The timetable for AR7 starts with the pre-qualication for the Clean Industry Bonus, the new extra subsidy that is an under the table attempt to disguise the true costs of the programme. It opens for applications next week.
However the bonus isn't that generous and comes with strings attached on investment in facilities in the UK. Moreover, the ceiling prices for CFD bids remain unrealistically low, especially since under AR7 the LCCC will be able to require a CFD to be commenced as soon as it judges a project is operational - there will be no option to make money out of market prices as several recent wind farms have been doing. There is a severe risk of disappointment.
Add to that that over a year since HAR1 hydrogen CFDs were awarded, only three so far have actually been signed. The HAR2 round was launched back in April, and was supposed to have produced a short list in the Autumn followed by awards early this year. There has been complete radio silence on hydrogen:the whole area appears to be stalled. That RenewableUK called for ways to subsidise sales of power by wind farms as input rather confirms the lack of sensible economics.
Then we have the Capacity Market auction in early March, which looks set to pretend that batteries are reasonably dispatchable capacity, and which appears to be underprocuring real dispatchable capacity for four years hence. There will be a desperate hope that existing nuclear and CCGT stations will be able to extend their lives still further.
When I was a youngster back in the 50/60’s I used to go to the football match with my father. Usually, as we headed for the ground along with many other supporters, preaching to the passing crowd would be the odd old man with sandwich boards on his chest and back, featuring alarming messages like, “the end of the World is nigh!” Little did I realise that the country would one day be governed by such people.
The shame is that if as a global population we had spent the same money on Nuclear that we have wasted on the green thing we would all be riding and driving and enjoying affordable clean energy with a product not reliant on dirty mining and ending up with an unreliable energy supply.. big shame.
I like nuclear for stationary power needs, but I have yet to see a nuclear powered car.... and please don't tell me EVs are the answer, because they're not.
Well true ….not yet…. but the energy density of nuclear can be miniaturized over time and can power ships and trains for sure.. already doing subs and some ships now…. And how long before commercial transit etc.. I suggest that the ICE with an effective hybrid battery system that maximizes efficiency will be with us for quite some time… maybe fuel cells with hydrogen produced from abundant nuclear using water electrolyse process…. but also a long way off.. but I agree mining the snot our of the earth to make EV batteries is a mugs game.
Even this rancid, inept communist Labour Govt have realised renewables are not the future, especially when you need reliable, affordable power for new AI data centres - new nuclear is on!
The only rational interpretation of the UK Uniparty’s ruinously expensive, destructive and pointless Net Zero agenda is that it is a malign attempt to cripple the UK economy and impoverish the nation and its people. This is being done at the behest of the global establishment (UN, World Bank, WEF, Big Money, Big Media, billionaire philanthropaths, …) who are using “climate change” as a Trojan Horse to try to impose one-world governance.
Starmer’s pay grade is too low in the globalist pecking order for him to sabotage Net Zero. Apart from maybe a sustained Dunkelflaute leading to prolonged blackouts or a sudden massive fall in global temperatures, the only savour who might rescue us is Donald Trump.
How can the climate change hoax be sustained in this country in the face of such concise, uncontroversial debunking from the USA’s Secretary of Energy Chris Wright? https://x.com/MarcNixon24/status/1887214153020100950.
I still can’t get my head around knowing that when the wind doesn’t blow (& it really doesn’t sometimes) we -us-those who foot the bills & will be doing so for generations to come - are paying for these enormous edifices of vanity - to sit there immobile as a reminder of our collective poverty.
The speed of this madness has overtaken any signs of common sense.
We need reliable, energy-dense, on-shore power generation instead of the intermittent, maintenance intensive disaster of off-shore wind, that also happens to be destructive to avian and marine life and destructive to the tourism and fishing industries. Once reliable power generation is available, no smart meters are needed to switch individuals' washing machines off when there is no wind. I made a case for that here:
Milliband's policies are a direct route to economic disaster. Britain already has the highest industrial electricity prices on the European continent. Why would any manufacturer whose operations depend on major amounts of power consumption invest in a country whose government do everything in their means to make power more expensive and less reliable?
