In my humble opinion, the HoCL now comes under the aegis of the new definition of an 'extremist' organisation. Their stated purpose (and their moral, if not legal duty) is to provide elected MPs with impartial information in order for those MPs to fulfil their duties to their voters under the current putative system of a 'liberal democracy':
"The library has adopted the phrase "Contributing to a well-informed democracy" as a summary of its mission statement."
"Our job is to provide a range of research and information services for MPs and MPs’ staff. Our work helps MPs scrutinise legislation, prepare for debates, develop policies and support their constituents.
We are a team of researchers, statisticians, librarians, indexers, communications and customer service professionals, working together to provide an impartial and trusted service."
Really? Seriously? They now put 'diversity and inclusion' ahead of their commitment to impartial information:
In the House of Commons, we aspire to be:
Inclusive: We value everyone equally. We respect each other and all have a voice.
Courageous: We try new things. We own our actions and decisions and learn from our mistakes.
Trusted: We trust each other to do a good job. We are impartial and build confidence in Parliament through our integrity.
Collaborative: We share our knowledge and experience. We work towards a shared vision and know we work better in partnership.
The House of Commons Library is a research and information service based in the UK Parliament. Our impartial analysis, statistical research and resources help MPs and their staff scrutinise legislation, develop policy, and support constituents.
We are part of the wider Research and Information (R&I) team with the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST). Our team includes communications professionals, data and information managers, librarians, researchers, scientists, statisticians and more.
We recognise that we still have more to do to ensure that our workforce is diverse and reflects society. We also recognise the importance of creating and sustaining an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive, in line with our values.
We are doing this by embedding key areas of the House of Commons Inclusion and Diversity Strategy into our work and behaviours. Our goal is to:
decrease the ethnicity pay gap
improve accessibility
foster inclusive environments"
They are obviously obsessed by 'diversity and inclusion', almost certainly to the detriment of impartiality. And there's nothing quite so Woke as the 'just' clean, Green energy transition which addresses the fossil fuel based eco-crimes of our ancestors here in the UK. As such, given MPs' reliance upon their 'impartial' research to inform them in critical debates, they are a clear and present danger to our liberal parliamentary democracy:
"Extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology[footnote 3] based on violence, hatred or intolerance[footnote 4], that aims to:
negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms[footnote 5] of others; or
undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy[footnote 6] and democratic rights[footnote 7]; or
intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2)."
People on social media can be fooled. If you’re not careful you’ll fall for the fake threat (as even the Duran and the Grayzone seem to have on occasion) of ‘globalists’ /’One World Government’/’Davos aligned forces’ that was purposefully created by the anti-renewables anti-regulation powerful fossil fuel and animal ag/pharma industries owned by the 1%.
It’s not the House of Commons Library gaslighting MPs, it’s the entire establishment including almost all the MPS who are gaslighting us, the people, on the bidding of their globalist overlords. The really annoying thing is that their lies, deceptions and propaganda are so easily seen through, be it on climate change, Covid, wars on other countries and on children, families, motorists, farmers or whatever, as you have once again demonstrated in this admirable post.
I suspect they were advised by Lord Deben on who they should consult. Probably also told to steer clear of folk like Lord Monckton, Lord Lilley, Lord, Ridley, Graham Stringer MP, and a few others.
I no longer give Uniparty MPs the benefit of the doubt that they are just too thick to understand what is going on. I have been writing to Uniparty MPs for decades on how they are oppressing us across multiple fronts and I have never, ever had a straight answer from any of them. My litany of online posts is appended to this article: https://metatron.substack.com/p/my-heretical-epitaph.
This is what ‘health freedom’ wastes it time on. Insisting that the undoubted collusion and corruption between government and industry is worse for the cleaner renewables than for the decades old dirtier fossil fuels. It isn’t. Industry makes profits. Governments facilitate it.
The fact that the cheaper cost of producing cleaner energy is not always passed on to the consumer due to derivative bidding (though as the renewable market expands; prices will become cheaper and cheaper), the intransigence of incumbents to make it easier to balance the grid and the price of electricity being fixed to the price of gas (affected by war and sanctions as we have seen to our cost) - is not the fault of the technology.
Nor does it make stopping burning fossil fuels any less urgent nor cleaner renewable energy any less desirable.
When you consider our likely next incompetent Energy Minister will be that great bastion of socialism, Ed Milliband, things are likely to get a whole lot worse - he still quotes renewables are 9x cheaper than fossil fuels - what an utter spam mallet he will be
Until recently i saw that man as a menace to society but i believe Reeves will considerably restrict his freedom of movement as she knows full well that to get the growth this country needs requires competitively price energy and that wont come from his daft approach.
Net Zero is a giant fraud that can never happen, what will happen is the transfer of wealth from the bill payer to the criminals who profit from “green” energy.
It is frightening how such truth/reality-bending information, that degrades the standard of living for all, can persist for so many years. Maybe 90+% of Parliamentarians are energy-inept and have been gaslighted by relatively few people in the renewables industries and their NGO 'backers'.
Sadly, the poorest in society suffer the most from high energy bills and I wonder if those with the 'presentational' skills, who perpetrate this colossal and ultra-effective propaganda scandal have any pangs of conscience?
Dan McGrail at renewableUK, along with social media activists Michael Liebreich and Doug Parr of Greenpeace all spring to mind and all of whom will have directly inputted into political group-think.
Those on low incomes are in receipt of plenty of subsidy one that bill payers contribute to through Energy Company Obligation but thats just one of many schemes not forgetting winter fuel allowance. Necessary though these schemes are what they do is to suppress the true impact of high energy costs but the chickens are coming home to roost.
David, fairly new to your substack, and really appreciative of it. Your diligence, depth and detail 'through the cycle', are an eye opening tour de force. I invariably want to shout and scream reading them, for highlighting my, societies ' gullibility. I believe in and WANT renewable energy, and planned, it CAN deliver even when the wind doesn't blow. I don't want a legalised, govt sanctioned redistribution of wealth, from users to offshore tax abusers dressed up as the solution. Why can't we have honest provision with a honest profit? Why do we have this legalised money laundering and extortion?
