Miliband Falsely Claims High Energy Bills Due to Fossil Fuels

Ed Miliband has been caught telling porkies again. This excerpt came on Ian Collins’s Talk TV show Tuesday morning:

Miliband’s exact words:


To read the rest of this article, you need to donate at least £5/month or £50/year to the Daily Sceptic, then create an account on this website. The easiest way to create an account after you’ve made a donation is to click on the ‘Log In’ button on the main menu bar, click ‘Register’ underneath the sign-in box, then create an account, making sure you enter the same email address as the one you used when making a donation. Once you’re logged in, you can then read all our paywalled content, including this article. Being a Donor will also entitle you to comment below the line and access the premium content in the Sceptic, our weekly podcast. A one-off donation of at least £5 will also entitle you to the same benefits for one month. You can donate here.

There are more details about how to create an account, and a number of things you can try if you’re already a donor – and have an account – but cannot access the above perks on our Premium page.

Subscribe
Notify of

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

27 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
transmissionofflame
3 months ago

Funnily enough I was pondering related questions this morning.

Let’s leave aside other forms of generation and focusing on gas and wind.

Costs for 100% gas based generation:
Building and maintaining gas generation
Buying the gas

Additional costs for mixed gas and wind generation:
Building and maintaining wind generation
Additional grid costs because wind is further away from where the electricity it needed

Money saved by having wind:
Buying less gas
No saving on anything else because you need close to 100% backup when wind doesn’t blow

I wonder what the above calculation would show.

JXB
JXB
3 months ago

They would show an approx. 60% coal, 40% gas mix would be least cost, most efficient and secure generation model – about what we had with a bit of nuclear thrown in prior to the Net Zero wreckers working their evil.

This based on cost of construction, resources needed, and use, longevity of operational life, potential of near stated capacity output, dispatchable/flexibility, possibility to site nearest to points of consumption therefore less transmission loss and cost, more balanced grid and lower grid balancing costs, cost of consumables and abundance, and operating costs.

JohnK
3 months ago
Reply to  JXB

Reminds me of what has been done at Didcot, which used to have a 2000 MW coal fired station (Didcot A). Didcot B gas fired was built alongside, using the existing NESO connections.

The old A station originally used coal from Nottinghamshire, although during and after the NUM strike, it switched to imported coal from overseas, mostly from Colombia via Avonmouth. That was a major reason why some of the railway main line between Swindon & Didcot was quadrupled between Challow and Wantage road (some old colleagues of mine worked on that project, so I know the history of it all).

Purpleone
3 months ago

need to add the subsidies provided for when it’s too windy or not windy enough as well as the grid upgrades you’ve included

Pete Sutton
Pete Sutton
3 months ago

It shows that Rachel from Complaints is missing a useful revenue steam… Tax The Wind!

transmissionofflame
3 months ago
Reply to  Pete Sutton

If she did she’d be hoist by her own petard as they are constantly telling us wind is free, and sadly people think this means that electricity produced by wind must surely be almost free.

RW
RW
3 months ago

As someone pointed out in the past: There’s also free coal, free oil and free gas in Britain. They’re found in nature in certain places and nobody charges anyone for extracting them. What’s not free is to use them for something, like generating electricty.

transmissionofflame
3 months ago
Reply to  RW

True, though one could argue that while free, they have a value as you could sell them to others. Then again, you could theoretically sell wind if someone had a shortage of it and you had a surplus, and you could somehow capture and transport it. Could be another idea for Miliwat – we could become a Clean Wind Superpower.

RW
RW
3 months ago

Acquiring coal, oil and gas has a cost despite the resource itself doesn’t. But considering that wind doesn’t blow at predictable times with a predictable strength that’s guaranteed to be sufficient for extracting a certain number of watts from it, acquiring wind also has a cost and it’s worse than that of material resources: When the wind presently doesn’t blow, its cost is infinite because no amount of money is sufficient to acquire wind in such a situation.

Rachel from look-at-the-pies-in-the-skies is also telling porkies.

transmissionofflame
3 months ago
Reply to  RW

Indeed it’s really not that complicated by I am amazed by how little most people have thought about this. Even supposedly intelligent, educated people, whose bills have gone up hugely, have a vacant look when I put this to them.

mrbu
mrbu
3 months ago

I think we’re already a hot air superpower when it comes to Net Zero.

RW
RW
3 months ago
Reply to  mrbu

A cold air superpower. Heating it would require energy.

mickie
mickie
3 months ago

He just says what St Greta tells him to.

Andy JC
Andy JC
3 months ago

There has been a report in my local paper about how the winter cold snap might effect people, really its winter time! One of the comments was a point which shows how most of the population have been captured by Mr Mad Millibands ‘net zero’ ideas which Paul has highlighted as porkies. Quote below….

‘The price of our energy is tethered to the per unit price of gas because the fossil fuel companies want it that way. If renewables companies were ALLOWED to sell it cheaper they would but the fossil fuel companies are terrified of being priced out of the market. C’mon Grumps this is an EASY google search even for you’

Really? have a word with yourself and don’t use Google.

