I have complained to the BBC about the interview with Adam Berman. Unfortunately they only give you 2,000 characters to write your complaint and despite using all of them I've had to be brief (curtailed??) I agree with the writer who pointed out that gas was expensive to turn on and off. Jan 8th is a case in point.
It seems from what they say that the Net Zero fanatics are fighting an impossible battle to overcome the constraints of how the grid’s legacy pricing system actually works. They seem to think (or pretend) that if they can flood the grid with “cheap” wind and solar (e.g. by quintupling the supply), this will displace their bogeyman “expensive” gas.
They never consider that Net Zero is an engineering, logistical, financial and political impossibility as well as being totally pointless since proper science has shown that CO2 emissions pose negligible risk to the global climate and that Net Zero is especially pointless when pursued unilaterally while the rest of the world (bar the fanatics of the EU) carries on with fossil fuel business as usual.
Their modelling supposedly claims that 95% grid decarbonisation by 2030 is possible, but has anyone outside Westminster ever seen or reviewed these models? If not, why not?
These Net Zero fanatics are wilfully and cruelly oppressing the general public (with the poorest suffering the most) in their push towards their ulterior motive to create a totalitarian society. Starmer’s moves to cosy up to the undemocratic EU will only increase the oppression, e.g. by adopting the more damaging EU ETS system to increase the cost of gas: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/04/17/starmers-surrender-to-brussels-will-force-up-energy-bills/.
So of my £926 electricity bill using price cap prices and standard 2700kWhr annual usage, £520 is paying subsidy on renewables. And that figure won’t fall until around mid 2030s when the very expensive RO and FiT roll off?
That should be the headline. 55% of my bill is a Green Power Subsidy.
You have missed one further huge cost of renewable energy - It makes gas generation much more expensive AND environmentally damaging. Gas turbines are being switched on and off repeatedly to balance the grid, they often dont reach peak efficiency, thereby burning more gas, costing more money AND producing more co2 per therm. In addition, the capital cost has to be paid, the fewer therms produced, the higher the capital cost per therm i.e. the gas price , which sets the price for the grid, is artificially raised - if we just used gas generation, the cost per therm would be significantly lower than currently. Spectacularly, the less gas we use , the higher the cost per therm - I predict that , ultimately, the cost of gas generation per therm WILL be more than costs for renewables BECAUSE we have to pay for an entire fleet of gas power stations we hardly ever use except for weeks in the depths of winter when theres no wind , heavy cloud cover, and peak demand from heat pumps. Tell me I'm (not) wrong!
But even you are still missing a nuanced factor. It is impossible for gas plant operators to efficiently hedge their uncertain output, given that no one knows how much expensive wind generation will jump the queue on a particular date this time next year:
There is a different problem. The real idea of the capacity market is that it will pay well enough to encourage new investment to replace old plant that must be retired. Now, if you guarantee a full plant life the cost of that investment can be amortised over 30-40 years. However, if you say that there will be no unabated gas generation beyond 2035 or 2040, you are condemning the plant to a maximum life of perhaps a maximum of 12 years, with no guarantee that funding would appear for CCS or that it would be viable at the end of that period. So the capital cost must be amortised at three times the rate. So that means the cost per effective GW is more like £200m per year instead of £65m per year currently. The way the market works at present is that all capacity (adjusted for anticipated effective availability) is paid the same rate. So securing 50GW would cost £10bn p.a. across all technologies.
It might get even worse. The problem for new wind farms is that as more capacity is added the share of their output that is actually useful drops. There are more hours of curtailment because of the extra capacity, and more has to be curtailed in hours that are already in surplus. Curtailment payments are rapidly heading to a pittance as competition to secure them increases. The lack of revenue earning hours on wind farms becomes financially existential. What better way of bailing them out than a capacity market payment that pays a fixed sum annually simply for being there?
But how big would that need to be? If we take a 1GW offshore wind farm that might expect to produce at an average 45% capacity factor offshore that would be uncurtailed production of 0.45x8.76 =3.942TWh/a. At a CFD price of say £75/MWh the income would be £295.65m. But if 75% of production is valueless and curtailed then they will need a subsidy of £222m to make up the difference. Normally, wind is granted a low effective capacity on the basis that there is a very good chance there won't be wind at a time when you need to call on it, so instead of the 45% average capacity factor, which would require a price of 222/0.45 or £495m per GW of effective capacity per year, you would under current rules be looking at 3 times that or more. The model has to change.
An alternative way of looking at it is that the real cost of the 25% of useful output is 4 times the number you first thought of, or £300/MWh - and this is fundamentally why a renewables based system is only going to get more costly the more we install.
"a renewables based system is only going to get more costly the more we install"
Absolutely. For the reasons you articulate and many more (as gas heating and transport are brought into the lunacy). The true whole-system cost of offshore wind is already ~33p. We can expect it to double or triple if Miliband isn't stopped. Possibly to £1 a unit, displacing retail gas at 7p a unit. It's absolute insanity.
It is frustrating that the deeply biased BBC is not held prperly to account. They won't admit the additional costs either, as they've sunk considerable amounts of their pension fund into green nonsense.
After all, a government enforced tax scam that generates a healthy slush fund for anyone wanting to trough isn't something MPs will turn down.
It sickens me that the green zealots keep lying, the evidential facts prove them wrong and yet the lies continue and the public are kept distracted with waffle and nonsense.
I cannot disagree with a thing you said. You offer a well-thought-out rebuttal to asinine arguments. That said, you offer one of a plethora of good counterpoints to a plethora of half-baked, human afluence-destroying energy schemes.
Regrettably, the Hydra thrives. A carbon life form that fears carbon is lost. Carbon is the molecule that solidifies organic chemistry and is the basis of life.