Thank you. We will have to agree to disagree on whether renewables can ever be the solution, even if we do agree that the grift needs to be taken out of energy.
I think my best three explainers on why renewables are not the answer are the articles below:
Thanks David, I DO think they can be, and need to be the answer. And I've read your various subs on this, and can't help, as you do with your posts, education/information is really the answer. My starting point, is actually we all need to use less, as the base point, whereas the attitude seems to be from gov/society individuals, to not take personal responsibility and expect someone else to find a magic wand so I can be relentlessly selfishly wanton. The targets/education on transition are unrealistic/woeful respectively. Because the agenda/actions/subsidy is for the already enriched to be further enriched without actually providing a solution. A legalised con.
No we need to use more energy. A fact that most people just don't seem to get. To minimize our adverse effect on the environment requires more energy, not less.
Especially practical, zero emissions energy, which means nuclear. Not wind, not solar, not biomass.
To your first sentence, I would say: answer to what?
And why do we need to use less? There is no reason why energy shouldn’t be both cheap and abundant thus enabling us to use whatever we want to live our lives however we want. And, no small concern, to lift those in other parts of the world whose lives are far more impoverished than ours out of their poverty.
I for one reject the hair short approach that seems implicit in your view.
Hi Paul; secure wholesale energy provision. Because by using less, in the absence of the above, we free up capacity/provision. Not quite sure how your whatever/whenever use aids other parts of the world whose lives are far more impoverished - one's wanton use does not facilitate theirs; I for one reject the indifference implicit in your view.
As for ' hair short ', well I've never heard that expression, but I have long hair.
There is no reason for energy not to be both abundant and cheap - as it was until governments started interfering in pursuit of futile and nonsensical CO2 emission targets; energy capacity constraints are artificially created by government policy. There should be no need to “free up” capacity or provision. The developing world needs cheap, abundant fossil fuel energy to raise its living standards to what you & I take for granted. Constraining that supply condemns them to relative poverty for longer than would otherwise be the case.
Going through their report I have to say it is misleading, and relies on outdated information. From the top:
"Despite this, the price paid for wholesale electricity on the ‘spot market’, where, according to the Competition and Market’s Authority around two fifths of electricity is thought to be sold (PDF), is largely determined by the price of natural gas."
The report dates from 2016, when that might have been true, but it is no longer the case. Since then large tranches of interconnector capacity have opened which now play a key role in price setting, and the very volatile market during the energy crisis has had a huge impact on trading patterns, with long forward sales (especially at fixed prices) a rarity because of credit risk and performance risk (the costs if a counterparty fails on its side of the deal - a retailer going bust rather than paying a high price it agreed in the past, or a nuclear generator unable to generate because it is shut for safety for example). A few recent PPAs indicate that the credit market is normalising - but it is a credit market, not an electricity market, and helps to provide security for financing: the actual electricity pricing will almost certainly for renewables be based on day ahead markers, since market forecasts are for lower gas prices as more LNG comes on stream over the next few years.
It is a delusion to think that in the crisis prices were being set by gas: they were being set by the need to destroy demand to be within available supply. Gas prices simply rose in sympathy with that. In practice from April onwards prices were underpinned in the UK by the French need to import due to nuclear shortage: that was either direct to France, or additionally via the Netherlands and Belgium when their shortages were bigger.
In 2023 there were large swings in interconnector volumes as their prices determined which CCGT plants could be competitive, or even because we had a renewables surplus for export.
The idea that the GB system (NI is in a separate all-Ireland market) operates via marginal cost pricing is a travesty of the truth. Most power is sold ahead of gate closure, with only quite small volumes trading in the Balancing Mechanism (albeit sometimes at exorbitant prices). You can get a flavour of that from these (new) mouseover charts (unfortunately as yet with little back history) - bear in mind that settlement periods are half an hour, so average MW are twice the MWh.
Prices bid and offered in the Balancing Mechanism reflect a combination of economics and guessing what the market (NGESO) will pay. If you are a coal fired station warmed up as a last resort, you know that NGESO will more or less have to pay whatever you ask. If you are a wind farm you will refuse to curtail unless your consequent loss of subsidies is paid for. The result is a reverse merit order system, with the largest subsidies being most costly to recompense, so the costliest generation gets to carry on, while the cheapest gets curtailed. As has been found (see Intini and Waterson https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723000292?via%3Dihub ), they will likely overestimate the loss of production and egg the price at which they will curtail. As you have shown, with the exception of the brief period when CFDs were repaying all ROC generators and almost all CFDs in payment cost more than market price by virtue of the subsidies.
In the run up to gate closure the market adjusts as the wind forecast gets firmed up. Wind forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty much of the time. If they are looking optimistic, purchases from other generators or via interconnectors will help fill the gap. If they are pessimistic then perhaps it will be necessary for generators who have already sold output to agree to buy from wind farms at a price that generates a bigger profit (saving fuel and other operating cost) than generating would give. This is a negotiation, and prices will be lower the more wind farms are having to make last minute sales. Wind and solar farms are naturally wary of over or under selling volumes, because imbalance prices in the Balancing Mechanism are likely to prove much more ruinous than trying to match sales with likely output ahead of gate closure, unless they can count on being in line for curtailment payments.
Worth noting too that when we get a renewables surplus some generators get paid to provide ancillary services (inertia, short circuit strength, etc.) and keep generating, even though the value of their energy output on its own would not cover their costs. Just because wind farms are curtailed on the excuse of insufficient transmission capacity, the reality is that there would still be curtailment to create space for ancillary service providers. Of course, the idea that wind and solar get subsidised to export at negative prices with GB consumers picking up the bill is also forgotten.
I think the video is fine. However, there's an even more sinister element to smart meters. The recent Energy Act gave powers for central control over domestic appliances - heating, batteries, washing machines and fridges etc.
Your telescreen will switch on automatically for the two minute hate while you otherwise shiver in the dark in fear of the thought police hoping they haven't heard you picked up a windfall apple in the street to keep fed.
The “contracts for difference” (CfDs) that give guaranteed prices to new renewable energy schemes are currently costing the average household just 28p per year.
