David, your statement that "The UK represents only about 0.8% of global emissions" is very far from accurate. Could you please correct this, taking account not only of extra-territorial emissions, but also of cumulative emissions that reflect the long-term effect of CO2 released into the atmosphere? Could you also comment on what the result would be if all nations with relatively small annual emissions were to adopt the attitude that, individually, their actions cannot possibly make any difference?
This point that the UK doesn’t need to act because it only emits 0.8% of current emissions is clearly a tactic of the anti renewables crowd. If every country with around 1% did the same the. The world would never even get close to net zero. Every country, big and small emitters has a role. Rich countries like the UK have to be one of the leaders and help others by showing how it can be done. Luckily that is what appears to be happening although of course it could be even better. If David thinks the world is going to revert back to fossil fuels and stop electrifying heat and transport then he’s very much mistaken and fighting a losing battle.
The point is that the most effective action the UK could take even in the terms of assuming the alarmist view of the importance of CO2 emissions would be to assist countries where there is plenty of low hanging fruit to cut emissions. Money is wasted achieving very marginal reductions in the UK. Spending inside the UK would be far better reserved for adaptation, especially as the climate forecasts are very uncertain with threats of severe cooling on the one hand and modest temperature increases on the other.
Further reducing Uk emissions isn’t going to stop anyone else reducing theirs. Everyone needs to do it and faster. UK can show how it’s done. We still have a long way to go in domestic heating and industrial heat.
As for alarmists I presume you mean normal educated people who are aware of the harms of extreme heat and its consequences. Quite strange language you use to try and deflect away from reality. Physics always wins in the end whatever you say.
David as you know growth in fossil fuels has slowed dramatically and with countries like China going EV oil demand is set to peak very soon. Gas demand is also falling in many major markets and most countries are now either reducing reliance on coal or have actual plans to do so. It’s fantasy to think fossil fuels demand is going to keep growing in a rapidly changing energy world. The share of the world primary energy from electricity has taken an uptick in recent years. That will accelerate and I’m being very generous quoting primary energy when two thirds of fossil primary energy is wasted due to inefficiency. Electrification will reduce that share pretty quickly once electrification of domestic and industrial heat takes hold to join transport.
Sorry, no I won't correct it, because it's true. The latest data from The Global Carbon Budget shows the UK emitted ~305mt CO2 in 2023 out of a total of 37,614mt, or 0.8%.
Since 1850, the UK has emitted 4.2% of the global total. But they're are effectively a sunk cost, there's nothing we can do about the past.
After your tiresome reply to one of my comments, I’ll reply on this to save David the trouble.
The 0.8% figure doesn’t need a correction. National emissions from all countries are just that and don’t include the foreign emissions of imported goods. Uniparty politicians exploit this convention to pretend they have done a great job by reducing national emissions when all they have done is to ship jobs and emissions abroad, ignoring the foreign emissions of the substitute imports.
As most honest scientists are agreed that CO2 emissions have at most only minimal impact on global climate, I’ll skip on the rest of your comment.
Douglas, I'll go someway towards your position. As consumers of imported products we should take responsibility for the consequences of our actions, but that responsibility should sensibly be shared with the manufacturers of those products who clearly benefit from our actions. I guess the same argument should apply to the upstream emissions from imported oil and gas, and from the imported wood pellets burned at Drax power station that, when extra-territorial upstream emissions are taken into account, emit more CO2 per MWh of electricity generated than a coal-fired power station.
I'm not given to the notion that anthropogenic climate change is settled science, but neither am I of the view that there's a conspiracy of dishonest scientists. Engineers are often obliged to make decision based on uncertain and/or incomplete knowledge. The best we can do is to make judgements on the balance of risks and benefits between alternative options, i.e., by applying the precautionary principle. My own engineering discipline is concerned with the design of buildings. In this it's not only that buildings account for around 40% of global energy demand, it's that their purpose is, in part, to provide shelter from the adverse effects of climate, and that they are intended to have a useful life that extends into a very uncertain future.
On balance, I'm more persuaded by the argument that anthropogenic climate change is occurring than counter arguments. I'm not aware of any other hypothesis that would readily account for the loss of glacial ice or rising deep ocean temperatures.
Have you got any evidence that net zero is worse than adapting?
What value do you put on our polar regions and Alpine environments that so many people enjoy for its beauty and leisure opportunities and their huge range of associated biodiversity.
Id be very interested for you to describe how a world with several meters of sea level rise and loss of many beautiful natural environments and associated biodiversity is worth losing to continue burning fossil fuels rather than cleaning up our energy system.
Billions of people having to endure extreme heat each summer and damage from extreme rainfall seems to be a process worth paying to you. I have to say I think this view will be a tiny minority of people with very strong vested interests in fossil fuels.
I have just read it. It doesn’t answer a single one of my questions but just says deaths from natural disasters have decreased over time.
Well I would really have hoped that would be the case with far better communication and warning of extreme climatic events. However as you may know this trend is now likely in reverse given the increases we are seeing in extreme events such as heat and precipitation. The European heatwave of 2022 was associated with over 6OK excess premature deaths and over 250 people died in flash flooding in Valencia only last year. This despite our weather forecasting and communication. You will need to do better than your article promoting fossil fuels and nuclear to convince me and many others continually heating the planet is a better outcome than stopping AGW continuously heating the planet.
Anyone with 2 brain cells would know that 'NET ZERO' is an utterly insane off the charts idiocy, an absolute mathematical, physical, statistical and practical impossibility that can never be achieved or exist in reality!
Electricity has to come from somewhere, and the only reliable sources are coal, oil and gas (nukes don't cut it, the radioactive waste is too poisonous).
The 'CLIMATE CHAOS' fraud is the excuse and propaganda misdirection justifying attacks on farming and food, concealing a profoundly inimical globalist genocidal enslavement scheme.
Do you want to live in the squalor and drudgery and misery of the pre-industrial age? HELL NO!
HANDS OFF MY GAS STOVE! I LOVE MY GAS STOVE! Ever try to cook on an electric stove - absolute nightmare!
Can't say this often enough! CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN EVEN WORSE FRAUD THAN THE PLANSCAMDEMIC! SO-CALLED GREEN TECH IS A GIGANTIC SCAM! MINING AND MANUFACTURING 'GREEN' PRODUCTS NEEDS COAL, GAS AND OIL AND MINING RARE MINERALS IS MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY TOXIC AND DESTRUCTIVE THAN LEGACY PRODUCTS. SCREW YOUR DAMNED GREEN GRIFT AGENDA! climateviewer.com
All life everywhere is being assaulted by THE TECHNOCRATIC OMNIWAR! RESIST! DO NOT CONSENT TO ALL THINGS DIGITAL, 'SMART', AI, 5G, NO CASH - ALL OF IT! dhughes.substack.com Technocrat ruling class psychos get a sadistic thrill from their powers over life and death and hurting all who stand in their way and they need the resources worldwide to build their digital total slavery control grids (herd survivors into 15 minute city digital prisons)!
AI is designed to be anti-human/anti-life programmed by technocrat control freak psychos - garbage in = garbage out. Everyone got along just fine without all these absurd and downright satanic electronic gadgets that did not exist until recently. NOBODY NEEDS THIS AI CRAP!
It's always since the dawn of history, been about using knowledge for power and control by the psycho portion of the human population that learned how to manipulate 'normies' to obey them in their power-mad power trips.
In these modern times, this evil has become TECHNOCRACY, the vilest threat to the existence of all life on earth since forever!
They can stick their f*cking damned NANO, Digital IDs, AI, jabs and chips up their asses where the sun don't shine!
CREATIVITY! ARTISTRY! IMAGINATION! SPIRITUALITY! HUMOR! LOVING KINDNESS! These are the best ways to fight THEM!
I also have a landline, a wired laptop and a wired monitor screen, and I never had or will have those infernal mobile devices designed to enslave you. I also use cash as much as possible, no cash is TOTAL SLAVERY.
How to fight back against this TOTAL SLAVERY!
RESIST! DO NOT COMPLY! DITCH THE DAMNED 'SMART' PHONES AND THE DAMNED QR CODES AND GO BACK TO LANDLINES OR FLIP PHONES AND USE CASH AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! INSIST ON CASH! CBDC IS TOTAL SLAVERY!
It is heartbreaking to witness the holocausts happening and so many fellow citizens are brainwashed/bamboozled by the propaganda media, they are oblivious!
MISTAKES WERE NOT MADE! THEY can't get rid of the 'useless eaters' fast enough!
Peddling pure poison! Folks have to wake up to reality: health comes from organic diet, daily exercise and clean living and never from a needle or a pill except in dire, rare traumatic injuries.
It was NEVER about health! The Powers That Should Not Be were ALWAYS about they want you DEAD or a SLAVE! This is a painful truth to accept but we the people must wake up and fight back! And toxic injections/pills were/are a huge part of their arsenal!
This horrifying Gates, Governor 'Gruesome Newscum', 'Lone Scum', Soros, 'Benedict' Biden and Harris and even Trump, Vance, and 'Ramaswampy' et al are blatant fully owned and operated puppets of their globalist technocrat parasite masters same as other numerous 'PUBLIC SERPENTS' infesting by design from above, the bureaucratic apparatus.
Can't say this often enough! The Military/Industrial Complex and the Biowarfare/industrial Complex, WEF agenda and the evils assaulting humanity are from one and the same source - it is the 99% against the diabolical GREED of the 0.01% who should not be in charge of anything!
The monsters in human skin suits who rule the world get a sadistic vampiric thrill and boost from perpetrating the vilest most demonic crimes against the most vulnerable (babies and small children) and then corrupting the system to get away with it scot free! We the People must stop them, there are a lot more of us than them!
JAB INJURIES: GROSS CALAMARI BLOOD CLOTS/AUTISM TSUNAMI/SADS/TURBO CANCER/BIZARRE TERMINAL ILLNESSES: More tragic victims of the ruling parasite genocidal enslavement agenda, sacrificed on the altar of psychopathic greed and hatred of humanity.
And BIG pHARMa is an arsenal making permanently sickly addicted slaves dependent on their products - the complete opposite of actual health.
Can't say this often enough!
SCREW THE HYPOCHONDRIA GERMAPHOBIC FEAR HYSTERIA! DO NOT CONSENT! Avian flu is for the birds! RESIST!
KEEP FIGHTING! All the perps who pushed this greatest crime against humanity, all the way down to the local level, must get their comeuppances!
Proudly ANTI-VAXX! Reiterating for the sake of newbies and to support this post.
Ban all vaccine jabs! There has never been a 'safe and effective' vaccine since Edward Jenner's fraud over 200 years ago as per 'Dissolving Illusions' by Suzanne Humphries and 'Turtles All the Way Down' by Anonymous. Health can never come from a needle or pills, but from healthy eating, healthy exercise and healthy living! virustruth.net
Divide and rule! Agents provocateurs anyone, FALSE FLAGS, propaganda social engineering psyops? Keeping us proles at each others' throats while the globalist technocrat predators laugh all the way to the BIS and The Bank of Rothschild's!
As usual, David has a lot of his numbers very wrong, for no obvious reason.
By the time you correct them it turns out that recent wind and solar power costs are a lot lower than the full costs of gas generation.
Gas Generation Costs
Fuel
David correctly gets current TTF European gas fuel costs of £61/MWh..
Carbon
The UK carbon price is a lot lower than anyone else's estimates, based purely on market forces.
Take the US pre-Trump EPA estimated social cost of carbon of $180/tonne or the current EU ETS scheme price of €73/tonne. At 1.3 USD/GBP and 1.17 EUR/GBP, plus 400 kg CO2/MWh for gas generation, this works out at £55/MWh or £25/MWh respectively.
Capital cost (David doesn't include this)
The NESO T-4 capacity contract costs, including for the 27 GW of existing gas plants, is £60/kW-year. 2024 UK gas plant load factor was 30%, or 2,628 hours per year. So the capital cost adds £23/MWh.
Variable O&M (David doesn't include this)
But it is only £2/MWh
Total is £141 or £111/MWh, depending on the real cost of CO2 to global society.
Recent CfD costs for renewables, from https://register.lowcarboncontracts.uk/, are all in Q2 2025 pounds. I'm picking the highest price project where there are different install years with different pricesd.
Offshore wind
CfD AR3 projects are installing and going live, at £56/MWh
CfD AR4 projects were allowed to rebid 25% of capacity in AR6. 75% of AR4 cost + 25% of AR6 (AR4 rebid) cost is £56.
CfD new AR6 projects are £85/MWh
David's CfD cost (not including add ons for balancing etc) is £158/MWh which is two or three times too high - and better equates to bids 10 years ago rather than recent and future projects.
Onshore wind
AR4 - £56/MWh
AR5 - £76/MWh
AR6 - £74/MWh
David's raw onshore wind cost figure is £117/MWh. Again he is 50-100% too high compared to recent and near future projects.
Solar
AR4 - £66/MWh
AR5 - £67/MWh
AR6 - £72/MWh
David's raw solar cost is £77/MWh - a small overestimate
So, once you look at recent or future costs, and more correctly cost gas generation, you soon conclude that wind and solar power is much better value than power from gas. You basically get the carbon emissions reductions and the cost of balancing etc. thrown in for free.
You are writing an article about net zero, but are displaying subsidy costs which mostly won't be paid out any more, at the point UK gets to a net zero grid.
The 2030 Clean Power plan will keep 5% of UK electricity supply as backup from natural gas. So it isn't net zero. To get to net zero needs an additional step - such as the replacement of natural gas for backup by green hydrogen. This isn't likely to be complete until around 2035.
ROC subsidies were payable only until 2037, when the scheme ends. So only the tail end of the installs will still be receiving ROC subsidies by implementation in 2035 of a UK net zero grid. Two years later ROC subsidies will all be in the past, once the scheme closes.
The situation is even more stark for the CfD wind contracts, because the operational subsidy term is only for 15 years. After that, they either get the wholesale price (complete with self-cannibalisation), or have to sign PPA's directly with users.
The Investments Contract and Allocation Round 1 CfD contracts were signed in 2014 and 2015, so most became operational in or before 2020. These are the really expensive CfD contracts.
But by a 2035 net zero UK grid only the 400 MW Hornsea 1 phase 3 and the 440 MW Neart na Gaoithe offshore wind farms will be the only project still paid subsidies. out of many GW of Investment Contract and Allocation Round 1 CfD projects.
Surely you aren't claiming that early offshore wind projects which will no longer be paid subsidies at are still going to push up electricity costs in 2035 for the UK net zero grid, are you?
The evidence of Miliband's deal with Drax is that he will pay higher subsidies to keep old renewables going. He is actively trying to design a repowering regime, but it really won't help as the old kit will have to be ripped out or left to rot at considerable cost. Since it looks as though AR7 is going to be another big step up in price over AR6, and as more capacity is added the earnings of new wind and solar farms get eroded by curtailment, so the prices they need to break even go higher and higher, plus we are having to put in serious grid investment instead of piggybacking on the existing grid and planning to opt for extremely expensive ways of backing up when Dunkelflaute occurs there is only one way for cost to go, and that is up, especially since the cost of new wind farms is rising.
IDAU said "it looks as though AR7 is going to be another big step up in price over AR6"
And your evidence for this is?
IDAU said "as more capacity is added the earnings of new wind and solar farms get eroded by curtailment"
This is not likely to be true.
It is only generation supported by CfD or ROC subsidy that can actually afford to bid negative. But not from CfD AR4 onwards, where the projects do not get paid at all when there is negative day-ahead prices.
Negative pricing typically happens because of grid constraints from Scotland to England and Wales.
As English demand from EV charging and heat pumps increases, and transmission capacity from Scotland to England increases, there will be many fewer times when the existing CfD projects up to AR3 will be able to force day ahead wholesale prices negative. So the AR4++ projects will have increasingly fewer periods of no revenue because day ahead prices are negative.
Yes, some AR4++ projects won't be selected by the NESO to generate at times of low positive day ahead prices - but they still get paid their CfD contract strike price when curtailed in this situation.
So your supposed wind and solar risk doesn't look like a significant one to me, and likely to reduce over time because of the planned capacity increases between Scotland and England.
IDAU said "the cost of new wind farms is rising."
It has risen, but there's no evidence it will continue to rise. Further, technical and supply chain advances have always meant the long term cost trend is downwards, not upwards. This is also what the "law of learnings" says - for each doubling of installed capacity, the cost of a technology will come down by a similar, fixed percentage.
Anyway, we will know soon, when the AR7 auctions are concluded.
You keep your head in the sand. Hornsea 4 has been cancelled as unprofitable. Walney extension is threatened with early closure due to prospective wind theft. Several firms have announced plans to scale back wind investment in the UK because it is unprofitable and threatened by zonal pricing and REMA.
It is quite inevitable that as more capacity is added we will see rising curtailment, and quite evident that you haven't thought about what happens on windy and/or sunny days. I've done detailed hour by hour calculations. Here's a chart summarising some of them, showing duration curves for wind surpluses that could be expected for various levels of wind capacity
You are completely forgetting that negative prices are often driven by interconnectors, particularly for solar surpluses at the moment, but also at times for wind. We have to bribe other countries to take our surplus wind at negatife prices - something that is not sustainable when it comes to public attention. The alternative is curtailment and zero revenue. You also forget that we have a reverse merit order system for renewables whereby the costliest always get to generate unless physically impossible. Plus we have ambition for costly floating offshore wind, and even the seabed options are more remote and therefore more costly.
The idea that wind is going to get ever cheaper is fiction. The capital cost will at best stabilise for a given installation. The evidence suggests that ever larger turbines are now less economic because of high installation costs and high maintenance costs, with large rotor diameters leading to increased stresses that shorten hub and blade life for inadequate benefit from higher hub height for minimally higher average wind speed. Remote location and increased curtailment and need for extra grid and stabilisation guarantee the costs paid by consumers will rise
I keep abreast with virtually all of the most recent developments in green energy, particularly for UK.
IDAU said "Walney extension is threatened with early closure due to prospective wind theft."
That would make no financial sense - once the capital spend has been made, the fuel costs are zero and the running costs are about 1/4 of the typical CfD strike price. The reduction in output from nearby wind farms (not with the same owner) would be a few percent. So you would run the offshore wind farm until maintenance and operations costs start to exceed revenue - but that is a long long way off.
IDAU said "Several firms have announced plans to scale back wind investment in the UK because it is unprofitable and threatened by zonal pricing and REMA."
No one knows precisely what REMA will turn out to be. And if some firms cannot do offshore wind profitably, there are definitely others who can.
IDAU said "It is quite inevitable that as more capacity is added we will see rising curtailment, and quite evident that you haven't thought about what happens on windy and/or sunny days."
Your chart says "assumes current demand". But 100% EVs on the roads will ultimately increase demand by 40%, most of which will be highly flexible smart charging. A BEV with a 300 mile range and a 30 mile daily round trip has a week or more of flexibility in when to charge. So it can mostly take wind power as and when it is available (yes you do need a decent capacity of CCGT back up for this load, but it doesn't get invoked much).
I've modelled the Texas ERCOT grid. Roughly you end up with 20-25% overgeneration of annual wind and solar power output than adds up to the annual demand total. Around 8% of this goes into the overhead for green hydrogen production. Simulations showed 6% of backup supply. At 45% round trip efficiency this takes 8% of the over-generation. Grid battery (8 hours of average load) losses take another 2%. The additional 10% I assumed would be curtailed, but can also be used for BEV smart charging and exports (Texas doesn't do exports). The UK grid is not that dissimilar, judging from other groups modelling it, though I've not yet done my own model.
I'm pretty sure negative prices are not primarily driven by interconnectors. The higher the level of connectivity of a set of grids, the more efficient the supply will be, and this will mean fewer (rather than more) times of negative prices. In the UK most wind curtailment (and likely negative prices) is caused by transmission constraints.
