An important point you note here and elsewhere is that the system costs of renewables includes not only their delivery costs per MWh but also all the necessary extras - e.g. capacity market, grid expansion, back-up generation. But these are always considered separately, and as lump sums, so not comparable with the £/MWh costs for delivery. Do you think there could be a sensible way of presenting some at least of these "extras" as additional £/MWh costs so as to present an integrated "overall" cost of renewables on a single metric? If this could be robustly calculated then it feels to me it would be powerfully clarifying.
I think they should be challenged to show their workings, especially as forward gas prices show an expectation of lower prices, so the subsidies to renewables will grow with inflation.
Unfortunately here is what is likely to happen: renewables will be delivered at scale, though probably not enough to meet 100 percent of demand, and will be extraordinarily expensive.
Therefore our electricity bills, already amongst the highest in the world, will rise further.
The government will tell us we are lucky they went for "cheaper renewables", as bills would have been even more expensive if they hadn't.
And when I say "government", I mean the civil servants, because the Conservatives in office were very nearly as bad as the current lot. Don't believe Claire Coutinho when she tells you otherwise.
I worry you are right, expect a furious reverse ferret with regard to the cost estimates in the next 12 months.
We will be issues "revised" figures that add an inflation factor going back far enough to shape the predicted curve to the reality. As you highlight, we will then be told that we made the right choice as and we got "lucky" we didn't stay with hydrocarbons.
(Ignoring the fact we will be burning more gas than ever before to account for the intermittency)
It will take massive prolonged power cuts which cannot be blamed on gas power stations (unlike the big 2019 power cut which was caused by wind and smeared on gas) to stop this madness.
Yup but unlikely to happen anytime soon. ESO control engineers are very adept at keeping the lights on and have a huge array of (expensive) tools at their disposal to manage the unreliables.
You can run, but you can’t hide from EROI (energy return on energy investment). Offshore wind is just about the worst thing you can do to attempt to reduce CO2. The logistics are terrible, the conditions are really harsh, and the likely lifetimes of the offshore turbines are not good. Steel, cement, rare earth metals, and copper require huge volumes of fossil fuels to build the platforms and turbines. The net result of offshore wind energy is likely increased CO2 emissions and absurdly high electricity costs.
Fantastic job David - Of course, this will be lost on Milibrain and his expensive side kick Chris Stark(raving bonkers) - they’ve already shown they have no idea what they’re doing due to a distinct lack of STEM competency within themselves, or DESNZ - the sooner reality flushes net zero idiocy away, the better for the UK masses
This is of course only part of the story. Increasingly, renewables will be curtailed on days when output exceeds the level that the Grid can absorb. The alternatives are to pay to dispose of the surplus into exports or storage. The result is that the real cost to consumers of the power they use is inflated to cover for the wasted output. Meanwhile we will have to compete for supply via imports on days when wind and sun are inadequate, and have to pay for capacity kept on standby as backup. Those costs will also grow, particularly if electrification leads to rising demand, which would entail much more backup capacity being needed.
500GWh curtailed off in August and replaced largely with gas so we pay twice. Its about time the media shone a spotlight on this waste. This will also get a lot worse as the equally inept OFGEM prevented NG/SHET construction the Eastern DC links which would have alleviated transmission constraints Scotland to England. Any sane govt would have suspended any further windmill construction in Scotland until these links are commissioned later in this decade but they won't so the constraint cost will just keep escalating for several more years.
Renewables CfDs have all followed a boomerang path with an inflection point around 2023/24. This can be no coincidence. Your salty croc above should be pictured with a Net Zero boomerang in his mouth! On a more serious note:
"The department has:
• Commissioned an external provider in 2020 to review assumptions for onshore wind and large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV).
• Commissioned an external provider in 2020 to review assumptions for Energy from Waste (EfW) and Advanced Conversion Technologies (ACT), including with Combined Heat and Power (CHP).
• Commissioned an external provider in 2023 to review assumptions for Floating Offshore Wind (FOW) and Tidal Stream Energy (TSE). "
Who were the "external providers" (who presumably had a vested interest in promoting the notion that renewables were getting cheaper and more economically viable)?
2020 was not a sensible year to use for cost estimation. Many businesses were desperate for turnover in the face of covid lockdowns, and were prepared to price accordingly. That included manufacturers of green technologies of all kinds.