Green's entire argument is built on quicksand, which we solidify by accepting the view that carbon is harmful. Slay that Hydra, and the fiasco ends.
I have a lot of sympathy with that view, but unfortunately it is not ultimately correct imo.
We must always remember that we are fighting grifters & neo-Marxist globalist nutters - who lie, easily & unceasingly. If you tell them there is no climate crisis, & not the slightest evidence of a climate crisis, they simply come back with "well, what's the harm in 'going green' anyway, since it's so much cheaper and will give us energy independence?". So we must debunk that garbage as well, & get the true costs of Net Zero (£3.4 Trillion for the UK alone) out there.
John, you see the economic catastrophe of trying to achieve 'net zero' with green energy. So don't let the boogey man who tells you 'net zero' is a laudable, life-saving goal have a platform to sell his scam. Carbon dioxide is not a problem.
If only we could. However unravelling the morass of statism profiting from the con is going to take an entire government term, with very little else done: that's the level of fight the state - the dozens of quangocrats, hangers on, lawfare from those profiting, endless committees hosted by unintelligent placemen - will put up.
You're right. The fight is generational, but until each and every one of us asks 'Why' when bad ideas are presented, it will not end. That so many of us are so easily misled is the root of the problem, a problem that will persist until the culture of ignorance is reformed.
I don't think brilliantly fighting skirmishes is a winning strategy.
Paul Homewood has also covered this story and neatly exposes several key items of “misinformation” in the Berman interview, except that he doesn’t mince his words and calls them “lies”. He presents the counter-information which Berman must be aware of so clearly that the only conclusion one can draw from this interview is that Berman is a professional liar (including lies of omission): https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/04/16/bbc-ignore-the-renewable-elephant-in-the-room/.
In fairness to Sarah Montague, it is a difficult subject for most people, and unfortunately when it comes to reporting on industry the BBC is lamentably ill-equipped ... dare I say it 'ignorant'. The other mainstream media outlets are little better.
Last year I was surprised that in all their reporting on the South Wales steelworks closure there was very little discussion of the limitations of EAFs making steel from scrap, in particular the need for virgin steel for higher product grades, and yet an awful lot on the environmental benefits of EAFs vs blast furnaces. There was also no mention that the new EAF might struggle, given UK power prices, or indeed that TATA had just commissioned a new state-of-the-art blast furnace in India. It was if they had just taken the TATA press releases and repeated them verbatim.
I did a bit of digging and interestingly whilst I could find lots of journalists with climate change and environmental portfolios, (some shared with science) seemingly none had a specific industry remit. They have economics and business reporters but looking at their reports there was demonstrably little evidence of much interest in, or indeed in-depth understanding of, the primary or secondary sectors let alone particular industries. In fairness I could only find their senior reporters and they apparently can access several thousand more but I strongly suspect this is where much of the problem lies.
I guess the BBC has at some point made an editorial decision that this isn't a problem and that they have concentrated their efforts on what they deem the public thinks is important but it does of course lead to a suspicion of inherent bias and certainly diminishes their ability to report objectively on these issues. I'm not sure they are providing much of a 'public service' in that regard.
Indeed. Time was when major news outlets had journalists who specialised in major industries and who had in depth knowledge of them. Many had actually worked in the industries concerned, which gave them contacts and a degree of inside knowledge about how things really work, technically, financially, in the face of regulation, and the skills and attitudes of workers at all levels, and in the markets for their output.
Now the best industry journalists are hidden away in specialist industry publications where the starting subscription is of the order of £2,000p.a. per reader. Their contracts preclude them from undermining business by providing commentary to third parties for the most part. However, even these outlets have been overwhelmed by the need to provide analyses that senior industry management can trot out when challenged on their green credentials in the press. This often results in muddled thinking rather than clear insights.
That is why the best journalism is on Substack. Nerdy amateurs, ex-professionals etc are way better at this stuff than group-think journalists. I love the irony that jounalism will have (and be proud of) huge "diversity" in everything.... except ideology/political bias.
David, have you considered sharing this information with Martin Lewis? Perhaps, assuming he agrees with your analysis, he could help champion how the public is being misinformed and is paying far more than they need to should a more reasonable approach be used for the energy transition. There is nothing more than the price of energy which drives consumer costs for almost all things.
Yes. And, worse, as within the “energy companies", many think it is the oil and gas production companies primarily responsible for high electricity prices.
Yes, I understand. Maybe a case of all at the right time.
Most people would switch-off as soon as one goes into the detail to justify the conclusion. But... if someone like Martin Lewis championed the cause most people would accept the conclusion without wanting/needing to understand the detail
I loved this summary of the subsidy costs of renewables. I was confused by one element: "NESO produce Monthly Balancing Services Summary reports and the data for 2023/24 shows the cost of this service [=gas balancing the grid?] was £2.54bn. In addition, we pay for backup through the capacity market and the OBR shows this cost us £1bn in 2023/24" If I understand this correctly, and I suspect I don't, this is the cost of using gas when the renewables don't produce enough energy and so should not be lumped on to the cost of the renewables? Also I thought we paid c. £1b to turn off renewables when they were producing more than the market demand - is this what the "capacity market" refers to?
The balancing costs include curtailment payments to renewables generators, typically offshore wind farms as well as the costs of turning on the gas when the grid can't take anymore wind power. When we didn't have much renewables on the grid this cost about £0.5bn. It is perfectly reasonable to attribute the costs of balancing to renewables.
Capacity Market is different and is the cost to keep reliable plants (or maybe batteries) on standby for when the wind drops. This is an extra cost that we didn't have when we didn't have unreliable renewables on the grid.
