All this begs into question why is the NESO/ the Government not pressing the pause button on the Norwich to Tilbury grid expansion until it is clear it is really needed?
I think there will be a lot of pressure towards slowing down the NESO More Grid programme around the country generally, especially with limited capacity added via AR7. It's adding significant cost to our bills, as well as blighting areas it passes through. It was a prominent topic raised by the Big 6 representatives at the ESNZ Select Committee session
You mention the impact of additional renewables lowering prices. Presumably this means a saving to consumers, though I expect it’s less than the subsidy. This is the first attempt I’ve seen to quantify the impact which suggests it’s significant so wondered what you make of it?
If the strike price is say £110/MWh and the reference price is £60/MWh, then the subsidy is £50/MWh. If the reference price falls to £40/MWh, the subsidy rises to £70/MWh. The cost to the consumer is £110/MWh in both cases. It's just the mix of how that is made up that changes.
The counterfactual I would like to see is the price of electricity per MW had we committed to open cycle gas plants for the vast majority of our needs, bought the kit before turbine prices shot up, and compare this to current and projected prices to consumers and businesses under Miliband's plans.
My rough guess is that prices would be less than half what they are now, probably much less if our counter factual included a scenario whereby we had encouraged domestic gas production, rather than eviscerated the industry, and carbon taxes were removed.
OCGT is low efficiency compared with CCGT, which is why it only runs to handle demand peaks. It is also lower in capital cost per MW, making it cheaper to keep on standby for peak demand.
The ECIU analysis is complete nonsense. The average CFD currently pays around 150/MWh, and ROCs add £100/MWh on average to the cost of generation from generators on those subsidies, compared with CCGT generation costing £75/MWh. Even before we add in the extra costs for grid balancing and transmission associated with renewables, it is clear that they add to cost for every extra MWh they produce. They ignore all the extra costs and subsidies.
The analysis isn’t really focussed on the subsidies, but the impact of wholesale prices. Do you disagree with the central claim that, “the day-ahead wholesale price in 2024 could have been up to 33% higher if there had been no large-scale wind capacity and gas made up most of the difference.” My question is whether these saving should be included when working out the total cost of renewables. Not disputing that renewables are more expensive, just trying to get to an accurate view of how much more expensive.
Its fair to say that the wholesale price has been suppressed downwards by all the renewables bidding in at low cost. However, the wholesale cost is now a long way from what the true cost of renewable power actually is. Renewable generators also have the benefit of additional income stream be it a ROC or CfD payment so they can afford to bid in low into the wholesale mkt especially when its sunny and windy to make sure they get selected. Add back in those additional costs and you get the true cost at the generator export meters. Gas of course is bidding its true cost including the carbon tax.
The day ahead wholesale prices are a very misleading guide to the cost of energy procured. Most of the trade that takes place at this stage in the market consists of swaps, trading supply in a low demand timeframe (e.g. overnight) for supply during peak demand, or swapping hedged supply purchases and sales with renewables supply. From the point of view of a retailer undertaking such swap trades what matters is the difference in price between the low demand period and the peak demand period, not the absolute level. Such differences tend to be much greater on days with high renewables supply.
Swaps for renewables are often conducted by hedge sellers: they buy in renewable supply to fulfill the hedge sales from their own generation they made earlier, and resell the gas (or hold the biomass in stock for another day) where it is more profitable to do so. That has no effect whatever on the direct cost paid by the hedged retailer, who bought the hedge maybe months previously. However, retailers have to pay out the subsidies associated with the extra renewables generation through the Renewables Obligation, and the CFD and FiT levelisation arrangements. As I explained, these amount to a substantial premium to notional wholesale prices.
Most of the cost of supply excluding subsidy costs is determined by the cost of hedge purchases made in advance: these costs are added to by the costs of shaping to the actual demand profile and buying or selling any overall differences between hedged volumes and actual demand. Renewables subsidies are inescapable, and although they are levied in complicated ways, the accounting ensures that every renewables MWh gets its subsidy payout. You really can't just ignore the subsidies. Nor can you ignore the extra balancing costs that are associated with higher volumes of renewables output, or the extra grid costs of connecting up and stabilising renewables supply.
Apologies, I know you're right, I appreciate the level of information and detail but how on earth is a normal person supposed to understand this?
It seems, just as with everything else the state gets involved with it makes it so byzantine, so completely convoluted - all to disguise the immense pointlessness of it's meddling - that they argue black is white and up is down because, in their demented Escher painting of the market they have broken, it is.