It is interesting to note that all CFDs for ACT have been terminated. None of them was able to secure financing to proceed with the projects.
DESNZ, CCC, National Grid and OFGEM have a largely shared list of preferred consultants, some of whom have changed their trading names so as to seem to be different. Some of them actually have directors who work for one of the commissioning bodies. It's a deeply incestuous world of mutual back scratching. I'm expecting it will be in evidence to provide "answers" to the Miliband/Stark SOS.
David, thank you for putting the bald financial facts before our eyes in such an easily digestible form. You could also add in your conclusion that the mis-named renewables are a failure on "energy return on energy invested" or EROEI terms (i.e. they waste energy/use it inefficiently) as you have previously discussed in your substack. In short, modern renewables are a financial and energy sink or dead end. Regards, John C.
When the government says they will reduce bills, do we know what they are comparing the cost to? I would assume, given the stated objectives and legal requirement, that the baseline would be gas power, based in a long term forward projection of gas price, coupled with CCS, as that would be necessary to achieve net zero
It would be interesting to re-cut your data based on that baseline. Picking four months from the current year doesn’t really give a good view of the future
Don't worry, I have reported Mr Miliband to my local Labour MP for spreading misinformation. and included a link to this article as evidence.
Given Sir T Starmer"s (sic) commitment to eradicating misinformation I expect Mr Miliband to take up the only prison place remaining before Monday afternoon (IE tomorrow)
Surely the priorities of a responsible government for an energy system should be: 1) Reliable, 2) Secure (think cyber-attacks), 3) Affordable, 4) Low carbon, simply on the grounds that if 1 to 3 fail, civil society may break down.
We seem to have (4), plus head in a ministerial bucket of sand.
Well yes, I know that, you know that, but so far it hasn't dawned on Ed the Shred and his Merry Band of Incompetents. Add the physical vulnerability to attack from a hostile actor and it looks downright stupid.
It isn't staggeringly good for birds either. But when has concern about wildlife got in the way of the eco-loons. The end justifies the means etc etc. It's the outworking of Marxism for wildlife
So much self-flagellation, all on the false premise that "gas of life" CO2 is a deadly threat. The reality is that the warming effect of atmospheric CO2 is already “saturated”, which means even a doubling of its concentration from the present level will cause negligible global warming. On top of that, it is clear that the majority non-Western world will continue to increase their consumption of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future which renders our puny decarbonisation efforts doubly pointless. Finally, the world is currently living in a CO2 famine and we should be glad that beneficial atmospheric CO2 levels are rising, as explained by Professor Will Happer: https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1781283075046969643?t=rgx93yy-jxyHDFj9EKmZmg&s=19.
Its plain incomprehensible that Millibrain closes his eyes to what is going on in the rest of the world and somehow believes that if we set an example others will follow!
Clearly, we don't know what inflation is going to do between now and 2040 but the 2023 generation cost report numbers will naturally rise due to inflation. We know that the UK RPI has gone from 716 in May 2003 to 1480 in May 2023, i.e.: roughly doubled. Using history as a guide, we could say roughly the same for the numbers for cost report and electricity price out to 2040.
Absent an unlikely step change in technology in the material, manufacturing, construction and operational costs, it is hard to see how the gap will be closed. The jaws will gape ever wider compared to the cost of gas generation.
Unfortunately, the most likely outcome is that the gap between actual electricity price and the delivery offer / award prices will inevitably have to close because the money to fill the gap will have to come from somewhere.
Yet another problem, in addition to the destruction of the pension system, we're leaving for our children and grandchildern to sort out. Another fine mess.....
An important point you note here and elsewhere is that the system costs of renewables includes not only their delivery costs per MWh but also all the necessary extras - e.g. capacity market, grid expansion, back-up generation. But these are always considered separately, and as lump sums, so not comparable with the £/MWh costs for delivery. Do you think there could be a sensible way of presenting some at least of these "extras" as additional £/MWh costs so as to present an integrated "overall" cost of renewables on a single metric? If this could be robustly calculated then it feels to me it would be powerfully clarifying.
I see that Cornwall Insight have come up with some pretendy figures that claim to show the extra cost on bills from AR6 will be quite small.
https://www.current-news.co.uk/cornwall-insight-cfd-scheme-to-have-minimal-impact-on-consumer-bills/
I think they should be challenged to show their workings, especially as forward gas prices show an expectation of lower prices, so the subsidies to renewables will grow with inflation.