They will turn negative and start reducing consumer energy costs from October. The design of the contracts means projects pay money back to consumers when electricity prices are very high.
The current portfolio of roughly 18 gigawatts (GW) of CfD projects – mainly offshore wind – will be cutting average bills by around £11 per year under the October cap.
As wholesale gas prices are rising and the portfolio is expanding, this saving will increase to around £18 in January, according to Auxilione’s detailed forecasts shared with Carbon Brief.
£11 off £1,690 isn't going to help much and does it cover the times when wind and solar aren't contributing? Filling in the troughs of no solar low wind is what is driving up costs for consumers as we are basically running two generation systems and even with all the renewables too much of it is being constrained off at great cost all that goes on the bills. I believe renewables have a part to play but the chaotic way the system is being managed currently isn't benefiting consumers. No more wind should be allowed to be connected unless the transmission capacity is there for it for starters. Y
The overall cost of production is coming down and energy independence is increasing because of renewables (though the price to the consumer is fixed to the price of gas). This hasn't stopped the government continuing to spend a couple of billion a year supporting the fossil fuel industry.
Agreed the grid needs to be sorted out but that's not renewables fault, those presently making money by constantly inflating the price of fossil fuels for profit are to blame.
This is simply untrue. CfDs, FiTs and ROCs are index-linked, so the prices go up each year. ROCs are awarded in addition to market price, set by gas. But the other strike prices have nothing to do with the price of gas.
Declining UK production, because of underinvestment and over taxation certainly played a part. Our gas production in the summer of 2021 was the lowest it has been since the 1970s. The result is that we have had to import costly LNG from distant suppliers such as Peru to meet our own demand. Previously, our LNG imports were re-exported to the Continent (they had a lack of import capacity), so we were not exposed to the cost - they were.
Whatever the strike price i'm talking about how much it actually costs to produce energy.
Are you saying that the fossil fuel industry have tiny profit margins and don't make $billions in profits each year (all the while receiving massive tax payer subsidies and not paying for the environmental damage they cause leaving the tax payer around the globe to pick up their tab)?
The fossil fuel industry doesn't get subsidies in the UK. It pays lots of taxes. The only fossil fuel subsidies are paid to consumers, mostly in either in countries like Saudi Arabia, or in countries where some fuel is subsidised for the poor. As an industry it has been through both good and bad times in recent years - massive losses in 2020 as a result of the economic lockdowns globally, and compensating profits as the resulting lack of investment led to supply shortages by mid 2021 - long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since fossil fuels account for about 80% of global energy consumption, it is important that we keep the supply maintained.
'UK had pledged £4.8bn in financial support to fossil fuel firms since 2010 through UK Export Finance, the government agency that supports risky export deals to boost international trade by providing guarantees, insurance and reinsurance against loss.'
'Chancellor Philip Hammond recently announced new help for the North Sea oil and gas industry, also highlighting the “unprecedented support already provided to the oil and gas sector through £2.3bn packages in the last three years”.'
Nothing of course but that clearly isn't enough of an incentive for offshore wind which requires a subsidy in the form of ROC or more latterly CfD. Yes the price of those had dropped back but as we saw at AR5 no offshore wind developer was prepared to bid and to avoid government embarrassment next time the price for AR6 a whopping 66% and we are being warned that won't be enough either. This is a whopping subsidy in my book but will be interested to know how you see it.
Ignorant nonsense. The average value of CFDs currently is a little over £160/MWh, while the benchmark price is about £70/MWh. That means that CFDs are getting an average of £90/MWh in subsidy from consumer bills. CFD generation is a bit over 20 million MWh p.a., so the current subsidy cost is about £1.8bn p.a., or a bit over £60 per household - a very far cry from your figure. There is very little prospect that electricity prices will rise to levels necessary to see CFDs repaying consumers £11 per household come October. No new CFDs will commence by then, since existing projects at low strike prices have the option not to commence their CFDs. Futures prices for next winter are only a little over £90/MWh for peakload - a price that entails over £70/MWh of subsidy. Moreover, from April, CFD strike prices will be increased 4% by CPI inflation indexation.
Gas prices remain stable for now, and close to recent lows.
A UK government auction has secured a record 11 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity that will generate electricity nine times more cheaply than current gas prices.
The projects are all due to start operating within the next five years up to 2026/27 and have agreed to generate electricity for an average price of £48 per megawatt hour (MWh) in today’s money. This is nine times cheaper than the £446/MWh current cost of running gas-fired power stations.
Gas-fired electricity is currently costing ~£65/MWh. None of the renewables projects in the pipeline are nine times cheaper than that. Some of the AR4 projects have been cancelled e.g. Norfolk Boreas and others are rebidding parts of their projects under AR6. AR7 will offer extra bungs on top of the strike price.
At the time gas prices had risen considerably which meant it was £446. Wind being free doesn't have this geopolitical sensitivity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_BGHy4sfMs
Bungs.. like the $trillions given to fossil fuels in cost of production and cost to consumer?
Oil, gas, coal & uranium are also free. It just costs money to extract them & utilize them for practical applications, like electricity generation. So to compensate developers for their investment in mineral extraction, society has granted property rights or leases to companies who do that, thus not sold for free. No different for wind & solar. Difference is that oil, gas, coal & uranium are stored energy. Storage is critical. Wind & solar don't have that.
Oil , coal and gas have to be extracted at environmental and monetary cost, if they're in our 'own' country yes. But mostly we have to buy them from other countries and transport them. This is a significant component (along with finance) of the final cost of production that has varied considerably recently and can be affected by war and sanctions.
The cost of wind and solar as a fuel is zero. The electricity can be stored in hydro or batteries that arer getting cheaper and cheaper.
In reality, the UK’s rapid deployment of renewables has reduced our reliance on costly fossil fuels.
To put this argument in perspective, Carbon Brief calculated the cost of extra gas that the UK would have needed to buy, if it did not already get a third of its electricity from renewables.
The chart below shows this cost broken down by year, with renewables having helped the UK avoid the need to buy nearly £12.5bn of gas in 2022 to date, more than in any other year.