The Capacity Market doesn't really pay for immediate standby. It pays for maintenance and a skeleton staff to actually keep plant open rather than in mothballs or shut down altogether. The more immediate standby costs come when a Capacity Market Notice is issued, at which point a full shift crew come in to ready the plant for operation if it is only operated infrequenty. The prices offered to NESO for generating will refect the costs of emergency overtime for staff and of ramping up output etc.
The market pays as cleared, so a 2GW plant like Pembroke, which actually operates much of the time because there is little alternative generation in South Wales and the West Midlands, and because it is modern, gets paid although it rarely goes to standby. The result is that it can remain profitable on a much tighter marginal cost margin, in a self-reinforcing mechanism that keeps it running.
Capacity Mkt costs will have trebled by the 27/28 delivery year to over 3.5B that pays for a lot of standby staff!! The reality is most of the cost is going to incentivise plant owners to keep the plant open and cover for the reduced running hours. Everyone else like the BESS who participate in it get a stonking subsidy to allow them to be built and then derive income from then trading energy. The other farce is a they've never had to actually call upon the capacity mkt as and shortfalls are resolved well in advance. The best solution if Milibrain is hell bent on NZ2030 is for DENZ to nationalise all the CCGT stations and treat them as national critical infrastructure.
Thanks for the clarification: I am nearly there! I now understand the Capacity Market and agree it is incremental. On the balancing costs, I agree that the curtailment costs are incremental. The final bit I am unsure about is the "cost of turning on the gas": does this mean that we spend money getting gas generators up to speed (presumably heating the water from close to room temperature to boiling point to drive steam turbines?) that would not have been needed had we not had to repeatedly turn gas generators on-and-off when the wind stopped (as the water in the steam turbines would always be hot, i.e., close to boiling point, as always in use). If my description is correct then I also see why it is incremental. PS - Sorry to be slow on the uptake.
OCGTs can run up in minutes and don't use any steam driven plant. CCGTs are basically OCGTs with heat recovery to produce steam and drive a second generator to improve overall efficiency.
Most CCGT operators run the plant at part load and provide offers in the BM to increase output pretty quickly.
As I mentioned in the article, I've complained to the BBC before about similar claims of "cheap renewables". Their position seems to be that their innumerate, arts graduate journalists know more than the great unwashed engineers. I've better things to do with my time. Public humiliation of the BBC is a better strategy imho.
Berman: "It does get a bit technical quite quickly..." To the layman in these matters this is true, but he might been more accurate to add that the powers that be have made it complicated so that that the layman won't understand the system, enabling them to pull the wool over our eyes. But I think you have missed a point. I listened to the broadcast twice to be sure I understood what he was saying. To me he seemed to be saying that renewables are cheap but scarce and gas is expensive electricity. So they set the price for renewables on the gas price, above the natural rate for renewables, and tax it so that renewable generators don't make excess profits. As renewables proportion in the mix increases prices will come down. This is a downright lie, it is precisely the opposite in reality.
You can burst the fantasy bubble of the UK Renewables Cult numerous times, using solid arguments based on cost, engineering infeasibility, meteorology, climatology, thermodynamics, geography, environmental, social and economic impact . . . . . but it makes no difference. It is held intact and fully inflated by an unholy combination of mass delusion, malign political idealism/opportunism and simple Green grift. The last is arguably the most significant - filthy Green lucre is what ultimately keeps 'Clean' Power afloat.
Its pretty depressing that people cant equate lack of wind and night time with no electricity. Its basic and easily understood by majority but of course all they see is the lights aren't going out so where is the problem. As ive been saying for nearly a decade without major blackouts no one is going to take much interest. In the short term though NESO's control engineers have both the tools to keep the lights and the biggest asset of all the ability to spend what it takes to do so.
There was no argument at all in the sceptic piece and as soon as we get into details it all goes over the heads of the politicians and the people in the street.
Sounding like a cracked record I will say again that we have to lift the wind literacy of everyone so they can understand the ABC of intermittent energy which demonstrates that wind and solar should never have been connected to the grid or at least never subsidised and mandated so they can drive conventional power, especially coal, out of the marketplace. Is anyone circulating the case that I have been making over and over again?
Consider the ABC of intermittent energy generation.
A. Input to the grid must continuously match the demand.
B. The continuity of RE is broken on nights with little or no wind.
C. There is no feasible or affordable large-scale storage to bridge the gaps.
Therefore, the green transition is impossible with current storage technology.
The rate of progress towards the tipping point will accelerate as demand is swelled by AI and electrification at large.
Just as VAT is explicit in bills, it should be mandatory for electricity bills to separate the actual charge for fuel from the subsidies added on by government interference in the market. That would get people’s attention. What’s stopping any energy provider from doing this voluntarily? Has the government compounded the offence of the subsidy regime by actually forbidding transparent disclosure in customer bills?
I think it has. I spent a good portion of my submission to the ESNZ Select Committee on trying to educate them that every MWh produced under an FiT costs consumers the FiT price, every MWh produced under a CFD costs the CFD strike price, every MWh subsidised by an ROC costs the consumer the ROC subsidy on top of whatever it notionally sells for in wholesale markets, and these costs are normally substantially more than the cost of gas generation. Even at the height of the energy crisis when market prices did rise above fixed FiT and CFD prices that benefit was insufficient to offset the cost of ROCs at least on a monthly average basis. The reality is that on a sunny, windy Sunday the real cost to consumers of their supply is much higher than when there is a reasonable portion of gas.
Only when supply gets really tight because we have limited dispatchable capacity and have to bid against other countries to maintain interconnector imports do we see much higher prices. These are not determined by cost of supply, but by pricing out demand (mainly in industry on time of use pricing). Indeed, Prof Gordon Hughes has shown a clear link between prices on the Continent and prices in the UK.