Have a look at a couple of high wind and solar days (with very low daytime gas) as examples.
15th April 2024 at https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2024-04-15&&_k=z6ny4i. Click on the arrow to expand interconnector traffic, and note that interconnectors were actively importing at both times of positive (high or low) and negative UK wholesale price. The wind power is too steady all day - the picture smacks of Scotland to England transmission constraints (slowly being relieved) holding back Scottish wind power.
29th May 2025 at https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2025-05-29&&_k=ggjd3o is more what I would expect - when prices go negative, the imports drop off. Of course they get booked 24 hours ahead, so a wind mis-forecast (such as there was supposed to be on 29 May) might cause weird things to happen. But it didn't seem to on that particular day.
Norway in particular can take a lot more surplus wind power from UK, and use it to save hydro water at the time. Hydro water is the most important resource for the Norwegian grid (96% hydro). Later, when wind is lower, it can use the surplus water to generate higher levels of power exports to UK. And yes the Norwegians expect to make a decent profit from all this, but it also saves UK considerably money compared with running our own gas backup.
IDAU said "The idea that wind is going to get ever cheaper is fiction. The capital cost will at best stabilise for a given installation. "
The Law of Learnings generally holds for technology such as wind power. Each doubling of installed capacity results in a fixed percentage reduction in price.
IDAU said "The evidence suggests that ever larger turbines are now less economic because of high installation costs and high maintenance costs, with large rotor diameters leading to increased stresses that shorten hub and blade life for inadequate benefit from higher hub height for minimally higher average wind speed."
Think about it for a minute. If larger turbines inevitably led to more costly wind power, the market would go for smaller turbines, and make price reductions just on increasing economies of scale. If there wasn't a financial driver to increase the size of offshore wind turbines, it just wouldn't happen. I trust the market on this, even if you don't. Yes, things like supply chain disruption because of the Ukraine invasion by Russia can disrupt long term trends like this temporarily. But mostly such stuff reverts to the mean after a while.
IDAU said "Remote location and increased curtailment and need for extra grid and stabilisation guarantee the costs paid by consumers will rise"
This is just wishful thinking from you. There are a lot of modellers out there, planning the future UK grid, and they don't see your doom mongering coming to pass. In general, they see wind power getting cheaper, not more expensive.
I have a theory about more remote locations, which you might like to comment on. This goes that the more remote the location from UK shores, the lower the fraction of nominal full output which should be provided by an expensive transmission link. The rest of the output should go into local green hydrogen production, which should be capable of taking the full output from the wind farm.
Undersea connectors are roughly 25% of the cost of offshore wind power.
The thinking is that when winds are strong, the closer in offshore wind farms can supply all UK demand. So you only need remote generation when winds are lower. But if winds are lower, you don't need to provide remote wind farms with a connector capable of transmitting maximum output to the onshore grid.
And you only need to connect up remote sites to the grid connection for a closer in farm. The remote power is only needed when wind is low, so not at the same time as the more local wind farm is generating at full capacity. So the links don't get overloaded, despite being connected to more sources of generation than they can nominally handle.
Haven't researched the cost savings yet, though. Someone should.
Except David's figures are highly inaccurate. He isn't including all the costs of gas power, and he takes costs for wind and solar from 10 years ago, instead of recent costs.
By the time you do the sums accurately (as I have in a comment), it is clearly cheaper to adopt new (but not old) wind and solar, than it is to ditch them in favour of power from gas.
And the thing missing from your "simple version" list above is that, if you do NOT go net zero, "you may lose your world" - the world as we know it.
He uses current costs for CFDs and for farms on renewables obligations (ROCs) . They are correct, as is his allocation of capacity market payments to renewables and his use of current UKA prices which are in reality a back door subsidy for renewables not on CFDs or FiTs by imposing a tariff on gas use. I suspect we will be waiting quite some time before CFDs from AR3, 4 and 6 are commenced, even if they start operating: they will take advantage of the option of higher market prices. We already know that Ørsted has cancelled Hornsea 4 from AR6 at a current price of £83/MWh, so future rounds will be rather more expensive. That is the reality of current costs. Whether we get more cancellations of projects bid at now uneconomic prices remains to be seen, but it seems likely. That is even more likely as additional capacity leads to curtailment with wind farms on low priced CFDs or market price basis first in line to curtail competing against each other for curtailment money, while all the heavily subsidised generation gets to continue to gorge on its subsidies, keeping average costs high.
I should have added that Net Zero threatens your life on a far shorter timescale than any climate apocalypse you may imagine. Provided we don't waste money on it, we would be able to afford to adapt to changes in climate such as they are.
IDAU said "He uses current costs for CFDs and for farms on renewables obligations (ROCs) ."
It is an article about the costs of net zero. The UK won't be at net zero until around 2035. The 2030 Clean Power plan simulations show 5% of supply will be from natural gas CCGT and OCGT backup.
If David is purporting to show that a UK net zero grid will be expensive, then he shouldn't be including subsidy costs expiring before 2035 (the likely net zero grid date). Expired subsidies include all but 2 years of the ROC subsidy contracts (the last ones expire in 2037). And only 848 MW of Investment Contract and Allocation Round 1 CfD offshore wind farms will still be paid subsidies after 2035 (+ a couple expire in 2035). Those 848 MW consist of 400 MW of Hornsea 1 phase 3, and the 448 MW of Nearth na Gaoithe. And the strike prices and thus subsidies are by far the biggest on these earliest CfD phases.
It is fine to allocate some sort of capacity contract payments to renewables. The T-4 (=2029) subsidy contract for 35 GW of existing (27 GW) and new (8 GW) of CCGT/OCGT plants will cost £60/kW-year, so £2.1bn/year.
But it is not fine to exclude CCGT/OCGT capital costs. And variable O&M should be included, though low. If you are going to ignore capital costs, then wind and solar power costs would be decimated.
As for carbon costs, the UK costs are artificially low, and we all know it. You can't ignore the fact that more African farmers loses their livelihood due to drought, caused by warming caused by UK burning of gas. A low UK cost of carbon doesn't mean a cost is not incurred somewhere else. Trump term one's approach of counting only warming costs directly incurred by the USA due to US fossil fuel generation is not the way the economists would do the sums.
IDAU said "I suspect we will be waiting quite some time before CFDs from AR3, 4 and 6 are commenced, even if they start operating: they will take advantage of the option of higher market prices."
Possibly. But wind power tends to self-cannibalise without CfD support. If it is windy (say wind > 40% of supply), the wholesale price is far lower than in situations of low wind (say wind > 20% of supply), yet the former is where most of the generation takes place.
But I'm not sure it matters precisely when the AR3 CfD's are commenced - the increased wind output, reduced CO2 and reduced gas costs still kick in without a CfD. I thought AR6 included some provision that you couldn't defer CfD start beyond full operation. Since AR6 included 25% rebids from AR4, presumably that would apply to AR4 too. But I confess I haven't checked whether that did apply to AR6 or is just a change for the 2025 AR7.
IDAU said "Whether we get more cancellations of projects bid at now uneconomic prices remains to be seen, but it seems likely."
There has been only the one offshore wind cancellation so far, and three sales.
AR3 is too late to cancel. Once you have been through FID, on a project it would be very tricky to cancel. But the project has back to back subcontracts signed after that, so the biggest risk would be subcontractors going bust - and the CPI inflation proofing of the CfD terms helps a lot to avoid that.
The factors causing a large increase in offshore wind cost (in 2012 constant pounds) recently, are mainly temporary. The biggest permanent change is likely to be the reintroduction of positive real interest rates (interest minus inflation), but that isn't going to push prices up that far beyond AR3 levels. Supply chains continue to mature, and materials prices (particularly steel and copper) tend to revert to the mean, after disruptions. Meanwhile, the trend to larger turbines tends to reduce a lot of costs which are primarily based on the number of turbines and interconnections.
You do not understand that when market prices go negative there is no support from CFDs for any recent or current CFD round. That means they need to charge more at other times to have sufficient revenue.
IDAU said "You do not understand that when market prices go negative there is no support from CFDs for any recent or current CFD round."
It is from AR4 onwards that the CfD projects receive no revenue when day ahead wholesale prices go negative.
The projects which can receive such subsidies when prices go negative are all contracted and known.. As the link capacity from Scotland to England increases, and as English load increases with EV charging and heat pumps, there are thus bound to be fewer and fewer times when prices will actually go negative.
The acid test is that the AR4 projects knew all about the effect of negative prices on their revenue, and still bid to record low prices at the time. And their average prices also did not increase that much on average with their 25% AR6 rebids last year either. So they obviously didn't and still don't consider that not being paid because of negative prices was a serious financial risk over the lifetime of the CfD contract.
You need to look up the square-cube law. As turbines increase in size, the power goes up as the square of blade length but the material content goes up as the cube of the blade size. So material costs go up as turbine size increases.
Specifically, in the UK estimates (all per MW of nameplate capacity), the direct turbine costs are £1.2m/MW while balance of system and installation costs are £1.1m and £1m respectively.
A lot of the cost, such as inter-array cabling and much of the installation, relates more to the number of turbines, and less to the MW capacity of the wind turbine. So there are distinct benefits to a fixed capacity project as a whole from reducing the number of turbines, even while the total cost of turbines increases.
Further, nearly 2/3rds of the turbine cost is the nacelle (£789k/£1.2m ~=2/3rds), which you would expect to be broadly proportional to the turbine nameplate capacity. Larger electric motors tend to have a lower weight/MW ratio.
The weight of towers and rotors should indeed scale as you predict, but are only 33% of the turbine cost.
But, likely of more importance than individual turbine weight and materials cost, is the economy of scale from building much bigger wind farms - in excess of 1 GW.
Note that Modvion is now making wooden turbine towers for onshore wind turbine use, working in conjunction with RWE. These are not only cheaper, stronger and lighter than steel turbine towers, but can be made in sections for easy transportation, and assembled on site to the full tower height.
Miliband wants to spend £260-290bn on his CP2030 plan. When gas prices were 120p/therm only about £7bn/yr of gas for electricity would be saved. At today's prices that saving would be only about £5bn/yr.
Only if you believe all the figures and are quite happy with climate change science denial. Then I guess maybe it’s ok. But for the majority I don’t think this is anything more than a fossil fuel rant from someone who feels fossil fuels are more and more under threat.
I am not blindly following anything Nigel. I take note of the data we receive on extreme weather and climate change that has occurred in line with the science that predicted it. The science also predicts it gets worse with more heating. You may stick your head in the sand or think this is all a conspiracy or something but the vast majority of people don’t agree with you. We have followed scientific principles and that has allowed humanity to flourish. Few people will abandon those principles just to please the fossil fuel crowd. One day you will thank people for acting as you will not be immune to the impacts of significant climate change.
If your argument is on extreme weather then you will lose it if the real data is reviewed.
Past and present data shows no significant trends that place causation on past and present climate change. In fact the net current situation is positive within the realm of weather variability….. even the biased IPCC reports that…… If you want to debate this with data lets go..
Its only on predictions(projections) based on suspect climate models where adverse conditions are reported. And some of these are better managed with focused adaption not broad-based mitigation that just wont work and will destroy our prosperity and our ability to afford any needed adaption when needed later..
What we are talking about is risk management and that calls for realistic ongoing assessments not fixed narratives that make you blind.
You also are wrong about a high level of virtuous commitment to saving the planet staying in place when prosperity suffers or it does not exist yet.
This is the problem with people like you Nigel. You are ignorant of the data. You call the IPCC biased yet the review in the IPCC report are systematic reviews of all the available data at the time. I can assure you that since the IPCC review there is even more data showing extreme heat, extreme precipitation and associated floods and increased frequency and severity of droughts in certain places around d the world. Your ignorance or denial of the evidence does not help you. It exposes that you don’t follow data but a fixed belief changing the planets climate system through AGW will have no impact or no consequences. If you really believe that review all the data yourself and submit it for publication with your own conclusions. We will already need risk management and adaptation since we are already baked in at 1.5 degrees plus with current emissions. We are likely heading towards 3 degrees C of warming. I await your review of the existing evidence and then your appraisal of atmospheric science that shows we have no cause for concern with continuing warming. Also under your proposal for business as usual and no reductions in fossil fuel use we will likely be on course for 5 degrees of warming plus. So you have some hard work ahead of you convincing any sane person that is a safe and beneficial thing to do for life on this planet.
First of all…. Its not my job to convince you of anything… If you are so grounded in your beliefs that you won’t look at both sides of the subject then it’s your loss. Many of us have, and we don’t believe that some nations are making the correct policy decisions and are going to NetZero that is unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish.
We have a climate science environment that is clearly politized and divided on the severity and policies to take, and our position is that it’s not a panic and certainly needs significant review before further policies are baked in.
What I will do is give you some sources for you to do your own research …
My Substack is full of articles as is this site Eigen Values | David Turver | Substack
Both CLINTEL and CO2 Coalition do a good job of hosting the alternative information.
Most of us use the data in the IPCC but we don’t let the policy section distort it.
I would say the book Unsettled by Steve Koonin is the best to start and he draws from the IPCC but is compelling that we don’t have an emergency…. His videos are also good.
Green jobs are mostly about wiping solar panels clean for all eternity. Or driving the diesel truck and diesel crane to fetch broken windmill blades that expel fiberglass into the environment.
The industry, led by Vestas, has been working on windmill blade material re-use. By 2030 rotors will all be recycled down into individual epoxy and reinforcement components which can be used to make new windmill rotors.
In the case of onshore wind farms, don't forget one job will be that of forester - Modvion is now making onshore wind turbine towers out of wood. It turns out that wood is stronger and lighter than steel, and can be transported in shorter sections to assemble on site. We've seen wooden construction in the lattice roof of the Canary Wharf Elizabeth line station, though that bears less of a load than a wind turbine tower.
Wind farms typically use less than 2% of the area they have to occupy, typically with wind turbine spacings of 6 or 7 rotor diameters apart. Normal farming can continue in the other 98%. The 2% includes wind turbine bases, access roads and ancillary buildings and areas, such as those containing grid connection transformers.
You can see roughly where 2% might come from. If spacings are 7 diameters apart, then one square with one turbine is 7 x 7 = 49 diameters. But the area which has to be cleared is pi x r squared = pi x D squared / 4. Pi is roughly 3.2, so that gives 0.8 x diameter squared, vs 49 x diameter squared ~= 2% (with access roads etc.
So there are precious few trees which might be cut down, even to put a wind farm in the middle of a wood. I'm not sure I care whether they go to Drax or not, but they shouldn't be made into turbine towers unless they are the right kind of tree.
If the wind turbines are in a forest, you could presumably make the towers rather taller, so the trees don't interfere with the local wind. But I've not seen many wind farms in the middle of a forest - most of them are on agricultural land.
IDAU said "There are vast areas of clearance to ensure that winds are less turbulent. What is it? 14 million trees in Scotland so far."
And how many additional trees are planted and grown in Scotland since the millennium? I'm sure you must have looked this one up, but somehow just forgot to mention it.
Roughly 30 million trees were planted in Scotland during 2023/4 (15,000 hectares) under the Forestry Grant Scheme. That's to supplement the roughly 2 billion trees in Scotland. And 166 million planted since 2,000, so 14 million trees cleared for wind farms is less than 10% of the additions made since 2,000.
So why are you so keen to present only part of the picture of Scottish forestry?
The clearances for avoiding turbulence to wind farms are not getting replanted. The planting that has occurred doesn't replace the trees burned at Drax.
Evidently you do not understand onshore wind if you believe that they will simply erect turbines in a wooded area. It must be cleared in all directions, preferably for at least a couple of miles around.
I'm agnostic on climate change but morally I believe its right that we do something about air quality in our big conurbations so contents to see ULEZ schemes as long as its supported by decent public transport alternatives.
Anyhow the biggest thing that riles me on the list is the so called Green Jobs bonanza as it won't be in UK with this mad rush to 2030. At best we get to dig the holes for the onshore cables and civil works and we can produce the blades for some models but the rest of a windfarm is sourced from other countries. Thee was a time when unions looked after the members over large scale imports but here they just stand idle and not only see no jobs but the few we still have in N.Sea O&G being destroyed in front of them.
You will see that pollution levels have declined very dramatically (even more so compared with 1970 though that data is no longer presented), and that ULEZ has in practice contributed very little to reductions and has very little scope to reduce pollution further because it is already so low from the transport sector. Much of the reduction in transport pollution was achieved by such measures as particulate filters, cat converters, improved engine design, sealed fuelling systems (preventing evaporation at petrol stations) and the replacement of older vehicles by more modern ones. The lack of availability of modern vehicles with the right specifications second hand to replace older more polluting ones is probably the biggest hindrance to further reduction. EVs don't cut that mustard. In any event, in cities we must now worry more about households driven to using wood burners by high cost energy. A lot of city pollution is also the result of construction.
ULEZ is like LTNs just part of the system of monitoring and control and taxation: it has almost no practical benefit in pollution terms.
Not contrary at all. The price of second hand EVs may have fallen sharply, but that doesn't make them cheap because they have a limited remaining battery life that will keep depreciation high until they are scrapped, making them an expensive choice for overall cost. Add in limited range and difficulties with charging (particularly for those living in cities without private driveways with parking well away from buildings) and EVs remain undesirable as purchases for private motorists - which is another reason why prices for second hand EVs have fallen. The pollution emissions from modern ICE vehicles are very low, to the point where they are really not much of a problem: there are other areas to be far more concerned about if you are worried by pollution. Emissions of water vapour and CO2 are not pollution, although both are GHGs.
Brake wear largely depends on driving style: many EV owners tend to be more aggressive drivers especially of the larger up market vehicles that have been passed out as company cars. But overall, brake particulates are probably lower for EVs.
Tyres have to be formulated to be tougher to carry the extra weight. However, that doesn't mean lower wear overall: in fact, EV tyres tend to have a lower life despite heavier construction, which actually means more particulates, not fewer. If they only had a lower weight to carry they would have less wear, albeit at a cost to the owner for the more elaborate construction.
The points I made stand, because they are based on the facts of pollution and the sectors causing it.
IDAU said [second hand EVs] "have a limited remaining battery life that will keep depreciation high until they are scrapped, making them an expensive choice for overall cost."
Yet all the publicly available information says BEV battery packs are likely to outlast the rest of the BEV, then be used for 10-15 years as stationary grid storage.
The self-registered Tesla user sites indicate Teslas are generally good for up to 300,000 miles, down to 80% of original battery capacity - all except the ill-fated P95D battery pack which degraded at twice the rate of the original model S, and got pulled pretty quickly.
CATL will guaranteed stationary CB310 LFP cells for around 7,300 full cycles, down to 66% of original capacity, when used in Powin stationary storage. For a BEV with a 300 mile range, 7,300 cycles would be 2.1 million miles. However, perhaps best regard it as only around 1 million miles down to 80% of original capacity.
And lastly, my own June 2015 Nissan Leaf Acenta (no spelling mistake) 24 kWh with a London range of around 74 miles, has lost only 1 battery bar out of 12 in precisely 10 years of life now, though I actually bought it, used, in November 2016.
IDAU said "that will keep depreciation high until they are scrapped, making them an expensive choice for overall cost."
BEV depreciation matters a great deal to leasing companies, but doesn't matter much to private motorists who own an EV. Because almost no BEV owners will go back to a fossil fuel car voluntarily. So the next change is likely to be to a BEV with a higher range.
What has happened is that new BEVs have become cheaper, which also pushes down the price of used BEVs. But the key cost of an upgrade is also coming down (for me and other BEV owners). I would like an upgrade on the Leaf, with 74 miles of range, to a BEV with a range of 200 miles or more. Three years ago that was out of the question. But now, prices (net to include selling of the Leaf) have come down enough that it is more a question of getting around to it, and agreeing with my wife on a precise model, than on the finances, which are now distinctly more favourable. The 2015 Leaf price has gone from what I paid for it in 2016 (£10,500) three years ago, to maybe £3,500 now. But the target upgrade car has come down much more than £7,000.
