Thanks for drawing our attention to these excellent papers. I found the first particularly interesting - mainly because I'm reasonably familiar with the material in the second. I suggest the most compelling argument - if we're to have any hope of persuading our political 'leaders' that Net Zero is a dangerous absurdity - is that the policy is in any case pointless. And, as you may recall from a short paper I posted on Cliscep about a year ago, in the interests of keeping it simple and accessible, I focussed exclusively on the reality that non-western countries (the source of over 75% of global emissions) are giving little, if any, priority to emission reduction. Since then I've updated my paper: https://cliscep.com/2023/10/29/the-uks-net-zero-policy-an-update/. Do you disagree with this approach?
I think that Net Zero needs to be attacked from all angles where the case is compelling. The futility of pursuing it while most of the rest of the world looks askance and gets on with life is certainly one of those, as are various aspects of its infeasibility (lack of resources, unicorn assumptions everywhere, unaffordable cost, impracticality) and consequences for ordinary people.
Rational argument also needs to be backed by memes and slogans that go viral. Such things give people hooks as they discover aspects of the truth. It's why I devised
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
Underlining the effects of the policy are important.
I'm inclined to think that it is most difficult to try to persuade cultists that the AGW religion is wrong and based on bad science, especially when necessarily only a relatively simple version of alternative science can really be presented, and few will be able to follow even that. Better is to leave little truth bombs to be assembled by those who can absorb them. If you venture into the comment sections of the downmarket press you soon find that the public are well aware that polar bears and coral are doing fine, for instance. There's understanding that temperature records recorded adjacent to the taxiway where several Typhoons have just passed are liable to be nonsensical. These bits of pointillism build an overall picture without having to go into the quantum physics of radiation in the atmosphere, or how ocean currents vary over time.
Excellent articles. However it is a dangerous falsehood to claim the business-as-usual policy is the best policy. This is because the real problem is not Climate Change but the legitimate aspirations of Developing Nations to reach a modern standard of living, with a functioning Industrial Economy, which will require a 5X increase in World Primary Energy supply. And major increases in Oil & Gas needed just to supply petrochemical industry which will grow accordingly. That is where Oil & Gas consumption should be prioritized, not for energy.
There is no way fossil is capable of supplying that level of energy economically. Or is renewables capable, not even close. Not even fossil + renewables. The only energy source capable of supply that level of energy economically is Nuclear. Just the resources of thorium and uranium on the accessible portion of the Earth's land mass would power that level of energy consumption for 20Myrs. Fusion resources would supply that much energy past when the Sun dies. Happy coincidence, Nuclear energy has insignificant GHG emissions, so that just makes the Climate Change question irrelevant.
Add to that Nuclear releases negligible toxic emissions, far, far less than any other energy source. So, the simple truth is, the energy transition needs to be to Nuclear, nothing else matters. And because of that, the Climate Change Grifters despise nuclear more than even fossil. And go to great lengths to blockade nuclear expansion. With their $trillions in wealth.
And during the past year, we have seen how vulnerable our current energy infrastructure is to economic blackmail and war. The specter of even worse and longer Middle East wars stands before us. We could care less about the Middle East if not for all the Oil & Gas there. It's just a big sandpit. But we have a World of Oil & Gas hegemony, mostly centered on the most geopolitically unstable regions on Earth. Replacing Fossil with ubiquitous Uranium & Thorium is just a giant insurance policy for humanity, insurance against economic strangulation.
That equity and debt didn’t come into their possession for nothing though, ie if money going offshore is bad then presumably foreign investment is good when the money comes onshore. It would be interesting to see the net flows of cash to judge whether bill payers are being ripped off.
Even with the subsidies the equity returns are sub-par. The business needs a huge amount of capital, both equity and debt; the returns are volatile and the unstable political climate demands a risk premium (yes we’ve had a conservative government for 14 years but they are wont to declaring windfall taxes on a whim).
If the business was a guaranteed profit machine, share prices of market participants would be steadily rising and others would be queuing up to take part. Instead we have auctions with no takers.