Why do producers not simply sell what they have at the cost of production? Oh, because unreliables *can't*. Why? Because they are, well, unreliable. So the state has to protect this stupid ideology from the market through a demented Gordian knot and bonkers arrangements that allow it to proclaim grass is orange, or something equally absurd; and then have the gall to say 'see, orange paint is why your bill is so high. Nothing to do with us, guv.'
A normal person is not meant to understand this. Nor are politicians, and almost none of them do. I think Claire Coutinho with her Maths/Philosophy degree and background in structured finance/risk management in banking does broadly grasp it. It is also the case that most academics who profess to do studies on energy markets, advising government or producing papers for green think tanks have a limited, Nelsonian eye patch view at best. There are only a few consultancies I would really trust, and their clients are people in the industry who need to get it right as best they can.
Real understanding is limited in many of the important players. Almost no-one in OFGEM really has a proper overview. Within NESO knowledge appears to be somewhat siloed: specialists can be very good in their narrow areas. In DESNZ and the CCC it is almost non-existent.
The need for highly competent energy traders was perhaps brought home within the industry at the time of Enron, who ran circles round the rules that cost some in the industry hundreds of millions. However, understanding in the trading room doesn't necessarily extend to the CEOs, and may not include some wider aspects anyway. It was notable that Simone Rossi of EdF was the only one to openly disagree with the claim that marginal gas sets costs that so many endorsed on the back of the same flawed academic paper that assumes we still run the pool system abandoned in 2001, much cited in written evidence to the ESNZ Select Committee.
Thanks for the explanation about wholesale energy prices which I agree is misunderstood and misused in debates on energy costs.
The authors do understand this with this paragraph.
“Finally, the day-ahead price is a useful indicator of prices of power that has been
traded earlier, and hence of overall prices. Most longer-term contracts are indexed
such that the provider can receive a price that more closely reflects the situation at
delivery. Also, data from Ofgem shows that each unit of power is on average
traded multiple times before delivery (the ‘churn rate’) e.g. 2.6 times in 2024,
7 and
trading nearer to delivery will see the price tend towards the day-ahead price.”
They don’t put a number on it and I expect it’s very hard to do. It seems very unlikely to be nothing and won’t be the full amount either. So an area of further work to quantify.
I completely agree you can’t ignore subsidies, I’m just saying that if having a debate about costs it should be the net costs if there are wholesale benefits.
David, meticulous as always. The Govt Load Factor of almost 44% looks optimistic. From my limited reading, about 33% would be more realistic as a load factor for offshore wind. How much impact does the load factor have on the model? RLW
Like everything renewable we always knew it would be something that yet again increased energy prices at the expense of the consumer with further destruction of what little remains of our industrial base in order to save the planet from its imminent meltdown.
Now lookk here! If you're going to be so relentlessly practical and sensible aboout the waste of public money on the altar of grand projects that don't work you're going to be sent to re-education where you will learn that socialism is the only goal that matters and driving the country and economy off a cliff is paramount in that plan.
You WILL accept the lies. You will conform and you WILL NOT question the masters. Truth, common sense, rational thinnking will be expunged!
It’s not just AR7 that needs to be stopped, it’s Net Zero in its entirety. Our simple-minded/traitorous [delete according to choice] Uniparty politicians embarked on a “climate change” fantasy endeavour in 2008 which was always bound to end in disaster. They can’t say they weren’t warned.
As their self-imposed 2030 milestone approaches, it is obvious that their targets will not be met. Miliband was never going to get anywhere near 95% grid decarbonisation and that was before the stark lesson learned from the recent Spanish national power cut that inertia-less renewables are dangerously incompatible with the way the grid was designed to operate. And how could they be so careless as to “forget” that the electricity supply from wind and solar can fall to next to nothing in cold, dark midwinter for several successive days or even weeks on end. The UK’s largest battery storage facility will only keep the national grid going for 48 seconds.
The multiple UK “allocation rounds” (now at AR7) have left us with the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world yet still they pedal the lie that prices will eventually come down if we only have faith, or something.
It seems "self imposed" but UK, Germany etc are working towards the UN's 2030 SG agenda. Maybe Milliband hopes for a medal/cup/ super yacht if UK is first to the finish line.
True, the Agenda 2030 connection momentarily slipped my mind. It’s actually a more immediate threat than Net Zero, what with the push for censorship of free speech, enslaving Digital Ids and CBDCs. President Trump has already withdrawn the USA from participation in Agenda 2030 which is a worry unless he is still prepared to rescue us from our totalitarian oppressors.