I did the same in my submission to ESNZ too. Interesting that more than a week has passed since the deadline for giving evidence, but they have not published any of the written evidence yet.
They haven't scheduled any further work on any of the topics yet either. My experience is that you may not see written submissions published until some time after they have held oral evidence sessions. I have taken care to ensure that sympathetic committee members already have my submissions. You can see how far behind they are here
The argument for renewables is that the fuel is free. I've seen the prime minister of Australia say this in the Sky News Australia documentary "The real cost of net zero". So the argument continues - if the fuel is free then the cost of renewable electricity must be minimal. So why do the renewable companies need so much subsidy in order to make a profit?
I'm completely on board with the Eigenvalues point of view it's just that I have a nincompoop son in law who thinks renewables are the answer to life the universe and everything and I need Ammo. His other favourite is that the oil companies get more subsidies than renewables do.
Australians struggle with the fact that for nuclear the cost of fuel is also nearly free, and ongoing maintenance costs per MWh are typically much lower than for renewables.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, Mark Mills made the excellent point that all energy is free in the sense that humans didn't create it. What costs is obtaining and harnessing it. Once this is pointed out, wind and solar fit into the grand scheme along with all other sources. As Mr Turver and others point out, we're paying through the nose for harvesting low-density intermittent (unreliable) sources.
Thanks Ian. I still don't understand what it is about renewables which makes it necessary to give them big subsidies before they make a profit. Are wind farms very expensive to build? Even before CFDs they are already getting a premium on their electricity price because they get the same price as gas generated electricity which as we've seen is usually the highest.
The answer to that is easy. The industry wouldn't have been financed without them because the financial don't make sense. The capital equipment, r&d, and manufacturing costs need to be recooped. If you get subsidy you shorten the return on investment and derisk it. The company I did system design for would never have raised the money needed for 3,500 solar installs without FiT and the customers couldn't afford the capex so the entire business wouldn't have existed. The industry had to lobby for subsidy. Since then it's become more and more clear that even with your capex costs covered, the life span of the equipment and output over the life span don't out perform putting your money in a different asset class and paying your gas and electricity bills. Soon energy prices will be so high you would be better off heating and powering your home with long turn diesel generator. You won't be popular with your neighbours but then you also won't be as skint as them. Of course diesel, biodiesel, red fuel, alternative forms of power generation will be next on the nutcases list of things to ban, tax and destroy and we will be left in the dark with a mangle, candle and pantry. Back to the 1840s with us all.
It's already cheaper to run a house on bulk propane (just) and grid mix. You just need to switch to air fryers, a mangle / hanging washing, chest freezer, and pantry. It's a right pain but I'm up about £30 so far and not a trace of solar, heat pumps or lithium whole house batteries in sight. Diesel only works at about 3.2x the current electricity price. I just wonder what will happen to my bulk propane costs as electricity prices increase. Eventually, if we survive economically, SMRs will save the day but I figure I have at least 25 years of savings before the prices come down unless someone talks sense into the energy policy.
Steve, with the health warning that I may be quite wrong, I'll venture my take on things. It starts with two political decisions: to be seen to avoid nationalising the supply of electricity; and to pursue wind and solar energy in the mistaken belief that they will get us to the sacred holy grail of net-zero. Wind farms, and offshore ones in particular, are very expensive to build, and relatively inexpensive to operate. They will also be expensive to decommission after what is likely to be disappointingly short lives (I've no idea if or how these have been taken into account). These attributes are shared with nuclear energy, which is steady, reliable and in terms of plant, much longer-lasting. To induce private companies to shoulder the high up-front cost, the UK government has provided the inducement of cost recovery via high prices per unit of energy generated, unrelated to real operation and maintenance costs. They are also compensated for generation that's not needed (curtailment costs), so they continue to make their buck. If the inducements on offer don't entice bids, auction rounds for new generation fall flat. The net result is a reward system, laughingly called an energy market, that is too complex for Joe Public to understand, one result being that we can't easily see what the real costs (construction, operation, decommissioning) are. Further, it has been set up so as to make claims that our high bills are due to the cost of gas seem adequately plausible to those without the time or inclination to follow the likes of Mr Turver. As a final note, nuclear energy has not been pursued as it should have been because it takes too long and costs too much, which is being ably demonstrated in the UK but refuted elsewhere, such as Korea and China.
I have complained to the BBC about the interview with Adam Berman. Unfortunately they only give you 2,000 characters to write your complaint and despite using all of them I've had to be brief (curtailed??) I agree with the writer who pointed out that gas was expensive to turn on and off. Jan 8th is a case in point.
It seems from what they say that the Net Zero fanatics are fighting an impossible battle to overcome the constraints of how the grid’s legacy pricing system actually works. They seem to think (or pretend) that if they can flood the grid with “cheap” wind and solar (e.g. by quintupling the supply), this will displace their bogeyman “expensive” gas.
They never consider that Net Zero is an engineering, logistical, financial and political impossibility as well as being totally pointless since proper science has shown that CO2 emissions pose negligible risk to the global climate and that Net Zero is especially pointless when pursued unilaterally while the rest of the world (bar the fanatics of the EU) carries on with fossil fuel business as usual.
Their modelling supposedly claims that 95% grid decarbonisation by 2030 is possible, but has anyone outside Westminster ever seen or reviewed these models? If not, why not?
These Net Zero fanatics are wilfully and cruelly oppressing the general public (with the poorest suffering the most) in their push towards their ulterior motive to create a totalitarian society. Starmer’s moves to cosy up to the undemocratic EU will only increase the oppression, e.g. by adopting the more damaging EU ETS system to increase the cost of gas: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/04/17/starmers-surrender-to-brussels-will-force-up-energy-bills/.