JXB
JXB
3 months ago
Reply to  Andy JC

The ignorance is strong isn’t it?

Contract for Difference establishes a “strike price” which guarantees that if wholesale market prices mean unreliable have to sell “cheaper”, the difference between the “cheaper” market price and strike price is subsidised through the CfD scheme, so that the unreliables get up to twice the market price. eg gas can sell for £60 to £70 per MWh and if it sets the wholesale price at say £70, the unreliables get that made up to the strike price of £128 per MWh by the grid operator which is then passed on to the retailer and thus consumer.

Now, not a lot of people know that.

Art Simtotic
3 months ago
Reply to  JXB

And also embedded in this witches’ brew of costs is an iniquitous “carbon tax” on gas, which Sir Two-Tier recently agreed to align with the higher EU rate.

JXB
JXB
3 months ago
Reply to  Art Simtotic

Which if removed would lake gas (or coal) even cheaper.

stewart
3 months ago

The people supposedly in charge, like Miliband, are in over their heads. They don’t know much about the things they talk about. And the complexity of what they pretend to manage and control is way beyond the capability of even the most highly competent people, let alone bullshitting politicians and mediocre bureaucrats.

The most maddening thing about it all is that hey have everyone dancing to their tune and talking about their stupid schemes as if they were serious propositions.

What works in society are the bits that are out of their hands – the businesses and activity of ordinary private people – despite the active constant vandalism of these moronic officials.

LadbrokeGrove
LadbrokeGrove
3 months ago

I fear is that Mad Ed believes his own BS and that his whole policy is based on the lie – how do we get rid of this madness?

RW
RW
3 months ago
Reply to  LadbrokeGrove

It’s immaterial of The Ed™ believes in the BS he’s spreading. He’s getting that from a phrasebook with him just being the Used Policies Salesman supposed to sell it to the population.

RW
RW
3 months ago

Miliband’s exact words:

The truth is our country remains in the grip of fossil fuels markets, controlled by petro states and dictators.

Could this be the same Miliband who’s trying to tax domestic oil production out of existence while refusing to grant licenses for new oil extraction plants at the same time and could this perhaps make Britain more dependent on petro states and dictators as it would otherwise be?

Michael Ashcroft
Michael Ashcroft
3 months ago

Milliband says, “The truth is our country remains in the grip of fossil fuels markets, controlled by petro states and dictators. That’s why your energy bills are so high.”

The truth is our country sits on billions of tons of coal and shale gas. Our country remains in the grip of green dictators. That is why our energy bills are so high.

Another truth, our country is bankrupt because green dictators have destroyed our home-produced cheap and reliable fossil fuel energy industries, along with the engineering and infrastructure jobs it supported. Not to mention most of our heavy industry, manufacturing and chemical industries. Priced out by high energy bills.

Sforzesca
Sforzesca
3 months ago

I’m mildly surprised that he didn’t mention the real reason that our bills are so high.
And that reason is of course all down to Putin.
If he hadn’t launched his full scale military invasion of Ukraine, copyright BBC/ MSM, we’d all we basking in about 80 degrees F. in our homes, and nobody would need the 300 quid cheaper bills he promised.
If Starmer wants to be re-elected he’d better sort Putin out and quickly.
I will be right behind him, and UVDL and her 7 children, Boris and his? brood, Kallas and Metrewelli to name but a few.

Western Firebrand
Western Firebrand
3 months ago

Ah yes, the carbon cycle, but not as taught in GCSE chemistry and geography. When fossil fuels are burned, they attract a Government surcharge. This surcharge is then given as subsidies to those developing “renewable energy”. Those who receive subsidies become very wealthy, donating funds to the same politicians that helped them achieve and maintain their wealth and to supporting extremist groups. In the meantime, those unfortunate to rely on fossil fuels to heat their homes and power their cars are the ones funding corrupt politicians, bankrolling green billionaires and subsidising the virtuous adopters of solar panels, heat pumps and electric cars – having to choose between heating or eating – either way diminishing the utilisation of carbon in their environment.

varmint
3 months ago

“Solar and wind power in Britain are nine times cheaper than fossil fuels”.————-
OK so let’s take a look at our energy bills. If wind is so cheap and we have a lot of it then our bills should be lower than places that don’t use much wind. But the opposite is true.
The countries that have the most wind like the UK and Germany all have the highest prices in the world. Miliband is a bare faced liar.
To see why he is a bare faced liar go to the website of Kathryn Porter or look at her posts on X.
But even if you do not visit Kathryn’s website it is pretty obvious that comparing full time energy (fossil fuels) with part time energy (wind and sun) is an idle pursuit. It is like comparing a 2 litre car to a bicycle. When you compare wind to gas you have to factor in the cost of the backup and other assorted costs, and the costs added to gas like carbon taxes etc. ——-Energy production is not a level playing field, it is highly politicised and Miliband is full of absolute c..p