UK was actually 47% high carbon electricity in 2023, discounting the 9% biomass which is ACTUALLY the highest carbon emission source. vs France @ 6.3%. 7.5X the emissions with an electricity price of $0.44 vs $0.26 for France. With UK net imports (imports @ a high price, exports @ a low price) @ 8.6%. Some success that is. France being the largest net exporter of electricity on Earth.
If UK had skipped the Wind & Solar and just built high efficiency CCGT and nuclear, they would be much lower emissions, far lower imports and a much lower electricity cost. They could reduce gas emissions by 40% by just using CCGT without the Wind & Solar cycling impairing efficiency. Enough to displace 1/2 of their Wind. And the other half by replacing their dirty, eco-destructive biomass with ultra-supercritical coal, at the same emissions and 1/3rd the cost. The pittance of mostly useless solar (4.7%) could easily have been replaced by coal, gas or nuclear. Same emissions at much lower cost. No dependence on imports.
In reality, renewables have displaced cheap coal and nuclear. They have had very little effect on gas so far, because gas has to be used to cope with the intermittency of renewables output. They have proved very expensive replacements, not only because of the massive subsidies paid out, but also because of all the extra costs they cause, ranging from big extra investments in pylons and subsea interconnectors, transformers, statcoms, increased costs of backup generation, and much else besides.
Fossil generators across the UK and Europe pay carbon prices that are below the cost that CO2 imposes on society, known as the social cost of carbon. From this perspective, raising CO2 prices removes hidden subsidies to the fossil fuel sector.
EUA and UKA carbon prices have long been above the alleged social cost of carbon. Recently, they have fallen to what might be regarded as not too far from parity. The design of carbon taxation is not based on the social cost of carbon, but rather on what bureaucrats guess might be necessary to cause enough industry to shut down to ensure their current emissions target is met. The reason for the recent fall is simply that the high prices caused a lot of industry to shut down and move to China and India, with the Port Talbot blast furnaces being a recent example. Global emission will rise as a result, but the bureaucrats will have met their target.
Wind & Solar are a total waste of capital. Their only value is for small niche applications like off grid homes, on a diesel grid or a grid with lots of reservoir hydro. Adding fluctuating solar and wind to the electrical grid makes it much less efficient at producing electricity. The electrical grid runs at maximum efficiency when most generation is high efficiency, high capital cost baseload power Nuclear, Hydro, high cost CCGT not low cost OCGT, high cost supercritical coal not low cost conventional coal. Wind & solar favor low cost, fuel guzzling OCGT & diesel generation to mirror the wind & solar variation. That means high overall emissions.
In fact the Bentek study of the Texas & Colorado big Wind Power expansions showed they caused emissions to INCREASE rather then the theoretical decrease expected.
How Less Became More: Wind, Power and Unintended Consequences in the Colorado & Texas Energy Markets:
Other inefficiencies forced upon the grid by wind & solar include:
-- idling big coal & gas power plants when wind or solar is low (Germany disconnects the generators from the grid so it can falsely ignore those emissions)
-- running big thermal plants at less than full output which is inefficient
-- large line losses from the highly peaking supply on wind & solar long distance transmission lines
-- overbuild (excess generation when not needed) i.e. wind & solar both peak in spring when hydro also peaks and electricity demand is minimum
-- curtailment of operating low emissions nuclear/hydro plants
-- rooftop solar in sub-optimal locations (i.e. poor alignment, shade from trees & buildings)
-- cycling inefficiencies
-- high energy cost from needing a duplicate power grid
-- low EROI (energy return on invested) for wind & solar. In fact so low that they are physically impossible replacements for fossil
-- high material inputs of wind & solar ~20X conventional fossil, nuclear hydro per unit energy produced
-- vast areas of productive land made useless by wind or solar installations. There is a high opportunity cost to that. ~300X the land area of fossil/nuclear. That is more inefficiency.
-- EV charging in the most inefficient method = fast charging stations in the daytime when grid is already at max output rather than at home charging at a slow rate overnight when there is surplus low cost baseload generation supply. Using nighttime baseload electricity for EV charging increases the efficiency of the grid. Using daytime solar or random wind peaks reduces grid efficiency for EV charging.
-- Energy storage losses. Battery storage from 10-30% round trip efficiency losses. H2 storage as much as 70% efficiency losses. And high additional energy & material inputs energy losses. An EROI too low to be physically capable of replacing fossil
-- negative pricing when there is surplus wind or solar causing electricity dumping.
These massive inefficiencies of wind & solar are confirmed by a survey of 68 nations over the past 52 years done by Environmental Progress and duplicated by the New York Times, which shows conventional hydro was quite successful at decarbonization, nuclear energy was also very successful and both wind and solar show no correlation between grid penetration and decarbonization. An expensive total waste of capital and material resources:
Solar Panels Are Three Times More Carbon-Intensive Than IPCC Claims, Shellenberger, Environmental Progress, Enrico Mariutti analysis, 170-250 gms/kwh not IPCC's 48:
In my humble opinion, the HoCL now comes under the aegis of the new definition of an 'extremist' organisation. Their stated purpose (and their moral, if not legal duty) is to provide elected MPs with impartial information in order for those MPs to fulfil their duties to their voters under the current putative system of a 'liberal democracy':
"The library has adopted the phrase "Contributing to a well-informed democracy" as a summary of its mission statement."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Commons_Library
"Our job is to provide a range of research and information services for MPs and MPs’ staff. Our work helps MPs scrutinise legislation, prepare for debates, develop policies and support their constituents.
We are a team of researchers, statisticians, librarians, indexers, communications and customer service professionals, working together to provide an impartial and trusted service."
Really? Seriously? They now put 'diversity and inclusion' ahead of their commitment to impartial information:
In the House of Commons, we aspire to be:
Inclusive: We value everyone equally. We respect each other and all have a voice.
Courageous: We try new things. We own our actions and decisions and learn from our mistakes.
Trusted: We trust each other to do a good job. We are impartial and build confidence in Parliament through our integrity.
Collaborative: We share our knowledge and experience. We work towards a shared vision and know we work better in partnership.
The House of Commons Library is a research and information service based in the UK Parliament. Our impartial analysis, statistical research and resources help MPs and their staff scrutinise legislation, develop policy, and support constituents.