Perhaps explains why Starmer wants digi ID rolled out by 2029 to forestall opposition by blackmailing, at the least, the working population to accept the new status quo or be impoverished. Darren Jones claiming digi ID as the "bedrock of the modern State", actually must mean the 'bedrock of global government'.
It wont get stopped too much is invested in the CC brainwashing now but for sure AR7 needs to be suspended and a complete reappraisal undertaken of how we keep the lights on at the least cost but without completed disregarding the CC fraternity.
If we do meet this 'net zero' target, what happens then? Will the world be greener? What are the metrics to determine if this nonsens is a success or a failure?
Then what about the industry lost? What about the opportunities missed? The technology lost? When there is no growth will that be considered?
It's a nonsense. It's just 'you're going to be made poorer and we will meet net zero - there's no reason, just an utterly meaningless, destructive, irrelevant demand so a bunch of wonks can trough off to some eurojob on nothing but damaging twaddle.
This is the problem with most all government idiocy: there's never failure standards nor success criteria. If there were, government would simply provide the basics as it is too incompetent to do anything else.
We won’t ever “reach” Net Zero without wrecking and depopulating the entire country. Net Zero would lead to national suicide and there is no way back from death. Within about 20 years all of Miliband’s windmills and solar panels will fall to bits but we wouldn’t have the power, raw materials, resources or money to replace them.
If the DESNZ were to look at what is happening around the world, they would see that Malaysia has currently switched from gas firing to coal. The resultant emissions will be almost equivalent to what our carbon emission savings were last year. The reason for the switch is to allow Malaysia to export gas as LNG, which will double its revenue versus the coal costs of imports. Obviously the Malay government is more concerned with the well being of its citizens than ours is. Money talks for them and our industries go to the wall. Well done Milliband, what a complete farce. I now see that they have employed yet another academic as Chief Scientific Advisor. What can this advisor provide more than what we already know. Just more cost to the Civil Service bloated bill.
Another nail in the coffin of the climate change hoax. Hitherto climate zealot Bill Gates has just announced that “Climate change … will not lead to mankind’s demise” and that he will not be going to COP30. Jeff Childers gives his cynical and amusing commentary: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/green-old-scam-tuesday-october-28.
I did read Gates’ statement. He has obviously concluded that “climate change” is a dead duck with no further prospects for money-making. However he doesn’t want to alienate the green community so he panders to them with climate change hoax lies such as “climate change is serious” (it isn’t) and “climate change will have serious consequences” (it won’t). Gates is a grifting snake-oil salesman.
The Gates Foundation has distributed some $100 billion over the last 25 years which has had a major effect on the health of people living in the 3rd world. The GF have invested several billions into Breakthrough Energy which has a focus on energy reduction. He will give away the balance of his wealth in the next 20 years. I don’t think many people would call him a grifter.
Bill Gates was a major player in the tyrannical Covid “plandemic”. In this clip he openly boasts how he turned $10 billion into $200 billion by investing in Big Pharma’s toxic-by-design mRNA products, selling out at peak when it started to become obvious that the jabs were unsafe and ineffective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtVEChTKFpE.
The budget is most constraining in the delivery year with the lowest Reference Price value, with an extra tweak that 2031/32 contains a 29th February, adding an extra day of budget consumption. Yes, amid all the artificial constructs they take that into account!
The reality is that the artificial assumptions only serve to produce a maximum demand curve for the auction which cuts off at the ASP maximum strike price. If the capacity bid for is less than the capacity at ASP then there is no auction and all bidders are awarded ASP. There was supposed to be a Notice of Auction issued yesterday if an auction is needed. It has not been made public, and I have a query in to the EMR Settlement Body asking them to point to the auction notice if there is one. If there isn't then the volume of bids is below 3GW for offshore and 200MW for floating, which would signify extremely serious trouble for CP2030 and AR7.
For all the intellectual nonsense covering parameter assessments here
The reality is the demand curve has a simple form tweaked by the parameters
Budget X Constant
___________________ = Max Capacity at Strike price
(Strike - Reference)
Against this DESNZ and NESO will have tried to second guess where bids may come in from those projects that have cleared planning and applied to bid when they assessed the budget which may also have involved conversations with Starmer and Reeves and Cabinet. We don't have the list of actual applicants, but the REPD database allows us to see which projects have cleared planning (although Berwick Bank is a late addition since REPD was last updated). We can also review public statements from potential applicants.