Where they are listed, is not the same as where they are domiciled. I can't post images in a comment, but TRIG is ultimately controlled by an entity in Guernsey.
I can foresee a collection of rusted-out broken offshore wind turbines in our future.. Here's a 2012 article that makes this case: "Broken down and rusting, is this the future of Britain's 'wind rush'?" By TOM LEONARD, PUBLISHED: 21:00 EDT, 18 March 2012, The Daily Mail (UK.) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116877/Is-future-Britains-wind-rush.html
Iberdrola and Orsted and SSE have all taken heavy write-downs on projects that they committed to a silly prices that they have yet to complete, or have withdrawn from altogether. That does not alter the fact that existing, operating wind farms are what consumers are paying for, and they are making heavily subsidised profits at our expense.
Trig has just reported:
6.9p reduction in NAV per share2 to 127.7p (31 December 2022: 134.6p) driven by lower power price forwards and higher valuation discount rates.
- Power prices trended down during 2023 following reductions in gas prices. Since the balance sheet date, forwards for 2024-2026 have further reduced by c. 20%. Over a five-year horizon, a 10% reduction in power prices would reduce the Company's NAV by 2.2p/share4.
- The weighted average Portfolio Valuation3 discount rate as at 31 December 2023 has increased to 8.1% (31 December 2022: 7.2%), reflecting the higher return environment.
The recent declines in share price/NAV simply reflect the end of extreme prices in the energy crisis and the higher interest rate environment. If you look at the 10 year chart you get a better perspective.
Beatrice (and others) operate a further money-grubbing trick which Andrew Montford discovered, gaming the system to charge us twice for the same electricity. When a windfarm generates too much electricity for the national grid to absorb it is obliged to curtail its output, for which it receives a generous constraint payment. The Blackhillock substation which serves Beatrice has a facility which can divert the Beatrice electricity into an off-grid low voltage network and/or battery storage system for which they can receive payment even when they have accepted a constraint payment from the grid, apparently quite legally. https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/how-windfarms-charge-you-twice-for-the-same-electricity.
The truth of how to square the Beatrice accounts is still subject to investigation. The alleged battery at Blackhillock was still only under construction when the discrepancies were identified - by me. Needless to say, SSE/Beatrice have not responded to enquiries. Given that their financial years ends in March, I cannot make a complete reconciliation as the data on curtailment I have access to is for calendar years. However, using the data extracted from Elexon by Robin Hawkes here:
we can see that for calendar 2022 BEATO-1 to BEATO-4 had 534.86 GWh of curtailment at an average of £64.50/MWh for an income of £34.5m, and for calendar 2023 it was 69.91GWh at £126.45/MWh providing £8.84m. For 2021 it was 308.77GWh providing £19.38m at £62.77/MWh, and 2020 was 2.93 GWh providing £0.54m at £184.30/MWh.
I think the mystery is basically solved on the assumption that they claimed "generation" volume for curtailed volumes in their environmental report part of their accounts, which shows 2155.2GWh "generated" in y.e. March 2023 and 2084.7GWh in y.e. March 2022, compared with CFD real generation per LCCC data of 1897.9GWh in y.e. March 2023 implying 257.3GWh of curtailment, and 1533.7GWh of real generation in y.e. March 2022 implying 551GWH of curtailment. Bear in mind that curtailment will be greater in winter months.
I think you have undervalued the cost of ROCs by about 13%. It's easy to forget that what the consumer pays is not the cashout value, but also the premium recycle value from the redistributed cashout fund. In addition, OFGEM recycles monies from late payment. They tend to disguise this by hiding away the publication of the full ROC value announcements so you have to delve to find them year by year. Here's my record of their reported values from 2013/14 to 2022/23
Recycle values tend to be higher when renewables output has been below average, or there was an unexpected spurt in demand, and lower when there is bumper renewables output or unexpectedly low demand (as in 2020). The scheme is geared to try to ensure there is a shortfall of real ROCs vs. obligation - only in 2015/16 was there an excess and therefore zero recycle value. ROC cashout prices are RPI indexed: the price to apply from this April is £64.73/ROC, but the expected ROC value is 13% higher at over £73/MWh.