We are part of the wider Research and Information (R&I) team with the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST). Our team includes communications professionals, data and information managers, librarians, researchers, scientists, statisticians and more.
We recognise that we still have more to do to ensure that our workforce is diverse and reflects society. We also recognise the importance of creating and sustaining an inclusive culture where everyone can thrive, in line with our values.
We are doing this by embedding key areas of the House of Commons Inclusion and Diversity Strategy into our work and behaviours. Our goal is to:
decrease the ethnicity pay gap
improve accessibility
foster inclusive environments"
They are obviously obsessed by 'diversity and inclusion', almost certainly to the detriment of impartiality. And there's nothing quite so Woke as the 'just' clean, Green energy transition which addresses the fossil fuel based eco-crimes of our ancestors here in the UK. As such, given MPs' reliance upon their 'impartial' research to inform them in critical debates, they are a clear and present danger to our liberal parliamentary democracy:
"Extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology[footnote 3] based on violence, hatred or intolerance[footnote 4], that aims to:
negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms[footnote 5] of others; or
undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy[footnote 6] and democratic rights[footnote 7]; or
intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2)."
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-definition-of-extremism-2024/new-definition-of-extremism-2024
It's not even funny anymore. We are not amused.
People on social media can be fooled. If you’re not careful you’ll fall for the fake threat (as even the Duran and the Grayzone seem to have on occasion) of ‘globalists’ /’One World Government’/’Davos aligned forces’ that was purposefully created by the anti-renewables anti-regulation powerful fossil fuel and animal ag/pharma industries owned by the 1%.
https://jowaller.substack.com/p/thank-you-toby-rogers-you-have-beautifully
🐒
It’s not the House of Commons Library gaslighting MPs, it’s the entire establishment including almost all the MPS who are gaslighting us, the people, on the bidding of their globalist overlords. The really annoying thing is that their lies, deceptions and propaganda are so easily seen through, be it on climate change, Covid, wars on other countries and on children, families, motorists, farmers or whatever, as you have once again demonstrated in this admirable post.
I suspect they were advised by Lord Deben on who they should consult. Probably also told to steer clear of folk like Lord Monckton, Lord Lilley, Lord, Ridley, Graham Stringer MP, and a few others.
Don't underestimate how many thick MPs there are who don't take any trouble to understand the background to any issue and sense check its accuracy.
I no longer give Uniparty MPs the benefit of the doubt that they are just too thick to understand what is going on. I have been writing to Uniparty MPs for decades on how they are oppressing us across multiple fronts and I have never, ever had a straight answer from any of them. My litany of online posts is appended to this article: https://metatron.substack.com/p/my-heretical-epitaph.
This is what ‘health freedom’ wastes it time on. Insisting that the undoubted collusion and corruption between government and industry is worse for the cleaner renewables than for the decades old dirtier fossil fuels. It isn’t. Industry makes profits. Governments facilitate it.
The fact that the cheaper cost of producing cleaner energy is not always passed on to the consumer due to derivative bidding (though as the renewable market expands; prices will become cheaper and cheaper), the intransigence of incumbents to make it easier to balance the grid and the price of electricity being fixed to the price of gas (affected by war and sanctions as we have seen to our cost) - is not the fault of the technology.
Nor does it make stopping burning fossil fuels any less urgent nor cleaner renewable energy any less desirable.
Well done David, another superb analysis
When you consider our likely next incompetent Energy Minister will be that great bastion of socialism, Ed Milliband, things are likely to get a whole lot worse - he still quotes renewables are 9x cheaper than fossil fuels - what an utter spam mallet he will be
Until recently i saw that man as a menace to society but i believe Reeves will considerably restrict his freedom of movement as she knows full well that to get the growth this country needs requires competitively price energy and that wont come from his daft approach.
They've drafted in Mark Carney to bring ib private capital through their version of a Sovereign Wealth Fund. More subsidies for cronies.
Net Zero is a giant fraud that can never happen, what will happen is the transfer of wealth from the bill payer to the criminals who profit from “green” energy.
Yes, many of them offshore as I covered here:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/offshore-wind-follow-the-money
It is frightening how such truth/reality-bending information, that degrades the standard of living for all, can persist for so many years. Maybe 90+% of Parliamentarians are energy-inept and have been gaslighted by relatively few people in the renewables industries and their NGO 'backers'.
Sadly, the poorest in society suffer the most from high energy bills and I wonder if those with the 'presentational' skills, who perpetrate this colossal and ultra-effective propaganda scandal have any pangs of conscience?
Dan McGrail at renewableUK, along with social media activists Michael Liebreich and Doug Parr of Greenpeace all spring to mind and all of whom will have directly inputted into political group-think.
Those on low incomes are in receipt of plenty of subsidy one that bill payers contribute to through Energy Company Obligation but thats just one of many schemes not forgetting winter fuel allowance. Necessary though these schemes are what they do is to suppress the true impact of high energy costs but the chickens are coming home to roost.
You seem to be implying there are not many,many thousand in the heat or eat 'category'???
David, fairly new to your substack, and really appreciative of it. Your diligence, depth and detail 'through the cycle', are an eye opening tour de force. I invariably want to shout and scream reading them, for highlighting my, societies ' gullibility. I believe in and WANT renewable energy, and planned, it CAN deliver even when the wind doesn't blow. I don't want a legalised, govt sanctioned redistribution of wealth, from users to offshore tax abusers dressed up as the solution. Why can't we have honest provision with a honest profit? Why do we have this legalised money laundering and extortion?
Thanks again for your contribution.
Thank you. We will have to agree to disagree on whether renewables can ever be the solution, even if we do agree that the grift needs to be taken out of energy.
I think my best three explainers on why renewables are not the answer are the articles below:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/why-eroei-matters
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/wind-solar-renewables-not-sustainable-not-green
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-everywhere-all-at-once
Thanks David, I DO think they can be, and need to be the answer. And I've read your various subs on this, and can't help, as you do with your posts, education/information is really the answer. My starting point, is actually we all need to use less, as the base point, whereas the attitude seems to be from gov/society individuals, to not take personal responsibility and expect someone else to find a magic wand so I can be relentlessly selfishly wanton. The targets/education on transition are unrealistic/woeful respectively. Because the agenda/actions/subsidy is for the already enriched to be further enriched without actually providing a solution. A legalised con.