Berwick Bank (4.1GW, split between England and Scotland landfalls) implied they were aiming for AR7 - but they would need the auction to clear below £90/MWh to get their capacity awarded, probably excluding other applicants altogether. Whether RWE submits Rampion 2 (1200MW) and the 2.8GW off East Anglia they inherited when Vattenfall cancelled Norfolk Boreas (1.4GW) is unlikely: too much to chew on all at once, stretching finances. BP may be less keen on Mona (1.5GW) given their new strategy. A Seagreen extension from SSE will be hampered by the high curtailment of the main project. Equinor have also been stretched with arguments with Trump about US wind, and may not be quite so keen on their extension projects at Dudgeon (402MW) and Sheringham (317MW).
Miliband has the option to add to the budget if he can get it past Cabinet, but that depends on applications made. When he upped the AR6 budget from £800m to £1.1bn in 2012 money for offshore the awarded bids only used about £870m of budget, so it didn't add much to capacity awarded, which included the rebid capacity from AR4.
Renewables UK apparently said they thought the auction could procure 5GW (itself way behind for CP2030 timelines). But that would require the auction to clear at £80/MWh in 2024 money, or lower than the price that caused Ørsted to cancel Hornsea 4. Seems unlikely.
Im guessing most of those will have gone through the approvals process at least but doesn't mean they will be interested in bidding of course although given they have an extra 5yrs on contract length presumably that will improve the financials?
If I were a wind farm developer I would have half an eye on what the next government might do, and half an eye on the fact that Miliband will get desperate if he procures little capacity from AR7. There are also big uncertainties on costs. CBAM could make Chinese jackets, towers and turbines much more costly, for instance. I would be very tempted to pass until things become clearer.
Not one AR3 windfarm site has yet actualised its CfD contract and given they are only getting c£56/MWhr none of them are going to bother until they reach there long stop date i would imagine. This is critical to the wind is cheap merchants as the AR3 sites would lower the overall cost of CfD supplied offshore wind before the more expensive years come in. Dogger Bank A is still far from complete and only at around half capacity despite having 85/95 WT installed. Dogger Bank B has no WT installed yet.
Looking at the debt in Seagreen, I'm not convinced it can pay the interest and principal on its debt if it gets only £56/MWh. Which coincidentally, will be the approx merchant rate if the Tories ditch the carbon taxes on gas-fired electricity.
I suspect the other AR3 and AR4 units are in the same boat.
If £82/MWh for H4 was not economic, how can <£60/MWh be economic for H3 and the other AR4 and AR3 projects?
Interesting to know what strategy Seagreen are playing here as they bid in well below the day ahead price to constrain off. Are they looking to minimise wear and tear and thus O&M to sweat the asset until they actualise their CfD.
"...There are changes to both the methodology and the base year of calculations making comparisons to prior auctions difficult. ..."
Just as planned, so the saying goes. If you can compare A to B, you realise that it's spewing more money at the nonsense, so they change it 'Redefine the baseline from which the figures are derived', as Humphrey would say.
It's a tiresome civil service trick to pretend it's not just firehosing money into a pointless boondoggle. They've done this practically every year for HS2 and did it most obviously during covid to up the threat level.
There are an enormous number of posts and comments about electrical energy which is only about 30% of the energy consumed globally. It would do us all good if we stepped back once in a while and looked at the bigger picture. Why not read this important statement by Bill Gates: https://www.gatesnotes.com/three-tough-truths-about-climate
My apologies to David if you feel that I have hijacked your post
And yet again the cheaper renewable needs to be subsidised. Does this reference price of £43/MWHR now
Quoting Hemingway out of context:
Q: How did you go bankrupt?
A: In two ways, slowly, then suddenly.
Seems highly appropriate somehow? ;-)
All this begs into question why is the NESO/ the Government not pressing the pause button on the Norwich to Tilbury grid expansion until it is clear it is really needed?
I think there will be a lot of pressure towards slowing down the NESO More Grid programme around the country generally, especially with limited capacity added via AR7. It's adding significant cost to our bills, as well as blighting areas it passes through. It was a prominent topic raised by the Big 6 representatives at the ESNZ Select Committee session
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/16535/html/
National Grid did delay the Bramford to Twinstead connection on Suffolk/ Essex border so there is precedent for delaying a project if timing not right
You mention the impact of additional renewables lowering prices. Presumably this means a saving to consumers, though I expect it’s less than the subsidy. This is the first attempt I’ve seen to quantify the impact which suggests it’s significant so wondered what you make of it?
https://eciu.net/analysis/reports/2025/marginal-gains-how-wind-is-pushing-gas-out-of-the-power-market-and-cutting-costs
No.