In 2020 I predicted that Net Zero was impossible for the obvious reason that the UK’s 2019 dependency on fossil fuels for its primary energy supply was irrevocably high at almost 80%: https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/fossil-fuel-dependency-shows-net-zero-is-impossible/.
My bet is that by 2029 when Uniparty Labour gets kicked out of office, the UK’s dependency on fossil fuels will be not much different from what it is now, last reported by gov.uk to be 75% in 2024 (well hidden, search for “75.0” or “dependency”) and barely scratching the surface on progress towards Net Zero: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e4f5d855239fa04d412067/Energy_Trends_March_2025.pdf.
So of my £926 electricity bill using price cap prices and standard 2700kWhr annual usage, £520 is paying subsidy on renewables. And that figure won’t fall until around mid 2030s when the very expensive RO and FiT roll off?
That should be the headline. 55% of my bill is a Green Power Subsidy.
Not quite. The £520 is an equivalent figure. Some of the costs are paid by businesses, that of course pass on those costs in things you buy.
Please read this david
You have missed one further huge cost of renewable energy - It makes gas generation much more expensive AND environmentally damaging. Gas turbines are being switched on and off repeatedly to balance the grid, they often dont reach peak efficiency, thereby burning more gas, costing more money AND producing more co2 per therm. In addition, the capital cost has to be paid, the fewer therms produced, the higher the capital cost per therm i.e. the gas price , which sets the price for the grid, is artificially raised - if we just used gas generation, the cost per therm would be significantly lower than currently. Spectacularly, the less gas we use , the higher the cost per therm - I predict that , ultimately, the cost of gas generation per therm WILL be more than costs for renewables BECAUSE we have to pay for an entire fleet of gas power stations we hardly ever use except for weeks in the depths of winter when theres no wind , heavy cloud cover, and peak demand from heat pumps. Tell me I'm (not) wrong!
Yes. The way we described it was "All drivers know they will get better fuel efficiency on a long run at steady speed than from a short trip in town".
https://johnsullivan.substack.com/p/uk-energy-consumption-and-electricity
But even you are still missing a nuanced factor. It is impossible for gas plant operators to efficiently hedge their uncertain output, given that no one knows how much expensive wind generation will jump the queue on a particular date this time next year:
𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑓𝑢𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑤𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝐶𝐶𝐺𝑇 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑢𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑑. 𝐼𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡, 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑔𝑎𝑠 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒, 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟, 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑓𝑢𝑒𝑙 𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑒𝑛𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑡𝑜 “𝑏𝑢𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑”, 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑦, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑔𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑒𝑙 𝑝𝑎𝑦𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠, 𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑖𝑑 𝑏𝑢𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑓𝑢𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑑, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑘𝑠 𝑠𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑎𝑠 𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑖𝑔𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠. 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝐾 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑎 𝑚𝑖𝑥 𝑜𝑓 𝑔𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑎𝑙 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 (𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑠𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑔𝑜!) 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑐𝑜𝑎𝑙 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑔𝑎𝑠 𝑓𝑢𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑑, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑣𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑎.
Yes, that's why the CM costs are forecast to rise.
There is a different problem. The real idea of the capacity market is that it will pay well enough to encourage new investment to replace old plant that must be retired. Now, if you guarantee a full plant life the cost of that investment can be amortised over 30-40 years. However, if you say that there will be no unabated gas generation beyond 2035 or 2040, you are condemning the plant to a maximum life of perhaps a maximum of 12 years, with no guarantee that funding would appear for CCS or that it would be viable at the end of that period. So the capital cost must be amortised at three times the rate. So that means the cost per effective GW is more like £200m per year instead of £65m per year currently. The way the market works at present is that all capacity (adjusted for anticipated effective availability) is paid the same rate. So securing 50GW would cost £10bn p.a. across all technologies.
It might get even worse. The problem for new wind farms is that as more capacity is added the share of their output that is actually useful drops. There are more hours of curtailment because of the extra capacity, and more has to be curtailed in hours that are already in surplus. Curtailment payments are rapidly heading to a pittance as competition to secure them increases. The lack of revenue earning hours on wind farms becomes financially existential. What better way of bailing them out than a capacity market payment that pays a fixed sum annually simply for being there?
But how big would that need to be? If we take a 1GW offshore wind farm that might expect to produce at an average 45% capacity factor offshore that would be uncurtailed production of 0.45x8.76 =3.942TWh/a. At a CFD price of say £75/MWh the income would be £295.65m. But if 75% of production is valueless and curtailed then they will need a subsidy of £222m to make up the difference. Normally, wind is granted a low effective capacity on the basis that there is a very good chance there won't be wind at a time when you need to call on it, so instead of the 45% average capacity factor, which would require a price of 222/0.45 or £495m per GW of effective capacity per year, you would under current rules be looking at 3 times that or more. The model has to change.
An alternative way of looking at it is that the real cost of the 25% of useful output is 4 times the number you first thought of, or £300/MWh - and this is fundamentally why a renewables based system is only going to get more costly the more we install.
"a renewables based system is only going to get more costly the more we install"
Absolutely. For the reasons you articulate and many more (as gas heating and transport are brought into the lunacy). The true whole-system cost of offshore wind is already ~33p. We can expect it to double or triple if Miliband isn't stopped. Possibly to £1 a unit, displacing retail gas at 7p a unit. It's absolute insanity.
It is frustrating that the deeply biased BBC is not held prperly to account. They won't admit the additional costs either, as they've sunk considerable amounts of their pension fund into green nonsense.
After all, a government enforced tax scam that generates a healthy slush fund for anyone wanting to trough isn't something MPs will turn down.
It sickens me that the green zealots keep lying, the evidential facts prove them wrong and yet the lies continue and the public are kept distracted with waffle and nonsense.