IDAU said "Add in limited range"
Sure, but that depends what you bought it for. My Leaf is still as good a London runabout as ever, though with quite a few scratches now.
IDAU said "difficulties with charging (particularly for those living in cities without private driveways with parking well away from buildings) "
The government stats show that around 67% of UK homes have off street parking. Drivers preferentially buy these homes, so over 70% of drivers have off street parking, on which a charger can be installed (may need some legislative changes at some point). A further 10% of drivers can (or will be able to) charge in a workplace car park. The total is 80%.
It is not so superbly convenient for the 20% who cannot charge off street at home or at work. However, conversion of lamp posts to dual chargers, plus wand-style charge points, set level into pavements, seem to be all the rage around North London.
Thanks for that link and have to stand corrected on how much reduction has been made already. Of course in hindsight I should have factored in how the various environmental regulations that have been met with solutions by road vehicle industry which go no thanks for what it has achieved albeit being pushed but nevertheless they found solutions.
China used to have a "one child" policy for many decades. It has now dropped it. It did almost nothing to reduce China's CO2 emissions.
But in 2023 and 2024, China installed more wind and solar each year than the rest of the world put together. And over 50% of Chinese car sales are now BEVs or PHEVs.
The net result is that China's all demand is peaking, and its CO2 emissions are down 1.6% in the 12 months up to end of Q2 2025.
It is early days yet, but China's example shows you can (start to) reduce CO2 by improving per capita emissions, rather than attempting to reduce the number of people.
Of course it’s a scam, based on junk science just like the climate change scam. Sadiq Khan claims his ULEZ helps to save thousands of lives a year but an official query to the ONS revealed that between 2001 and 2021 only one death had been recorded as being due to air pollution. This article explains the chicanery: https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-bogus-figures-behind-mayor-khans-emissions-drive/.
Look at the blue and red ocean heat content chart at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/ocean-heat-content-rises. It is very clear that something has changed dramatically since the 1960s, and the proven source of all this heat entering the ocean is global warming. Nor is there any sign of this being cyclic, nor any alternative theory that explains the steady rise, year on year, of ocean heat content.
It’s been years since I’ve come across anyone pushing the ludicrous myth that rising ocean heat content is due to man-made CO2 emissions. You need to take anything NOAA says on this subject with a very large pinch of salt. The US’s NOAA is in the same camp as the UK’s Met Office, totally captured and corrupted to support the globalists’ climate change hoax, as Paul Homewood has assiduously documented: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/tag/met-office/.
Not only does atmospheric CO2 not cause global warming of any consequence in the first place, any downwards longwave infrared radiation from atmospheric CO2 can only penetrate the top few micrometres of the ocean surface can, heating which is quickly lost through evaporation.
The reality which NOAA (and the Met Office) never publicly admit is that radiative warming of the oceans, as typically occurs during natural El Nino events, is due to direct shortwave irradiation from sunlight which can penetrate and heat the ocean to depths of up to 100 metres.
DB said "It’s been years since I’ve come across anyone pushing the ludicrous myth that rising ocean heat content is due to man-made CO2 emissions. "
The reason you haven't come across the mainstream science is surely that you choose not to look anywhere where your opinions would be challenged.
An article claiming that the Met Office has been subverted isn't going to cut any ice outside the climate denial fraternity. Over the past 30 or 40 years, the scientists there have expanded the use of bigger and better supercomputers and atmospheric simulation algorithms for weather forecasting, such that the weather is forecast now, around 3 or 4 times further out, with a similar accuracy to what it used to be 30 or 40 years ago. This is proven fact, and goes completely contrary to any claim that those same successful atmospheric scientists know less about climate forecasts than you or Paul Homewood do.
Let us first deal with “has been due to an increase in short wave solar radiation caused by a decrease in global low level marine cloud cover”. You would have to assume that, contrary to day-to-day experience, there would have to be precious few clouds left by now, because ocean heat content has risen steady over the past 45 years. The charts all show there is no cycle involved - a more or less straight line increase in heat content, if anything, with a slight acceleration recently.
As for heat not making it past the first few micrometres of the ocean surface, have you ever actually been on the open ocean? It has waves varying in height from 10s of cm to 10s of metres, and plenty of "white horses" to ensure mixing of the top surface layers.
Further, the implication of your "rapid evaporation" would be an equally rapid increase in the water vapour (greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere, which would contribute to further warming, before the water vapour precipitated out as more rain that before. And indeed there has been a significant increase in record flooding over the years.
JJ said in 1/ "[a decrease in low level cloud cover] is very unlikely to be a positive feedback of a far more modest theoretical increase in GHG radiative forcing due to emissions. Yet if CO2 causes an increase in atmospheric temperatures, then fewer clouds are likely to form, as higher temperatures enable water vapour to exist in gaseous form before condensing into small droplets in the liquid form in the form of clouds. In other words, this effect could provide increased amplification of the base global warming due to human burning of fossil fuels.
And in 2/ JJ claims that erosion releases different isotopes of CO2. Yet the huge annual dynamic interchange of CO2 between atmosphere and both biosphere and ocean surface, soon masks any evidence of the precise origination of higher levels of CO2 found in the atmosphere (best measured on the same day each year, to control for the huge annual dynamic exchange.
Be assured there is no escaping the climate propaganda machine, of which you are a part. However, those who actually understand some science are able to examine the claims that are made and sort the ones that have merit from those that do not.
In your case I suggest you need a course in basic meteorology that includes something on the equatorial and other formation of clouds. You might even glance at the restricted work done by CLOUD at CERN (restricted when real experiments started contradicting climate theory).
My only criticism, David, is that half the country can't read a graph, and few people go to the pub or the office armed with copies of them anyway.
We need to arm people with simple, memorable examples they can do on a beer mat. The alarmists have succeeded in getting this far on soundbites and constantly repeated mis/dis/malinformation.
I have used a couple in another reply, and all anyone needs to remember are a few well established numbers.
This is another one that only uses a few numbers wholly accepted within the alarmist community:
How long do we have left?
Based on IPCC published information, we are assured that mankind’s annual CO2 emissions influence the climate.
Assume for a moment anthropogenic (manmade) CO2 is responsible for 100% of warming, how long will it take us to induce 1.5ºC of warming?
It’s straightforward arithmetic.
1850 – total atmospheric CO2: 280ppm (parts per million) (Vostok Ice Core).
2024 – total atmospheric CO2: 420ppm. (Mauna Loa observatory).
420ppm – 280ppm = 140ppm. Divide that by the intervening 174 years (2024 - 1850) = total annual average increase of 0.81ppm CO2 to date.
We are assured mankind is responsible for 4% of total annual CO2 emissions. 0.81ppm x 4% = 0.0324ppm.
Therefore, time required for mankind’s emission to double preindustrial CO2 levels:
280ppm ÷ 0.0324ppm = 8,642 years, about the year 10665
If the world eliminated 100% of mankind’s CO2 emissions today – in the 26 years left to 2050 it would alleviate warming by 0.0045ºC. (1.5ºC ÷ 8,642 x 26 = 0.0045ºC).
Run for your lives folks, we only have 8,642 years left to live!
That's entirely ignoring the effect of the most powerful 'greenhouse' gas, water vapour which is ~96% of all greenhouse gases.
Your maths is bad because human induced CO2 emissions didn't really start taking off until the 1960s. Look at the blue and red chart of ocean heat content at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/ocean-heat-content-rises. It is very clear that something has been going on since the 1960s, to cause the oceans to heat up steadily recently. From the chart, there is no sign of a cycle, so little chance of it turning down soon.
Ocean heat content is about the best measure of global warming, because 90%+ of global warming heat ends up in the oceans, which are very deep. The atmospheric pressure is only the equivalent of 10m of water - not a few km like the average ocean depth. And the ground doesn't transmit heat downwards appreciably.
Water vapour is indeed the most potent greenhouse gas. But it is self-limiting. Too much water vapour in the atmosphere and it rain (or snows or ...0) as we all know living here. CO2 can amplify the effect of water vapour, because CO2 raises the air temperature a little at a time. The higher air temperature allows more water vapour before it precipitates out, so that gives more warming. So water vapour amplifies the warming effect of CO2, but not so much that you get runaway warming.
I like this approach and it is always good to have graphical data to support each argument. Some people are more visual while others focus on text, but a good graphic can condense much information and concretize it.
Every week at Examining ESG I post a colection of articles and make short comments, and your writing has provided me with a number of articles to reference favourably. Thank you for your insights.
Most of David's numbers are way out, unfortunately. If you do the sums properly to compare gas power with recent and future UK wind and solar costs, you soon conclude gas power is more expensive. See my comment above.
A new gas CCGT commissioned today would need a price of about £110 per MWh just to break even. It seems new wind and solar are both cheaper than this. People are misunderstanding why Orsted cancelled Hornsea 4 or purposely saying all new wind farms will need to be more expensive. Orsted got their financing badly wrong and were hit by big increases in supply chain they could have avoided. They now say supply chain costs have come down again.
Cost of building a new CCGT has soared in recent years. Not only that but there is a long waiting list to even build one. You can’t quote the price of the fuel with any accuracy as you don’t know the price of gas for the next 4 years. The cost I quote is also based on a NG CCGT running quite intermittently as it will have to fit round an ever increasing amount of renewable generation. Low utilisation rates will also drive up their costs. when they are used. See David Tokes articles for the full details of his £110 estimate. And he was being very generous.
I doubt anyone is now going to buy a new gas CCGT to operate just on generating ("merchant") revenue. The fraction of supply from gas was 26% in 2024, and will drop to as low as 5% by 2030 (or, say, 2031 if the Clean Power plan ends up late).
The NESO has to specifically contract for CCGT/OCGT capacity if it is needed. In the recent T-4 capacity auction (for 2029), the strike price was £60/kW-year, and all 27 GW of existing NESO reported gas capacity obtained contracts.
But, even if supply from gas plants gets down to 5% of total supply by 2030, 27 GW of backup up capacity is not enough into the 2030s, because new loads are coming - EV charging and heat pumps. The fraction of gas might remain at 5%, but you need the backup capacity to increase to handle increasing peak hour loads when wind and solar might not deliver much power.
And no one is going to build a gas plant on the promise of just one year's (2029) capacity payment of £60/kW. The capital cost would be around £750/kW, so the project would need at least a 15 year capacity contract at £60/kW-year. The estimated requirement is 35 GW of gas plants in the 2030s, which means 8 GW of new plants. But even so, the total capacity payment would be only £2.1bn per year.
Oh I agree except some of ours are aging and may need replacing. For the low utilisation rates are OGTs better for ramping up and down?
I quoted the price as the fossil fuel guys will clearly need to build new ones for how they would plan to run the grid to meet the peak demand of the future. Unless of course they plan to ban EVs heat pumps etc.
You completely fail to acknowledge that there will be very large costs from all the supporting infrastructure for the net zero dream, not to mention the effects of rapidly rising curtailment that we won't be able to afford to store (which would in any case simply be another huge cost).
The contracts are already in place for grid reliability services (without active gas) going forward - inertia, various durations of frequency response, short circuit current, reactive power).
The rest of the supporting infrastructure is mainly:-
- grid batteries (/PSH = pumped hydro storage) for the shorter duration gaps in wind and solar of less than a day. The bids in the December 2024 PowerChina auction for BESS capacity averaged $66/kWh. UK likely needs 8 hours of average load of batteries/PSH. At 35 GW average load 280 GWh would cost only $19bn = £15bn, which is one third of the estimated capital cost of HPC new nuclear, for enough storage to storage 87 hours of its output
- CCGT/OCGT plants to fill in the longer gaps. The estimate is 35 GW is required for the 2030s, and the recent T-4 capacity contract was for £60/kW-year. So 35 GW will cost £2.1bn a year in capacity contracts. The new 8 GW will require capacity contracts for 15 years or so, or wouldn't be profitable to get built. At some point it all converts to green hydrogen fuel, so you need enough electrolysers to produce this At 5% backup on, say a 40 GW average load grid, with a 45% power to hydrogen to power efficiency, this would need an average electrolyser load of 4.5 GW. Assuming 55% load factor (the expected capacity factor of new offshore wind), you thus need 8 GW of electrolyser capacity, at an expected price of $320/kW. That is $2.6bn or £2bn capital costs, plus the extra offshore wind to drive them.
- new transmission lines - primarily from Scotland to England, most of which will end up a undersea links.
Within England there is already a grid with decent coverage, with bits requiring reconductoring to meet additional demand or offshore feeds, which is a lot cheaper than new lines.
The National Grid estimate is for £54bn of capital spend to support the 2030 Clean Power plan (presumably over the next 5 years). Likely this will be depreciated over 50 years. If you assume 2% real interest rates, and inflation of 2%, the costs start at around £3bn/year (£2bn interest + £1bn depreciation = capital repayment) and reduce to £1bn/year (just depreciation) in 2025 pounds by the end of the 50 years, or you can spread them a little more evenly.
National Grid also expect this expenditure on transmission lines to generate some savings compare to now (e.g. reduced wind curtailment, some lower line losses?)
Conclusions
If you add up all these UK capital and annual costs, and compare them to the £8bn per year currently spent on power from natural gas, you can see you have to go well into the details to see whether the Clean Power grid will save consumers money or not. There is no obvious financial show stopper in any of these costs.
My calculations are only back of the envelope, but aren't going to be an order of magnitude out.
On Storage
There seems to be around 7 GW of Scottish pumped hydro schemes with 1.5 GW Coire Glass, 1.8 GW for each of Fearna and Earba, 2 GW for Glen Earrach (Ear ache?) up for approval at the moment. If accompanied by some grid battery storage in England, these would provide considerable relief from having to build the full transmission line capacity from Scotland to England. They would allow operation of these lines at close to 100% load factor, while mainly eliminating curtailment. Hopefully the government will take an optimal set of decisions on lines + pumped hydro to minimise consumer costs, rather than treating them as (un-optimised) individual decisions.
For The contracts read ☆Some contracts. A lot more will be needed. Try reading the Royal Society study to understand storage needs, rather than your fantasy numbers. Plant that normally is built on a 30-40 year life is not going to be content with being paid for less than half that with a threat of closure. Offshore wind does not have a level capacity factor, so your calculations even given your optimistic assumptions are bunk.
IDAU said "Plant that normally is built on a 30-40 year life is not going to be content with being paid for less than half that with a threat of closure."
Why should they close after 15 years? Most of the capital costs will be paid off by then, so it will be time to make the profits, as costs will drop considerably.
Incidentally, it now looks like some Danish offshore wind farms already over 20 years old have just been given a lifetime extension of another 10 years from 25 up to 35 years, without repowering.
IDAU said "Offshore wind does not have a level capacity factor, so your calculations even given your optimistic assumptions are bunk."
New offshore wind farms are likely to have at least 55% capacity factors. The fact this isn't level isn't key to the calculation. I assume 20% overgeneration covers both losses (such as the power to green hydrogen and back to power, efficiency 45%) and "unusable" power (within the scenario), which uses only 8% of the overgeneration of 20% (batteries are another 2%). So there is already an allowance for the variability of offshore wind built in, including the fact it is like buses - either you don't have enough or you have far too many, but rarely just the right quantity.
IDAU said "For The contracts read ☆Some contracts. A lot more will be needed."
You are trying to mix up grid stability functions with grid energy provision.
The NESO has been working on projects and contracts for 5 years on the ability to run the stable and reliable grid with no active gas WHEN UK POWER DEMAND CAN BE MET WITHOUT ACTIVE GAS (as the requirement is easier to solve when enough gas is active). That is probably the situation the ill-prepared Spanish grid was in - no one at all is claiming there was too little wind and solar power available.
The Royal Society says it is discussing grid energy provision, not grid stability support functions. That means it is discussing the times when UK power demand can't be met just with wind, solar and nuclear. The way they put it is "there will be times when wind and solar cannot meet all demand, and large-scale storage will be needed. " Inertia and frequency response are only mentioned peripherally in the RS document. It doesn't even mention short circuit current, reactive power and black start capability.
IDAU said "Try reading the Royal Society study to understand storage needs, rather than your fantasy numbers."
The Royal Society documents is a reasonable first approximation of what I'm saying, which is generally based on the Texas ERCOT grid. However, I'm pushing 20% overgeneration of wind and solar (700 TWh/year) as likely to be optimal, while the RS has only case of <600, and 800 TWh. Further they don't have enough grid batteries to get close to the optimum, such as 15 GW which they describe as only for grid stability, duration not obvious in my skimming. I would go for something like 35-40 GW of 8 hour batteries = 280 to 320 GW.
And the net of all this is that the RS solution requires far more than optimal long-duration storage, and a whopping ~70 GW of electrolysers to produce hydrogen, not to mention far larger numbers of salt caverns than seems likely. My figures are more like 14 GW of electrolysers - which is enough to produce hydrogen to cover 5% of a 70 GW average demand (= 3.5 GW) for backup up.
When doing simulations, there is a distinct sweet spot in specifying overgeneration, before which the grid looks flaky, and after which it behaves far more robustly, in terms of backup requirements. The RS seems to be on the wrong side of this sweet spot. You can tell it doesn't correspond to NESO and DESNZ modelling because the latter are talking about 5% of supply from backup from natural gas CCGT/OCGT, and the RS are way above this. So they are out on a limb.
You are the one getting mixed up. RS are not out on a limb. I did similar calculations several years previously using the same 37 year data and unsurprisingly reached similar conclusions. The ones who are out of step are the net zero supporters with their choice of narrow time horizons and goldilocks weather and other assumptions rather than looking at what is necessary to cover more difficult circumstances.
Good to see, but your article is still an admission that anthropogenically released CO2 drives climate change.
The current concentration of CO2 is a little over 0.04%, a trace gas. Plant die off occurs at 0.02%. Notice how no one ever gives the ideal figure for CO2 concentrations, but given that 0.04% is allegedly too much, and 0.02% too little, it must be around 0.03%.
Does anyone really think that we can hit that sweet spot with such a complex system as the Earth’s climate?
Oh by the way, of that 0.04%, humans contribute 3%, and of that 3%, Britain contributes 1%. You do the math.
Humans are responsible for the whole of the atmospheric CO2 increase to 420 ppm, from the pre-industrial 280 ppm.
Don't get confused by the rapid annual interchange of CO2 between atmosphere, and biosphere + oceans.
During spring and summer, plants grow, the biosphere absorbs CO2, and atmospheric levels decrease. During autumn and winter the plants dies, releasing CO2, and atmospheric levels increase.
Although these seasonal changes swamp human additions, they are cyclic. That is, if you measure CO2 on the same date each year, over a few years, the increase is all due to humans.
Further, only half of CO2 increases caused by human burning of fossil fuels, stays in the atmosphere. Over a few years, the other half is absorbed by the biosphere and ocean surface (but only taken down to ocean depths very slowly). By quantity, the half of human emissions which stays in the atmosphere does so for at least hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Because of the huge annual dynamic interchange, the molecules of CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels are rapidly absorbed, but they are always replaced by other molecules by the same day the next year. That is why CO2 rises steadily over time.
C3 plants (95% of all plant life), flourishes around 1,000ppm – 1,200ppm.
The only observable effect increased atmospheric CO2 has on the planet is to stimulate plant growth by about 7% over 35 years of satellite observations. Another 7% is attributed to mankind's agricultural activities. (NASA)
CO2 = 0.04ppm of the earth’s atmosphere.
Mankind contributes around 3% = 0.0012ppm
The UK contributes around 0.9% of that 3% = 0.0000108ppm
If you're going to "do the math" kindly complete the equations.
DR said "CO2 = 0.04ppm of the earth’s atmosphere."