Thank you for the reporting, David. regarding these investments that do not make economic sense. These schemes are designed to be opaque and indirect. Doubtless that similar schemes with different names to line the economic elites's pockets are being planned for California offshore wind. Yesterday, I attended this fundraiser opposing offshore wind from REACT Alliance https://www.reactalliance.org/events-2-1/save-our-seas-sos Dr. Carolyn Porco gave a good talk critical of the harms of the proposed project during the event.
Paying top-dollar for inherently-unreliable offshore wind power does not make economic sense.. However, billions are being spent to lobby for and promote offshore wind.
"A recent study by Bloomberg has drawn attention to the way that wind farms overstate likely generation at times of constraint and thus cause unreasonable cost (£51m since 2018) to consumers. While correct, excessive prices charged by wind farms to reduce output are a much more significant problem, resulting in much higher total costs for consumers, exceeding for example, £100m in 2023 alone"
I would be interested in any views you may have on these two posts
The first says do absolutely nothing
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/minimal-future-warming-from-co2-ch4-n2o/
The second says Weather-Dependent “Renewables” are absolutely useless at doing nothing but pointlessly very expensive
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/the-myth-of-cheap-renewables/
If Western politicians had any sense and took some notice they could save Western Civilisation from an self-inflicted disaster and a lot of money.
Thanks for drawing our attention to these excellent papers. I found the first particularly interesting - mainly because I'm reasonably familiar with the material in the second. I suggest the most compelling argument - if we're to have any hope of persuading our political 'leaders' that Net Zero is a dangerous absurdity - is that the policy is in any case pointless. And, as you may recall from a short paper I posted on Cliscep about a year ago, in the interests of keeping it simple and accessible, I focussed exclusively on the reality that non-western countries (the source of over 75% of global emissions) are giving little, if any, priority to emission reduction. Since then I've updated my paper: https://cliscep.com/2023/10/29/the-uks-net-zero-policy-an-update/. Do you disagree with this approach?
I think that Net Zero needs to be attacked from all angles where the case is compelling. The futility of pursuing it while most of the rest of the world looks askance and gets on with life is certainly one of those, as are various aspects of its infeasibility (lack of resources, unicorn assumptions everywhere, unaffordable cost, impracticality) and consequences for ordinary people.
Rational argument also needs to be backed by memes and slogans that go viral. Such things give people hooks as they discover aspects of the truth. It's why I devised
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
Underlining the effects of the policy are important.
I'm inclined to think that it is most difficult to try to persuade cultists that the AGW religion is wrong and based on bad science, especially when necessarily only a relatively simple version of alternative science can really be presented, and few will be able to follow even that. Better is to leave little truth bombs to be assembled by those who can absorb them. If you venture into the comment sections of the downmarket press you soon find that the public are well aware that polar bears and coral are doing fine, for instance. There's understanding that temperature records recorded adjacent to the taxiway where several Typhoons have just passed are liable to be nonsensical. These bits of pointillism build an overall picture without having to go into the quantum physics of radiation in the atmosphere, or how ocean currents vary over time.
Excellent articles. However it is a dangerous falsehood to claim the business-as-usual policy is the best policy. This is because the real problem is not Climate Change but the legitimate aspirations of Developing Nations to reach a modern standard of living, with a functioning Industrial Economy, which will require a 5X increase in World Primary Energy supply. And major increases in Oil & Gas needed just to supply petrochemical industry which will grow accordingly. That is where Oil & Gas consumption should be prioritized, not for energy.
There is no way fossil is capable of supplying that level of energy economically. Or is renewables capable, not even close. Not even fossil + renewables. The only energy source capable of supply that level of energy economically is Nuclear. Just the resources of thorium and uranium on the accessible portion of the Earth's land mass would power that level of energy consumption for 20Myrs. Fusion resources would supply that much energy past when the Sun dies. Happy coincidence, Nuclear energy has insignificant GHG emissions, so that just makes the Climate Change question irrelevant.