I cannot disagree with a thing you said. You offer a well-thought-out rebuttal to asinine arguments. That said, you offer one of a plethora of good counterpoints to a plethora of half-baked, human afluence-destroying energy schemes.
Regrettably, the Hydra thrives. A carbon life form that fears carbon is lost. Carbon is the molecule that solidifies organic chemistry and is the basis of life.
Green's entire argument is built on quicksand, which we solidify by accepting the view that carbon is harmful. Slay that Hydra, and the fiasco ends.
I have a lot of sympathy with that view, but unfortunately it is not ultimately correct imo.
We must always remember that we are fighting grifters & neo-Marxist globalist nutters - who lie, easily & unceasingly. If you tell them there is no climate crisis, & not the slightest evidence of a climate crisis, they simply come back with "well, what's the harm in 'going green' anyway, since it's so much cheaper and will give us energy independence?". So we must debunk that garbage as well, & get the true costs of Net Zero (£3.4 Trillion for the UK alone) out there.
John, you see the economic catastrophe of trying to achieve 'net zero' with green energy. So don't let the boogey man who tells you 'net zero' is a laudable, life-saving goal have a platform to sell his scam. Carbon dioxide is not a problem.
If only we could. However unravelling the morass of statism profiting from the con is going to take an entire government term, with very little else done: that's the level of fight the state - the dozens of quangocrats, hangers on, lawfare from those profiting, endless committees hosted by unintelligent placemen - will put up.
You're right. The fight is generational, but until each and every one of us asks 'Why' when bad ideas are presented, it will not end. That so many of us are so easily misled is the root of the problem, a problem that will persist until the culture of ignorance is reformed.
I don't think brilliantly fighting skirmishes is a winning strategy.
Paul Homewood has also covered this story and neatly exposes several key items of “misinformation” in the Berman interview, except that he doesn’t mince his words and calls them “lies”. He presents the counter-information which Berman must be aware of so clearly that the only conclusion one can draw from this interview is that Berman is a professional liar (including lies of omission): https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/04/16/bbc-ignore-the-renewable-elephant-in-the-room/.
In fairness to Sarah Montague, it is a difficult subject for most people, and unfortunately when it comes to reporting on industry the BBC is lamentably ill-equipped ... dare I say it 'ignorant'. The other mainstream media outlets are little better.
Last year I was surprised that in all their reporting on the South Wales steelworks closure there was very little discussion of the limitations of EAFs making steel from scrap, in particular the need for virgin steel for higher product grades, and yet an awful lot on the environmental benefits of EAFs vs blast furnaces. There was also no mention that the new EAF might struggle, given UK power prices, or indeed that TATA had just commissioned a new state-of-the-art blast furnace in India. It was if they had just taken the TATA press releases and repeated them verbatim.
I did a bit of digging and interestingly whilst I could find lots of journalists with climate change and environmental portfolios, (some shared with science) seemingly none had a specific industry remit. They have economics and business reporters but looking at their reports there was demonstrably little evidence of much interest in, or indeed in-depth understanding of, the primary or secondary sectors let alone particular industries. In fairness I could only find their senior reporters and they apparently can access several thousand more but I strongly suspect this is where much of the problem lies.
I guess the BBC has at some point made an editorial decision that this isn't a problem and that they have concentrated their efforts on what they deem the public thinks is important but it does of course lead to a suspicion of inherent bias and certainly diminishes their ability to report objectively on these issues. I'm not sure they are providing much of a 'public service' in that regard.
Indeed. Time was when major news outlets had journalists who specialised in major industries and who had in depth knowledge of them. Many had actually worked in the industries concerned, which gave them contacts and a degree of inside knowledge about how things really work, technically, financially, in the face of regulation, and the skills and attitudes of workers at all levels, and in the markets for their output.
Now the best industry journalists are hidden away in specialist industry publications where the starting subscription is of the order of £2,000p.a. per reader. Their contracts preclude them from undermining business by providing commentary to third parties for the most part. However, even these outlets have been overwhelmed by the need to provide analyses that senior industry management can trot out when challenged on their green credentials in the press. This often results in muddled thinking rather than clear insights.
That is why the best journalism is on Substack. Nerdy amateurs, ex-professionals etc are way better at this stuff than group-think journalists. I love the irony that jounalism will have (and be proud of) huge "diversity" in everything.... except ideology/political bias.
David, have you considered sharing this information with Martin Lewis? Perhaps, assuming he agrees with your analysis, he could help champion how the public is being misinformed and is paying far more than they need to should a more reasonable approach be used for the energy transition. There is nothing more than the price of energy which drives consumer costs for almost all things.
Martin Lewis' audience thinks that energy companies are responsible for high prices. Few think beyond who they get the bill from.
Government perpetuates this ignorance through relentless deceit.
Yes. And, worse, as within the “energy companies", many think it is the oil and gas production companies primarily responsible for high electricity prices.
I don't think Martin Lewis is ready to challenge the Establishment view on this yet.
Yes, I understand. Maybe a case of all at the right time.
Most people would switch-off as soon as one goes into the detail to justify the conclusion. But... if someone like Martin Lewis championed the cause most people would accept the conclusion without wanting/needing to understand the detail
I loved this summary of the subsidy costs of renewables. I was confused by one element: "NESO produce Monthly Balancing Services Summary reports and the data for 2023/24 shows the cost of this service [=gas balancing the grid?] was £2.54bn. In addition, we pay for backup through the capacity market and the OBR shows this cost us £1bn in 2023/24" If I understand this correctly, and I suspect I don't, this is the cost of using gas when the renewables don't produce enough energy and so should not be lumped on to the cost of the renewables? Also I thought we paid c. £1b to turn off renewables when they were producing more than the market demand - is this what the "capacity market" refers to?