If the strike price is say £110/MWh and the reference price is £60/MWh, then the subsidy is £50/MWh. If the reference price falls to £40/MWh, the subsidy rises to £70/MWh. The cost to the consumer is £110/MWh in both cases. It's just the mix of how that is made up that changes.
But shouldn’t it be relative to the counterfactual of no renewables, which would be a higher wholesale reference price than with renewables.
The counterfactual I would like to see is the price of electricity per MW had we committed to open cycle gas plants for the vast majority of our needs, bought the kit before turbine prices shot up, and compare this to current and projected prices to consumers and businesses under Miliband's plans.
My rough guess is that prices would be less than half what they are now, probably much less if our counter factual included a scenario whereby we had encouraged domestic gas production, rather than eviscerated the industry, and carbon taxes were removed.
OCGT is low efficiency compared with CCGT, which is why it only runs to handle demand peaks. It is also lower in capital cost per MW, making it cheaper to keep on standby for peak demand.
The ECIU analysis is complete nonsense. The average CFD currently pays around 150/MWh, and ROCs add £100/MWh on average to the cost of generation from generators on those subsidies, compared with CCGT generation costing £75/MWh. Even before we add in the extra costs for grid balancing and transmission associated with renewables, it is clear that they add to cost for every extra MWh they produce. They ignore all the extra costs and subsidies.
The analysis isn’t really focussed on the subsidies, but the impact of wholesale prices. Do you disagree with the central claim that, “the day-ahead wholesale price in 2024 could have been up to 33% higher if there had been no large-scale wind capacity and gas made up most of the difference.” My question is whether these saving should be included when working out the total cost of renewables. Not disputing that renewables are more expensive, just trying to get to an accurate view of how much more expensive.
Its fair to say that the wholesale price has been suppressed downwards by all the renewables bidding in at low cost. However, the wholesale cost is now a long way from what the true cost of renewable power actually is. Renewable generators also have the benefit of additional income stream be it a ROC or CfD payment so they can afford to bid in low into the wholesale mkt especially when its sunny and windy to make sure they get selected. Add back in those additional costs and you get the true cost at the generator export meters. Gas of course is bidding its true cost including the carbon tax.
The day ahead wholesale prices are a very misleading guide to the cost of energy procured. Most of the trade that takes place at this stage in the market consists of swaps, trading supply in a low demand timeframe (e.g. overnight) for supply during peak demand, or swapping hedged supply purchases and sales with renewables supply. From the point of view of a retailer undertaking such swap trades what matters is the difference in price between the low demand period and the peak demand period, not the absolute level. Such differences tend to be much greater on days with high renewables supply.
Swaps for renewables are often conducted by hedge sellers: they buy in renewable supply to fulfill the hedge sales from their own generation they made earlier, and resell the gas (or hold the biomass in stock for another day) where it is more profitable to do so. That has no effect whatever on the direct cost paid by the hedged retailer, who bought the hedge maybe months previously. However, retailers have to pay out the subsidies associated with the extra renewables generation through the Renewables Obligation, and the CFD and FiT levelisation arrangements. As I explained, these amount to a substantial premium to notional wholesale prices.
Most of the cost of supply excluding subsidy costs is determined by the cost of hedge purchases made in advance: these costs are added to by the costs of shaping to the actual demand profile and buying or selling any overall differences between hedged volumes and actual demand. Renewables subsidies are inescapable, and although they are levied in complicated ways, the accounting ensures that every renewables MWh gets its subsidy payout. You really can't just ignore the subsidies. Nor can you ignore the extra balancing costs that are associated with higher volumes of renewables output, or the extra grid costs of connecting up and stabilising renewables supply.
Apologies, I know you're right, I appreciate the level of information and detail but how on earth is a normal person supposed to understand this?
It seems, just as with everything else the state gets involved with it makes it so byzantine, so completely convoluted - all to disguise the immense pointlessness of it's meddling - that they argue black is white and up is down because, in their demented Escher painting of the market they have broken, it is.
Why do producers not simply sell what they have at the cost of production? Oh, because unreliables *can't*. Why? Because they are, well, unreliable. So the state has to protect this stupid ideology from the market through a demented Gordian knot and bonkers arrangements that allow it to proclaim grass is orange, or something equally absurd; and then have the gall to say 'see, orange paint is why your bill is so high. Nothing to do with us, guv.'
