Recently, Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has been promoting his party’s ‘Green Prosperity Plan’ again, promising more jobs, more investment and lower bills. However, these claims do not stand up to scrutiny. Currently each job in the wind and solar power sectors is being subsidised by the taxpayer to the tune of over £250,000 per job, every year. This is the path to penury, not prosperity.
Miliband was ‘ratioed’ on X, meaning he received more replies than likes, so maybe the public is starting to rumble his ruse. Nevertheless, he is likely to be in the Cabinet after the election, so we need to pay attention to what he says. Time to work through the data to find out how much these mythical jobs in the renewable sector cost us.
From time to time, the ONS publishes an assessment of Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy (LCREE). This covers the number of businesses, turnover and how many jobs are involved in the LCREE sector. Helpfully, it breaks down the figures by sector, including offshore wind, onshore wind and solar power. The latest available figures for 2021 show the number of full-time equivalent jobs in the U.K. for these sectors was 10,600, 5,000 and 6,400, respectively.
There are three subsidy regimes for renewable energy in the U.K. These are Feed-in-Tariffs (FiTs), Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) and Contracts for Difference (CfDs).
Each year Ofgem publish the FiT report and dataset that details the total amount of electricity generated, total payments and the capacity installed by technology. In scheme year 12, running from April 2021 to March 2022, 79.4% of FiT capacity was solar and 11.9% wind. The rest was made up of hydro and anaerobic digestion plants. The total payments under the FiT scheme were £1,557m. If we split these payments by capacity, we can determine that solar power received £1,236m in FiT payments and wind (assumed to be onshore) received £185m.
Details of ROCs issued cab be found on the Ofgem portal. The value of ROCs related to the output period of the whole of 2021 was £2,009m for offshore wind, £1,251m for onshore wind and £493m for solar power.
The Low Carbon Contracts Company publishes a database of CfD payments that can also be split by technology. This shows that offshore wind received £612m in 2021. This figure is lower than might be expected because gas prices started to spike in late-2021 and so some CfD-funded wind farms started to refund money under the CfD scheme. Because strike prices for onshore wind and solar power tend to be lower than for offshore wind, these two technologies paid back £22m and £204m, respectively.
The total subsidies in 2021 for these three sectors is around £5.56bn. This compares to the ONS estimate of £14.56bn turnover for the same sectors. Putting it another way, 38% of the turnover is pure subsidy.
Pulling all this together, we can add up the total subsidy received for these technologies and compare it to the number of jobs in each sector.
We can see that each offshore wind job cost £247,000 in subsidy, each onshore wind job nearly £283,000 and solar £238,000. The average across all three sectors is nearly £253,000 per job.
Now remember, this is not a one-off payment to get a new industry up and running, it is an ongoing annual payment. The ONS does not publish its estimate of the salaries in the sector, however, the annual subsidies are far higher than any reasonable estimate of the average salaries paid in the sector.
It is crystal clear that all talk of a “green revolution” is simply a pipedream. These green jobs are only a façade: Potemkin jobs to give politicians and policymakers a good sound bite and make them feel good about themselves. The idea that we can move to “green prosperity” by subsidising each job to the tune of over £250,000 each year is plainly absurd. If we take any further steps down this “green prosperity” road, we risk bankrupting the nation.
David Turver writes the Eigen Values Substack page, where this article first appeared.
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We should stop indulging the anti-whitists. They are not advocating “reparations”. They are advocating the punishment of entirely innocent white people living today by means of expropriations – thefts, in other words.
The correct term for “reparations” is expropriations.
“Starmer Prepares to Give Ground on Reparations.”
That’s very unfair. The chap top right, for example, looks like he could do with the cash to buy himself a decent meal.
I think you’re right. The hugely distended stomach must be a sign of extreme malnutrition.
Some of the rulers of the most corrupt countries on earth are trying to extract Danegeld from us straight into their own personal bank accounts to buy even more mansions and fleets of Mercedes.
Some of the rulers of the most corrupt countries on earth are trying to extract Danegeld from us straight into their own personal bank accounts to buy even more mansions and fleets of Mercedes.fixed it for you:
Some of the rulers of the most corrupt countries on earth are trying to extract Danegeld from us straight into their own personal bank accounts to buy even more mansions and fleets of Mercedes and to pay the 20% kickback to the UK politicians who authorised the payments in the first place.