The balancing costs include curtailment payments to renewables generators, typically offshore wind farms as well as the costs of turning on the gas when the grid can't take anymore wind power. When we didn't have much renewables on the grid this cost about £0.5bn. It is perfectly reasonable to attribute the costs of balancing to renewables.
Capacity Market is different and is the cost to keep reliable plants (or maybe batteries) on standby for when the wind drops. This is an extra cost that we didn't have when we didn't have unreliable renewables on the grid.
The Capacity Market doesn't really pay for immediate standby. It pays for maintenance and a skeleton staff to actually keep plant open rather than in mothballs or shut down altogether. The more immediate standby costs come when a Capacity Market Notice is issued, at which point a full shift crew come in to ready the plant for operation if it is only operated infrequenty. The prices offered to NESO for generating will refect the costs of emergency overtime for staff and of ramping up output etc.
The market pays as cleared, so a 2GW plant like Pembroke, which actually operates much of the time because there is little alternative generation in South Wales and the West Midlands, and because it is modern, gets paid although it rarely goes to standby. The result is that it can remain profitable on a much tighter marginal cost margin, in a self-reinforcing mechanism that keeps it running.
Capacity Mkt costs will have trebled by the 27/28 delivery year to over 3.5B that pays for a lot of standby staff!! The reality is most of the cost is going to incentivise plant owners to keep the plant open and cover for the reduced running hours. Everyone else like the BESS who participate in it get a stonking subsidy to allow them to be built and then derive income from then trading energy. The other farce is a they've never had to actually call upon the capacity mkt as and shortfalls are resolved well in advance. The best solution if Milibrain is hell bent on NZ2030 is for DENZ to nationalise all the CCGT stations and treat them as national critical infrastructure.
I really wouldn't want to rely on Miliband nationalised industries, but YMMV.
Thanks for the clarification: I am nearly there! I now understand the Capacity Market and agree it is incremental. On the balancing costs, I agree that the curtailment costs are incremental. The final bit I am unsure about is the "cost of turning on the gas": does this mean that we spend money getting gas generators up to speed (presumably heating the water from close to room temperature to boiling point to drive steam turbines?) that would not have been needed had we not had to repeatedly turn gas generators on-and-off when the wind stopped (as the water in the steam turbines would always be hot, i.e., close to boiling point, as always in use). If my description is correct then I also see why it is incremental. PS - Sorry to be slow on the uptake.
OCGTs can run up in minutes and don't use any steam driven plant. CCGTs are basically OCGTs with heat recovery to produce steam and drive a second generator to improve overall efficiency.
Most CCGT operators run the plant at part load and provide offers in the BM to increase output pretty quickly.
I think so, yes.
Complain to the World at One - if they don't know they can't get to a balanced position.
As I mentioned in the article, I've complained to the BBC before about similar claims of "cheap renewables". Their position seems to be that their innumerate, arts graduate journalists know more than the great unwashed engineers. I've better things to do with my time. Public humiliation of the BBC is a better strategy imho.
I've challenged Energy UK to a debate:
https://x.com/7Kiwi/status/1912407193871167833
Berman: "It does get a bit technical quite quickly..." To the layman in these matters this is true, but he might been more accurate to add that the powers that be have made it complicated so that that the layman won't understand the system, enabling them to pull the wool over our eyes. But I think you have missed a point. I listened to the broadcast twice to be sure I understood what he was saying. To me he seemed to be saying that renewables are cheap but scarce and gas is expensive electricity. So they set the price for renewables on the gas price, above the natural rate for renewables, and tax it so that renewable generators don't make excess profits. As renewables proportion in the mix increases prices will come down. This is a downright lie, it is precisely the opposite in reality.
You can burst the fantasy bubble of the UK Renewables Cult numerous times, using solid arguments based on cost, engineering infeasibility, meteorology, climatology, thermodynamics, geography, environmental, social and economic impact . . . . . but it makes no difference. It is held intact and fully inflated by an unholy combination of mass delusion, malign political idealism/opportunism and simple Green grift. The last is arguably the most significant - filthy Green lucre is what ultimately keeps 'Clean' Power afloat.
Its pretty depressing that people cant equate lack of wind and night time with no electricity. Its basic and easily understood by majority but of course all they see is the lights aren't going out so where is the problem. As ive been saying for nearly a decade without major blackouts no one is going to take much interest. In the short term though NESO's control engineers have both the tools to keep the lights and the biggest asset of all the ability to spend what it takes to do so.
There was no argument at all in the sceptic piece and as soon as we get into details it all goes over the heads of the politicians and the people in the street.
Sounding like a cracked record I will say again that we have to lift the wind literacy of everyone so they can understand the ABC of intermittent energy which demonstrates that wind and solar should never have been connected to the grid or at least never subsidised and mandated so they can drive conventional power, especially coal, out of the marketplace. Is anyone circulating the case that I have been making over and over again?
Consider the ABC of intermittent energy generation.
A. Input to the grid must continuously match the demand.
B. The continuity of RE is broken on nights with little or no wind.
C. There is no feasible or affordable large-scale storage to bridge the gaps.
Therefore, the green transition is impossible with current storage technology.
The rate of progress towards the tipping point will accelerate as demand is swelled by AI and electrification at large.
A few more things.
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/the-late-discovery-of-wind-droughts
https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/we-have-to-talk-about-wind-droughts
https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/general/escaping-the-wind-drought-trap
For a change of pace here are two brilliant five minute videos from Mark Mills.
The green energy transition is not happening.
Trillions of dollars of expenditure have hardly moved the needle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDOI-uLvTnY
The limit of wind and solar power.