No we need to use more energy. A fact that most people just don't seem to get. To minimize our adverse effect on the environment requires more energy, not less.
Especially practical, zero emissions energy, which means nuclear. Not wind, not solar, not biomass.
To your first sentence, I would say: answer to what?
And why do we need to use less? There is no reason why energy shouldn’t be both cheap and abundant thus enabling us to use whatever we want to live our lives however we want. And, no small concern, to lift those in other parts of the world whose lives are far more impoverished than ours out of their poverty.
I for one reject the hair short approach that seems implicit in your view.
Hi Paul; secure wholesale energy provision. Because by using less, in the absence of the above, we free up capacity/provision. Not quite sure how your whatever/whenever use aids other parts of the world whose lives are far more impoverished - one's wanton use does not facilitate theirs; I for one reject the indifference implicit in your view.
As for ' hair short ', well I've never heard that expression, but I have long hair.
There is no reason for energy not to be both abundant and cheap - as it was until governments started interfering in pursuit of futile and nonsensical CO2 emission targets; energy capacity constraints are artificially created by government policy. There should be no need to “free up” capacity or provision. The developing world needs cheap, abundant fossil fuel energy to raise its living standards to what you & I take for granted. Constraining that supply condemns them to relative poverty for longer than would otherwise be the case.
Gas lighting might have been more illuminating.
Going through their report I have to say it is misleading, and relies on outdated information. From the top:
"Despite this, the price paid for wholesale electricity on the ‘spot market’, where, according to the Competition and Market’s Authority around two fifths of electricity is thought to be sold (PDF), is largely determined by the price of natural gas."
The report dates from 2016, when that might have been true, but it is no longer the case. Since then large tranches of interconnector capacity have opened which now play a key role in price setting, and the very volatile market during the energy crisis has had a huge impact on trading patterns, with long forward sales (especially at fixed prices) a rarity because of credit risk and performance risk (the costs if a counterparty fails on its side of the deal - a retailer going bust rather than paying a high price it agreed in the past, or a nuclear generator unable to generate because it is shut for safety for example). A few recent PPAs indicate that the credit market is normalising - but it is a credit market, not an electricity market, and helps to provide security for financing: the actual electricity pricing will almost certainly for renewables be based on day ahead markers, since market forecasts are for lower gas prices as more LNG comes on stream over the next few years.
It is a delusion to think that in the crisis prices were being set by gas: they were being set by the need to destroy demand to be within available supply. Gas prices simply rose in sympathy with that. In practice from April onwards prices were underpinned in the UK by the French need to import due to nuclear shortage: that was either direct to France, or additionally via the Netherlands and Belgium when their shortages were bigger.
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GB-Gen-Price-HQ-1676233783.8236.png
In 2023 there were large swings in interconnector volumes as their prices determined which CCGT plants could be competitive, or even because we had a renewables surplus for export.
The idea that the GB system (NI is in a separate all-Ireland market) operates via marginal cost pricing is a travesty of the truth. Most power is sold ahead of gate closure, with only quite small volumes trading in the Balancing Mechanism (albeit sometimes at exorbitant prices). You can get a flavour of that from these (new) mouseover charts (unfortunately as yet with little back history) - bear in mind that settlement periods are half an hour, so average MW are twice the MWh.
https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/system-prices
Prices bid and offered in the Balancing Mechanism reflect a combination of economics and guessing what the market (NGESO) will pay. If you are a coal fired station warmed up as a last resort, you know that NGESO will more or less have to pay whatever you ask. If you are a wind farm you will refuse to curtail unless your consequent loss of subsidies is paid for. The result is a reverse merit order system, with the largest subsidies being most costly to recompense, so the costliest generation gets to carry on, while the cheapest gets curtailed. As has been found (see Intini and Waterson https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723000292?via%3Dihub ), they will likely overestimate the loss of production and egg the price at which they will curtail. As you have shown, with the exception of the brief period when CFDs were repaying all ROC generators and almost all CFDs in payment cost more than market price by virtue of the subsidies.
In the run up to gate closure the market adjusts as the wind forecast gets firmed up. Wind forecasts are subject to significant uncertainty much of the time. If they are looking optimistic, purchases from other generators or via interconnectors will help fill the gap. If they are pessimistic then perhaps it will be necessary for generators who have already sold output to agree to buy from wind farms at a price that generates a bigger profit (saving fuel and other operating cost) than generating would give. This is a negotiation, and prices will be lower the more wind farms are having to make last minute sales. Wind and solar farms are naturally wary of over or under selling volumes, because imbalance prices in the Balancing Mechanism are likely to prove much more ruinous than trying to match sales with likely output ahead of gate closure, unless they can count on being in line for curtailment payments.
Worth noting too that when we get a renewables surplus some generators get paid to provide ancillary services (inertia, short circuit strength, etc.) and keep generating, even though the value of their energy output on its own would not cover their costs. Just because wind farms are curtailed on the excuse of insufficient transmission capacity, the reality is that there would still be curtailment to create space for ancillary service providers. Of course, the idea that wind and solar get subsidised to export at negative prices with GB consumers picking up the bill is also forgotten.
Great article. Very much into your thinking process
although your analytics are way better than mine.
Would you take the time to critique my video n Demand side response.
by HoC Library gives away real reason for Smartmeter promotion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjUcY92-EgY
I think the video is fine. However, there's an even more sinister element to smart meters. The recent Energy Act gave powers for central control over domestic appliances - heating, batteries, washing machines and fridges etc.
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/criminalising-net-zero-disobedience#:~:text=Centralised%20Control%20of%20%E2%80%9CSmart%E2%80%9D%20Appliances
Your telescreen will switch on automatically for the two minute hate while you otherwise shiver in the dark in fear of the thought police hoping they haven't heard you picked up a windfall apple in the street to keep fed.
Thank you for the feedback. Yes utter bonkers upside down clown world. There will be massive push ack if they interfere with selling a house.