Yes, indeed.
I am an electrical tech, I know my kVAr from my elbow, but I cannot get my head around the financial side of how the grid operates.
A normal person is not meant to understand this. Nor are politicians, and almost none of them do. I think Claire Coutinho with her Maths/Philosophy degree and background in structured finance/risk management in banking does broadly grasp it. It is also the case that most academics who profess to do studies on energy markets, advising government or producing papers for green think tanks have a limited, Nelsonian eye patch view at best. There are only a few consultancies I would really trust, and their clients are people in the industry who need to get it right as best they can.
Real understanding is limited in many of the important players. Almost no-one in OFGEM really has a proper overview. Within NESO knowledge appears to be somewhat siloed: specialists can be very good in their narrow areas. In DESNZ and the CCC it is almost non-existent.
The need for highly competent energy traders was perhaps brought home within the industry at the time of Enron, who ran circles round the rules that cost some in the industry hundreds of millions. However, understanding in the trading room doesn't necessarily extend to the CEOs, and may not include some wider aspects anyway. It was notable that Simone Rossi of EdF was the only one to openly disagree with the claim that marginal gas sets costs that so many endorsed on the back of the same flawed academic paper that assumes we still run the pool system abandoned in 2001, much cited in written evidence to the ESNZ Select Committee.
Thanks for the explanation about wholesale energy prices which I agree is misunderstood and misused in debates on energy costs.
The authors do understand this with this paragraph.
“Finally, the day-ahead price is a useful indicator of prices of power that has been
traded earlier, and hence of overall prices. Most longer-term contracts are indexed
such that the provider can receive a price that more closely reflects the situation at
delivery. Also, data from Ofgem shows that each unit of power is on average
traded multiple times before delivery (the ‘churn rate’) e.g. 2.6 times in 2024,
7 and
trading nearer to delivery will see the price tend towards the day-ahead price.”
They don’t put a number on it and I expect it’s very hard to do. It seems very unlikely to be nothing and won’t be the full amount either. So an area of further work to quantify.
I completely agree you can’t ignore subsidies, I’m just saying that if having a debate about costs it should be the net costs if there are wholesale benefits.
🤯
David, meticulous as always. The Govt Load Factor of almost 44% looks optimistic. From my limited reading, about 33% would be more realistic as a load factor for offshore wind. How much impact does the load factor have on the model? RLW
Yes, a little optimistic, but the average load factor for CfD funded offshore wind runs between 40-45%.
A lower load factor would mean each GW of capacity would receive less subsidy because it generates less. Less subsidy than budgeted.
Thank you for crunching the numbers David.
Like everything renewable we always knew it would be something that yet again increased energy prices at the expense of the consumer with further destruction of what little remains of our industrial base in order to save the planet from its imminent meltdown.
Yet again I despair.
A timely reminder in yesterday’s papers on UK deindustrialisation and decline thanks to sky-high energy prices: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/10/28/british-industry-is-now-in-terminal-decline-killed-by-expensive-energy/.
Now lookk here! If you're going to be so relentlessly practical and sensible aboout the waste of public money on the altar of grand projects that don't work you're going to be sent to re-education where you will learn that socialism is the only goal that matters and driving the country and economy off a cliff is paramount in that plan.
You WILL accept the lies. You will conform and you WILL NOT question the masters. Truth, common sense, rational thinnking will be expunged!
It’s not just AR7 that needs to be stopped, it’s Net Zero in its entirety. Our simple-minded/traitorous [delete according to choice] Uniparty politicians embarked on a “climate change” fantasy endeavour in 2008 which was always bound to end in disaster. They can’t say they weren’t warned.
As their self-imposed 2030 milestone approaches, it is obvious that their targets will not be met. Miliband was never going to get anywhere near 95% grid decarbonisation and that was before the stark lesson learned from the recent Spanish national power cut that inertia-less renewables are dangerously incompatible with the way the grid was designed to operate. And how could they be so careless as to “forget” that the electricity supply from wind and solar can fall to next to nothing in cold, dark midwinter for several successive days or even weeks on end. The UK’s largest battery storage facility will only keep the national grid going for 48 seconds.
In her latest post Kathryn Porter says "REE [the Spanish operator] has allowed the Spanish power grid to become dangerously unbalanced and Scotland is heading in the same direction”: https://watt-logic.com/2025/10/24/location-location-location-managing-voltage-in-weak-grids/.