Take the islands back; apply Tort Law, restoring them to the same condition prior to the damage being done – so transport them to the coast of West Africa, dump them on the shoreline in their under wear.
Then they can take up the matter of reparations with the descendants of those who sold them to the European and Arab slave traders.
You saved me the job of posting similar.
Starmer would be very foolish to give way in any sense to this grift and hysteria.
I agree with Clint Eastwood;
https://x.com/FrankWi49123398/status/1849799222192742881
Thanks for that link. Succinct and to the point as one would expect from Mr Eastwood
Well said.
I’ll try another: My mom’s whole childhood was dominated by a series of nightly and daily bombing raids on her native city which ended only in 1945 when even Arthur Harris conceded that dumping more incendiaries onto the ruins was pointless as the rubble simply wouldn’t burn anymore (she wouldn’t stop talking about that until she was nearly fifty).
And now you claim you’re traumatized because your ancestors worked in agriculture more than 150 years ago?
I don’t owe you shit, either, and don’t tell me anything about your moral highground.
Oh dear… we are screwed then. Clearly these ‘leaders’ have never had to deal or negotiate anything in their lives. These ‘noises’ need to be closed down immediately, then ignored
Right now the last person we need as Prime Minister to face all of these wealth extraction schemes is the hand wringing globalist UN lacky STARMER. ——-Someone who prefers Davos to Westminster for a reason—–Because he cares more about being part of the One Word Government than the people who voted for him
The issue now is not will Kneel give way but exactly how much will he give away.
I can see free British passports for everybody signed up to the Commonwealth as an hors d’oevre, debt relief or foreign aid, or both, which amount to the same thing anyway. If he can undermine this country he will do it.
The very definition of a traitor and by God we have had enough of them these last thirty years.
I don’t know though…Think how much worse it would be if Margaret Thatcher had been in charge.
Abolish the Commonwealth.
The art of politics is said to be negotiating. But for some situations there can be no negotiation for there is no common ground.
Slavery (and all the debates about who benefited and who suffered) is at least 10 generations ago so any empathy has long evaporated.
Can we perhaps send them David Lammy?
Even more pricey the Nut 0!
From this brazen attempt at extortion using blatant emotional blackmail involving the inference of historical (and present) racism, it is apparent that the Commonwealth must go. The Monarch has demonstrated he does not care for UK citizens but is enthralled to the UN, WEF, WWF, and now to a bunch of Commonwealth grifters that are trying to extract unearned wealth.
Why are selected parts of history that only involved the UK, identified as problematic and crimes, while the same actions and worse in other cultures is either glossed over or excused, or even celebrated? What about the Moriori genocide? This was the mass murder and enslavement of the Moriori people, the indigenous ethnic group of the Chatham Islands, by members of the mainland New Zealand iwi Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama from 1835 to 1863. The invaders murdered around 300 Moriori and enslaved the remaining population.
And what is the legacy of slavery, considering all the other varied hardships that all nations and all peoples had to deal with? For all nations, the legacy of European and UK culture has been an improvement in wealth and health across the planet and in the main without the use of violent revolution that is so favoured by those obsessing over perceived inequalities. Look at the graphic below showing the increase in life expectancy globally and how all peoples now live far longer than any and all of our ancestors. Which culture has been instrumental in increasing life expectancy and which culture decided to outlaw customs and practices that it came to consider backward and barbaric, such as cannibalism and slavery. The legacy of all the benefits of western culture must be costed up and then each country, or group, that demands reparations must be billed for all the positive legacy and we can see who comes away with change. In addition, all that which has improved peoples lives must be removed from the lives of reparation claimants, which will include any and all conveniences, including tools, imported foods and medicines and electricity, even so called renewables. That should focus minds.
Well said! Excellent, eye-opening post!
In hard times it will fall on deaf ears. Two or three missed meals and people start to feel a bit resentful and nasty. If it carries on for a few days then people get really nasty in the sense that they will readily kill if it means their own survival. A few days after that there will be very few who turn their noses up at their freshly cooked neighbour. There will be lower characters who will hide in graveyards until dusk and then dig up the rotting corpses and feast on the remains. At such a point any talk about reparations will bring about a sick chuckle at best.