The “contracts for difference” (CfDs) that give guaranteed prices to new renewable energy schemes are currently costing the average household just 28p per year.
They will turn negative and start reducing consumer energy costs from October. The design of the contracts means projects pay money back to consumers when electricity prices are very high.
The current portfolio of roughly 18 gigawatts (GW) of CfD projects – mainly offshore wind – will be cutting average bills by around £11 per year under the October cap.
As wholesale gas prices are rising and the portfolio is expanding, this saving will increase to around £18 in January, according to Auxilione’s detailed forecasts shared with Carbon Brief.
I see that rather than have an open debate, you have blocked me on the app.
How mature.
£11 off £1,690 isn't going to help much and does it cover the times when wind and solar aren't contributing? Filling in the troughs of no solar low wind is what is driving up costs for consumers as we are basically running two generation systems and even with all the renewables too much of it is being constrained off at great cost all that goes on the bills. I believe renewables have a part to play but the chaotic way the system is being managed currently isn't benefiting consumers. No more wind should be allowed to be connected unless the transmission capacity is there for it for starters. Y
The overall cost of production is coming down and energy independence is increasing because of renewables (though the price to the consumer is fixed to the price of gas). This hasn't stopped the government continuing to spend a couple of billion a year supporting the fossil fuel industry.
Agreed the grid needs to be sorted out but that's not renewables fault, those presently making money by constantly inflating the price of fossil fuels for profit are to blame.
This is simply untrue. CfDs, FiTs and ROCs are index-linked, so the prices go up each year. ROCs are awarded in addition to market price, set by gas. But the other strike prices have nothing to do with the price of gas.
What made the price of gas go up so drastically after Russia's SMO when the UK imports so little from Russia?
Declining UK production, because of underinvestment and over taxation certainly played a part. Our gas production in the summer of 2021 was the lowest it has been since the 1970s. The result is that we have had to import costly LNG from distant suppliers such as Peru to meet our own demand. Previously, our LNG imports were re-exported to the Continent (they had a lack of import capacity), so we were not exposed to the cost - they were.
Whatever the strike price i'm talking about how much it actually costs to produce energy.
Are you saying that the fossil fuel industry have tiny profit margins and don't make $billions in profits each year (all the while receiving massive tax payer subsidies and not paying for the environmental damage they cause leaving the tax payer around the globe to pick up their tab)?
The fossil fuel industry doesn't get subsidies in the UK. It pays lots of taxes. The only fossil fuel subsidies are paid to consumers, mostly in either in countries like Saudi Arabia, or in countries where some fuel is subsidised for the poor. As an industry it has been through both good and bad times in recent years - massive losses in 2020 as a result of the economic lockdowns globally, and compensating profits as the resulting lack of investment led to supply shortages by mid 2021 - long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since fossil fuels account for about 80% of global energy consumption, it is important that we keep the supply maintained.
WTF? The government is investing in new gas and oil extraction and production as we speak.
'UK had pledged £4.8bn in financial support to fossil fuel firms since 2010 through UK Export Finance, the government agency that supports risky export deals to boost international trade by providing guarantees, insurance and reinsurance against loss.'
'Chancellor Philip Hammond recently announced new help for the North Sea oil and gas industry, also highlighting the “unprecedented support already provided to the oil and gas sector through £2.3bn packages in the last three years”.'
Though indeed they do claim to give no subsidies.
You haven't got back to me about how much it costs me to feel the sun on my face and the wind in my hair.
Nothing of course but that clearly isn't enough of an incentive for offshore wind which requires a subsidy in the form of ROC or more latterly CfD. Yes the price of those had dropped back but as we saw at AR5 no offshore wind developer was prepared to bid and to avoid government embarrassment next time the price for AR6 a whopping 66% and we are being warned that won't be enough either. This is a whopping subsidy in my book but will be interested to know how you see it.
I'd bet on at least an airfare to Majorca...
A look at way offshore wind got so expensive in 2023 if you really are interested in the answer to the question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuwNBtKpjhQ
Ignorant nonsense. The average value of CFDs currently is a little over £160/MWh, while the benchmark price is about £70/MWh. That means that CFDs are getting an average of £90/MWh in subsidy from consumer bills. CFD generation is a bit over 20 million MWh p.a., so the current subsidy cost is about £1.8bn p.a., or a bit over £60 per household - a very far cry from your figure. There is very little prospect that electricity prices will rise to levels necessary to see CFDs repaying consumers £11 per household come October. No new CFDs will commence by then, since existing projects at low strike prices have the option not to commence their CFDs. Futures prices for next winter are only a little over £90/MWh for peakload - a price that entails over £70/MWh of subsidy. Moreover, from April, CFD strike prices will be increased 4% by CPI inflation indexation.
Gas prices remain stable for now, and close to recent lows.
A UK government auction has secured a record 11 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy capacity that will generate electricity nine times more cheaply than current gas prices.
The projects are all due to start operating within the next five years up to 2026/27 and have agreed to generate electricity for an average price of £48 per megawatt hour (MWh) in today’s money. This is nine times cheaper than the £446/MWh current cost of running gas-fired power stations.
Gas-fired electricity is currently costing ~£65/MWh. None of the renewables projects in the pipeline are nine times cheaper than that. Some of the AR4 projects have been cancelled e.g. Norfolk Boreas and others are rebidding parts of their projects under AR6. AR7 will offer extra bungs on top of the strike price.
At the time gas prices had risen considerably which meant it was £446. Wind being free doesn't have this geopolitical sensitivity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_BGHy4sfMs
Bungs.. like the $trillions given to fossil fuels in cost of production and cost to consumer?
I am talking about now, and in fact all the time since 2010, except for a short period in 2021 & 2022. Wind is not free.
Producing wind power is obviously not free.
Do I have to pay for the wind in my hair?
Do i have to pay for gas to be extracted from under the sea?
Oil, gas, coal & uranium are also free. It just costs money to extract them & utilize them for practical applications, like electricity generation. So to compensate developers for their investment in mineral extraction, society has granted property rights or leases to companies who do that, thus not sold for free. No different for wind & solar. Difference is that oil, gas, coal & uranium are stored energy. Storage is critical. Wind & solar don't have that.
