to use an Oggism…
That’s why you stop pussyfooting, tell the Greenies where they can stick their Notions, and build those damned nukes.
Or just tell the bird mincer operators that, to be connected to the grid the contract will require them to provide 24/7/52 supply. Failure to do so will be a contract breach and will have financial penalties. How they deal with that is their problem, if they have to install massive battery farms that’s part of their cost not ours.
Swivel-eyed climate denialist scientific illiterates have been saying this for decades
So good the meeja have woken up to it
Perhaps they could get onto other greenwash now?
Well, well BiW and Grikath. I wholeheartedly agree with you both.
I hope you’re not too horrified!!!
Forty quid a mW is the price at the foot of the wind turbine. Okay so there’s a collector doodad so call it at the factory gate, or ex works in Incoterms. The sparks still have to be fed into the grid and from there into your distribution box at home. Add the billions of pounds spent connecting the wind “farms” to the grid, at public expense mind you…
Something never mentioned….They tell us wind is free, sunshine is free…..Well so is oil. So is coal. So is gas. They are all naturally occuring and the costs are in harnessing them.
Also, the ‘subsidy’ that is the 5% VAT rate (instead of 20%) for ‘fossil fuel’ energy also applies to wind, but Dale Vince stated on tv that wind farms receive no subsidies. Somebody is telling porkies.
“Carbon Tax”…. You’re still pushing the dogma Tim.
I think your externalities mantra would look a lot better if wind & solar had an ‘intermittency’ tax applied. It’s a serious externality that raises costs elsewhere that they don’t have to pay.
That would level the playing field, were it not for the fact that Pigou taxes are subject to political rather than economic forces, like all taxes, and so are mostly useless for their ostensible purpose.
“How they deal with that is their problem, if they have to install massive battery farms that’s part of their cost not ours.”
I think you’d find that we (the consumer) would end up paying it, if thats the way the PTB declare electricity generation must be. Rather like the sewage discharge into the sea situation, we all use electric so ultimately the only people who will pay for it to be produced is the consumer, or the tax payer, which is largely one and the same thing.
The reason why there isn’t a simple carbon tax is *because* no one would build renewable generation if there was (with the possible exception of tidal). You just don’t know what you are going to get 🙁
This is why a simple carbon tax is so much better. Because you can;t play games like that when everything is already in the one price.
You are incredibly naive, Tim.
Government will see a carbon tax as a revenue source & tax to maximise revenue. The they will play games like that to compensate for the distortions to their policies the carbon tax has caused.
The sole purpose of any government is to maximise revenue to buy the votes gets it re-elected (That said, governments can have very strange ideas about which votes are for sale & which votes should be bought. Possibly as a result of listening to themselves over much)
One has oft opined in the past that as it’s necessary to build sufficient “hot standby” generation to cope with the intermittencies of “renewables” wouldn’t it be better not to bother spending money on said “renewables” and just use the stand-by capacity as normal generation?
Tim
What BiS/TG et al said.
It’s interesting – you quite correctly dismiss MMT, part of that dismissal being an understanding of the psychology of our criminal political class. Ie, even if you accept the notion that taxing might reduce inflation, can one in practice trust the crims to do anything other than that which gets said grifters re-elected.
But then ignore psychology entirely when it comes to the notion of what same thieves might attempt given the possibilities of a carbon tax?
If wind farms received no subsidies, that cunt Dale Vince would still be a penniless hippy living in a caravan.
No doubt the stationary bandits would be spending our money to their own best advantage, so it would depend if they’re getting bigger backhanders from a wind farm or a nuke plant.
Warner still does not address the gas question.
LNG transport is incredibly wasteful (20% in the case of Qatari gas) and does nothing for our security.
We should apply the same rules about earth tremors for fracked gas as we do for quarries. We would then have a reliable supply close to the distribution network, at a price we could afford.
TG,
“I think your externalities mantra would look a lot better if wind & solar had an ‘intermittency’ tax applied. It’s a serious externality that raises costs elsewhere that they don’t have to pay.”
The point with having a simple carbon tax is that intermittent electricity would be a lot less valuable because of it. Because the leccy company would be comparing intermittent + backup vs reliable supply. So only if intermittent + backup was cheaper would they buy it. The intermittency tax you’re thinking of effectively gets factored in.
The best thing to do with the wind and solar is probably to convert it to hydrogen.
None of this is going to happen for decades, though. Or until some massive power outage at which point all the middle class earth mothers will get a horrible shock and start demanding that we drill/build nukes.
philip @ 11.48, don’t start trying things like facts, reasoning and logic with these morons, they are impervious to facts, reasoning and logic.
Why frack in the UK (and get the revenue including taxes going to UK Gov) when we can pay the likes of the USA £190+million a week to ship their their fracked gas across the ocean in diesel powered supertankers? Likewise Qatar.
I wish those promoting un-reliables live for a few months this winter relying solely on their
pipedream. I’m sure a number of weeks in the cold and dark would concentrate a few minds…..
People need to stop thinking this is anything other than a boondoggle to make a few people rich(er) at our expense and stop coming up with solutions to solve their delusions.