Add to that Nuclear releases negligible toxic emissions, far, far less than any other energy source. So, the simple truth is, the energy transition needs to be to Nuclear, nothing else matters. And because of that, the Climate Change Grifters despise nuclear more than even fossil. And go to great lengths to blockade nuclear expansion. With their $trillions in wealth.
And during the past year, we have seen how vulnerable our current energy infrastructure is to economic blackmail and war. The specter of even worse and longer Middle East wars stands before us. We could care less about the Middle East if not for all the Oil & Gas there. It's just a big sandpit. But we have a World of Oil & Gas hegemony, mostly centered on the most geopolitically unstable regions on Earth. Replacing Fossil with ubiquitous Uranium & Thorium is just a giant insurance policy for humanity, insurance against economic strangulation.
Thank you for your eloquent arguments for expanding nuclear power.
That equity and debt didn’t come into their possession for nothing though, ie if money going offshore is bad then presumably foreign investment is good when the money comes onshore. It would be interesting to see the net flows of cash to judge whether bill payers are being ripped off.
Thank you for your investigations showing some of the methods of the subsidy-seekers.
if the debt is 97% then there was zero foreign investment.
They dont seem to have taken on any of the risk but get a huge yield guaranteed by taxpayers.
TRIG’s ordinary shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange.
https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-search-results/t/the-renewables-infrastructure-group-ord-npv
A cursory glance at its share price chart would suggest that this business is not the slam-dunk profit making scam that your article makes out.
The same is true of SSE
https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-search-results/s/sse-plc-ord-50p
And Iberdrola
https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-search-results/i/iberdrola-sa-eur-0.75
And Orsted
https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shares-search-results/o/orsted-as-dkk10
Even with the subsidies the equity returns are sub-par. The business needs a huge amount of capital, both equity and debt; the returns are volatile and the unstable political climate demands a risk premium (yes we’ve had a conservative government for 14 years but they are wont to declaring windfall taxes on a whim).
If the business was a guaranteed profit machine, share prices of market participants would be steadily rising and others would be queuing up to take part. Instead we have auctions with no takers.
Where they are listed, is not the same as where they are domiciled. I can't post images in a comment, but TRIG is ultimately controlled by an entity in Guernsey.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08506871/persons-with-significant-control
Iberdrola is Spanish. Orsted is Danish.
None of them are exclusively offshore wind companies.
I can foresee a collection of rusted-out broken offshore wind turbines in our future.. Here's a 2012 article that makes this case: "Broken down and rusting, is this the future of Britain's 'wind rush'?" By TOM LEONARD, PUBLISHED: 21:00 EDT, 18 March 2012, The Daily Mail (UK.) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116877/Is-future-Britains-wind-rush.html
Good one.
Iberdrola and Orsted and SSE have all taken heavy write-downs on projects that they committed to a silly prices that they have yet to complete, or have withdrawn from altogether. That does not alter the fact that existing, operating wind farms are what consumers are paying for, and they are making heavily subsidised profits at our expense.
Trig has just reported:
6.9p reduction in NAV per share2 to 127.7p (31 December 2022: 134.6p) driven by lower power price forwards and higher valuation discount rates.
- Power prices trended down during 2023 following reductions in gas prices. Since the balance sheet date, forwards for 2024-2026 have further reduced by c. 20%. Over a five-year horizon, a 10% reduction in power prices would reduce the Company's NAV by 2.2p/share4.
- The weighted average Portfolio Valuation3 discount rate as at 31 December 2023 has increased to 8.1% (31 December 2022: 7.2%), reflecting the higher return environment.
The recent declines in share price/NAV simply reflect the end of extreme prices in the energy crisis and the higher interest rate environment. If you look at the 10 year chart you get a better perspective.
Beatrice (and others) operate a further money-grubbing trick which Andrew Montford discovered, gaming the system to charge us twice for the same electricity. When a windfarm generates too much electricity for the national grid to absorb it is obliged to curtail its output, for which it receives a generous constraint payment. The Blackhillock substation which serves Beatrice has a facility which can divert the Beatrice electricity into an off-grid low voltage network and/or battery storage system for which they can receive payment even when they have accepted a constraint payment from the grid, apparently quite legally. https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/how-windfarms-charge-you-twice-for-the-same-electricity.