Your units are way out. "ppm" stands for "parts per million". In this unit, atmospheric CO2 is 420 ppm now, up from 280 ppm in pre-industrial times. So humans have added 140 ppm.
If you want to translate it into fractions, 420 ppm is 0.00042 of the earth's atmosphere, or 0.0042%. But ppm is a much better unit, because you don't have to be accurately counting zeroes after the decimal point all the time.
DR said "The UK contributes around 0.9% [of annual human-induced CO2 emissions]
This is true. But UK is also responsible for more than 4% of cumulative historical CO2 emissions, and thus for more than 4% of the 140 ppm rise in CO2 so far (so at least 6 ppm rise). And UK is thus also responsible for more than 4% of the current 1.2 to 1.6 deg C temperature rise so far. By contrast, China, with 20x the people, is responsible for around 15% of the current rise. The USA is at 25%, and China may not now catch up with the USA, especially with Trump in charge.
So UK has an oversized moral responsibility for what has happened so far. That should at least lead to us trying harder than nations who are responsible only for lower warming on a per capita basis.
No idea where you get the idea that the 4% you claim the UK has added to the atmosphere is still hanging around as no one has a clue what the half life of CO2 in the atmosphere is. Plenty of guesses from the likes of the crackpot site skepticalscience but none of it supportable.
Your concept of "moral responsibility" ignores that the UK was principal to industrialisation of the world, improving life expectancy by more than 40 years in most cases, increasing crop yields, developing medicines and elevating mankind from grinding poverty in a couple of hundred years.
I'm pleased to see that in your 'ineffective' section you also touched upon 'unnecessary' by showing the Greenland temperature chart. My summary of Net Zero For Dummies would be 'Unsafe, Ineffective and Unnecessary'. The unnecessary argument takes us into the realms of 'climate science denial' - which the UN and EU want to criminalise. But they would have to criminalise people spreading 'misinformation' about actual science and real, empirical data. Two recent examples spring to mind:
1/ Published science and CERES data demonstrates conclusively that most or all of the increase in global mean surface temperature since 2000 (and probably since the early 1980s) has been due to an increase in short wave solar radiation caused by a decrease in global low level marine cloud cover. We don't know for sure what has caused that decline in cloud cover, but it is very unlikely to be a positive feedback of a far more modest theoretical increase in GHG radiative forcing due to emissions.
2/ A study published very recently brings into question the 'irrefutable atmospheric fingerprint' of man-made CO2 argument, based on measuring the fraction of allegedly fossil fuel derived carbon vs. natural (biome derived) carbon in the atmosphere. It found that 50% of 'old' carbon in the atmosphere may in fact be emitted from river systems as they erode their way through old carbon deposits and rocks. Which is interesting because the study points out that a large fraction of this old carbon comes from upland areas, where rivers cut their way through older exposed geological layers. So I checked; it just so happens that in recent decades, there has been a significant increase in upstream river flows, but not so much downstream, which is also linked to the observed increase in recent notable flooding events in mountainous regions.
The UN and EU would like to throw me in prison for citing these facts. The UN and EU are totalitarian science denying organisations.
How much longer do these tyrants with no valid mandates think the can keep getting away with their constant lying and cheating and oppressing? They are literally getting away with murder. As Abraham Lincoln said over 150 years ago
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
They would call you a “conspiracy theorist” for uttering a truth that goes against the orthodoxy of their carefully crafted narrative based on lies, deceptions and cherry-picked junk science but the obvious reality is that they themselves are the conspirators and the enemies of the people. The simple proof of this is that their efforts to cancel, censor and even jail (e.g. Reiner Fuellmich, Tommy Robinson, Lucy Connolly) anyone who dissents from the narrative are so obviously coordinated. For examples, search X for Biden “as sharp as a tack” or Covid “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
Agreed, Organ harvesting will no doubt become an even more important factor in the removal of Infanticide as a crime. Or perhaps as long as no link is discovered between depression and organ quality, being depressive may become another Capital Offence along with "Being new/about to be born but Inconvenient" or "Old and Rich with rapacious relatives." Still, I suppose we should look on the bright side, Murder and Islamists murdering young girls are still not Capital Offences, we wouldn't want to kill an innocent person would we?
IF those who demanded these Bills are so righteous, perhaps they lack the courage of assisting a suicide then having their motives tested by an investigation and possibly in a court of Law? That is the case now, their loved ones will have already died so why should they fear having their motives investigated? As for full term abortions ....
"This can only work if everyone else reduces their emissions to zero too."
Actually, it won't even work, then. CO2 has no effect on climates; however, climates have an effect on CO2, the most notable of which is that warmer sea-surfaces will cause oceans to release CO2, in accordance with Henry's Gas Law.
It works both ways. More CO2 drives warming. And more warming (e.g. caused by earth's orbital changes) drives more CO2. At the moment, atmospheric CO2 emissions are rising due to human burning of fossil fuels, and that is driving warming. Particularly ocean heat content (see https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/ocean-heat-content-rises)
China is busting a gut to reduce CO2 emissions, but starting from a really bad place with ~60% of power generation from coal.
But in 2023 and 2024 China installed more wind and solar than the rest of the world put together. And Chinese BEV+PHEV sales have been over 50% for the last 9 months, with the notable exception of January 2025 for some reason.
It is early days yet, but it looks like the Chinese wind and solar installs have contributed to China reducing its CO2 emissions by 1.6% between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025. China may possibly have peaked CO2, and also may have peaked its oil demand, depending on how BEV+PHEV sales go from here on forwards.
IDAU said "Alternatively the Chinese economy is suffering contraction."
Difficult to know for sure. Certainly the property sector is still not doing well.
What we do know for sure is that, according to the most recent CEF document on the Chinese grid, January to April 2025 vs Jan-Apr 2024, Chinese grid demand was up 3.8%, while coal and thermal generation were down 3.6% (to end on 60%), with wind output up 16% (to 13%) and solar up 43% (to 11%). Other fuel types output changes made much smaller differences. See the CEF Monthly-China-Energy-Update-May-2025-2 PDF file.
The point is that, even had the Chinese grid had its typical 5.5% expansion in demand (another 1.7%), coal generation in China would still have been down from a year previously.
China may or may not yet have peaked grid coal use by implementing huge quantities of wind, and particularly solar, but it looks more likely than not, at this point.
The amount of denial of established science in the original post and some of these crazed responses is sad. They will never win their arguments with this approach. They need to accept reality and come up with alternative and cheaper ways to decarbonise our energy system if they don’t like what is actually happening the world over.
"More CO2 drives warming." Does it? Can you show the the verifiable evidence for this? While CO2 has (purportedly) been rising steadily at about 2ppm per year, temperatures have been up and down like a [fill with your own witty analogy, here].
Burn all our FF, in the interim development and invent the next generation energy system, whatever that may be (humans are quite clever!). Killing our economy and our lives at the alter of climate alarmism is absolutely stupid. But what do you expect when zealots and fanatics control energy, instead of experts? another great article David keep up the great work.
David's numbers are wrong - UK recent wind and solar prices in the CfD Register are lower than the costs of UK gas generation (David has left out capital costs and underestimated the true social cost of carbon). Effectively, by installing wind and solar you get the CO2 reductions for free.
This is an unapologetically angry essay-type comment on climate change/Net Zero and other Uniparty political tyrannies that I prepared earlier.
The climate change hoaxers on this side of the pond are going to become even more discredited when President Trump and his MAGA team have finished eviscerating the climate change hoax in the USA. Their failed ‘Chicken Licken’ climate fearmongering has become wearisome and people are sick and tired of having every spell of bad (or warm) weather unscientifically hyped as supposed “proof” of impending Thermageddon. Their pseudo-scientific, intelligence-insulting climate change narrative is actually very easy to debunk, as I have done myself. My post was published over a year ago and I’ve never yet had anyone rebut any of it: https://metatron.substack.com/p/debunking-the-climate-change-hoax.
Quite apart from the scientific fraud of alleged but actually negligible man-made CO2 global warming, the engineering fantasy of their Net Zero supposed “solution” is doomed to failure because they are going about it using ill-advised, totally inappropriate weather-dependent technologies which are fundamentally incompatible with how the grid was designed to operate and in any case they lack the necessary money, manpower and materials according to Emeritus Professor Michael Kelly: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/06/19/net-zero-is-an-engineering-fantasy-michael-kelly/.
Professor Kelly and others have been saying this for many years but the corrupt establishment blanked them all out. The establishment, epitomised by then-Price Charles and the birdbrained climate media (e.g. George Monbiot) succumbed to the hubris of believing that they were omnipotent, especially when they acquired the support of so many world institutions (hint: there’s a malign ulterior motive behind it all), and thought they could push through their climate change/Net Zero fantasy against all reality.
The UK general public is now starting to realise that all they get from Net Zero is ever-rising ruinously-expensive energy bills, deindustrialisation and the ruination of entire industries (steel, chemicals, oil and gas exploration, cars, …) with very few of the promised pie-in-the-sky “green” jobs, falling living standards, coercion of doubtful legality to adopt unwanted, expensive and climatically-pointless heat pumps and EVs and the worsening probability that rolling blackouts and even prolonged and deadly nationwide blackouts like the recent outage in Spain could happen at any time: https://watt-logic.com/2025/06/18/should-neso-be-allowed-to-lower-its-minimum-inertia-requirement/.
Fortunately, the UN IPCC inadvertently shot themselves in the foot and condemned their precious climate change agenda to irrelevance when, in desperation at the lack of “climate progress”, they published their infamous 1.5 degrees special report in 2018 calling for impossibly large reductions in global CO2 emissions in an impossibly short timescale. I called it out at the time. Any rationalist could see that these targets were utterly impossible. For example, Professor Roger Pielke Jr calculated that Net Zero CO2 emissions by 2050 would require building a new nuclear power station every day: https://iowaclimate.org/2019/10/02/net-zero-carbon-dioxide-emissions-by-2050-requires-a-new-nuclear-power-plant-every-day/.
It was only a matter of time. Net Zero fantasy is finally crashing against engineering reality and the chickens are coming home to roost. The establishment is panicking, with the unelected, unaccountable UN calling for the criminalisation of what these lying propagandists deem to be “climate misinformation”, such as justifiably asserting that the recent Spanish power outage was due to the excessive deployment of inertia-less renewables which, unlike dispatchable rotational generators such as conventional gas, lack the inbuilt capability to defend against sudden grid perturbances: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/06/20/un-calls-for-climate-misinformation-to-be-criminalised/.
I will never forgive the UK Lab/Con/Lib Dem/SNP Uniparty politicians for foisting their climate change/Net Zero tyranny on us to wreck our energy infrastructure and economy and despoil our landscapes and seascape with pointless ineffective so-called renewables, against all honest scientific and engineering advice. They are even using their junk pseudo-science as a pretext to attack our farmers and food supplies. All their short lifespan, environmentally-unfriendly wind and solar farms will soon be junk and will have to be scrapped but the scars of their massive concrete and steel foundations (https://tinyurl.com/s83aayed) and the landfills full of unrecyclable wind turbine blades (https://tinyurl.com/52yy56m4) and toxic solar panels will probably remain forever.
It’s not just the current Labour Uniparty incumbents to blame for the mess we are in although they probably take the prize for mindless fanaticism and irresponsible spaffing of countless £billions of taxpayer money on climate malinvestments. The Conservatives have pushed climate change and Net Zero for many years and although they have changed their tune recently to the extent of saying “No Net Zero by 2050”, whatever that means, they can’t bring themselves to defy their Davos/WEF/UN/Big Money/Club of Rome/et al globalist overlords by committing to scrap Net Zero.
The Lib Dems are very dangerous climate fanatics. Earlier this year all 72 Lib Dem MPs supported the dystopian Climate and Nature Bill which if enacted and implemented would have taken the country back to the dark ages: https://metatron.substack.com/p/climate-change-and-the-corruption.
The SNP are moronically dangerous on climate change/Net Zero. They even delude themselves that they can reach Net Zero by 2045 (vs. the UK’s infeasible 2050) despite energy policy being a reserved issue for devolved Scotland! Many independent scientists have proved that methane is quite harmless as a greenhouse gas yet the SNP climate change minister is so worried about methane from landfill sites that she is going to use 100 lorries a day to transport Scottish waste to England. Just like that, this SNP muppet thinks she has solved her imagined methane problem! https://www.gbnews.com/news/snp-tonnes-rubbish-england-uk.
The climate-obsessed SNP have also announced a new set of impossibly-onerous yet pointless CO2 emission reduction targets which will never be achieved short of forcing the country almost to a standstill (climate lockdowns coming?), e.g. a 57% reduction in emissions (i.e. in consumption of essential fossil fuels) over the next five years: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056gv2q9q5o.
These Uniparty globalists showed their true colours through their coldly-preplanned, globally-coordinated Covid “plandemic” which is still being waged, with the NHS telling people to get the latest Covid booster jab against the pretend dangerous virus while ordinary people can see that friends, relations and acquaintances all around are succumbing to abnormally high rates of turbo cancer (https://tinyurl.com/4a8kxff3), heart disease, strokes, failed pregnancies (https://tinyurl.com/496pn8we) and other health horrors, not to mention sudden or premature death. All just coincidences of course (not): https://biologyphenom.substack.com/p/newnrs-vital-events-q4-data-2024.
They only thing that might persuade me to forgive the Uniparty for their Covid crimes against humanity is if they confess all, finger and convict the guilty globalist ringleaders and make a grovelling apology. That’s never going to happen so the best we can do is to sweep them all away.
The only non-globalist UK party with a fighting chance of gaining power is Reform UK. They may not be perfect but at least they have committed to scrapping Net Zero.
Apologies to David for perhaps overstepping the mark with such a long and angry comment. It was prompted by learning a few days ago that someone I was close to has died from an aggressive form of cancer, two years after her mother also died from an aggressive cancer (usually referred to as turbo cancer by oncologist Professor Angus Dalgleish). That and the realisation from the Spanish power outage and insights gained from the likes of David and Kathryn Porter that our grid system is an even worse state of vulnerability to collapse than I had previously thought.
The UK grid is not near collapse. Kathryn was dramatically overstating it. There was over 3 GW of reserve on 8th January, with the biggest possible failing component being a 1.4 GW interconnector.
The UK NESO has been working for 5 years to ensure grid reliability services such as inertia (etc. etc.) can be delivered without any active gas generation whatsoever. My guess is we will see the first day without gas either December 2025 or January 2026.
At first the NESO will take it gently, with only short periods - it has some organisational learning of how to use the balancing market to reliably deliver power with no active gas. But by 2030 this will be the normal mode of operations of the UK grid, as gas will be only around 5% of supply.
2.6GW of that "reserve" was not capable of fast start, as her detailed examination of BM data revealed. It is not reserve if you have to wait up to 4 hours for it.
The Spanish discovered that 90 minutes isn't reserve either, when they realised they needed more CCGT to help with voltage control and power oscillation damping, but only instructed it 7 minutes before the grid collapsed.
Kathryn didn't have the detailed figures she thought she was entitled to (but which are confidential so she was never going to get them), so she was only promoting FUD, not making a provable claim. You have to remember that she gets most of her consultancy business from those heavily involved in fossil fuels in one way or another.
Her investigation was subsequent to NESO's comment and entailed checking on the status of each plant. She concluded that 2.6GW couldn't have ramped up in time.
I see now that you have infected this thread with, so far, 13 comments of climate alarmist propaganda and nonsense. You are a troll, probably paid by some globalist outfit, otherwise in need of therapy.
I have my own reference web site on green energy, which you might care to peruse, if you wish to sample information with plenty of reference links, and not conforming to your current opinions. See https://greenenergytransition.info/wp/. It needs further development, but is fairly solid on the basics.
And I can assure you that no one pays me to do anything. I have both a state and a personal pension, plus savings and investments, so can do whatever is most important in my opinion (music comes first, and green energy related matters a close second). That was after obtaining a PhD in physics from Imperial College immediately after retirement (subject "Energy storage at perovskite interfaces).
It is interesting that you see debate here as "infection". Are you concerned that the beliefs of "true believers" might be put at risk?
Douglas, your efforts would be better directed at refuting the arguments of contributors whose views you disagree with, rather than insulting them with ad hominem remarks. Please be more polite.
There isn’t a reader on this thread who agrees with his lies and nonsense. If you scan through all 13 of his comments you will see that he has not gained a single Like.
Be very wary of anything that uses fear as a motivator.
David, your statement that "The UK represents only about 0.8% of global emissions" is very far from accurate. Could you please correct this, taking account not only of extra-territorial emissions, but also of cumulative emissions that reflect the long-term effect of CO2 released into the atmosphere? Could you also comment on what the result would be if all nations with relatively small annual emissions were to adopt the attitude that, individually, their actions cannot possibly make any difference?
This point that the UK doesn’t need to act because it only emits 0.8% of current emissions is clearly a tactic of the anti renewables crowd. If every country with around 1% did the same the. The world would never even get close to net zero. Every country, big and small emitters has a role. Rich countries like the UK have to be one of the leaders and help others by showing how it can be done. Luckily that is what appears to be happening although of course it could be even better. If David thinks the world is going to revert back to fossil fuels and stop electrifying heat and transport then he’s very much mistaken and fighting a losing battle.
The point is that the most effective action the UK could take even in the terms of assuming the alarmist view of the importance of CO2 emissions would be to assist countries where there is plenty of low hanging fruit to cut emissions. Money is wasted achieving very marginal reductions in the UK. Spending inside the UK would be far better reserved for adaptation, especially as the climate forecasts are very uncertain with threats of severe cooling on the one hand and modest temperature increases on the other.
Further reducing Uk emissions isn’t going to stop anyone else reducing theirs. Everyone needs to do it and faster. UK can show how it’s done. We still have a long way to go in domestic heating and industrial heat.
As for alarmists I presume you mean normal educated people who are aware of the harms of extreme heat and its consequences. Quite strange language you use to try and deflect away from reality. Physics always wins in the end whatever you say.
Coal, oil and gas consumption are at record highs.
We're demonstrating to the rest of the world that Net Zero is a fool's errand.
David as you know growth in fossil fuels has slowed dramatically and with countries like China going EV oil demand is set to peak very soon. Gas demand is also falling in many major markets and most countries are now either reducing reliance on coal or have actual plans to do so. It’s fantasy to think fossil fuels demand is going to keep growing in a rapidly changing energy world. The share of the world primary energy from electricity has taken an uptick in recent years. That will accelerate and I’m being very generous quoting primary energy when two thirds of fossil primary energy is wasted due to inefficiency. Electrification will reduce that share pretty quickly once electrification of domestic and industrial heat takes hold to join transport.
Sorry, no I won't correct it, because it's true. The latest data from The Global Carbon Budget shows the UK emitted ~305mt CO2 in 2023 out of a total of 37,614mt, or 0.8%.
Since 1850, the UK has emitted 4.2% of the global total. But they're are effectively a sunk cost, there's nothing we can do about the past.
https://globalcarbonbudget.org/gcb-2024/#:~:text=Carbon%20Atlas-,Datasets,-Global%20Carbon%20Budget
After your tiresome reply to one of my comments, I’ll reply on this to save David the trouble.
The 0.8% figure doesn’t need a correction. National emissions from all countries are just that and don’t include the foreign emissions of imported goods. Uniparty politicians exploit this convention to pretend they have done a great job by reducing national emissions when all they have done is to ship jobs and emissions abroad, ignoring the foreign emissions of the substitute imports.
As most honest scientists are agreed that CO2 emissions have at most only minimal impact on global climate, I’ll skip on the rest of your comment.
Douglas, I'll go someway towards your position. As consumers of imported products we should take responsibility for the consequences of our actions, but that responsibility should sensibly be shared with the manufacturers of those products who clearly benefit from our actions. I guess the same argument should apply to the upstream emissions from imported oil and gas, and from the imported wood pellets burned at Drax power station that, when extra-territorial upstream emissions are taken into account, emit more CO2 per MWh of electricity generated than a coal-fired power station.