‘Give ground’ infers he’s reluctant to do it.
He’s not. It’s intentional, deliberate, planned and its your money.
Yet another strand to impoverish, restrict and demean you.
Precisely. I don’t understand King Charles’ Commonwealth speech lamenting their “pain” at things that happened centuries ago, all leading up to an apology and cash for Third World Grifters to trouser in the future, no doubt.
“Pain”? What pain is anyone experiencing now about things that happened centuries ago?
I read an article a couple of years ago describing how Queen Elizabeth II cared more about the Commonwealth than about the British people, and that her son King Charles was raised to feel the same. Here is another analysis:
Analysis: Is the Commonwealth the Queen’s greatest legacy? | CNN
” When she acceded to the throne, her empire – once the largest on Earth – was collapsing. Country after country voted for independence and many saw it as the beginning of the end of the entire institution of monarchy.
Elizabeth, then still in her 20s, stopped the rot by throwing herself behind a fledgling group her father had overseen for post-colonial nations. The Queen made the Commonwealth a priority and, under her stewardship, it has grown from eight members to 54 today.
Why does that matter? Because it changed the narrative. As quickly as she was losing authority with a collapsing power base, she was regaining it as the figurehead of an association of independent states. She kept her international footprint and modernized at the same time.”
That’s all very well, but the British People never benefitted in any way from the Commonwealth, which has been nothing but a huge financial burden.
Hypothesis: Is CNN run by ignorants?
That’s an interesting version of history. This first real crack in the empire occurred when the post-WWII Labour government accepted the independence of India. There was no real reason for that. According to a text I once read about this (forgotten which), the argument for Indian indepedence was roughly: In order to continue to rule India, we’ll need the Indian Army which is still loyal to us at the moment (because they’re mercenaries we are paying) but will they remain loyal in future (why not, for as long as they keep getting paid?)? I take this is coded statement that Attlee wanted to get rid of the Indian Army as badly as he had wanted to get rid of most of the British Navy — to save costs. Hence, India became independent.
Elizabeth II. became queen in 1952. By that time, Churchill was prime minister and he was very much dedicated to maintaining the empire and fought wars in order to do so. The next major issue was the Suez Crisis in 1956. The joint Anglo-French-Israelian attack was called on the verge of success because of some American threats over British debts. Churchill is on record for stating that he’d eventually have bowed to US demands but not before the attack had accomplished its military objectives.
Finally, Harold McMillan decided that this Empire things was really too much of a botheration (read: stood in the way for more cost-savings) and he initiated systematic decolonization, ie, turning administrative units of it into synthetic states. Shortly the afterwards, the Royal Navy was also finally reduced to an also-ran NATO fleet.
There was no Country after country voted for independence because there were no countries which could have voted for independence and no such votes were held. The British empire got liquidated by a series of elected prime ministers who saw no benefit in maintaining it.
It was costly to run. Our economy was driven by cheap and increasingly abundant energy which drove industry and a colonial empire didn’t add much except markets. But, all industrialised nations sell to all other nations especially advanced wealthy nations, and colonies became irrelevant. We lost the American colonies and continued to gain wealth. We abolished slavery and spent much effort and money fighting it, and we continued to gain wealth. When all the former colonies gained independence one by one we continued to gain wealth although at a much slower rate almost entirely due to the UK becoming a command economy post WW2 driven by our Civil Service and Labour. The potential nail in the coffin was the deliberate de-industrialization along with the destruction of apprenticeships and the move towards an exam based and academic education system. And now we have arrived at a point where the UK energy strategy is not finding ways to provide cheap and abundant energy, but the complete opposite, along with encouraging people to use less, with none being ideal.
It may have been costly to run. But the immediate outcome was the collapse (for all practical purposes) of the British economy in the 1970s. This obviously didn’t concern the people whose ancestors had become stinking rich by exploiting the opportunities the empire provided to them at all whose only concern was how to avoid getting buried by accumulated interest of their effortlessly inherited fortunes, but for Britain at large, it became a case of The Moor has done his duty. The Moor can go.