The truth of how to square the Beatrice accounts is still subject to investigation. The alleged battery at Blackhillock was still only under construction when the discrepancies were identified - by me. Needless to say, SSE/Beatrice have not responded to enquiries. Given that their financial years ends in March, I cannot make a complete reconciliation as the data on curtailment I have access to is for calendar years. However, using the data extracted from Elexon by Robin Hawkes here:
https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/curtailment
we can see that for calendar 2022 BEATO-1 to BEATO-4 had 534.86 GWh of curtailment at an average of £64.50/MWh for an income of £34.5m, and for calendar 2023 it was 69.91GWh at £126.45/MWh providing £8.84m. For 2021 it was 308.77GWh providing £19.38m at £62.77/MWh, and 2020 was 2.93 GWh providing £0.54m at £184.30/MWh.
I think the mystery is basically solved on the assumption that they claimed "generation" volume for curtailed volumes in their environmental report part of their accounts, which shows 2155.2GWh "generated" in y.e. March 2023 and 2084.7GWh in y.e. March 2022, compared with CFD real generation per LCCC data of 1897.9GWh in y.e. March 2023 implying 257.3GWh of curtailment, and 1533.7GWh of real generation in y.e. March 2022 implying 551GWH of curtailment. Bear in mind that curtailment will be greater in winter months.
Pointer to original discussion here and at NALOPKT
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/exploding-the-cheap-offshore-wind-power-fantasy/comment/13037583
It looks as though there is still some 'splainin to do on revenues, even if volumes now make sense.
I think you have undervalued the cost of ROCs by about 13%. It's easy to forget that what the consumer pays is not the cashout value, but also the premium recycle value from the redistributed cashout fund. In addition, OFGEM recycles monies from late payment. They tend to disguise this by hiding away the publication of the full ROC value announcements so you have to delve to find them year by year. Here's my record of their reported values from 2013/14 to 2022/23
Cash £42.02 £43.30 £43.30 £44.77 £45.58 £47.22 £48.78 £50.05 £50.80 £52.88
Recycle £0.60 £0.24 £0.00 £4.89 £5.42 £6.80 £5.02 £3.87 £7.04 £6.81
Late Payment £0.00 £0.00 £0.00 £0.21 £0.43 £1.02 £0.63 £0.55 £0.40 £0.07
Total £42.62 £43.54 £43.30 £49.87 £51.43 £55.04 £54.43 £54.47 £58.24 £59.76
Recycle values tend to be higher when renewables output has been below average, or there was an unexpected spurt in demand, and lower when there is bumper renewables output or unexpectedly low demand (as in 2020). The scheme is geared to try to ensure there is a shortfall of real ROCs vs. obligation - only in 2015/16 was there an excess and therefore zero recycle value. ROC cashout prices are RPI indexed: the price to apply from this April is £64.73/ROC, but the expected ROC value is 13% higher at over £73/MWh.
Thank you for the reporting, David. regarding these investments that do not make economic sense. These schemes are designed to be opaque and indirect. Doubtless that similar schemes with different names to line the economic elites's pockets are being planned for California offshore wind. Yesterday, I attended this fundraiser opposing offshore wind from REACT Alliance https://www.reactalliance.org/events-2-1/save-our-seas-sos Dr. Carolyn Porco gave a good talk critical of the harms of the proposed project during the event.
Paying top-dollar for inherently-unreliable offshore wind power does not make economic sense.. However, billions are being spent to lobby for and promote offshore wind.
I see this has appeared on the REF site
"A recent study by Bloomberg has drawn attention to the way that wind farms overstate likely generation at times of constraint and thus cause unreasonable cost (£51m since 2018) to consumers. While correct, excessive prices charged by wind farms to reduce output are a much more significant problem, resulting in much higher total costs for consumers, exceeding for example, £100m in 2023 alone"
Full blog item below
https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/380-2024-03-12-15-27-20