I'm not given to the notion that anthropogenic climate change is settled science, but neither am I of the view that there's a conspiracy of dishonest scientists. Engineers are often obliged to make decision based on uncertain and/or incomplete knowledge. The best we can do is to make judgements on the balance of risks and benefits between alternative options, i.e., by applying the precautionary principle. My own engineering discipline is concerned with the design of buildings. In this it's not only that buildings account for around 40% of global energy demand, it's that their purpose is, in part, to provide shelter from the adverse effects of climate, and that they are intended to have a useful life that extends into a very uncertain future.
On balance, I'm more persuaded by the argument that anthropogenic climate change is occurring than counter arguments. I'm not aware of any other hypothesis that would readily account for the loss of glacial ice or rising deep ocean temperatures.
The question isn't really whether the climate is changing, or indeed the cause. The real question is what do we do about it?
I contend that the Net Zero cure is worse than the Climate Change disease, and a far better strategy is adaptation.
Have you got any evidence that net zero is worse than adapting?
What value do you put on our polar regions and Alpine environments that so many people enjoy for its beauty and leisure opportunities and their huge range of associated biodiversity.
Id be very interested for you to describe how a world with several meters of sea level rise and loss of many beautiful natural environments and associated biodiversity is worth losing to continue burning fossil fuels rather than cleaning up our energy system.
Billions of people having to endure extreme heat each summer and damage from extreme rainfall seems to be a process worth paying to you. I have to say I think this view will be a tiny minority of people with very strong vested interests in fossil fuels.
I gave a whole presentation about it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/net-zero-cure-worse-than-climate-change-disease?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I have just read it. It doesn’t answer a single one of my questions but just says deaths from natural disasters have decreased over time.
Well I would really have hoped that would be the case with far better communication and warning of extreme climatic events. However as you may know this trend is now likely in reverse given the increases we are seeing in extreme events such as heat and precipitation. The European heatwave of 2022 was associated with over 6OK excess premature deaths and over 250 people died in flash flooding in Valencia only last year. This despite our weather forecasting and communication. You will need to do better than your article promoting fossil fuels and nuclear to convince me and many others continually heating the planet is a better outcome than stopping AGW continuously heating the planet.
Anyone with 2 brain cells would know that 'NET ZERO' is an utterly insane off the charts idiocy, an absolute mathematical, physical, statistical and practical impossibility that can never be achieved or exist in reality!
Electricity has to come from somewhere, and the only reliable sources are coal, oil and gas (nukes don't cut it, the radioactive waste is too poisonous).
The 'CLIMATE CHAOS' fraud is the excuse and propaganda misdirection justifying attacks on farming and food, concealing a profoundly inimical globalist genocidal enslavement scheme.
Do you want to live in the squalor and drudgery and misery of the pre-industrial age? HELL NO!
HANDS OFF MY GAS STOVE! I LOVE MY GAS STOVE! Ever try to cook on an electric stove - absolute nightmare!
Can't say this often enough! CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN EVEN WORSE FRAUD THAN THE PLANSCAMDEMIC! SO-CALLED GREEN TECH IS A GIGANTIC SCAM! MINING AND MANUFACTURING 'GREEN' PRODUCTS NEEDS COAL, GAS AND OIL AND MINING RARE MINERALS IS MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY TOXIC AND DESTRUCTIVE THAN LEGACY PRODUCTS. SCREW YOUR DAMNED GREEN GRIFT AGENDA! climateviewer.com
All life everywhere is being assaulted by THE TECHNOCRATIC OMNIWAR! RESIST! DO NOT CONSENT TO ALL THINGS DIGITAL, 'SMART', AI, 5G, NO CASH - ALL OF IT! dhughes.substack.com Technocrat ruling class psychos get a sadistic thrill from their powers over life and death and hurting all who stand in their way and they need the resources worldwide to build their digital total slavery control grids (herd survivors into 15 minute city digital prisons)!
AI is designed to be anti-human/anti-life programmed by technocrat control freak psychos - garbage in = garbage out. Everyone got along just fine without all these absurd and downright satanic electronic gadgets that did not exist until recently. NOBODY NEEDS THIS AI CRAP!
It's always since the dawn of history, been about using knowledge for power and control by the psycho portion of the human population that learned how to manipulate 'normies' to obey them in their power-mad power trips.
In these modern times, this evil has become TECHNOCRACY, the vilest threat to the existence of all life on earth since forever!
EW! GROSS! HELL NO! technocracy.news
They can stick their f*cking damned NANO, Digital IDs, AI, jabs and chips up their asses where the sun don't shine!
CREATIVITY! ARTISTRY! IMAGINATION! SPIRITUALITY! HUMOR! LOVING KINDNESS! These are the best ways to fight THEM!
I also have a landline, a wired laptop and a wired monitor screen, and I never had or will have those infernal mobile devices designed to enslave you. I also use cash as much as possible, no cash is TOTAL SLAVERY.
How to fight back against this TOTAL SLAVERY!
RESIST! DO NOT COMPLY! DITCH THE DAMNED 'SMART' PHONES AND THE DAMNED QR CODES AND GO BACK TO LANDLINES OR FLIP PHONES AND USE CASH AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! INSIST ON CASH! CBDC IS TOTAL SLAVERY!
It is heartbreaking to witness the holocausts happening and so many fellow citizens are brainwashed/bamboozled by the propaganda media, they are oblivious!
MISTAKES WERE NOT MADE! THEY can't get rid of the 'useless eaters' fast enough!
Peddling pure poison! Folks have to wake up to reality: health comes from organic diet, daily exercise and clean living and never from a needle or a pill except in dire, rare traumatic injuries.
It was NEVER about health! The Powers That Should Not Be were ALWAYS about they want you DEAD or a SLAVE! This is a painful truth to accept but we the people must wake up and fight back! And toxic injections/pills were/are a huge part of their arsenal!
This horrifying Gates, Governor 'Gruesome Newscum', 'Lone Scum', Soros, 'Benedict' Biden and Harris and even Trump, Vance, and 'Ramaswampy' et al are blatant fully owned and operated puppets of their globalist technocrat parasite masters same as other numerous 'PUBLIC SERPENTS' infesting by design from above, the bureaucratic apparatus.
Can't say this often enough! The Military/Industrial Complex and the Biowarfare/industrial Complex, WEF agenda and the evils assaulting humanity are from one and the same source - it is the 99% against the diabolical GREED of the 0.01% who should not be in charge of anything!
The monsters in human skin suits who rule the world get a sadistic vampiric thrill and boost from perpetrating the vilest most demonic crimes against the most vulnerable (babies and small children) and then corrupting the system to get away with it scot free! We the People must stop them, there are a lot more of us than them!
Please check out this substack! ponerology.substack.com
JAB INJURIES: GROSS CALAMARI BLOOD CLOTS/AUTISM TSUNAMI/SADS/TURBO CANCER/BIZARRE TERMINAL ILLNESSES: More tragic victims of the ruling parasite genocidal enslavement agenda, sacrificed on the altar of psychopathic greed and hatred of humanity.
And BIG pHARMa is an arsenal making permanently sickly addicted slaves dependent on their products - the complete opposite of actual health.
Can't say this often enough!
SCREW THE HYPOCHONDRIA GERMAPHOBIC FEAR HYSTERIA! DO NOT CONSENT! Avian flu is for the birds! RESIST!
KEEP FIGHTING! All the perps who pushed this greatest crime against humanity, all the way down to the local level, must get their comeuppances!
Proudly ANTI-VAXX! Reiterating for the sake of newbies and to support this post.
Ban all vaccine jabs! There has never been a 'safe and effective' vaccine since Edward Jenner's fraud over 200 years ago as per 'Dissolving Illusions' by Suzanne Humphries and 'Turtles All the Way Down' by Anonymous. Health can never come from a needle or pills, but from healthy eating, healthy exercise and healthy living! virustruth.net
Divide and rule! Agents provocateurs anyone, FALSE FLAGS, propaganda social engineering psyops? Keeping us proles at each others' throats while the globalist technocrat predators laugh all the way to the BIS and The Bank of Rothschild's!
BURN BACK BETTER!
PSYCHOPATHS! MEGALOMANIACS!
Bless and thank you for doing what you do.
As usual, David has a lot of his numbers very wrong, for no obvious reason.
By the time you correct them it turns out that recent wind and solar power costs are a lot lower than the full costs of gas generation.
Gas Generation Costs
Fuel
David correctly gets current TTF European gas fuel costs of £61/MWh..
Carbon
The UK carbon price is a lot lower than anyone else's estimates, based purely on market forces.
Take the US pre-Trump EPA estimated social cost of carbon of $180/tonne or the current EU ETS scheme price of €73/tonne. At 1.3 USD/GBP and 1.17 EUR/GBP, plus 400 kg CO2/MWh for gas generation, this works out at £55/MWh or £25/MWh respectively.
Capital cost (David doesn't include this)
The NESO T-4 capacity contract costs, including for the 27 GW of existing gas plants, is £60/kW-year. 2024 UK gas plant load factor was 30%, or 2,628 hours per year. So the capital cost adds £23/MWh.
Variable O&M (David doesn't include this)
But it is only £2/MWh
Total is £141 or £111/MWh, depending on the real cost of CO2 to global society.
Recent CfD costs for renewables, from https://register.lowcarboncontracts.uk/, are all in Q2 2025 pounds. I'm picking the highest price project where there are different install years with different pricesd.
Offshore wind
CfD AR3 projects are installing and going live, at £56/MWh
CfD AR4 projects were allowed to rebid 25% of capacity in AR6. 75% of AR4 cost + 25% of AR6 (AR4 rebid) cost is £56.
CfD new AR6 projects are £85/MWh
David's CfD cost (not including add ons for balancing etc) is £158/MWh which is two or three times too high - and better equates to bids 10 years ago rather than recent and future projects.
Onshore wind
AR4 - £56/MWh
AR5 - £76/MWh
AR6 - £74/MWh
David's raw onshore wind cost figure is £117/MWh. Again he is 50-100% too high compared to recent and near future projects.
Solar
AR4 - £66/MWh
AR5 - £67/MWh
AR6 - £72/MWh
David's raw solar cost is £77/MWh - a small overestimate
So, once you look at recent or future costs, and more correctly cost gas generation, you soon conclude that wind and solar power is much better value than power from gas. You basically get the carbon emissions reductions and the cost of balancing etc. thrown in for free.
I used the UK Government cost of carbon for the carbon price and assumed 350g/kWh for a modern plant.
The CfD prices are the weighted average strike price for active CfDs for April 2025.
If and when the others come online, the weighted average will update.
You are writing an article about net zero, but are displaying subsidy costs which mostly won't be paid out any more, at the point UK gets to a net zero grid.
The 2030 Clean Power plan will keep 5% of UK electricity supply as backup from natural gas. So it isn't net zero. To get to net zero needs an additional step - such as the replacement of natural gas for backup by green hydrogen. This isn't likely to be complete until around 2035.
ROC subsidies were payable only until 2037, when the scheme ends. So only the tail end of the installs will still be receiving ROC subsidies by implementation in 2035 of a UK net zero grid. Two years later ROC subsidies will all be in the past, once the scheme closes.
The situation is even more stark for the CfD wind contracts, because the operational subsidy term is only for 15 years. After that, they either get the wholesale price (complete with self-cannibalisation), or have to sign PPA's directly with users.
The Investments Contract and Allocation Round 1 CfD contracts were signed in 2014 and 2015, so most became operational in or before 2020. These are the really expensive CfD contracts.
But by a 2035 net zero UK grid only the 400 MW Hornsea 1 phase 3 and the 440 MW Neart na Gaoithe offshore wind farms will be the only project still paid subsidies. out of many GW of Investment Contract and Allocation Round 1 CfD projects.
Surely you aren't claiming that early offshore wind projects which will no longer be paid subsidies at are still going to push up electricity costs in 2035 for the UK net zero grid, are you?
The evidence of Miliband's deal with Drax is that he will pay higher subsidies to keep old renewables going. He is actively trying to design a repowering regime, but it really won't help as the old kit will have to be ripped out or left to rot at considerable cost. Since it looks as though AR7 is going to be another big step up in price over AR6, and as more capacity is added the earnings of new wind and solar farms get eroded by curtailment, so the prices they need to break even go higher and higher, plus we are having to put in serious grid investment instead of piggybacking on the existing grid and planning to opt for extremely expensive ways of backing up when Dunkelflaute occurs there is only one way for cost to go, and that is up, especially since the cost of new wind farms is rising.
IDAU said "it looks as though AR7 is going to be another big step up in price over AR6"
And your evidence for this is?
IDAU said "as more capacity is added the earnings of new wind and solar farms get eroded by curtailment"
This is not likely to be true.
It is only generation supported by CfD or ROC subsidy that can actually afford to bid negative. But not from CfD AR4 onwards, where the projects do not get paid at all when there is negative day-ahead prices.
Negative pricing typically happens because of grid constraints from Scotland to England and Wales.
As English demand from EV charging and heat pumps increases, and transmission capacity from Scotland to England increases, there will be many fewer times when the existing CfD projects up to AR3 will be able to force day ahead wholesale prices negative. So the AR4++ projects will have increasingly fewer periods of no revenue because day ahead prices are negative.
Yes, some AR4++ projects won't be selected by the NESO to generate at times of low positive day ahead prices - but they still get paid their CfD contract strike price when curtailed in this situation.
So your supposed wind and solar risk doesn't look like a significant one to me, and likely to reduce over time because of the planned capacity increases between Scotland and England.
IDAU said "the cost of new wind farms is rising."
It has risen, but there's no evidence it will continue to rise. Further, technical and supply chain advances have always meant the long term cost trend is downwards, not upwards. This is also what the "law of learnings" says - for each doubling of installed capacity, the cost of a technology will come down by a similar, fixed percentage.
Anyway, we will know soon, when the AR7 auctions are concluded.
You keep your head in the sand. Hornsea 4 has been cancelled as unprofitable. Walney extension is threatened with early closure due to prospective wind theft. Several firms have announced plans to scale back wind investment in the UK because it is unprofitable and threatened by zonal pricing and REMA.
It is quite inevitable that as more capacity is added we will see rising curtailment, and quite evident that you haven't thought about what happens on windy and/or sunny days. I've done detailed hour by hour calculations. Here's a chart summarising some of them, showing duration curves for wind surpluses that could be expected for various levels of wind capacity
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/nZM72/1/
You are completely forgetting that negative prices are often driven by interconnectors, particularly for solar surpluses at the moment, but also at times for wind. We have to bribe other countries to take our surplus wind at negatife prices - something that is not sustainable when it comes to public attention. The alternative is curtailment and zero revenue. You also forget that we have a reverse merit order system for renewables whereby the costliest always get to generate unless physically impossible. Plus we have ambition for costly floating offshore wind, and even the seabed options are more remote and therefore more costly.
The idea that wind is going to get ever cheaper is fiction. The capital cost will at best stabilise for a given installation. The evidence suggests that ever larger turbines are now less economic because of high installation costs and high maintenance costs, with large rotor diameters leading to increased stresses that shorten hub and blade life for inadequate benefit from higher hub height for minimally higher average wind speed. Remote location and increased curtailment and need for extra grid and stabilisation guarantee the costs paid by consumers will rise
IDAU said "You keep your head in the sand. "
I keep abreast with virtually all of the most recent developments in green energy, particularly for UK.
IDAU said "Walney extension is threatened with early closure due to prospective wind theft."
That would make no financial sense - once the capital spend has been made, the fuel costs are zero and the running costs are about 1/4 of the typical CfD strike price. The reduction in output from nearby wind farms (not with the same owner) would be a few percent. So you would run the offshore wind farm until maintenance and operations costs start to exceed revenue - but that is a long long way off.
IDAU said "Several firms have announced plans to scale back wind investment in the UK because it is unprofitable and threatened by zonal pricing and REMA."
No one knows precisely what REMA will turn out to be. And if some firms cannot do offshore wind profitably, there are definitely others who can.
IDAU said "It is quite inevitable that as more capacity is added we will see rising curtailment, and quite evident that you haven't thought about what happens on windy and/or sunny days."
Your chart says "assumes current demand". But 100% EVs on the roads will ultimately increase demand by 40%, most of which will be highly flexible smart charging. A BEV with a 300 mile range and a 30 mile daily round trip has a week or more of flexibility in when to charge. So it can mostly take wind power as and when it is available (yes you do need a decent capacity of CCGT back up for this load, but it doesn't get invoked much).
I've modelled the Texas ERCOT grid. Roughly you end up with 20-25% overgeneration of annual wind and solar power output than adds up to the annual demand total. Around 8% of this goes into the overhead for green hydrogen production. Simulations showed 6% of backup supply. At 45% round trip efficiency this takes 8% of the over-generation. Grid battery (8 hours of average load) losses take another 2%. The additional 10% I assumed would be curtailed, but can also be used for BEV smart charging and exports (Texas doesn't do exports). The UK grid is not that dissimilar, judging from other groups modelling it, though I've not yet done my own model.
I'm pretty sure negative prices are not primarily driven by interconnectors. The higher the level of connectivity of a set of grids, the more efficient the supply will be, and this will mean fewer (rather than more) times of negative prices. In the UK most wind curtailment (and likely negative prices) is caused by transmission constraints.
Have a look at a couple of high wind and solar days (with very low daytime gas) as examples.
15th April 2024 at https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2024-04-15&&_k=z6ny4i. Click on the arrow to expand interconnector traffic, and note that interconnectors were actively importing at both times of positive (high or low) and negative UK wholesale price. The wind power is too steady all day - the picture smacks of Scotland to England transmission constraints (slowly being relieved) holding back Scottish wind power.
29th May 2025 at https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2025-05-29&&_k=ggjd3o is more what I would expect - when prices go negative, the imports drop off. Of course they get booked 24 hours ahead, so a wind mis-forecast (such as there was supposed to be on 29 May) might cause weird things to happen. But it didn't seem to on that particular day.
Norway in particular can take a lot more surplus wind power from UK, and use it to save hydro water at the time. Hydro water is the most important resource for the Norwegian grid (96% hydro). Later, when wind is lower, it can use the surplus water to generate higher levels of power exports to UK. And yes the Norwegians expect to make a decent profit from all this, but it also saves UK considerably money compared with running our own gas backup.
IDAU said "The idea that wind is going to get ever cheaper is fiction. The capital cost will at best stabilise for a given installation. "
The Law of Learnings generally holds for technology such as wind power. Each doubling of installed capacity results in a fixed percentage reduction in price.
IDAU said "The evidence suggests that ever larger turbines are now less economic because of high installation costs and high maintenance costs, with large rotor diameters leading to increased stresses that shorten hub and blade life for inadequate benefit from higher hub height for minimally higher average wind speed."
Think about it for a minute. If larger turbines inevitably led to more costly wind power, the market would go for smaller turbines, and make price reductions just on increasing economies of scale. If there wasn't a financial driver to increase the size of offshore wind turbines, it just wouldn't happen. I trust the market on this, even if you don't. Yes, things like supply chain disruption because of the Ukraine invasion by Russia can disrupt long term trends like this temporarily. But mostly such stuff reverts to the mean after a while.
IDAU said "Remote location and increased curtailment and need for extra grid and stabilisation guarantee the costs paid by consumers will rise"
This is just wishful thinking from you. There are a lot of modellers out there, planning the future UK grid, and they don't see your doom mongering coming to pass. In general, they see wind power getting cheaper, not more expensive.
I have a theory about more remote locations, which you might like to comment on. This goes that the more remote the location from UK shores, the lower the fraction of nominal full output which should be provided by an expensive transmission link. The rest of the output should go into local green hydrogen production, which should be capable of taking the full output from the wind farm.