Oil , coal and gas have to be extracted at environmental and monetary cost, if they're in our 'own' country yes. But mostly we have to buy them from other countries and transport them. This is a significant component (along with finance) of the final cost of production that has varied considerably recently and can be affected by war and sanctions.
The cost of wind and solar as a fuel is zero. The electricity can be stored in hydro or batteries that arer getting cheaper and cheaper.
Are you going to tell me the fuel for solar panels is not free?
The fuel for washing solar panels is not free.
In reality, the UK’s rapid deployment of renewables has reduced our reliance on costly fossil fuels.
To put this argument in perspective, Carbon Brief calculated the cost of extra gas that the UK would have needed to buy, if it did not already get a third of its electricity from renewables.
The chart below shows this cost broken down by year, with renewables having helped the UK avoid the need to buy nearly £12.5bn of gas in 2022 to date, more than in any other year.
UK was actually 47% high carbon electricity in 2023, discounting the 9% biomass which is ACTUALLY the highest carbon emission source. vs France @ 6.3%. 7.5X the emissions with an electricity price of $0.44 vs $0.26 for France. With UK net imports (imports @ a high price, exports @ a low price) @ 8.6%. Some success that is. France being the largest net exporter of electricity on Earth.
If UK had skipped the Wind & Solar and just built high efficiency CCGT and nuclear, they would be much lower emissions, far lower imports and a much lower electricity cost. They could reduce gas emissions by 40% by just using CCGT without the Wind & Solar cycling impairing efficiency. Enough to displace 1/2 of their Wind. And the other half by replacing their dirty, eco-destructive biomass with ultra-supercritical coal, at the same emissions and 1/3rd the cost. The pittance of mostly useless solar (4.7%) could easily have been replaced by coal, gas or nuclear. Same emissions at much lower cost. No dependence on imports.
In reality, renewables have displaced cheap coal and nuclear. They have had very little effect on gas so far, because gas has to be used to cope with the intermittency of renewables output. They have proved very expensive replacements, not only because of the massive subsidies paid out, but also because of all the extra costs they cause, ranging from big extra investments in pylons and subsea interconnectors, transformers, statcoms, increased costs of backup generation, and much else besides.
Fossil generators across the UK and Europe pay carbon prices that are below the cost that CO2 imposes on society, known as the social cost of carbon. From this perspective, raising CO2 prices removes hidden subsidies to the fossil fuel sector.
EUA and UKA carbon prices have long been above the alleged social cost of carbon. Recently, they have fallen to what might be regarded as not too far from parity. The design of carbon taxation is not based on the social cost of carbon, but rather on what bureaucrats guess might be necessary to cause enough industry to shut down to ensure their current emissions target is met. The reason for the recent fall is simply that the high prices caused a lot of industry to shut down and move to China and India, with the Port Talbot blast furnaces being a recent example. Global emission will rise as a result, but the bureaucrats will have met their target.
Wind & Solar are a total waste of capital. Their only value is for small niche applications like off grid homes, on a diesel grid or a grid with lots of reservoir hydro. Adding fluctuating solar and wind to the electrical grid makes it much less efficient at producing electricity. The electrical grid runs at maximum efficiency when most generation is high efficiency, high capital cost baseload power Nuclear, Hydro, high cost CCGT not low cost OCGT, high cost supercritical coal not low cost conventional coal. Wind & solar favor low cost, fuel guzzling OCGT & diesel generation to mirror the wind & solar variation. That means high overall emissions.
In fact the Bentek study of the Texas & Colorado big Wind Power expansions showed they caused emissions to INCREASE rather then the theoretical decrease expected.
How Less Became More: Wind, Power and Unintended Consequences in the Colorado & Texas Energy Markets:
https://docs.wind-watch.org/BENTEK-How-Less-Became-More.pdf
Other inefficiencies forced upon the grid by wind & solar include:
-- idling big coal & gas power plants when wind or solar is low (Germany disconnects the generators from the grid so it can falsely ignore those emissions)
-- running big thermal plants at less than full output which is inefficient
-- large line losses from the highly peaking supply on wind & solar long distance transmission lines
-- overbuild (excess generation when not needed) i.e. wind & solar both peak in spring when hydro also peaks and electricity demand is minimum
-- curtailment of operating low emissions nuclear/hydro plants
-- rooftop solar in sub-optimal locations (i.e. poor alignment, shade from trees & buildings)
-- cycling inefficiencies
-- high energy cost from needing a duplicate power grid
-- low EROI (energy return on invested) for wind & solar. In fact so low that they are physically impossible replacements for fossil
-- high material inputs of wind & solar ~20X conventional fossil, nuclear hydro per unit energy produced
-- vast areas of productive land made useless by wind or solar installations. There is a high opportunity cost to that. ~300X the land area of fossil/nuclear. That is more inefficiency.
-- EV charging in the most inefficient method = fast charging stations in the daytime when grid is already at max output rather than at home charging at a slow rate overnight when there is surplus low cost baseload generation supply. Using nighttime baseload electricity for EV charging increases the efficiency of the grid. Using daytime solar or random wind peaks reduces grid efficiency for EV charging.
-- Energy storage losses. Battery storage from 10-30% round trip efficiency losses. H2 storage as much as 70% efficiency losses. And high additional energy & material inputs energy losses. An EROI too low to be physically capable of replacing fossil
-- negative pricing when there is surplus wind or solar causing electricity dumping.
These massive inefficiencies of wind & solar are confirmed by a survey of 68 nations over the past 52 years done by Environmental Progress and duplicated by the New York Times, which shows conventional hydro was quite successful at decarbonization, nuclear energy was also very successful and both wind and solar show no correlation between grid penetration and decarbonization. An expensive total waste of capital and material resources:
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/11/7/the-power-to-decarbonize
Solar Panels Are Three Times More Carbon-Intensive Than IPCC Claims, Shellenberger, Environmental Progress, Enrico Mariutti analysis, 170-250 gms/kwh not IPCC's 48:
https://public.substack.com/p/solar-panels-more-carbon-intensive