Debt-Funded GB Energy to Bet on the Costliest Electricity Generation Technologies
Labour has taken to the airwaves to promote the launch of the Great British Energy Bill in Parliament. The official press release makes a number of bold statements that do not have a very close relationship to the truth.
First, they make several claims about “cheap” renewables such as the claim that the Energy Secretary has “unblocked the production of cheap solar energy”. The Prime Minister claimed the new bill would “bring down energy bills for good” and the investment will be “lowering bills for families and businesses.”
Perhaps as a portent for what is to come, Labour appears to have dropped the pre-election pledge to cut energy bills by £300 (see Figure 2).
The pledge has been reduced to a conditional “should make bills lower in the long term”. This is not surprising because as discussed here, the promised reduction has already been delivered by reduced gas prices.
This is not a surprise because they are committed to investing in some of the whackiest, most expensive energy technologies. As well as offshore wind they are also going to invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen, wave and tidal energy. As Figure 3 shows, these are all extremely expensive technologies.
For this financial year, the average market reference price for wind and solar, largely set by gas, has been around £65/MWh. In the latest AR6 renewables auction round they are offering fixed offshore wind £102/MWh, floating offshore £246/MWh, tidal stream £364/MWh and wave power £359/MWh. All the renewable technologies are more expensive than gas (even when loaded with a carbon tax), with some costing many multiples of gas-fired power. Our bills can only go one way, and that is up.
The press release, the Prime Minister and the Energy Secretary all also claim that spending more money on renewables will lead to more energy security. They fail to explain what will keep the lights on cold, calm winter evenings when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Of course, the flexible, dispatchable electricity required will be generated by gas-fired power stations and even more gas will be required if these are fitted with CCS. The press release makes no mention of their commitment to ban further offshore exploration and development of gas resources in the North Sea. Even the Climate Change Committee and the National Grid ESO recognise we will need gas well beyond 2050, so building more intermittent renewables and cutting gas production both actively reduce domestic energy security.
GB Energy will form a partnership with the Crown Estate to try and accelerate offshore wind developments. GB Energy will be funded by £8.3 billion of (borrowed) money from the Government and the Crown Estate will be granted new borrowing powers. The Crown Estate estimates this mountain of debt will lead to up to 20-30GW of offshore wind capacity being leased by 2030.. They plan to conduct early development work to de-risk projects for the private sector.
They claim this new endeavour will bring “profits back to the British people”. What they really mean is that bill payers will be stung by the cost of the eye-watering subsidies for these new projects, and the profits that arise in GB Energy and the Crown Estate will flow through into Treasury coffers. Ordinary people will only pay the costs and receive none of the profits.
It is only a matter of time before we are exhorted to Stay Cold, Protect the Grid and Save Gas, perhaps accompanied by Patrick Vallance giving daily tallies of deaths from hypothermia.
David Turver writes the Eigen Values Substack page, where this article first appeared.
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Perhaps a utility trader could trade deliberately outside the Renewables Obligation certificates to offer lower prices, if that’s actually true. A kind of antidote against those that trade the otters way, with all of your import being tagged as renewable. Anyone willing to take a risk of that? They might have some difficulties with Ofgem, and other bureaucrats though. After all, it would be an anti-GB Energy organisation.
Labour are doing and will do all they can to wreck this country. No-one is going to stop them, at least not for the next 5 years.
You will own nothing and you won’t be happy. It is Labour’s way.
There is no build back better if the original has not been destroyed. Once people accept this everything else slots in to place.
Indeed
I’m looking forward to your report from today’s events. For my part I had the pleasure of chatting with a random bloke in the sauna 🙂 who described the bollocks at the opening of the Olympics as “satanic”. Seemed pretty awake. It’s that which give one a sliver of hope
All over the western world the UN/WEF lackey pretend to save the planet eco socialist governments are sticking the boot into their own citizens. We have the climate change fraud rammed down our throats, aided and abetted by mainstream media propaganda on a daily basis about a manufactured climate crisis for which no evidence exists, and led from the front by “Auntie” BBC, which has become more like the “Wicked Witch” luring us all into the lovely gingerbread house deep in the forest where cheap energy bills await and we hear the high pitched wail “C’mon my Pretty’s, you know the wind and sun are free”. Only then do a thousand bats fly over our heads and we realise we have been lured to our impoverishment. The Wicked Witches Potion brewed from dead Conservatives (proper ones) toenails has us in a trance that sees every storm and flood as a warning of the soon to come Apocalypse as prophesised by Jim Dale, where only the smart meter, the heat pump, the wind turbine and solar panel can save us from having our gizzards slit for our sins.
Don’t forget ULEZ charges varmint, they too can save us from Climate Apocalypse.
There has been an element of morphism in the ULEZ policy in recent times. Earlier on, it was mainly to do with local environmental improvements, health benefits etc. However, there appear to be some who believe that it can affect the weather on a large scale. That’s dodgy politics, and fundamentally unscientific.
Never mind £300 saving. What about the “up to £1400” promised in election leaflets?
The only comfort is that even those who voted Labour didn’t believe the promises. They just believed they had nowhere else to turn.
More lunacy from the lunatic asylum.
“GB Energy will form a partnership with the Crown Estate to try……and milk householders for every penny King Charles and the Government can in pursuit of their utopia.
It is not intended that King Charles or members of the Government will ever be in the position of “owning nothing.” The intention is the opposite …… they will own everything.
I rather hope we have a long, cold and very hard winter. One like 1963 would be very useful, to show the idiots who support this lunacy what they’re really supporting.
Not sure that’s very likely, I remember a few harsher winters as a kid, however I’d say these feel less common now – whether it’s down to more people / warmth from conurbation’s etc / more vehicles who knows – just ‘feels’ less likely these days… not very scientific I know!
Don’t worry, real meteorologists think we are on a downward slope of temperatures again, the Gulf stream has moved south a bit and the UK is not much further south than some very cold Countries, and N.Germany gets very cold.
We wll NEVER see the daily tallies of death from hypothermia because, as everyone knows, the death rate in winter is far higher than that in summer, which means that they can’t blame these fatalities on climate change.
So they only ever parrot the figures for summer in the vain hope that we won’t notice because they think we, the public, the tax payers, are as stupid as they are.