Bill payers are to spend as much as £150 per household on new wind turbines as Ed Miliband oversees a record-breaking expansion of green energy.
The numbers here are such a mess – deliberately – that it’s near impossible to say that bills are going to go up or down overall.
It is possible to say that this subsidy ‘ere will increase bills…..but so much else isn’t ceteris paribus that total ‘bills? As I say, I think this is deliberate.
But the thing that confuses us. The Sec of State, Mr Miliband, keeps telling us that renewables are much cheaper than fossil derived electricity. It would, obviously, be great if this were true for that would mean we’ve solved climate change. At those 2012 prices it’s also, just about, possible to make that claim – sure, there are a couple of experimental technologies but the big volumes there etc.
Except that the actual prices to be paid are that 2012 price plus 40% inflation plus those other costs and any future inflation to boot. Which is – at least as far as we understand it – significantly above the current gas derived electricity price.
Which is the bit we don’t understand. Why are prices so deliberately reported in this manner? Why are all the announcements of prices 33% below** the actual price being paid and so not comparable with current market prices? We’re sure there must be a reason for this other than trying to gaslight*** us all. We just can’t think of any that is other than that attempt to gaslight****.
All those prices of that ‘leccie you see reported from that ernewables auction. That’s in 2012 £. Actual prices are 40% higher than that. Why would people do this if it wasn’t to mislead?
No, Mad Ed is not expanding green energy. He might possibly be expanding the capacity to make “green energy” but only intermittently providing it…
And it’s only “green” if someone else who doesn’t rely on “green energy” makes the bits. Which, as all progressives and climate experts agree, doesn’t affect global warming.
Drax :
“Subsidies accounted for an estimated 13 per cent of Drax’s £7.5bn power generation revenues last year, according to research platform Visible Alpha”.
https://www.ft.com/content/21cdb4d8-9118-4865-bdca-7bf9db6369f0
13% of £7,500,000,000 = £975,000,000 = £18,750,000 per week.
“Yet biomass is actually even more polluting than coal. “Burning wood for energy produces at least as much carbon dioxide as burning coal per unit of energy produced and usually more,” Ms Putt explains.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59546278
As usual the plans don’t include energy storage for when the wind doesn’t blow. Were this to be done net zero it would be very very expensive. Much more so than the power generation.
It’s easy to see that storage is needed. Wind is very intermittent. We now have over 30GW of installed wind power, yet as I write this is producing 1.59GW which is under 6% of the claimed capacity.
Yes andyf.
You could keep all the coal and gas burners running and thus have 100% back up of reliables.
It’d be cheaper than building the huge amount of storage needed to cover the occasional weekly or monthly wind drought and the immense surplus of windmills needed to keep them topped up.
Storage at anything like the capacity needed is pure fantasy.
Doubly do (or should that be squared?) because the storage would – of necessity – have to be at least as diffuse as the unusables that might occasionally be able to utilise it.
Grist
And it’s only “green” if someone else who doesn’t rely on “green energy” makes the bits. Which, as all progressives and climate experts agree, doesn’t affect global warming.
And the intensive manufacture, installation and maintenance of net zero technologies such as EVs and wind turbines might well lead to an increase in emissions, at least during the “transition”…
Based on previous experience (the last time the millennium rolled round) we will be rid of this nonsense by about 2037.
Non Christian countries regard the dating system as no more significant than the length of a cricket pitch, so are not in thrall to the CO2 bogeyman.
Well obviously since there will be no gas and no light between dusk and dawn.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6556027d046ed400148b99fe/electricity-generation-costs-2023.pdf
Gas is more expensive than wind if external costs are paid for or the same if they are not.
What is the point of Hornsea 4.
If there’s a dunkelflaute on Hornsea 1, 2 and 3 , the chances of another one being in a squall are surely 1 in infinity. I just can’t see it delivering energy when other sources are generating low amounts and doing so when people want it.
@Jb – I got to page 12 of that report before finding the first egregious bullshit, so won’t be bothering further. The Department for Energy Gaslighting assumes a load factor for onshore wind of 45% for projects delivered in 2023. The actual figure for onshore wind in 2023 was 24.6% and has ranged from 22-29% in the previous decade or so, with no sign of significant improvement.
Thus I am calling bullshit on that assumption and assuming every other number in the report is similarly bullshit.
Profits from record-breaking green expansion will go to foreign energy firms
Yes, that’s what happens when foreigners take over your country.
@ Jb
That report would be more convincing if:
1) It wasn’t produced by the people ramming Net Zero down our throats (or others with their snouts in the trough).
2) Included the words battery or intermittent anywhere. Storage only appears in the context of carbon capture.
If the windmills were cost-effective there would be no need for governments to bully us into relying on them. All purported costings that imply windmill power is cheaper must therefore be wrong. The likeliest reason for their errors is dishonesty.
Long ago I knew a fellow who was that rare thing: an intelligent, well educated, fertile-minded Green. He set about trying to develop a device for exploiting wave power. One of his motivations was that it was obvious that wind power couldn’t be the answer to anything – it has far too low a density over space and time. Waves, though, are the integrated result of winds distributed over millions of square miles of ocean: the energy is much denser.
His ingenious device worked brilliantly in the lab but not at sea: the ocean was just too hostile an environment for it. There are two lessons.
(i) The proposition, much loved by greenies, that an answer must be around the corner because some experiments in the lab show great promise is folly.
(ii) His axiom – that wind power was scientifically stupid – was spot on.
How the “energy transition” is going:
‘A very serious situation’: Volkswagen could close plants in Germany for the first time in history
“The situation is extremely tense and cannot be resolved through simple cost-cutting measures,” Volkswagen said.
ByHanna Ziady CNNWire logo
Tuesday, September 3, 2024 2:18PM
Net Zero is now officially worse for the German economy than Bomber Harris was. And we’ve only just begun.
Prediction: by 2040, you won’t be able to find anybody who will admit to having supported Net Zero. They’ll be too afraid of retaliation from their neighbours
@dearieme
Stephen Salter and his Salter duck wave machines?
I met him too in 1983/4, toured research centre and tanks at Edi Uni. Seemed credible, but I was ~20 yo. Followed it for many years, then concluded a dead duck
Tidal just as useless, that’s why we abandoned it some 200 years ago
.
Matthew Lynn pushing his green cult in Gates funded Telegraph agan:
No Mr Lynn, everyone does not agree. All life on earth is built from Carbon. CO2 is a beneficial & harmless trace gas and climate change is not a serious health threat. Stop lying to promote your cult religion and pander to Bill Gates
As a rough benchmark the guaranteed floor price on the last round of intermittent wind was £90.
In China the average actual cost is more like £15.
They use coal mainly. It’s also reliable.