Undersea connectors are roughly 25% of the cost of offshore wind power.
The thinking is that when winds are strong, the closer in offshore wind farms can supply all UK demand. So you only need remote generation when winds are lower. But if winds are lower, you don't need to provide remote wind farms with a connector capable of transmitting maximum output to the onshore grid.
And you only need to connect up remote sites to the grid connection for a closer in farm. The remote power is only needed when wind is low, so not at the same time as the more local wind farm is generating at full capacity. So the links don't get overloaded, despite being connected to more sources of generation than they can nominally handle.
Haven't researched the cost savings yet, though. Someone should.
I think he is or at least that’s what he wants people to think.
My simple version:
You will be poor
You will be cold
You will be hungry
You may lose your car
You may lose your job
You may lose your home
Net zero - infeasible and unaffordable.
Except David's figures are highly inaccurate. He isn't including all the costs of gas power, and he takes costs for wind and solar from 10 years ago, instead of recent costs.
By the time you do the sums accurately (as I have in a comment), it is clearly cheaper to adopt new (but not old) wind and solar, than it is to ditch them in favour of power from gas.
And the thing missing from your "simple version" list above is that, if you do NOT go net zero, "you may lose your world" - the world as we know it.
He uses current costs for CFDs and for farms on renewables obligations (ROCs) . They are correct, as is his allocation of capacity market payments to renewables and his use of current UKA prices which are in reality a back door subsidy for renewables not on CFDs or FiTs by imposing a tariff on gas use. I suspect we will be waiting quite some time before CFDs from AR3, 4 and 6 are commenced, even if they start operating: they will take advantage of the option of higher market prices. We already know that Ørsted has cancelled Hornsea 4 from AR6 at a current price of £83/MWh, so future rounds will be rather more expensive. That is the reality of current costs. Whether we get more cancellations of projects bid at now uneconomic prices remains to be seen, but it seems likely. That is even more likely as additional capacity leads to curtailment with wind farms on low priced CFDs or market price basis first in line to curtail competing against each other for curtailment money, while all the heavily subsidised generation gets to continue to gorge on its subsidies, keeping average costs high.
I should have added that Net Zero threatens your life on a far shorter timescale than any climate apocalypse you may imagine. Provided we don't waste money on it, we would be able to afford to adapt to changes in climate such as they are.
IDAU said "He uses current costs for CFDs and for farms on renewables obligations (ROCs) ."
It is an article about the costs of net zero. The UK won't be at net zero until around 2035. The 2030 Clean Power plan simulations show 5% of supply will be from natural gas CCGT and OCGT backup.
If David is purporting to show that a UK net zero grid will be expensive, then he shouldn't be including subsidy costs expiring before 2035 (the likely net zero grid date). Expired subsidies include all but 2 years of the ROC subsidy contracts (the last ones expire in 2037). And only 848 MW of Investment Contract and Allocation Round 1 CfD offshore wind farms will still be paid subsidies after 2035 (+ a couple expire in 2035). Those 848 MW consist of 400 MW of Hornsea 1 phase 3, and the 448 MW of Nearth na Gaoithe. And the strike prices and thus subsidies are by far the biggest on these earliest CfD phases.
It is fine to allocate some sort of capacity contract payments to renewables. The T-4 (=2029) subsidy contract for 35 GW of existing (27 GW) and new (8 GW) of CCGT/OCGT plants will cost £60/kW-year, so £2.1bn/year.
But it is not fine to exclude CCGT/OCGT capital costs. And variable O&M should be included, though low. If you are going to ignore capital costs, then wind and solar power costs would be decimated.
As for carbon costs, the UK costs are artificially low, and we all know it. You can't ignore the fact that more African farmers loses their livelihood due to drought, caused by warming caused by UK burning of gas. A low UK cost of carbon doesn't mean a cost is not incurred somewhere else. Trump term one's approach of counting only warming costs directly incurred by the USA due to US fossil fuel generation is not the way the economists would do the sums.
IDAU said "I suspect we will be waiting quite some time before CFDs from AR3, 4 and 6 are commenced, even if they start operating: they will take advantage of the option of higher market prices."
Possibly. But wind power tends to self-cannibalise without CfD support. If it is windy (say wind > 40% of supply), the wholesale price is far lower than in situations of low wind (say wind > 20% of supply), yet the former is where most of the generation takes place.
But I'm not sure it matters precisely when the AR3 CfD's are commenced - the increased wind output, reduced CO2 and reduced gas costs still kick in without a CfD. I thought AR6 included some provision that you couldn't defer CfD start beyond full operation. Since AR6 included 25% rebids from AR4, presumably that would apply to AR4 too. But I confess I haven't checked whether that did apply to AR6 or is just a change for the 2025 AR7.
IDAU said "Whether we get more cancellations of projects bid at now uneconomic prices remains to be seen, but it seems likely."
There has been only the one offshore wind cancellation so far, and three sales.
AR3 is too late to cancel. Once you have been through FID, on a project it would be very tricky to cancel. But the project has back to back subcontracts signed after that, so the biggest risk would be subcontractors going bust - and the CPI inflation proofing of the CfD terms helps a lot to avoid that.
The factors causing a large increase in offshore wind cost (in 2012 constant pounds) recently, are mainly temporary. The biggest permanent change is likely to be the reintroduction of positive real interest rates (interest minus inflation), but that isn't going to push prices up that far beyond AR3 levels. Supply chains continue to mature, and materials prices (particularly steel and copper) tend to revert to the mean, after disruptions. Meanwhile, the trend to larger turbines tends to reduce a lot of costs which are primarily based on the number of turbines and interconnections.
You do not understand that when market prices go negative there is no support from CFDs for any recent or current CFD round. That means they need to charge more at other times to have sufficient revenue.
IDAU said "You do not understand that when market prices go negative there is no support from CFDs for any recent or current CFD round."
It is from AR4 onwards that the CfD projects receive no revenue when day ahead wholesale prices go negative.
The projects which can receive such subsidies when prices go negative are all contracted and known.. As the link capacity from Scotland to England increases, and as English load increases with EV charging and heat pumps, there are thus bound to be fewer and fewer times when prices will actually go negative.
The acid test is that the AR4 projects knew all about the effect of negative prices on their revenue, and still bid to record low prices at the time. And their average prices also did not increase that much on average with their 25% AR6 rebids last year either. So they obviously didn't and still don't consider that not being paid because of negative prices was a serious financial risk over the lifetime of the CfD contract.
Vestas turbine prices are still rising.
You need to look up the square-cube law. As turbines increase in size, the power goes up as the square of blade length but the material content goes up as the cube of the blade size. So material costs go up as turbine size increases.
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/eroei-eroi-of-onshore-offshore-wind-power?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Yes, turbine materials costs do go up faster than the power increases, at least for traditional designs.
But turbine costs are only a fraction of project costs. See https://guidetoanoffshorewindfarm.com/wind-farm-costs/.
Specifically, in the UK estimates (all per MW of nameplate capacity), the direct turbine costs are £1.2m/MW while balance of system and installation costs are £1.1m and £1m respectively.
A lot of the cost, such as inter-array cabling and much of the installation, relates more to the number of turbines, and less to the MW capacity of the wind turbine. So there are distinct benefits to a fixed capacity project as a whole from reducing the number of turbines, even while the total cost of turbines increases.
Further, nearly 2/3rds of the turbine cost is the nacelle (£789k/£1.2m ~=2/3rds), which you would expect to be broadly proportional to the turbine nameplate capacity. Larger electric motors tend to have a lower weight/MW ratio.
The weight of towers and rotors should indeed scale as you predict, but are only 33% of the turbine cost.
But, likely of more importance than individual turbine weight and materials cost, is the economy of scale from building much bigger wind farms - in excess of 1 GW.
Note that Modvion is now making wooden turbine towers for onshore wind turbine use, working in conjunction with RWE. These are not only cheaper, stronger and lighter than steel turbine towers, but can be made in sections for easy transportation, and assembled on site to the full tower height.
Miliband wants to spend £260-290bn on his CP2030 plan. When gas prices were 120p/therm only about £7bn/yr of gas for electricity would be saved. At today's prices that saving would be only about £5bn/yr.
Retail prices are only going up under Net Zero.
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/miliband-cheaper-electricity-claims-do-not-add-up?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
bloody brilliant :-)
Only if you believe all the figures and are quite happy with climate change science denial. Then I guess maybe it’s ok. But for the majority I don’t think this is anything more than a fossil fuel rant from someone who feels fossil fuels are more and more under threat.
The only real threat is from people like you that blindly follow a crisis narrative with solutions that will do far more harm than good.
I am not blindly following anything Nigel. I take note of the data we receive on extreme weather and climate change that has occurred in line with the science that predicted it. The science also predicts it gets worse with more heating. You may stick your head in the sand or think this is all a conspiracy or something but the vast majority of people don’t agree with you. We have followed scientific principles and that has allowed humanity to flourish. Few people will abandon those principles just to please the fossil fuel crowd. One day you will thank people for acting as you will not be immune to the impacts of significant climate change.
If your argument is on extreme weather then you will lose it if the real data is reviewed.
Past and present data shows no significant trends that place causation on past and present climate change. In fact the net current situation is positive within the realm of weather variability….. even the biased IPCC reports that…… If you want to debate this with data lets go..
Its only on predictions(projections) based on suspect climate models where adverse conditions are reported. And some of these are better managed with focused adaption not broad-based mitigation that just wont work and will destroy our prosperity and our ability to afford any needed adaption when needed later..
What we are talking about is risk management and that calls for realistic ongoing assessments not fixed narratives that make you blind.
You also are wrong about a high level of virtuous commitment to saving the planet staying in place when prosperity suffers or it does not exist yet.
This is the problem with people like you Nigel. You are ignorant of the data. You call the IPCC biased yet the review in the IPCC report are systematic reviews of all the available data at the time. I can assure you that since the IPCC review there is even more data showing extreme heat, extreme precipitation and associated floods and increased frequency and severity of droughts in certain places around d the world. Your ignorance or denial of the evidence does not help you. It exposes that you don’t follow data but a fixed belief changing the planets climate system through AGW will have no impact or no consequences. If you really believe that review all the data yourself and submit it for publication with your own conclusions. We will already need risk management and adaptation since we are already baked in at 1.5 degrees plus with current emissions. We are likely heading towards 3 degrees C of warming. I await your review of the existing evidence and then your appraisal of atmospheric science that shows we have no cause for concern with continuing warming. Also under your proposal for business as usual and no reductions in fossil fuel use we will likely be on course for 5 degrees of warming plus. So you have some hard work ahead of you convincing any sane person that is a safe and beneficial thing to do for life on this planet.
Over to you to make your case.
First of all…. Its not my job to convince you of anything… If you are so grounded in your beliefs that you won’t look at both sides of the subject then it’s your loss. Many of us have, and we don’t believe that some nations are making the correct policy decisions and are going to NetZero that is unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish.
We have a climate science environment that is clearly politized and divided on the severity and policies to take, and our position is that it’s not a panic and certainly needs significant review before further policies are baked in.
What I will do is give you some sources for you to do your own research …
My Substack is full of articles as is this site Eigen Values | David Turver | Substack
Here is my summary of the situation…
The Climate Change Stand-off. - by Nigel Southway
https://nigelsouthway.substack.com/p/the-climate-change-stand-off
Both CLINTEL and CO2 Coalition do a good job of hosting the alternative information.
Most of us use the data in the IPCC but we don’t let the policy section distort it.
I would say the book Unsettled by Steve Koonin is the best to start and he draws from the IPCC but is compelling that we don’t have an emergency…. His videos are also good.
Watch The Climate The Movie - The Cold Truth - 4K https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Ut3cjENZg&t=72s
Stop treating the subject as a religion and stop bad mouthing those that have a different perspective based on the facts they have collected.
The science and the policies are far from settled.. get over it!
Try reading the detail from the IPCC, not the propaganda SPM, and you'll find it is you who hasn't got a grip on the data.
Green jobs are mostly about wiping solar panels clean for all eternity. Or driving the diesel truck and diesel crane to fetch broken windmill blades that expel fiberglass into the environment.
The industry, led by Vestas, has been working on windmill blade material re-use. By 2030 rotors will all be recycled down into individual epoxy and reinforcement components which can be used to make new windmill rotors.
In the case of onshore wind farms, don't forget one job will be that of forester - Modvion is now making onshore wind turbine towers out of wood. It turns out that wood is stronger and lighter than steel, and can be transported in shorter sections to assemble on site. We've seen wooden construction in the lattice roof of the Canary Wharf Elizabeth line station, though that bears less of a load than a wind turbine tower.
So I suppose the trees they chop down in Wales and Scotland to make way for winc farms will now go to build them? Or will they get burned at Drax?
Wind farms typically use less than 2% of the area they have to occupy, typically with wind turbine spacings of 6 or 7 rotor diameters apart. Normal farming can continue in the other 98%. The 2% includes wind turbine bases, access roads and ancillary buildings and areas, such as those containing grid connection transformers.
You can see roughly where 2% might come from. If spacings are 7 diameters apart, then one square with one turbine is 7 x 7 = 49 diameters. But the area which has to be cleared is pi x r squared = pi x D squared / 4. Pi is roughly 3.2, so that gives 0.8 x diameter squared, vs 49 x diameter squared ~= 2% (with access roads etc.
So there are precious few trees which might be cut down, even to put a wind farm in the middle of a wood. I'm not sure I care whether they go to Drax or not, but they shouldn't be made into turbine towers unless they are the right kind of tree.
If the wind turbines are in a forest, you could presumably make the towers rather taller, so the trees don't interfere with the local wind. But I've not seen many wind farms in the middle of a forest - most of them are on agricultural land.
There are vast areas of clearance to ensure that winds are less turbulent. What is it? 14 million trees in Scotland so far.
IDAU said "There are vast areas of clearance to ensure that winds are less turbulent. What is it? 14 million trees in Scotland so far."
And how many additional trees are planted and grown in Scotland since the millennium? I'm sure you must have looked this one up, but somehow just forgot to mention it.
Roughly 30 million trees were planted in Scotland during 2023/4 (15,000 hectares) under the Forestry Grant Scheme. That's to supplement the roughly 2 billion trees in Scotland. And 166 million planted since 2,000, so 14 million trees cleared for wind farms is less than 10% of the additions made since 2,000.
So why are you so keen to present only part of the picture of Scottish forestry?
The clearances for avoiding turbulence to wind farms are not getting replanted. The planting that has occurred doesn't replace the trees burned at Drax.
Evidently you do not understand onshore wind if you believe that they will simply erect turbines in a wooded area. It must be cleared in all directions, preferably for at least a couple of miles around.
I'm agnostic on climate change but morally I believe its right that we do something about air quality in our big conurbations so contents to see ULEZ schemes as long as its supported by decent public transport alternatives.
Anyhow the biggest thing that riles me on the list is the so called Green Jobs bonanza as it won't be in UK with this mad rush to 2030. At best we get to dig the holes for the onshore cables and civil works and we can produce the blades for some models but the rest of a windfarm is sourced from other countries. Thee was a time when unions looked after the members over large scale imports but here they just stand idle and not only see no jobs but the few we still have in N.Sea O&G being destroyed in front of them.
Why are you agnostic on climate change? Can you explain how much warming there needs to be before you change your opinion?
Just so you can invent some like the other alarmists?
No I wonder how much warming you think we and other life can all tolerate before it’s going to have serious impacts.
If you don’t know simply say. If you have a figure in mind let us know and why you think that will be a safe limit.
I can recommend you review the data here for the major pollutants:
https://naei.energysecurity.gov.uk/air-pollutants
You will see that pollution levels have declined very dramatically (even more so compared with 1970 though that data is no longer presented), and that ULEZ has in practice contributed very little to reductions and has very little scope to reduce pollution further because it is already so low from the transport sector. Much of the reduction in transport pollution was achieved by such measures as particulate filters, cat converters, improved engine design, sealed fuelling systems (preventing evaporation at petrol stations) and the replacement of older vehicles by more modern ones. The lack of availability of modern vehicles with the right specifications second hand to replace older more polluting ones is probably the biggest hindrance to further reduction. EVs don't cut that mustard. In any event, in cities we must now worry more about households driven to using wood burners by high cost energy. A lot of city pollution is also the result of construction.
ULEZ is like LTNs just part of the system of monitoring and control and taxation: it has almost no practical benefit in pollution terms.
On the contrary, EVs have zero tail pipe emissions, and second hand EVs are now getting pretty cheap.
EV brake pads are expected to last the life of the vehicle because of regenerative motor braking. So brake pad emissions are minimal.
Purpose made EV tyres have lower wear than standard tyres fitted to fossil fuel cars, so lower particulate emissions.
Not contrary at all. The price of second hand EVs may have fallen sharply, but that doesn't make them cheap because they have a limited remaining battery life that will keep depreciation high until they are scrapped, making them an expensive choice for overall cost. Add in limited range and difficulties with charging (particularly for those living in cities without private driveways with parking well away from buildings) and EVs remain undesirable as purchases for private motorists - which is another reason why prices for second hand EVs have fallen. The pollution emissions from modern ICE vehicles are very low, to the point where they are really not much of a problem: there are other areas to be far more concerned about if you are worried by pollution. Emissions of water vapour and CO2 are not pollution, although both are GHGs.
Brake wear largely depends on driving style: many EV owners tend to be more aggressive drivers especially of the larger up market vehicles that have been passed out as company cars. But overall, brake particulates are probably lower for EVs.
Tyres have to be formulated to be tougher to carry the extra weight. However, that doesn't mean lower wear overall: in fact, EV tyres tend to have a lower life despite heavier construction, which actually means more particulates, not fewer. If they only had a lower weight to carry they would have less wear, albeit at a cost to the owner for the more elaborate construction.
The points I made stand, because they are based on the facts of pollution and the sectors causing it.
IDAU said [second hand EVs] "have a limited remaining battery life that will keep depreciation high until they are scrapped, making them an expensive choice for overall cost."
Yet all the publicly available information says BEV battery packs are likely to outlast the rest of the BEV, then be used for 10-15 years as stationary grid storage.
The self-registered Tesla user sites indicate Teslas are generally good for up to 300,000 miles, down to 80% of original battery capacity - all except the ill-fated P95D battery pack which degraded at twice the rate of the original model S, and got pulled pretty quickly.
CATL will guaranteed stationary CB310 LFP cells for around 7,300 full cycles, down to 66% of original capacity, when used in Powin stationary storage. For a BEV with a 300 mile range, 7,300 cycles would be 2.1 million miles. However, perhaps best regard it as only around 1 million miles down to 80% of original capacity.
And lastly, my own June 2015 Nissan Leaf Acenta (no spelling mistake) 24 kWh with a London range of around 74 miles, has lost only 1 battery bar out of 12 in precisely 10 years of life now, though I actually bought it, used, in November 2016.
IDAU said "that will keep depreciation high until they are scrapped, making them an expensive choice for overall cost."
BEV depreciation matters a great deal to leasing companies, but doesn't matter much to private motorists who own an EV. Because almost no BEV owners will go back to a fossil fuel car voluntarily. So the next change is likely to be to a BEV with a higher range.
What has happened is that new BEVs have become cheaper, which also pushes down the price of used BEVs. But the key cost of an upgrade is also coming down (for me and other BEV owners). I would like an upgrade on the Leaf, with 74 miles of range, to a BEV with a range of 200 miles or more. Three years ago that was out of the question. But now, prices (net to include selling of the Leaf) have come down enough that it is more a question of getting around to it, and agreeing with my wife on a precise model, than on the finances, which are now distinctly more favourable. The 2015 Leaf price has gone from what I paid for it in 2016 (£10,500) three years ago, to maybe £3,500 now. But the target upgrade car has come down much more than £7,000.