The multiple UK “allocation rounds” (now at AR7) have left us with the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world yet still they pedal the lie that prices will eventually come down if we only have faith, or something.
It‘s all a charade: https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/the-charade-of-net-zero-2/.
It seems "self imposed" but UK, Germany etc are working towards the UN's 2030 SG agenda. Maybe Milliband hopes for a medal/cup/ super yacht if UK is first to the finish line.
True, the Agenda 2030 connection momentarily slipped my mind. It’s actually a more immediate threat than Net Zero, what with the push for censorship of free speech, enslaving Digital Ids and CBDCs. President Trump has already withdrawn the USA from participation in Agenda 2030 which is a worry unless he is still prepared to rescue us from our totalitarian oppressors.
Perhaps explains why Starmer wants digi ID rolled out by 2029 to forestall opposition by blackmailing, at the least, the working population to accept the new status quo or be impoverished. Darren Jones claiming digi ID as the "bedrock of the modern State", actually must mean the 'bedrock of global government'.
It wont get stopped too much is invested in the CC brainwashing now but for sure AR7 needs to be suspended and a complete reappraisal undertaken of how we keep the lights on at the least cost but without completed disregarding the CC fraternity.
If we do meet this 'net zero' target, what happens then? Will the world be greener? What are the metrics to determine if this nonsens is a success or a failure?
Then what about the industry lost? What about the opportunities missed? The technology lost? When there is no growth will that be considered?
It's a nonsense. It's just 'you're going to be made poorer and we will meet net zero - there's no reason, just an utterly meaningless, destructive, irrelevant demand so a bunch of wonks can trough off to some eurojob on nothing but damaging twaddle.
This is the problem with most all government idiocy: there's never failure standards nor success criteria. If there were, government would simply provide the basics as it is too incompetent to do anything else.
We won’t ever “reach” Net Zero without wrecking and depopulating the entire country. Net Zero would lead to national suicide and there is no way back from death. Within about 20 years all of Miliband’s windmills and solar panels will fall to bits but we wouldn’t have the power, raw materials, resources or money to replace them.
Exactly! 👍
If the DESNZ were to look at what is happening around the world, they would see that Malaysia has currently switched from gas firing to coal. The resultant emissions will be almost equivalent to what our carbon emission savings were last year. The reason for the switch is to allow Malaysia to export gas as LNG, which will double its revenue versus the coal costs of imports. Obviously the Malay government is more concerned with the well being of its citizens than ours is. Money talks for them and our industries go to the wall. Well done Milliband, what a complete farce. I now see that they have employed yet another academic as Chief Scientific Advisor. What can this advisor provide more than what we already know. Just more cost to the Civil Service bloated bill.
Another nail in the coffin of the climate change hoax. Hitherto climate zealot Bill Gates has just announced that “Climate change … will not lead to mankind’s demise” and that he will not be going to COP30. Jeff Childers gives his cynical and amusing commentary: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/green-old-scam-tuesday-october-28.
An alternative is to read the original Bill Gates document and make up your own mind: https://www.gatesnotes.com/three-tough-truths-about-climate
I did read Gates’ statement. He has obviously concluded that “climate change” is a dead duck with no further prospects for money-making. However he doesn’t want to alienate the green community so he panders to them with climate change hoax lies such as “climate change is serious” (it isn’t) and “climate change will have serious consequences” (it won’t). Gates is a grifting snake-oil salesman.
The Gates Foundation has distributed some $100 billion over the last 25 years which has had a major effect on the health of people living in the 3rd world. The GF have invested several billions into Breakthrough Energy which has a focus on energy reduction. He will give away the balance of his wealth in the next 20 years. I don’t think many people would call him a grifter.
Bill Gates was a major player in the tyrannical Covid “plandemic”. In this clip he openly boasts how he turned $10 billion into $200 billion by investing in Big Pharma’s toxic-by-design mRNA products, selling out at peak when it started to become obvious that the jabs were unsafe and ineffective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtVEChTKFpE.
The budget is most constraining in the delivery year with the lowest Reference Price value, with an extra tweak that 2031/32 contains a 29th February, adding an extra day of budget consumption. Yes, amid all the artificial constructs they take that into account!