If only there was a workable opposition of any sort, then all this nonsense would be curtailed. I can't remember when I was last so angry -- except for this morning, and the threat of the Islamophobia law to come. Where has logic gone? We need a leader for the silent majority to fall in behind, to stop all of this insanity NOW.
Oops! Batman Baldrick's Clean Energy Superpower cunning plan to save the world is in serious peril. I expect he'll have to ride to the rescue in the Battymobile by granting even more consent for solar panels on valuable farmland - meaning that we'll only achieve superpower status during summer and not at all when it's night time.
The basic problem is constantly overlooked in favour of nitpicking about this or that plan to increase wind power generation. Before the recent rise of Reform, the two major parties were committed to net zero using wind power.
But the whole wind power thing is insane in the light of the inevitable wind droughts/Dunkelflautes when there is next to no wind across western Europe for days or even weeks at a time.
I would have expected people to be alert to this after the experience of June 2021 and subsequent events, most recently a few days ago.
Wind power will not work. Full stop. End of story.
When I read about the efforts that people are making keep the British lights on I think about the band that played on while the Titanic went down. Short-term expedients may prolong the agony but the bipartisan obsession with more and more wind can only make things worse.
Ah, but hang on Mr Turver. What they really want is more cash. They know Miliooaf is obsessed with this demented ideology and has tied himself to the mast, so to speak. As soon as the Oaf hears, he'll happily offer an even higher trough price and hand over ever more public money for inefficient, unreliable, horrifically expensive windmills.
One thing we know about the political classs is if there's the possibility of doing the wrong thing and the right thing, they will always, without fail do the wrong thing out of spite.
I am not very clued up when it comes to the physics of energy production and usage - that’s why I read this ‘Stack, amongst other things, to educate myself. But I do understand, at a most basic level, that supply, demand and profit govern the laws of economics. And leaving large chunks of a country’s energy generation in the hands of private, for-profit foreign companies is not a great idea if you want stable and secured supply of your product. An organisation beholden to its shareholders is not going to care whether the lights are on or off elsewhere, as long as the dividends roll in.
You're entirely right - in a market they do. The UK energy market has been fundamentally broken by the state. It wants windmills, so it forces us to pay for them - whether they work or not. The tax payer is lumbered with every single cost going. The provider just collects our taxes.
This is why energy is so expensive. It's why everything is so expensive in the UK: state meddling to break markets. EVs, for example forced up the price of used cars. The well off benefitted (because they work for richer companies) from EV subsidy in fleet sales. I'm not bashing that, it's what happens, but that money came from someone who cannot, and will never likely be able to afford an electric car.
Similarly through soaring energy bills those who can pay are subsidising those who can't, or won't. The rational option would be to cut bills, same as the rational choice over high taxes was to cut taxes, not introduce working tax credits but it's about power (over you, not from the wall!) to control how you live.
It's being touted that stalin, sorry, sorry, Starmer, is going to have to choose between Minibrain and Thieves. PMs usually back their chancellor. Here's hoping.....
Get rid of both and resign, would be my suggestion Kier. Sack your entire front bench. Repeal every bill you've rammed through, set a law to cut taxes - all of them - by 5% per year for the duration of your parliament and just put card board cut outs on the green benches - on both sides. Government would be the best we've had in some time.
Thank you David. I read just yesterday from journalist John Rentoul that there is speculation in Westminster that UK Gov commitments to Net Zero are going to be weakened, and that in a cabinet reshuffle, Miliband will be moved. Idle chit-chat at the moment, but it's nice to hope. I mused a while ago that his plans wouldn't survive contact with the Treasury. Where would we move him? A new minister for Greenland? That would certainly baffle Trump. Though what do I have against Greenland?