IDAU said "Add in limited range"
Sure, but that depends what you bought it for. My Leaf is still as good a London runabout as ever, though with quite a few scratches now.
IDAU said "difficulties with charging (particularly for those living in cities without private driveways with parking well away from buildings) "
The government stats show that around 67% of UK homes have off street parking. Drivers preferentially buy these homes, so over 70% of drivers have off street parking, on which a charger can be installed (may need some legislative changes at some point). A further 10% of drivers can (or will be able to) charge in a workplace car park. The total is 80%.
It is not so superbly convenient for the 20% who cannot charge off street at home or at work. However, conversion of lamp posts to dual chargers, plus wand-style charge points, set level into pavements, seem to be all the rage around North London.
Thanks for that link and have to stand corrected on how much reduction has been made already. Of course in hindsight I should have factored in how the various environmental regulations that have been met with solutions by road vehicle industry which go no thanks for what it has achieved albeit being pushed but nevertheless they found solutions.
It's all a scam. Call it for our good when it's true aim is depopulation then monies for the elite. Agenda 2030, WEF, UN, WHO and the others.
China used to have a "one child" policy for many decades. It has now dropped it. It did almost nothing to reduce China's CO2 emissions.
But in 2023 and 2024, China installed more wind and solar each year than the rest of the world put together. And over 50% of Chinese car sales are now BEVs or PHEVs.
The net result is that China's all demand is peaking, and its CO2 emissions are down 1.6% in the 12 months up to end of Q2 2025.
It is early days yet, but China's example shows you can (start to) reduce CO2 by improving per capita emissions, rather than attempting to reduce the number of people.
Of course it’s a scam, based on junk science just like the climate change scam. Sadiq Khan claims his ULEZ helps to save thousands of lives a year but an official query to the ONS revealed that between 2001 and 2021 only one death had been recorded as being due to air pollution. This article explains the chicanery: https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-bogus-figures-behind-mayor-khans-emissions-drive/.
Look at the blue and red ocean heat content chart at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/ocean-heat-content-rises. It is very clear that something has changed dramatically since the 1960s, and the proven source of all this heat entering the ocean is global warming. Nor is there any sign of this being cyclic, nor any alternative theory that explains the steady rise, year on year, of ocean heat content.
It’s been years since I’ve come across anyone pushing the ludicrous myth that rising ocean heat content is due to man-made CO2 emissions. You need to take anything NOAA says on this subject with a very large pinch of salt. The US’s NOAA is in the same camp as the UK’s Met Office, totally captured and corrupted to support the globalists’ climate change hoax, as Paul Homewood has assiduously documented: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/tag/met-office/.
Not only does atmospheric CO2 not cause global warming of any consequence in the first place, any downwards longwave infrared radiation from atmospheric CO2 can only penetrate the top few micrometres of the ocean surface can, heating which is quickly lost through evaporation.
The reality which NOAA (and the Met Office) never publicly admit is that radiative warming of the oceans, as typically occurs during natural El Nino events, is due to direct shortwave irradiation from sunlight which can penetrate and heat the ocean to depths of up to 100 metres.
See also the comment on this thread from my colleague Jaime Jessop explaining how most if not all recent global warming, and that includes the oceans, “has been due to an increase in short wave solar radiation caused by a decrease in global low level marine cloud cover”: https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/net-zero-for-dummies?r=8t7a0&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=128210330.
DB said "It’s been years since I’ve come across anyone pushing the ludicrous myth that rising ocean heat content is due to man-made CO2 emissions. "
The reason you haven't come across the mainstream science is surely that you choose not to look anywhere where your opinions would be challenged.
An article claiming that the Met Office has been subverted isn't going to cut any ice outside the climate denial fraternity. Over the past 30 or 40 years, the scientists there have expanded the use of bigger and better supercomputers and atmospheric simulation algorithms for weather forecasting, such that the weather is forecast now, around 3 or 4 times further out, with a similar accuracy to what it used to be 30 or 40 years ago. This is proven fact, and goes completely contrary to any claim that those same successful atmospheric scientists know less about climate forecasts than you or Paul Homewood do.
Let us first deal with “has been due to an increase in short wave solar radiation caused by a decrease in global low level marine cloud cover”. You would have to assume that, contrary to day-to-day experience, there would have to be precious few clouds left by now, because ocean heat content has risen steady over the past 45 years. The charts all show there is no cycle involved - a more or less straight line increase in heat content, if anything, with a slight acceleration recently.
As for heat not making it past the first few micrometres of the ocean surface, have you ever actually been on the open ocean? It has waves varying in height from 10s of cm to 10s of metres, and plenty of "white horses" to ensure mixing of the top surface layers.
Further, the implication of your "rapid evaporation" would be an equally rapid increase in the water vapour (greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere, which would contribute to further warming, before the water vapour precipitated out as more rain that before. And indeed there has been a significant increase in record flooding over the years.
JJ said in 1/ "[a decrease in low level cloud cover] is very unlikely to be a positive feedback of a far more modest theoretical increase in GHG radiative forcing due to emissions. Yet if CO2 causes an increase in atmospheric temperatures, then fewer clouds are likely to form, as higher temperatures enable water vapour to exist in gaseous form before condensing into small droplets in the liquid form in the form of clouds. In other words, this effect could provide increased amplification of the base global warming due to human burning of fossil fuels.
And in 2/ JJ claims that erosion releases different isotopes of CO2. Yet the huge annual dynamic interchange of CO2 between atmosphere and both biosphere and ocean surface, soon masks any evidence of the precise origination of higher levels of CO2 found in the atmosphere (best measured on the same day each year, to control for the huge annual dynamic exchange.
Be assured there is no escaping the climate propaganda machine, of which you are a part. However, those who actually understand some science are able to examine the claims that are made and sort the ones that have merit from those that do not.
In your case I suggest you need a course in basic meteorology that includes something on the equatorial and other formation of clouds. You might even glance at the restricted work done by CLOUD at CERN (restricted when real experiments started contradicting climate theory).
My only criticism, David, is that half the country can't read a graph, and few people go to the pub or the office armed with copies of them anyway.
We need to arm people with simple, memorable examples they can do on a beer mat. The alarmists have succeeded in getting this far on soundbites and constantly repeated mis/dis/malinformation.
I have used a couple in another reply, and all anyone needs to remember are a few well established numbers.
This is another one that only uses a few numbers wholly accepted within the alarmist community:
How long do we have left?
Based on IPCC published information, we are assured that mankind’s annual CO2 emissions influence the climate.
Assume for a moment anthropogenic (manmade) CO2 is responsible for 100% of warming, how long will it take us to induce 1.5ºC of warming?
It’s straightforward arithmetic.
1850 – total atmospheric CO2: 280ppm (parts per million) (Vostok Ice Core).
2024 – total atmospheric CO2: 420ppm. (Mauna Loa observatory).
420ppm – 280ppm = 140ppm. Divide that by the intervening 174 years (2024 - 1850) = total annual average increase of 0.81ppm CO2 to date.
We are assured mankind is responsible for 4% of total annual CO2 emissions. 0.81ppm x 4% = 0.0324ppm.
Therefore, time required for mankind’s emission to double preindustrial CO2 levels:
280ppm ÷ 0.0324ppm = 8,642 years, about the year 10665
If the world eliminated 100% of mankind’s CO2 emissions today – in the 26 years left to 2050 it would alleviate warming by 0.0045ºC. (1.5ºC ÷ 8,642 x 26 = 0.0045ºC).
Run for your lives folks, we only have 8,642 years left to live!
That's entirely ignoring the effect of the most powerful 'greenhouse' gas, water vapour which is ~96% of all greenhouse gases.
Your understanding of this topic is seriously flawed. But never mind some people in this thread appear to like it.
Be my guest. Point out where my understanding is seriously flawed. Put your money where your mouth is.
Your maths is bad because human induced CO2 emissions didn't really start taking off until the 1960s. Look at the blue and red chart of ocean heat content at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/ocean-heat-content-rises. It is very clear that something has been going on since the 1960s, to cause the oceans to heat up steadily recently. From the chart, there is no sign of a cycle, so little chance of it turning down soon.
Ocean heat content is about the best measure of global warming, because 90%+ of global warming heat ends up in the oceans, which are very deep. The atmospheric pressure is only the equivalent of 10m of water - not a few km like the average ocean depth. And the ground doesn't transmit heat downwards appreciably.
Water vapour is indeed the most potent greenhouse gas. But it is self-limiting. Too much water vapour in the atmosphere and it rain (or snows or ...0) as we all know living here. CO2 can amplify the effect of water vapour, because CO2 raises the air temperature a little at a time. The higher air temperature allows more water vapour before it precipitates out, so that gives more warming. So water vapour amplifies the warming effect of CO2, but not so much that you get runaway warming.
Where do you get this simplistic, confused bollox from?
The chart you link to only begins in 1960, FFS! What happened for millennia before that?
This is why gullible fools like you are conned into believing this scam, you haven't a clue how to read a graph, which was my initial contention.
how about a beer mat.... Support the climate emergency ….and be poor!.
I like this approach and it is always good to have graphical data to support each argument. Some people are more visual while others focus on text, but a good graphic can condense much information and concretize it.
Every week at Examining ESG I post a colection of articles and make short comments, and your writing has provided me with a number of articles to reference favourably. Thank you for your insights.
Most of David's numbers are way out, unfortunately. If you do the sums properly to compare gas power with recent and future UK wind and solar costs, you soon conclude gas power is more expensive. See my comment above.
A new gas CCGT commissioned today would need a price of about £110 per MWh just to break even. It seems new wind and solar are both cheaper than this. People are misunderstanding why Orsted cancelled Hornsea 4 or purposely saying all new wind farms will need to be more expensive. Orsted got their financing badly wrong and were hit by big increases in supply chain they could have avoided. They now say supply chain costs have come down again.
Justify your number. The fuel cost for 3-5 years forward is about 65p/therm, or about £45/MWhe. Capital cost fir 850MW at Keadby2 was £350m.
Cost of building a new CCGT has soared in recent years. Not only that but there is a long waiting list to even build one. You can’t quote the price of the fuel with any accuracy as you don’t know the price of gas for the next 4 years. The cost I quote is also based on a NG CCGT running quite intermittently as it will have to fit round an ever increasing amount of renewable generation. Low utilisation rates will also drive up their costs. when they are used. See David Tokes articles for the full details of his £110 estimate. And he was being very generous.
The price of gas out to 2032
https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/NFN25/futures-prices?timeFrame=daily
Yeah right. If nothing changes it then it could be right. I bet they had a similar prediction in 2021.
I doubt anyone is now going to buy a new gas CCGT to operate just on generating ("merchant") revenue. The fraction of supply from gas was 26% in 2024, and will drop to as low as 5% by 2030 (or, say, 2031 if the Clean Power plan ends up late).
The NESO has to specifically contract for CCGT/OCGT capacity if it is needed. In the recent T-4 capacity auction (for 2029), the strike price was £60/kW-year, and all 27 GW of existing NESO reported gas capacity obtained contracts.
But, even if supply from gas plants gets down to 5% of total supply by 2030, 27 GW of backup up capacity is not enough into the 2030s, because new loads are coming - EV charging and heat pumps. The fraction of gas might remain at 5%, but you need the backup capacity to increase to handle increasing peak hour loads when wind and solar might not deliver much power.
And no one is going to build a gas plant on the promise of just one year's (2029) capacity payment of £60/kW. The capital cost would be around £750/kW, so the project would need at least a 15 year capacity contract at £60/kW-year. The estimated requirement is 35 GW of gas plants in the 2030s, which means 8 GW of new plants. But even so, the total capacity payment would be only £2.1bn per year.
Oh I agree except some of ours are aging and may need replacing. For the low utilisation rates are OGTs better for ramping up and down?
I quoted the price as the fossil fuel guys will clearly need to build new ones for how they would plan to run the grid to meet the peak demand of the future. Unless of course they plan to ban EVs heat pumps etc.
You completely fail to acknowledge that there will be very large costs from all the supporting infrastructure for the net zero dream, not to mention the effects of rapidly rising curtailment that we won't be able to afford to store (which would in any case simply be another huge cost).
The contracts are already in place for grid reliability services (without active gas) going forward - inertia, various durations of frequency response, short circuit current, reactive power).
The rest of the supporting infrastructure is mainly:-
- grid batteries (/PSH = pumped hydro storage) for the shorter duration gaps in wind and solar of less than a day. The bids in the December 2024 PowerChina auction for BESS capacity averaged $66/kWh. UK likely needs 8 hours of average load of batteries/PSH. At 35 GW average load 280 GWh would cost only $19bn = £15bn, which is one third of the estimated capital cost of HPC new nuclear, for enough storage to storage 87 hours of its output
- CCGT/OCGT plants to fill in the longer gaps. The estimate is 35 GW is required for the 2030s, and the recent T-4 capacity contract was for £60/kW-year. So 35 GW will cost £2.1bn a year in capacity contracts. The new 8 GW will require capacity contracts for 15 years or so, or wouldn't be profitable to get built. At some point it all converts to green hydrogen fuel, so you need enough electrolysers to produce this At 5% backup on, say a 40 GW average load grid, with a 45% power to hydrogen to power efficiency, this would need an average electrolyser load of 4.5 GW. Assuming 55% load factor (the expected capacity factor of new offshore wind), you thus need 8 GW of electrolyser capacity, at an expected price of $320/kW. That is $2.6bn or £2bn capital costs, plus the extra offshore wind to drive them.
- new transmission lines - primarily from Scotland to England, most of which will end up a undersea links.
Within England there is already a grid with decent coverage, with bits requiring reconductoring to meet additional demand or offshore feeds, which is a lot cheaper than new lines.
The National Grid estimate is for £54bn of capital spend to support the 2030 Clean Power plan (presumably over the next 5 years). Likely this will be depreciated over 50 years. If you assume 2% real interest rates, and inflation of 2%, the costs start at around £3bn/year (£2bn interest + £1bn depreciation = capital repayment) and reduce to £1bn/year (just depreciation) in 2025 pounds by the end of the 50 years, or you can spread them a little more evenly.
National Grid also expect this expenditure on transmission lines to generate some savings compare to now (e.g. reduced wind curtailment, some lower line losses?)
Conclusions
If you add up all these UK capital and annual costs, and compare them to the £8bn per year currently spent on power from natural gas, you can see you have to go well into the details to see whether the Clean Power grid will save consumers money or not. There is no obvious financial show stopper in any of these costs.
My calculations are only back of the envelope, but aren't going to be an order of magnitude out.
On Storage
There seems to be around 7 GW of Scottish pumped hydro schemes with 1.5 GW Coire Glass, 1.8 GW for each of Fearna and Earba, 2 GW for Glen Earrach (Ear ache?) up for approval at the moment. If accompanied by some grid battery storage in England, these would provide considerable relief from having to build the full transmission line capacity from Scotland to England. They would allow operation of these lines at close to 100% load factor, while mainly eliminating curtailment. Hopefully the government will take an optimal set of decisions on lines + pumped hydro to minimise consumer costs, rather than treating them as (un-optimised) individual decisions.
See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/12/loch-ness-hydro-storage-schemes-scotland
For The contracts read ☆Some contracts. A lot more will be needed. Try reading the Royal Society study to understand storage needs, rather than your fantasy numbers. Plant that normally is built on a 30-40 year life is not going to be content with being paid for less than half that with a threat of closure. Offshore wind does not have a level capacity factor, so your calculations even given your optimistic assumptions are bunk.
IDAU said "Plant that normally is built on a 30-40 year life is not going to be content with being paid for less than half that with a threat of closure."
Why should they close after 15 years? Most of the capital costs will be paid off by then, so it will be time to make the profits, as costs will drop considerably.
Incidentally, it now looks like some Danish offshore wind farms already over 20 years old have just been given a lifetime extension of another 10 years from 25 up to 35 years, without repowering.
IDAU said "Offshore wind does not have a level capacity factor, so your calculations even given your optimistic assumptions are bunk."
New offshore wind farms are likely to have at least 55% capacity factors. The fact this isn't level isn't key to the calculation. I assume 20% overgeneration covers both losses (such as the power to green hydrogen and back to power, efficiency 45%) and "unusable" power (within the scenario), which uses only 8% of the overgeneration of 20% (batteries are another 2%). So there is already an allowance for the variability of offshore wind built in, including the fact it is like buses - either you don't have enough or you have far too many, but rarely just the right quantity.
Try asking yourself why there isn't a queue of new projects at a price that "should" work.
IDAU said "For The contracts read ☆Some contracts. A lot more will be needed."
You are trying to mix up grid stability functions with grid energy provision.
The NESO has been working on projects and contracts for 5 years on the ability to run the stable and reliable grid with no active gas WHEN UK POWER DEMAND CAN BE MET WITHOUT ACTIVE GAS (as the requirement is easier to solve when enough gas is active). That is probably the situation the ill-prepared Spanish grid was in - no one at all is claiming there was too little wind and solar power available.
The Royal Society says it is discussing grid energy provision, not grid stability support functions. That means it is discussing the times when UK power demand can't be met just with wind, solar and nuclear. The way they put it is "there will be times when wind and solar cannot meet all demand, and large-scale storage will be needed. " Inertia and frequency response are only mentioned peripherally in the RS document. It doesn't even mention short circuit current, reactive power and black start capability.
IDAU said "Try reading the Royal Society study to understand storage needs, rather than your fantasy numbers."
The Royal Society documents is a reasonable first approximation of what I'm saying, which is generally based on the Texas ERCOT grid. However, I'm pushing 20% overgeneration of wind and solar (700 TWh/year) as likely to be optimal, while the RS has only case of <600, and 800 TWh. Further they don't have enough grid batteries to get close to the optimum, such as 15 GW which they describe as only for grid stability, duration not obvious in my skimming. I would go for something like 35-40 GW of 8 hour batteries = 280 to 320 GW.
And the net of all this is that the RS solution requires far more than optimal long-duration storage, and a whopping ~70 GW of electrolysers to produce hydrogen, not to mention far larger numbers of salt caverns than seems likely. My figures are more like 14 GW of electrolysers - which is enough to produce hydrogen to cover 5% of a 70 GW average demand (= 3.5 GW) for backup up.
When doing simulations, there is a distinct sweet spot in specifying overgeneration, before which the grid looks flaky, and after which it behaves far more robustly, in terms of backup requirements. The RS seems to be on the wrong side of this sweet spot. You can tell it doesn't correspond to NESO and DESNZ modelling because the latter are talking about 5% of supply from backup from natural gas CCGT/OCGT, and the RS are way above this. So they are out on a limb.
You are the one getting mixed up. RS are not out on a limb. I did similar calculations several years previously using the same 37 year data and unsurprisingly reached similar conclusions. The ones who are out of step are the net zero supporters with their choice of narrow time horizons and goldilocks weather and other assumptions rather than looking at what is necessary to cover more difficult circumstances.
Good to see, but your article is still an admission that anthropogenically released CO2 drives climate change.
The current concentration of CO2 is a little over 0.04%, a trace gas. Plant die off occurs at 0.02%. Notice how no one ever gives the ideal figure for CO2 concentrations, but given that 0.04% is allegedly too much, and 0.02% too little, it must be around 0.03%.
Does anyone really think that we can hit that sweet spot with such a complex system as the Earth’s climate?
Oh by the way, of that 0.04%, humans contribute 3%, and of that 3%, Britain contributes 1%. You do the math.
Humans are responsible for the whole of the atmospheric CO2 increase to 420 ppm, from the pre-industrial 280 ppm.
Don't get confused by the rapid annual interchange of CO2 between atmosphere, and biosphere + oceans.
During spring and summer, plants grow, the biosphere absorbs CO2, and atmospheric levels decrease. During autumn and winter the plants dies, releasing CO2, and atmospheric levels increase.