Whatever wind and solar you think you need, triple it to charge the 70% efficient batteries you can’t afford.
Perhaps the government should be reported for disinformation.
Unfortunately here is what is likely to happen: renewables will be delivered at scale, though probably not enough to meet 100 percent of demand, and will be extraordinarily expensive.
Therefore our electricity bills, already amongst the highest in the world, will rise further.
The government will tell us we are lucky they went for "cheaper renewables", as bills would have been even more expensive if they hadn't.
And when I say "government", I mean the civil servants, because the Conservatives in office were very nearly as bad as the current lot. Don't believe Claire Coutinho when she tells you otherwise.
I worry you are right, expect a furious reverse ferret with regard to the cost estimates in the next 12 months.
We will be issues "revised" figures that add an inflation factor going back far enough to shape the predicted curve to the reality. As you highlight, we will then be told that we made the right choice as and we got "lucky" we didn't stay with hydrocarbons.
(Ignoring the fact we will be burning more gas than ever before to account for the intermittency)
It will take massive prolonged power cuts which cannot be blamed on gas power stations (unlike the big 2019 power cut which was caused by wind and smeared on gas) to stop this madness.
Yup but unlikely to happen anytime soon. ESO control engineers are very adept at keeping the lights on and have a huge array of (expensive) tools at their disposal to manage the unreliables.
You can run, but you can’t hide from EROI (energy return on energy investment). Offshore wind is just about the worst thing you can do to attempt to reduce CO2. The logistics are terrible, the conditions are really harsh, and the likely lifetimes of the offshore turbines are not good. Steel, cement, rare earth metals, and copper require huge volumes of fossil fuels to build the platforms and turbines. The net result of offshore wind energy is likely increased CO2 emissions and absurdly high electricity costs.
Fantastic job David - Of course, this will be lost on Milibrain and his expensive side kick Chris Stark(raving bonkers) - they’ve already shown they have no idea what they’re doing due to a distinct lack of STEM competency within themselves, or DESNZ - the sooner reality flushes net zero idiocy away, the better for the UK masses
This is of course only part of the story. Increasingly, renewables will be curtailed on days when output exceeds the level that the Grid can absorb. The alternatives are to pay to dispose of the surplus into exports or storage. The result is that the real cost to consumers of the power they use is inflated to cover for the wasted output. Meanwhile we will have to compete for supply via imports on days when wind and sun are inadequate, and have to pay for capacity kept on standby as backup. Those costs will also grow, particularly if electrification leads to rising demand, which would entail much more backup capacity being needed.
500GWh curtailed off in August and replaced largely with gas so we pay twice. Its about time the media shone a spotlight on this waste. This will also get a lot worse as the equally inept OFGEM prevented NG/SHET construction the Eastern DC links which would have alleviated transmission constraints Scotland to England. Any sane govt would have suspended any further windmill construction in Scotland until these links are commissioned later in this decade but they won't so the constraint cost will just keep escalating for several more years.
Renewables CfDs have all followed a boomerang path with an inflection point around 2023/24. This can be no coincidence. Your salty croc above should be pictured with a Net Zero boomerang in his mouth! On a more serious note:
"The department has:
• Commissioned an external provider in 2020 to review assumptions for onshore wind and large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV).
• Commissioned an external provider in 2020 to review assumptions for Energy from Waste (EfW) and Advanced Conversion Technologies (ACT), including with Combined Heat and Power (CHP).
• Commissioned an external provider in 2023 to review assumptions for Floating Offshore Wind (FOW) and Tidal Stream Energy (TSE). "
Who were the "external providers" (who presumably had a vested interest in promoting the notion that renewables were getting cheaper and more economically viable)?
2020 was not a sensible year to use for cost estimation. Many businesses were desperate for turnover in the face of covid lockdowns, and were prepared to price accordingly. That included manufacturers of green technologies of all kinds.
It is interesting to note that all CFDs for ACT have been terminated. None of them was able to secure financing to proceed with the projects.