The laws of physics can’t be made to lie. The “laws” of economics (general empirical principles at best) can be – sorry, have been for decades – tortured to say whatever you like.
They can stick it where the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow.
Depressingly, they have.
@Baron Jackfield – “wouldn’t it be better not to bother spending money on said “renewables” and just use the stand-by capacity as normal generation?”
That very much depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you want the cheapest energy, then it would be better. If you want the least pollution, it may make sense to use a less-polluting generator when you can and use a more-polluting one only when forced to. If you’re pursuing an ideology, then expense probably doesn’t matter.
@Western Bloke – “The best thing to do with the wind and solar is probably to convert it to hydrogen.”
Or use it to charge electric vehicles. For solar especially, it makes sense for commuters to charge their cars during the day at work (people are usually more concentrated at a workplace, so it is easier to put in the infrastructure rather than having to distribute it over a wide area).
This is why a simple carbon tax is so much better.
Don’t you mean “would be”? Or are you now able to point to one country that has a simple carbon tax?
I’ll bet that every country that has a carbon tax also has subsidised renewables.
@Charles
“…it makes sense for commuters to charge their cars during the day at work…”
Just what I need, buying my commute fuel from the company store. (You really don’t think companies will provide charging points for free?)
@Charles
Dispatchable power basically means gas. A modern combined-cycle gas turbine power station is impressively (40%+) efficient… while running in a steady state. While coming on-line it uses more gas to produce less power than when running at steady-state. If there’s some intermittent wind and you keep having to toggle the gas plant on and off, you’ll actually end up using just as much gas as you did if you turned it on and left it running for multiple hours, while increasing the amount of wear and maintenance on it due to all the heating/cooling cycles.
The “laws” of economics (general empirical principles at best) can be – sorry, have been for decades – tortured to say whatever you like.
I think economics is a very useful historical subject. You can usually work out pretty sound economic reasons for what people have done. When all the facts are in. But that doesn’t mean it can predict anything. Even in very general terms. Couple of reasons. One’s information quality. You are never going to have all the information you need at the time to do the prediction. The other’s encapsulated in the phrase “People will seek to maximise what they perceive as their own personal advantage. ” And the important word in that is “perceive”. You can never know what that is. It may look entirely irrational to the observer, yet be perfectly rational to the observed. So impossible to predict. Chaotic.
Certainly makes macroeconomics no better than a branch of astrology.
You need to stop this carbon tax shit. It’s all bollocks. There is no man made global warming, to speak of, it’s a scam designed to given them the pretext to steal our land, take away our meat and our transport, and close us down in their 15 minute cities.
It’s a weird blind spot – you’ve adopted this position, I assume thinking it was a gotcha to the greencunts – ‘Ha! All we have to do is do what Stern said, and we’re done, and that’s an argument they can’t defeat!’ – when the fact is there ius no argument that will defeat them, because thy’re not arguing from facts, or logic, or sense, but from the will to power and genocide.
People like William Connelly are very dangerous indeed.
People like William Connelly are very dangerous indeed.
They all are.
I’ll take you back to that phrase ” “People will seek to maximise what they perceive as their own personal advantage. ” Which describes Connelly. But it also describes everyone involved in the Great Global Warming Scam right from the very first science & the phoney & indefensible Hockeystick curve.
The whole thing is the alignment of what are perceived as individual personal advantages. The scientists, the campaigners, economists, politicians, business leaders, you name it. The gravy train that just keeps pumping out gravy.
That does not imply that it’s a false paradigm. It maybe entirely genuine. But whether it is or not is totally obscured by the results of those pursuing what they perceive as their personal interests. It’s ended up as something where there’s nothing one can confidently believe. Of course that’s also entirely true of dissenters. Although we can say, currently, it’s much harder to derive personal advantage from dissent. (That may change & provide another gravy train.) What’s interesting now is, as the actually costs to individuals are being felt, where they were seeing their personal advantage of being on the “right side” cost free, socially, that’s now being trumped by their economic personal advantage in not having to pay for it.
The Great Global Warming Scam is hardly unique. This is is how wars & revolutions get started. It’s difficult to explain Ukraine from the outside. It makes so little sense. But no doubt Putin & his enablers all saw personal advantage in it. Still do. It’s how governments actually function. Any government is just a group of individuals pursuing their own interests. So are companies from, the CEO down to guy sweeps the floor.
And you can forget altruism. It’s a bird rarely sighted & possibly extinct. Even the greatest altruists are driven by seeking personal advantage. Although you might have to ask them what it is. If they know. It’s one of the failings most people have. Admitting to themselves why they do things. It’s not in their personal advantage to do so.
Yeah, I know. All very reductionist. But if you can find a better explanation of the world works, I’d like to hear it. I do know, if you want to manipulate people, make it so what they perceive as their personal interests align with yours. And they’ll eat out your hand. Works every time.
@ Baron Jackfield
wouldn’t it be better not to bother spending money on said “renewables” and just use the stand-by capacity as normal generation?
Come now, your lordship, that’s joined up thinking.