The reality is that the artificial assumptions only serve to produce a maximum demand curve for the auction which cuts off at the ASP maximum strike price. If the capacity bid for is less than the capacity at ASP then there is no auction and all bidders are awarded ASP. There was supposed to be a Notice of Auction issued yesterday if an auction is needed. It has not been made public, and I have a query in to the EMR Settlement Body asking them to point to the auction notice if there is one. If there isn't then the volume of bids is below 3GW for offshore and 200MW for floating, which would signify extremely serious trouble for CP2030 and AR7.
For all the intellectual nonsense covering parameter assessments here
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-7-administrative-strike-prices-methodology-note
The reality is the demand curve has a simple form tweaked by the parameters
Budget X Constant
___________________ = Max Capacity at Strike price
(Strike - Reference)
Against this DESNZ and NESO will have tried to second guess where bids may come in from those projects that have cleared planning and applied to bid when they assessed the budget which may also have involved conversations with Starmer and Reeves and Cabinet. We don't have the list of actual applicants, but the REPD database allows us to see which projects have cleared planning (although Berwick Bank is a late addition since REPD was last updated). We can also review public statements from potential applicants.
Berwick Bank (4.1GW, split between England and Scotland landfalls) implied they were aiming for AR7 - but they would need the auction to clear below £90/MWh to get their capacity awarded, probably excluding other applicants altogether. Whether RWE submits Rampion 2 (1200MW) and the 2.8GW off East Anglia they inherited when Vattenfall cancelled Norfolk Boreas (1.4GW) is unlikely: too much to chew on all at once, stretching finances. BP may be less keen on Mona (1.5GW) given their new strategy. A Seagreen extension from SSE will be hampered by the high curtailment of the main project. Equinor have also been stretched with arguments with Trump about US wind, and may not be quite so keen on their extension projects at Dudgeon (402MW) and Sheringham (317MW).
Miliband has the option to add to the budget if he can get it past Cabinet, but that depends on applications made. When he upped the AR6 budget from £800m to £1.1bn in 2012 money for offshore the awarded bids only used about £870m of budget, so it didn't add much to capacity awarded, which included the rebid capacity from AR4.
Renewables UK apparently said they thought the auction could procure 5GW (itself way behind for CP2030 timelines). But that would require the auction to clear at £80/MWh in 2024 money, or lower than the price that caused Ørsted to cancel Hornsea 4. Seems unlikely.
Im guessing most of those will have gone through the approvals process at least but doesn't mean they will be interested in bidding of course although given they have an extra 5yrs on contract length presumably that will improve the financials?
If I were a wind farm developer I would have half an eye on what the next government might do, and half an eye on the fact that Miliband will get desperate if he procures little capacity from AR7. There are also big uncertainties on costs. CBAM could make Chinese jackets, towers and turbines much more costly, for instance. I would be very tempted to pass until things become clearer.
his plan is to impoverish us
Not one AR3 windfarm site has yet actualised its CfD contract and given they are only getting c£56/MWhr none of them are going to bother until they reach there long stop date i would imagine. This is critical to the wind is cheap merchants as the AR3 sites would lower the overall cost of CfD supplied offshore wind before the more expensive years come in. Dogger Bank A is still far from complete and only at around half capacity despite having 85/95 WT installed. Dogger Bank B has no WT installed yet.
Looking at the debt in Seagreen, I'm not convinced it can pay the interest and principal on its debt if it gets only £56/MWh. Which coincidentally, will be the approx merchant rate if the Tories ditch the carbon taxes on gas-fired electricity.
I suspect the other AR3 and AR4 units are in the same boat.
If £82/MWh for H4 was not economic, how can <£60/MWh be economic for H3 and the other AR4 and AR3 projects?
Interesting to know what strategy Seagreen are playing here as they bid in well below the day ahead price to constrain off. Are they looking to minimise wear and tear and thus O&M to sweat the asset until they actualise their CfD.
"...There are changes to both the methodology and the base year of calculations making comparisons to prior auctions difficult. ..."
Just as planned, so the saying goes. If you can compare A to B, you realise that it's spewing more money at the nonsense, so they change it 'Redefine the baseline from which the figures are derived', as Humphrey would say.
It's a tiresome civil service trick to pretend it's not just firehosing money into a pointless boondoggle. They've done this practically every year for HS2 and did it most obviously during covid to up the threat level.
There are an enormous number of posts and comments about electrical energy which is only about 30% of the energy consumed globally. It would do us all good if we stepped back once in a while and looked at the bigger picture. Why not read this important statement by Bill Gates: https://www.gatesnotes.com/three-tough-truths-about-climate
My apologies to David if you feel that I have hijacked your post