DESNZ, CCC, National Grid and OFGEM have a largely shared list of preferred consultants, some of whom have changed their trading names so as to seem to be different. Some of them actually have directors who work for one of the commissioning bodies. It's a deeply incestuous world of mutual back scratching. I'm expecting it will be in evidence to provide "answers" to the Miliband/Stark SOS.
David, thank you for putting the bald financial facts before our eyes in such an easily digestible form. You could also add in your conclusion that the mis-named renewables are a failure on "energy return on energy invested" or EROEI terms (i.e. they waste energy/use it inefficiently) as you have previously discussed in your substack. In short, modern renewables are a financial and energy sink or dead end. Regards, John C.
When the government says they will reduce bills, do we know what they are comparing the cost to? I would assume, given the stated objectives and legal requirement, that the baseline would be gas power, based in a long term forward projection of gas price, coupled with CCS, as that would be necessary to achieve net zero
It would be interesting to re-cut your data based on that baseline. Picking four months from the current year doesn’t really give a good view of the future
Go here and you can see gas price futures out to 2031.
https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/NFV24/futures-prices
The forward prices are about a third lower than today's. The jaws look to be widening.
Yes. 3Q23 price cap is the baseline. Trouble is, earlier this year prices had already come down by more than their promise.
Covered here:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/labours-great-british-energy-suicide-note#:~:text=Magical%20Thinking%20for%20Renewable%20Energy%20Prices
Don't worry, I have reported Mr Miliband to my local Labour MP for spreading misinformation. and included a link to this article as evidence.
Given Sir T Starmer"s (sic) commitment to eradicating misinformation I expect Mr Miliband to take up the only prison place remaining before Monday afternoon (IE tomorrow)
Brilliant as ever David!
Surely the priorities of a responsible government for an energy system should be: 1) Reliable, 2) Secure (think cyber-attacks), 3) Affordable, 4) Low carbon, simply on the grounds that if 1 to 3 fail, civil society may break down.
We seem to have (4), plus head in a ministerial bucket of sand.
Offshore wind is highly vulnerable to actual physical attack. So relying on that for baseload is extremely foolish.
Wind can never be baseload its unreliable
Well yes, I know that, you know that, but so far it hasn't dawned on Ed the Shred and his Merry Band of Incompetents. Add the physical vulnerability to attack from a hostile actor and it looks downright stupid.
It isn't staggeringly good for birds either. But when has concern about wildlife got in the way of the eco-loons. The end justifies the means etc etc. It's the outworking of Marxism for wildlife
So much self-flagellation, all on the false premise that "gas of life" CO2 is a deadly threat. The reality is that the warming effect of atmospheric CO2 is already “saturated”, which means even a doubling of its concentration from the present level will cause negligible global warming. On top of that, it is clear that the majority non-Western world will continue to increase their consumption of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future which renders our puny decarbonisation efforts doubly pointless. Finally, the world is currently living in a CO2 famine and we should be glad that beneficial atmospheric CO2 levels are rising, as explained by Professor Will Happer: https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1781283075046969643?t=rgx93yy-jxyHDFj9EKmZmg&s=19.
The Uniparty (Lab/Con/Lib/SNP/Greens) are taking us all for fools. The real reason they are pushing ahead with their totally inappropriate weather-dependent so-called renewables is because the ulterior purpose of their climate change hoax is to degrade the economy, deindustrialise, create deliberate food shortages and reduce the population of “useless eaters” (© Henry Kissinger).
Its plain incomprehensible that Millibrain closes his eyes to what is going on in the rest of the world and somehow believes that if we set an example others will follow!
Good morning, David:
Thank you. As usual, an excellent article..
Clearly, we don't know what inflation is going to do between now and 2040 but the 2023 generation cost report numbers will naturally rise due to inflation. We know that the UK RPI has gone from 716 in May 2003 to 1480 in May 2023, i.e.: roughly doubled. Using history as a guide, we could say roughly the same for the numbers for cost report and electricity price out to 2040.
Absent an unlikely step change in technology in the material, manufacturing, construction and operational costs, it is hard to see how the gap will be closed. The jaws will gape ever wider compared to the cost of gas generation.
Unfortunately, the most likely outcome is that the gap between actual electricity price and the delivery offer / award prices will inevitably have to close because the money to fill the gap will have to come from somewhere.
Yet another problem, in addition to the destruction of the pension system, we're leaving for our children and grandchildern to sort out. Another fine mess.....