The rocks that have to be processed in energy-intensive processes to build an electric vehicle!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/RqppRC37OgI
Just as VAT is explicit in bills, it should be mandatory for electricity bills to separate the actual charge for fuel from the subsidies added on by government interference in the market. That would get people’s attention. What’s stopping any energy provider from doing this voluntarily? Has the government compounded the offence of the subsidy regime by actually forbidding transparent disclosure in customer bills?
I think it has. I spent a good portion of my submission to the ESNZ Select Committee on trying to educate them that every MWh produced under an FiT costs consumers the FiT price, every MWh produced under a CFD costs the CFD strike price, every MWh subsidised by an ROC costs the consumer the ROC subsidy on top of whatever it notionally sells for in wholesale markets, and these costs are normally substantially more than the cost of gas generation. Even at the height of the energy crisis when market prices did rise above fixed FiT and CFD prices that benefit was insufficient to offset the cost of ROCs at least on a monthly average basis. The reality is that on a sunny, windy Sunday the real cost to consumers of their supply is much higher than when there is a reasonable portion of gas.
Only when supply gets really tight because we have limited dispatchable capacity and have to bid against other countries to maintain interconnector imports do we see much higher prices. These are not determined by cost of supply, but by pricing out demand (mainly in industry on time of use pricing). Indeed, Prof Gordon Hughes has shown a clear link between prices on the Continent and prices in the UK.
I did the same in my submission to ESNZ too. Interesting that more than a week has passed since the deadline for giving evidence, but they have not published any of the written evidence yet.
They haven't scheduled any further work on any of the topics yet either. My experience is that you may not see written submissions published until some time after they have held oral evidence sessions. I have taken care to ensure that sympathetic committee members already have my submissions. You can see how far behind they are here
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/664/energy-security-and-net-zero-committee/publications/written-evidence/
The argument for renewables is that the fuel is free. I've seen the prime minister of Australia say this in the Sky News Australia documentary "The real cost of net zero". So the argument continues - if the fuel is free then the cost of renewable electricity must be minimal. So why do the renewable companies need so much subsidy in order to make a profit?
I'm completely on board with the Eigenvalues point of view it's just that I have a nincompoop son in law who thinks renewables are the answer to life the universe and everything and I need Ammo. His other favourite is that the oil companies get more subsidies than renewables do.
Australians struggle with the fact that for nuclear the cost of fuel is also nearly free, and ongoing maintenance costs per MWh are typically much lower than for renewables.
As I've mentioned in previous posts, Mark Mills made the excellent point that all energy is free in the sense that humans didn't create it. What costs is obtaining and harnessing it. Once this is pointed out, wind and solar fit into the grand scheme along with all other sources. As Mr Turver and others point out, we're paying through the nose for harvesting low-density intermittent (unreliable) sources.
Thanks Ian. I still don't understand what it is about renewables which makes it necessary to give them big subsidies before they make a profit. Are wind farms very expensive to build? Even before CFDs they are already getting a premium on their electricity price because they get the same price as gas generated electricity which as we've seen is usually the highest.
The answer to that is easy. The industry wouldn't have been financed without them because the financial don't make sense. The capital equipment, r&d, and manufacturing costs need to be recooped. If you get subsidy you shorten the return on investment and derisk it. The company I did system design for would never have raised the money needed for 3,500 solar installs without FiT and the customers couldn't afford the capex so the entire business wouldn't have existed. The industry had to lobby for subsidy. Since then it's become more and more clear that even with your capex costs covered, the life span of the equipment and output over the life span don't out perform putting your money in a different asset class and paying your gas and electricity bills. Soon energy prices will be so high you would be better off heating and powering your home with long turn diesel generator. You won't be popular with your neighbours but then you also won't be as skint as them. Of course diesel, biodiesel, red fuel, alternative forms of power generation will be next on the nutcases list of things to ban, tax and destroy and we will be left in the dark with a mangle, candle and pantry. Back to the 1840s with us all.
It's already cheaper to run a house on bulk propane (just) and grid mix. You just need to switch to air fryers, a mangle / hanging washing, chest freezer, and pantry. It's a right pain but I'm up about £30 so far and not a trace of solar, heat pumps or lithium whole house batteries in sight. Diesel only works at about 3.2x the current electricity price. I just wonder what will happen to my bulk propane costs as electricity prices increase. Eventually, if we survive economically, SMRs will save the day but I figure I have at least 25 years of savings before the prices come down unless someone talks sense into the energy policy.
Steve, with the health warning that I may be quite wrong, I'll venture my take on things. It starts with two political decisions: to be seen to avoid nationalising the supply of electricity; and to pursue wind and solar energy in the mistaken belief that they will get us to the sacred holy grail of net-zero. Wind farms, and offshore ones in particular, are very expensive to build, and relatively inexpensive to operate. They will also be expensive to decommission after what is likely to be disappointingly short lives (I've no idea if or how these have been taken into account). These attributes are shared with nuclear energy, which is steady, reliable and in terms of plant, much longer-lasting. To induce private companies to shoulder the high up-front cost, the UK government has provided the inducement of cost recovery via high prices per unit of energy generated, unrelated to real operation and maintenance costs. They are also compensated for generation that's not needed (curtailment costs), so they continue to make their buck. If the inducements on offer don't entice bids, auction rounds for new generation fall flat. The net result is a reward system, laughingly called an energy market, that is too complex for Joe Public to understand, one result being that we can't easily see what the real costs (construction, operation, decommissioning) are. Further, it has been set up so as to make claims that our high bills are due to the cost of gas seem adequately plausible to those without the time or inclination to follow the likes of Mr Turver. As a final note, nuclear energy has not been pursued as it should have been because it takes too long and costs too much, which is being ably demonstrated in the UK but refuted elsewhere, such as Korea and China.
Send him this:
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/busting-the-fossil-fuel-subsidy-myth?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false