From the workbench of the world to the three day week is certainly an exemplary case of a country being ruined by the unlimited greed of its ruling caste.
But that’s really an aside. My main point was that CNN is lying. The empire didn’t “crumble” as if affected by some natural process of erosion. It was deliberately torn down by (rich) penny-pincers with no political vision beyond Can this help me at the next election? and no understanding of anything but parliamentary manoeuvering in the House of Commons.
Your explanation seems very similar to what I have read in China Daily or the Morning Star. It seems the inheritors of Bolshevism still haven’t forgiven the British working class for not joining in with the revolutionary self righteous destruction of 1918.
Up until Newcomen’s steam engine the strength of an empire, or nation, was measured in men and horses, along with a few technological advances (multipliers) like chariots, fortifications/defences, metal work for swords, guns and cannons, such as the cannon that breached the walls of Constantinople, and food. In addition most empires had one or two commodities that they controlled, such as gold, silver, spices, or in the case of the Phoenicians, the Murex snail. And there was also tribute – a tax extracted from any conquered nation/group by all empires/groups.
All this ‘wisdom’ of how a nation survives was used by Great Britain which was neither wrong or unreasonable.
What changed was the invention of the steam engine which was against a backdrop of the explosion in scientific/engineering and social enquiry across Europe. The table below shows this very clearly with the extraordinary transition from the ancient ways above and into the modern world. Up until 1730 there were just 12 known elements and around 200 inventions available to humanity. All of these took several thousand years and more to acquire. From 1735 onwards there was an explosion in the discovery of elements all across Europe, so that by 1930 all 92 elements and more had been discovered. Underpinning that was the production of power in ever increasing quantities. In the UK there was abundant coal, lead, copper, iron, water, wood and a trained and trainable workforce. By 1930 there were over 10,000 inventions available. Look at the nationalities of those that discovered each element. There are no Moors, or any non European amongst them. Some European nations had colonies and some didn’t and it made no difference – there was general progress where ever it was not impeded.
UK GDP has been growing since the late 1400 and apart from a dip around 1910 the trajectory has been up. All this in spite of the move to the left at the end of WW2 when our Civil Service and governments put in place socialist policies, such as nationalisation along with the rise of more belligerent unions. I recall the 3 day week in the 70s and also the OPEC oil price increases. In the 80s we had the deliberate de-industrialisation and now Net Zero. One last point, considering the power that underpinned the old Babylonian type model of empire was measured in men and horses, power is still measured in horses.
He is living in a world that is already dead. And if you resonate on his wavelength then you are too. You will be blown away and you won’t have time to concern yourself with your fate. The spirit blows lush and quiet for ages but then it moves into high gear and it behoves you to have a high dynamic range. Your slobbery will be pissed upon long before we enter into posterity.
What about the aid and support given over the many years?
Awfulness was universal in the days of slavery whether you were enslaved or not. Would one have expected a Lancashire cotton mill worker or Durham miner to compensate those working in the sugar plantations? No amount of money can compensate for ones loss of freedom but the following generations have benefitted from their family’s translocation and allegence to Britain.
Sir kneel living up to his moniker.
And why not? It’s not his money.
I find it hard adequately to express my loathing and contempt for this person.
I’m with you on that. I never thought I could hate anyone as much as Blair but Starmer is right on his tail at this point and the worst is to come.
When these countries eradicate black on black slavery, which is as rife today as it was back when blacks sold blacks to us, is the day we might talk to them. Seems to me there are an awful lot under the delusion that whitey went to Africa and went off into the jungle: they went to the same sort of markets that exist today, full of blacks selling blacks just as they always have done.
There is a huge proportion of the UK population who are immigrants and descendants of immigrants from all over the world over generations and centuries who had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery.
Why should anyone who is a migrant to the UK or is a descendant of migrants to the UK have to be part of paying reparations which will inevitably be in taxation?
If the Caribbean want reparations then how about reparations against Germany for WW2?
And reparations for Ireland against England for historic wrongs.
Or reparations for Jewish people for the various pogroms and discrimination which have occurred worldwide?
Starmfuhrer is completely bonkers if he thinks this is worth entertaining.