Although these seasonal changes swamp human additions, they are cyclic. That is, if you measure CO2 on the same date each year, over a few years, the increase is all due to humans.
Further, only half of CO2 increases caused by human burning of fossil fuels, stays in the atmosphere. Over a few years, the other half is absorbed by the biosphere and ocean surface (but only taken down to ocean depths very slowly). By quantity, the half of human emissions which stays in the atmosphere does so for at least hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Because of the huge annual dynamic interchange, the molecules of CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels are rapidly absorbed, but they are always replaced by other molecules by the same day the next year. That is why CO2 rises steadily over time.
Utter nonsense.
C3 plants (95% of all plant life), flourishes around 1,000ppm – 1,200ppm.
The only observable effect increased atmospheric CO2 has on the planet is to stimulate plant growth by about 7% over 35 years of satellite observations. Another 7% is attributed to mankind's agricultural activities. (NASA)
CO2 = 0.04ppm of the earth’s atmosphere.
Mankind contributes around 3% = 0.0012ppm
The UK contributes around 0.9% of that 3% = 0.0000108ppm
If you're going to "do the math" kindly complete the equations.
DR said "CO2 = 0.04ppm of the earth’s atmosphere."
Your units are way out. "ppm" stands for "parts per million". In this unit, atmospheric CO2 is 420 ppm now, up from 280 ppm in pre-industrial times. So humans have added 140 ppm.
If you want to translate it into fractions, 420 ppm is 0.00042 of the earth's atmosphere, or 0.0042%. But ppm is a much better unit, because you don't have to be accurately counting zeroes after the decimal point all the time.
DR said "The UK contributes around 0.9% [of annual human-induced CO2 emissions]
This is true. But UK is also responsible for more than 4% of cumulative historical CO2 emissions, and thus for more than 4% of the 140 ppm rise in CO2 so far (so at least 6 ppm rise). And UK is thus also responsible for more than 4% of the current 1.2 to 1.6 deg C temperature rise so far. By contrast, China, with 20x the people, is responsible for around 15% of the current rise. The USA is at 25%, and China may not now catch up with the USA, especially with Trump in charge.
So UK has an oversized moral responsibility for what has happened so far. That should at least lead to us trying harder than nations who are responsible only for lower warming on a per capita basis.
You need to go back to school mate.
https://earthhow.com/earth-atmosphere-composition/
No idea where you get the idea that the 4% you claim the UK has added to the atmosphere is still hanging around as no one has a clue what the half life of CO2 in the atmosphere is. Plenty of guesses from the likes of the crackpot site skepticalscience but none of it supportable.
Your concept of "moral responsibility" ignores that the UK was principal to industrialisation of the world, improving life expectancy by more than 40 years in most cases, increasing crop yields, developing medicines and elevating mankind from grinding poverty in a couple of hundred years.
Er, ok right mate, whatever you say. 😳
No argument then. Predictable.
I can’t argue with a post that makes no sense, written by someone who doesn’t understand a relationship between % and ppm.
Of course it doesn't make sense to you. That's why you can't refute it. % and ppm are used entirely appropriately.
I'm pleased to see that in your 'ineffective' section you also touched upon 'unnecessary' by showing the Greenland temperature chart. My summary of Net Zero For Dummies would be 'Unsafe, Ineffective and Unnecessary'. The unnecessary argument takes us into the realms of 'climate science denial' - which the UN and EU want to criminalise. But they would have to criminalise people spreading 'misinformation' about actual science and real, empirical data. Two recent examples spring to mind:
1/ Published science and CERES data demonstrates conclusively that most or all of the increase in global mean surface temperature since 2000 (and probably since the early 1980s) has been due to an increase in short wave solar radiation caused by a decrease in global low level marine cloud cover. We don't know for sure what has caused that decline in cloud cover, but it is very unlikely to be a positive feedback of a far more modest theoretical increase in GHG radiative forcing due to emissions.
2/ A study published very recently brings into question the 'irrefutable atmospheric fingerprint' of man-made CO2 argument, based on measuring the fraction of allegedly fossil fuel derived carbon vs. natural (biome derived) carbon in the atmosphere. It found that 50% of 'old' carbon in the atmosphere may in fact be emitted from river systems as they erode their way through old carbon deposits and rocks. Which is interesting because the study points out that a large fraction of this old carbon comes from upland areas, where rivers cut their way through older exposed geological layers. So I checked; it just so happens that in recent decades, there has been a significant increase in upstream river flows, but not so much downstream, which is also linked to the observed increase in recent notable flooding events in mountainous regions.
The UN and EU would like to throw me in prison for citing these facts. The UN and EU are totalitarian science denying organisations.
How much longer do these tyrants with no valid mandates think the can keep getting away with their constant lying and cheating and oppressing? They are literally getting away with murder. As Abraham Lincoln said over 150 years ago
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
They would call you a “conspiracy theorist” for uttering a truth that goes against the orthodoxy of their carefully crafted narrative based on lies, deceptions and cherry-picked junk science but the obvious reality is that they themselves are the conspirators and the enemies of the people. The simple proof of this is that their efforts to cancel, censor and even jail (e.g. Reiner Fuellmich, Tommy Robinson, Lucy Connolly) anyone who dissents from the narrative are so obviously coordinated. For examples, search X for Biden “as sharp as a tack” or Covid “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
"They are literally getting away with murder."
That's because they made it legal. Net Zero, assisted genocide, infanticide - all now, or soon to be, written into British law.
Agreed, Organ harvesting will no doubt become an even more important factor in the removal of Infanticide as a crime. Or perhaps as long as no link is discovered between depression and organ quality, being depressive may become another Capital Offence along with "Being new/about to be born but Inconvenient" or "Old and Rich with rapacious relatives." Still, I suppose we should look on the bright side, Murder and Islamists murdering young girls are still not Capital Offences, we wouldn't want to kill an innocent person would we?
IF those who demanded these Bills are so righteous, perhaps they lack the courage of assisting a suicide then having their motives tested by an investigation and possibly in a court of Law? That is the case now, their loved ones will have already died so why should they fear having their motives investigated? As for full term abortions ....
"This can only work if everyone else reduces their emissions to zero too."
Actually, it won't even work, then. CO2 has no effect on climates; however, climates have an effect on CO2, the most notable of which is that warmer sea-surfaces will cause oceans to release CO2, in accordance with Henry's Gas Law.
It works both ways. More CO2 drives warming. And more warming (e.g. caused by earth's orbital changes) drives more CO2. At the moment, atmospheric CO2 emissions are rising due to human burning of fossil fuels, and that is driving warming. Particularly ocean heat content (see https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/ocean-heat-content-rises)
China is busting a gut to reduce CO2 emissions, but starting from a really bad place with ~60% of power generation from coal.
But in 2023 and 2024 China installed more wind and solar than the rest of the world put together. And Chinese BEV+PHEV sales have been over 50% for the last 9 months, with the notable exception of January 2025 for some reason.
It is early days yet, but it looks like the Chinese wind and solar installs have contributed to China reducing its CO2 emissions by 1.6% between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025. China may possibly have peaked CO2, and also may have peaked its oil demand, depending on how BEV+PHEV sales go from here on forwards.
Alternatively the Chinese economy is suffering contraction.
IDAU said "Alternatively the Chinese economy is suffering contraction."
Difficult to know for sure. Certainly the property sector is still not doing well.
What we do know for sure is that, according to the most recent CEF document on the Chinese grid, January to April 2025 vs Jan-Apr 2024, Chinese grid demand was up 3.8%, while coal and thermal generation were down 3.6% (to end on 60%), with wind output up 16% (to 13%) and solar up 43% (to 11%). Other fuel types output changes made much smaller differences. See the CEF Monthly-China-Energy-Update-May-2025-2 PDF file.
The point is that, even had the Chinese grid had its typical 5.5% expansion in demand (another 1.7%), coal generation in China would still have been down from a year previously.
China may or may not yet have peaked grid coal use by implementing huge quantities of wind, and particularly solar, but it looks more likely than not, at this point.
The amount of denial of established science in the original post and some of these crazed responses is sad. They will never win their arguments with this approach. They need to accept reality and come up with alternative and cheaper ways to decarbonise our energy system if they don’t like what is actually happening the world over.
"More CO2 drives warming." Does it? Can you show the the verifiable evidence for this? While CO2 has (purportedly) been rising steadily at about 2ppm per year, temperatures have been up and down like a [fill with your own witty analogy, here].
Burn all our FF, in the interim development and invent the next generation energy system, whatever that may be (humans are quite clever!). Killing our economy and our lives at the alter of climate alarmism is absolutely stupid. But what do you expect when zealots and fanatics control energy, instead of experts? another great article David keep up the great work.
David's numbers are wrong - UK recent wind and solar prices in the CfD Register are lower than the costs of UK gas generation (David has left out capital costs and underestimated the true social cost of carbon). Effectively, by installing wind and solar you get the CO2 reductions for free.
See my detailed comment (likely above).
Have any of those projects been built?
Absolutely. When/if something better than hydrocarbon fuels comes along, it will be widely adopted.
If governments have to legislate against the current options and subsidise the alternatives, then those alternatives are crap.
Excellent article David. We've seen this with 'COVID' and now we see it with climate and this is what it's really all about.
''Net Zero is an Attack on Personal Freedom''
This is an unapologetically angry essay-type comment on climate change/Net Zero and other Uniparty political tyrannies that I prepared earlier.
The climate change hoaxers on this side of the pond are going to become even more discredited when President Trump and his MAGA team have finished eviscerating the climate change hoax in the USA. Their failed ‘Chicken Licken’ climate fearmongering has become wearisome and people are sick and tired of having every spell of bad (or warm) weather unscientifically hyped as supposed “proof” of impending Thermageddon. Their pseudo-scientific, intelligence-insulting climate change narrative is actually very easy to debunk, as I have done myself. My post was published over a year ago and I’ve never yet had anyone rebut any of it: https://metatron.substack.com/p/debunking-the-climate-change-hoax.
Quite apart from the scientific fraud of alleged but actually negligible man-made CO2 global warming, the engineering fantasy of their Net Zero supposed “solution” is doomed to failure because they are going about it using ill-advised, totally inappropriate weather-dependent technologies which are fundamentally incompatible with how the grid was designed to operate and in any case they lack the necessary money, manpower and materials according to Emeritus Professor Michael Kelly: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/06/19/net-zero-is-an-engineering-fantasy-michael-kelly/.
Professor Kelly and others have been saying this for many years but the corrupt establishment blanked them all out. The establishment, epitomised by then-Price Charles and the birdbrained climate media (e.g. George Monbiot) succumbed to the hubris of believing that they were omnipotent, especially when they acquired the support of so many world institutions (hint: there’s a malign ulterior motive behind it all), and thought they could push through their climate change/Net Zero fantasy against all reality.
The UK general public is now starting to realise that all they get from Net Zero is ever-rising ruinously-expensive energy bills, deindustrialisation and the ruination of entire industries (steel, chemicals, oil and gas exploration, cars, …) with very few of the promised pie-in-the-sky “green” jobs, falling living standards, coercion of doubtful legality to adopt unwanted, expensive and climatically-pointless heat pumps and EVs and the worsening probability that rolling blackouts and even prolonged and deadly nationwide blackouts like the recent outage in Spain could happen at any time: https://watt-logic.com/2025/06/18/should-neso-be-allowed-to-lower-its-minimum-inertia-requirement/.
The general public is also beginning to realise that unilateral UK Net Zero is a cruelly pointless political imposition given that the majority rest of the world clearly doesn’t give two hoots about reducing their CO2 emissions, as illustrated by this simple graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=GBR~CHN~OWID_WRL.
Fortunately, the UN IPCC inadvertently shot themselves in the foot and condemned their precious climate change agenda to irrelevance when, in desperation at the lack of “climate progress”, they published their infamous 1.5 degrees special report in 2018 calling for impossibly large reductions in global CO2 emissions in an impossibly short timescale. I called it out at the time. Any rationalist could see that these targets were utterly impossible. For example, Professor Roger Pielke Jr calculated that Net Zero CO2 emissions by 2050 would require building a new nuclear power station every day: https://iowaclimate.org/2019/10/02/net-zero-carbon-dioxide-emissions-by-2050-requires-a-new-nuclear-power-plant-every-day/.
It was only a matter of time. Net Zero fantasy is finally crashing against engineering reality and the chickens are coming home to roost. The establishment is panicking, with the unelected, unaccountable UN calling for the criminalisation of what these lying propagandists deem to be “climate misinformation”, such as justifiably asserting that the recent Spanish power outage was due to the excessive deployment of inertia-less renewables which, unlike dispatchable rotational generators such as conventional gas, lack the inbuilt capability to defend against sudden grid perturbances: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/06/20/un-calls-for-climate-misinformation-to-be-criminalised/.
I will never forgive the UK Lab/Con/Lib Dem/SNP Uniparty politicians for foisting their climate change/Net Zero tyranny on us to wreck our energy infrastructure and economy and despoil our landscapes and seascape with pointless ineffective so-called renewables, against all honest scientific and engineering advice. They are even using their junk pseudo-science as a pretext to attack our farmers and food supplies. All their short lifespan, environmentally-unfriendly wind and solar farms will soon be junk and will have to be scrapped but the scars of their massive concrete and steel foundations (https://tinyurl.com/s83aayed) and the landfills full of unrecyclable wind turbine blades (https://tinyurl.com/52yy56m4) and toxic solar panels will probably remain forever.
It’s not just the current Labour Uniparty incumbents to blame for the mess we are in although they probably take the prize for mindless fanaticism and irresponsible spaffing of countless £billions of taxpayer money on climate malinvestments. The Conservatives have pushed climate change and Net Zero for many years and although they have changed their tune recently to the extent of saying “No Net Zero by 2050”, whatever that means, they can’t bring themselves to defy their Davos/WEF/UN/Big Money/Club of Rome/et al globalist overlords by committing to scrap Net Zero.
The Lib Dems are very dangerous climate fanatics. Earlier this year all 72 Lib Dem MPs supported the dystopian Climate and Nature Bill which if enacted and implemented would have taken the country back to the dark ages: https://metatron.substack.com/p/climate-change-and-the-corruption.
The SNP are moronically dangerous on climate change/Net Zero. They even delude themselves that they can reach Net Zero by 2045 (vs. the UK’s infeasible 2050) despite energy policy being a reserved issue for devolved Scotland! Many independent scientists have proved that methane is quite harmless as a greenhouse gas yet the SNP climate change minister is so worried about methane from landfill sites that she is going to use 100 lorries a day to transport Scottish waste to England. Just like that, this SNP muppet thinks she has solved her imagined methane problem! https://www.gbnews.com/news/snp-tonnes-rubbish-england-uk.
The climate-obsessed SNP have also announced a new set of impossibly-onerous yet pointless CO2 emission reduction targets which will never be achieved short of forcing the country almost to a standstill (climate lockdowns coming?), e.g. a 57% reduction in emissions (i.e. in consumption of essential fossil fuels) over the next five years: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056gv2q9q5o.
These Uniparty globalists showed their true colours through their coldly-preplanned, globally-coordinated Covid “plandemic” which is still being waged, with the NHS telling people to get the latest Covid booster jab against the pretend dangerous virus while ordinary people can see that friends, relations and acquaintances all around are succumbing to abnormally high rates of turbo cancer (https://tinyurl.com/4a8kxff3), heart disease, strokes, failed pregnancies (https://tinyurl.com/496pn8we) and other health horrors, not to mention sudden or premature death. All just coincidences of course (not): https://biologyphenom.substack.com/p/newnrs-vital-events-q4-data-2024.
They only thing that might persuade me to forgive the Uniparty for their Covid crimes against humanity is if they confess all, finger and convict the guilty globalist ringleaders and make a grovelling apology. That’s never going to happen so the best we can do is to sweep them all away.
The only non-globalist UK party with a fighting chance of gaining power is Reform UK. They may not be perfect but at least they have committed to scrapping Net Zero.
Well said in absolutely every regard, Douglas!
Great rant, Dougie!
I think you are being very rude to birds suggesting they are less intelligent than George Monbiot....
Apologies to David for perhaps overstepping the mark with such a long and angry comment. It was prompted by learning a few days ago that someone I was close to has died from an aggressive form of cancer, two years after her mother also died from an aggressive cancer (usually referred to as turbo cancer by oncologist Professor Angus Dalgleish). That and the realisation from the Spanish power outage and insights gained from the likes of David and Kathryn Porter that our grid system is an even worse state of vulnerability to collapse than I had previously thought.
The UK grid is not near collapse. Kathryn was dramatically overstating it. There was over 3 GW of reserve on 8th January, with the biggest possible failing component being a 1.4 GW interconnector.
The UK NESO has been working for 5 years to ensure grid reliability services such as inertia (etc. etc.) can be delivered without any active gas generation whatsoever. My guess is we will see the first day without gas either December 2025 or January 2026.
At first the NESO will take it gently, with only short periods - it has some organisational learning of how to use the balancing market to reliably deliver power with no active gas. But by 2030 this will be the normal mode of operations of the UK grid, as gas will be only around 5% of supply.
2.6GW of that "reserve" was not capable of fast start, as her detailed examination of BM data revealed. It is not reserve if you have to wait up to 4 hours for it.
The Spanish discovered that 90 minutes isn't reserve either, when they realised they needed more CCGT to help with voltage control and power oscillation damping, but only instructed it 7 minutes before the grid collapsed.
IDAU said "2.6GW of that "reserve" was not capable of fast start"
Doesn't that depend on a plant's operational state? It takes far less time to ramp a hot, operational CCGT plant than it does to start it from cold.
Around 2.3 GW of the 3.7 GW of minimum reserve was either "flex gen" or batteries. And the 1.4 GW of CCGT was doubtless hot and spinning too.
See https://www.neso.energy/news/what-happened-margins-8-january.
Kathryn didn't have the detailed figures she thought she was entitled to (but which are confidential so she was never going to get them), so she was only promoting FUD, not making a provable claim. You have to remember that she gets most of her consultancy business from those heavily involved in fossil fuels in one way or another.
Her investigation was subsequent to NESO's comment and entailed checking on the status of each plant. She concluded that 2.6GW couldn't have ramped up in time.
I don't believe that. I read her article and wasn't convinced.
And why was she complaining so bitterly that the NESO would not give her the information she needed to do the investigation?
It all smacks of a concerted operation to promote FUD on wind, solar and the UK grid.
I see now that you have infected this thread with, so far, 13 comments of climate alarmist propaganda and nonsense. You are a troll, probably paid by some globalist outfit, otherwise in need of therapy.
I have my own reference web site on green energy, which you might care to peruse, if you wish to sample information with plenty of reference links, and not conforming to your current opinions. See https://greenenergytransition.info/wp/. It needs further development, but is fairly solid on the basics.
And I can assure you that no one pays me to do anything. I have both a state and a personal pension, plus savings and investments, so can do whatever is most important in my opinion (music comes first, and green energy related matters a close second). That was after obtaining a PhD in physics from Imperial College immediately after retirement (subject "Energy storage at perovskite interfaces).
It is interesting that you see debate here as "infection". Are you concerned that the beliefs of "true believers" might be put at risk?
Douglas, your efforts would be better directed at refuting the arguments of contributors whose views you disagree with, rather than insulting them with ad hominem remarks. Please be more polite.
Why should I put any effort into rebutting the nonsense spouted by this trolling propagandist? Actually I did give a full reply to one of his comments before I realised he was a mischief-maker: https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/net-zero-for-dummies?r=8t7a0&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=128562542.
There isn’t a reader on this thread who agrees with his lies and nonsense. If you scan through all 13 of his comments you will see that he has not gained a single Like.
This isn't a popularity contest. It should be about making people think about the evidence.
Or are you entirely in favour of retaining this site solely as an echo chamber for those agreeing with your ideas.