Apologies for whinging but he won't. Milioaf will just give Orsted more money, Starmer will wave it through, the Treasury will dump the colossal cost on the tax payer likely in borrowing but also she will hike axes (which will do further economic hard).
Remember, these people are fools. Where they can ruin things, they will.
I choose to cling on to hope. I note that the pronouncement about smoothing the path for small modular nuclear reactors was made by Starmer and not Miliband. and am willing to accept that he understands the concept- at least of small, if not the other words. (I believe SMRs, like AI are the politician's equivalent of baby's new toy and that the need for lots more big nuclear reactors eludes them.) This noted I am resigned to the prospect of the usual full time score of Optimists 0: Pessimists 1.
Isn't there a single brave journalist out there who will confront Millivolt with these increasing costs versus his promise of lower energy bills? The fact is, it's impossible.
In a way, it's a shame that the blackout didn't happen because that for sure would have forced the issue from an angry populace?
Ah but you'vee got to remember that most people don't read blogs like this. They're ignorant. They don't look at their bills and see 70% of it is tax. They just think the 'energy companies' are profiteering. Government promotes this because it deflects from them, the real cause.
Journalists won't say anything because the Left wing press is obsessed with 'climate change' (and knows nothing about the science) and the Right wing types won't step out because it is careere suicide - access gets cut off, promotions don't happen, you're limited to the one paper and the BBC simply smother your rationality with propaganda.
The timetable for AR7 starts with the pre-qualication for the Clean Industry Bonus, the new extra subsidy that is an under the table attempt to disguise the true costs of the programme. It opens for applications next week.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-7
However the bonus isn't that generous and comes with strings attached on investment in facilities in the UK. Moreover, the ceiling prices for CFD bids remain unrealistically low, especially since under AR7 the LCCC will be able to require a CFD to be commenced as soon as it judges a project is operational - there will be no option to make money out of market prices as several recent wind farms have been doing. There is a severe risk of disappointment.
Add to that that over a year since HAR1 hydrogen CFDs were awarded, only three so far have actually been signed. The HAR2 round was launched back in April, and was supposed to have produced a short list in the Autumn followed by awards early this year. There has been complete radio silence on hydrogen:the whole area appears to be stalled. That RenewableUK called for ways to subsidise sales of power by wind farms as input rather confirms the lack of sensible economics.
Then we have the Capacity Market auction in early March, which looks set to pretend that batteries are reasonably dispatchable capacity, and which appears to be underprocuring real dispatchable capacity for four years hence. There will be a desperate hope that existing nuclear and CCGT stations will be able to extend their lives still further.
When I was a youngster back in the 50/60’s I used to go to the football match with my father. Usually, as we headed for the ground along with many other supporters, preaching to the passing crowd would be the odd old man with sandwich boards on his chest and back, featuring alarming messages like, “the end of the World is nigh!” Little did I realise that the country would one day be governed by such people.
The shame is that if as a global population we had spent the same money on Nuclear that we have wasted on the green thing we would all be riding and driving and enjoying affordable clean energy with a product not reliant on dirty mining and ending up with an unreliable energy supply.. big shame.
I like nuclear for stationary power needs, but I have yet to see a nuclear powered car.... and please don't tell me EVs are the answer, because they're not.
Well true ….not yet…. but the energy density of nuclear can be miniaturized over time and can power ships and trains for sure.. already doing subs and some ships now…. And how long before commercial transit etc.. I suggest that the ICE with an effective hybrid battery system that maximizes efficiency will be with us for quite some time… maybe fuel cells with hydrogen produced from abundant nuclear using water electrolyse process…. but also a long way off.. but I agree mining the snot our of the earth to make EV batteries is a mugs game.
Even this rancid, inept communist Labour Govt have realised renewables are not the future, especially when you need reliable, affordable power for new AI data centres - new nuclear is on!