The wrongs of history to long dead people cannot be put right by paying money to people who are not even related or by people who had nothing to do with slavery.
And what of all the people and their descendants who campaigned against slavery and who signed petitions against it? Are they and their descendants to be included in paying reparations through their taxes?
Very well said. What has a black kid in London over done to slaves? What did any of my sons do to anyone? History is not assuaged by money. History has also not taught many of these countries to prevent slavery continuing.
In my view, God (whichever one you believe in or do not believe in) will judge us, and He won’t be finding slavery on the list of crimes too often.
All countries including the Caribbean have limitation periods for bringing claims – often of about six years.
It is for good reason.
But what is worse here is not only is this looking back 200 years and more, it is seeking recompense against people who did not commit the wrongs in the first place.
We should insist the Caribbean respect their own laws and the principle of limitation of actions.
If the Caribbean want reparations then how about reparations against Germany for WW2?
I think you’ll find it physically impossible to extort more money from Germany than all the money you are already extorting. The German state finally paid off the so-called reparations for the first world war around 2010. There’s no end in sight for payments to be made to atone for having again been invaded by a world united in the quest for other people’s money because – wisely – no lump sum was ever demanded. Only eternal debt bondage.
RW
A few things need clarification.
“There’s no end in sight for payments ….. eternal debt bondage.”
No reparations were sought by the Allies against Germany is correct. Instead the Allies sought to ensure Germany was rebuilt. So stop whinging about loans made to rebuild Germany. Or are you saying Germany should have been left in the stone age and not helped to rebuild.
As for:
“If the Caribbean want reparations then how about reparations against Germany for WW2?”
The question is rhetorical. The point being made is that when Starmer caves in as he will, the chains of demands and of reparations sought are potentially endless.
By what tenous stretch of logic should reparations be paid by people living today for the wrongs done by people living two and more centuries ago? And even longer ago.
Reparations against Italy for the Roman Empire?
Reparations against Egypt for the biblical wrongs against the 12 tribes of Israel.
Reparations against Norway for the acts of the Vikings?
Reparations against Japan for the USA, China and the rest for WW2?
Reparations against Mongolia and the descendants of Gengis Khan and the Mongol hordes?
Reparations against Russia for all the enslaved Eastern European states and more besides.
Reparations against China for Tibet and the rest.
But why should Germany not pay reparations to all the people whose money and property and lives were taken? It is the same question as the Caribbean one and no one sought reparations against Germany so why should the people of the Caribbean be paid any now?
You’re wrong and me pointing out that you’re wrong is not “whining.”
Germany pays for all of the EU and almost all of the UN and this comes on top of what used to be known as German chequebook diplomacy in the 1980s, ie, whenever the USA wants to accomplish something in foreign politics, the Germans get to pay for that. Most recent example: War in Ukraine which has been financed by Germany to the tune of billions of Euros and more billions are already set to be made available.
Destroying a large part of the civil infrastructure of a country in a series of war crimes (applying the same post-WWII definition Germans were hanged for after the Nuremberg trials to the people which hanged them) of hitherto unheard of brutality and then generously loaning the money necessary for reconstruction isn’t exactly benevolence.
Wrong? “Eternal debt bondage“? “not “whining.”“? “extort more money from Germany than all the money you are already extorting”?
Really?
Sadly mistaken. Germans today are fortunate the USA recognised the need to rebuild Europe.
If there was “Eternal debt bondage” it applied to all European countries the beneficiaries of The Marshall Plan.
Germany was not singled out for special treatment under The Marshall Plan.
War torn European countries were beneficiaries and not just Germany.
The Marshall Plan: Rebuilding Europe After World War II
Key Objectives of the Marshall Plan
I hope Keir-Ching! is calculating the cost of all the infrastructure we provided these ungrateful grifters with ….. and the cost of all the intellectual property they’ve used for free for centuries ….. every invention WE made and THEY didn’t.
I guarantee they’ll end up owing us.
But of course, I jest. The hypocritical, virtue-signalling WEF-Marxist would never do anything to look after the interests of the UK and the British people.
Referendum anyone?
Christmas is a time of great change in the lives of Turkeys.