The only rational interpretation of the UK Uniparty’s ruinously expensive, destructive and pointless Net Zero agenda is that it is a malign attempt to cripple the UK economy and impoverish the nation and its people. This is being done at the behest of the global establishment (UN, World Bank, WEF, Big Money, Big Media, billionaire philanthropaths, …) who are using “climate change” as a Trojan Horse to try to impose one-world governance.
Starmer’s pay grade is too low in the globalist pecking order for him to sabotage Net Zero. Apart from maybe a sustained Dunkelflaute leading to prolonged blackouts or a sudden massive fall in global temperatures, the only savour who might rescue us is Donald Trump.
How can the climate change hoax be sustained in this country in the face of such concise, uncontroversial debunking from the USA’s Secretary of Energy Chris Wright? https://x.com/MarcNixon24/status/1887214153020100950.
Recently pointed out to me was Hanlon's Razor, a variant of Occam's: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity".
And Musk's observation that in the limit, stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
I still can’t get my head around knowing that when the wind doesn’t blow (& it really doesn’t sometimes) we -us-those who foot the bills & will be doing so for generations to come - are paying for these enormous edifices of vanity - to sit there immobile as a reminder of our collective poverty.
The speed of this madness has overtaken any signs of common sense.
We need reliable, energy-dense, on-shore power generation instead of the intermittent, maintenance intensive disaster of off-shore wind, that also happens to be destructive to avian and marine life and destructive to the tourism and fishing industries. Once reliable power generation is available, no smart meters are needed to switch individuals' washing machines off when there is no wind. I made a case for that here:
https://www.wildhorsewisdom.xyz/p/horses-like-running?r=31a4ti&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Milliband's policies are a direct route to economic disaster. Britain already has the highest industrial electricity prices on the European continent. Why would any manufacturer whose operations depend on major amounts of power consumption invest in a country whose government do everything in their means to make power more expensive and less reliable?
If only there was a workable opposition of any sort, then all this nonsense would be curtailed. I can't remember when I was last so angry -- except for this morning, and the threat of the Islamophobia law to come. Where has logic gone? We need a leader for the silent majority to fall in behind, to stop all of this insanity NOW.
Feel exactly the same...
Michael Shanks, UK Energy Minister, on sky News this morning was asked what % of our power was nuclear. 30% he said, whch is twice the correct figure.
Lies, obfuscation and sheer stupidity. Just about sums Labour up.
Oops! Batman Baldrick's Clean Energy Superpower cunning plan to save the world is in serious peril. I expect he'll have to ride to the rescue in the Battymobile by granting even more consent for solar panels on valuable farmland - meaning that we'll only achieve superpower status during summer and not at all when it's night time.
The basic problem is constantly overlooked in favour of nitpicking about this or that plan to increase wind power generation. Before the recent rise of Reform, the two major parties were committed to net zero using wind power.
But the whole wind power thing is insane in the light of the inevitable wind droughts/Dunkelflautes when there is next to no wind across western Europe for days or even weeks at a time.
I would have expected people to be alert to this after the experience of June 2021 and subsequent events, most recently a few days ago.
Wind power will not work. Full stop. End of story.
When I read about the efforts that people are making keep the British lights on I think about the band that played on while the Titanic went down. Short-term expedients may prolong the agony but the bipartisan obsession with more and more wind can only make things worse.
https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/and-the-band-played-on?
Don't forget the inter-connectors, which stand a chance of linking somewhere in need of electricity with somewhere else that hasn't any to spare.
I see what you did there.
Ah, but hang on Mr Turver. What they really want is more cash. They know Miliooaf is obsessed with this demented ideology and has tied himself to the mast, so to speak. As soon as the Oaf hears, he'll happily offer an even higher trough price and hand over ever more public money for inefficient, unreliable, horrifically expensive windmills.
One thing we know about the political classs is if there's the possibility of doing the wrong thing and the right thing, they will always, without fail do the wrong thing out of spite.
exactly, they'll just be asking for a higher price.
I am not very clued up when it comes to the physics of energy production and usage - that’s why I read this ‘Stack, amongst other things, to educate myself. But I do understand, at a most basic level, that supply, demand and profit govern the laws of economics. And leaving large chunks of a country’s energy generation in the hands of private, for-profit foreign companies is not a great idea if you want stable and secured supply of your product. An organisation beholden to its shareholders is not going to care whether the lights are on or off elsewhere, as long as the dividends roll in.
You're entirely right - in a market they do. The UK energy market has been fundamentally broken by the state. It wants windmills, so it forces us to pay for them - whether they work or not. The tax payer is lumbered with every single cost going. The provider just collects our taxes.
This is why energy is so expensive. It's why everything is so expensive in the UK: state meddling to break markets. EVs, for example forced up the price of used cars. The well off benefitted (because they work for richer companies) from EV subsidy in fleet sales. I'm not bashing that, it's what happens, but that money came from someone who cannot, and will never likely be able to afford an electric car.
Similarly through soaring energy bills those who can pay are subsidising those who can't, or won't. The rational option would be to cut bills, same as the rational choice over high taxes was to cut taxes, not introduce working tax credits but it's about power (over you, not from the wall!) to control how you live.
You should join the Earnings Call at 1pm today and ask the question directly to the CEO
https://getvisualtv.net/stream/?orsted-full-year-results-2024
It's being touted that stalin, sorry, sorry, Starmer, is going to have to choose between Minibrain and Thieves. PMs usually back their chancellor. Here's hoping.....
Get rid of both and resign, would be my suggestion Kier. Sack your entire front bench. Repeal every bill you've rammed through, set a law to cut taxes - all of them - by 5% per year for the duration of your parliament and just put card board cut outs on the green benches - on both sides. Government would be the best we've had in some time.
Thank you David. I read just yesterday from journalist John Rentoul that there is speculation in Westminster that UK Gov commitments to Net Zero are going to be weakened, and that in a cabinet reshuffle, Miliband will be moved. Idle chit-chat at the moment, but it's nice to hope. I mused a while ago that his plans wouldn't survive contact with the Treasury. Where would we move him? A new minister for Greenland? That would certainly baffle Trump. Though what do I have against Greenland?
Apologies for whinging but he won't. Milioaf will just give Orsted more money, Starmer will wave it through, the Treasury will dump the colossal cost on the tax payer likely in borrowing but also she will hike axes (which will do further economic hard).
Remember, these people are fools. Where they can ruin things, they will.
I choose to cling on to hope. I note that the pronouncement about smoothing the path for small modular nuclear reactors was made by Starmer and not Miliband. and am willing to accept that he understands the concept- at least of small, if not the other words. (I believe SMRs, like AI are the politician's equivalent of baby's new toy and that the need for lots more big nuclear reactors eludes them.) This noted I am resigned to the prospect of the usual full time score of Optimists 0: Pessimists 1.
Isn't there a single brave journalist out there who will confront Millivolt with these increasing costs versus his promise of lower energy bills? The fact is, it's impossible.
In a way, it's a shame that the blackout didn't happen because that for sure would have forced the issue from an angry populace?
Ah but you'vee got to remember that most people don't read blogs like this. They're ignorant. They don't look at their bills and see 70% of it is tax. They just think the 'energy companies' are profiteering. Government promotes this because it deflects from them, the real cause.
Journalists won't say anything because the Left wing press is obsessed with 'climate change' (and knows nothing about the science) and the Right wing types won't step out because it is careere suicide - access gets cut off, promotions don't happen, you're limited to the one paper and the BBC simply smother your rationality with propaganda.
I’d be interested if you could explain how is 70% of bills tax?
Can't you count?
This is not the place for antagonistic comments. I too would like to know how the 70% is calculated