Over the next few weeks of the election campaign, we’re going to be swamped with a veritable tsunami of blatant lies and empty promises by our would-be political leaders. Just one of these is Keir Starmer’s claim in the Labour Party manifesto that his new ‘GB Energy’ will lower people’s energy bills by providing cheap, clean energy:
The Labour Party will create Great British Energy, a new, publicly-owned clean energy company. We will harness Britain’s sun, wind and wave energy to save £93 billion for UK households.
This is, of course, complete nonsense, as intermittent and unreliable supposedly ‘renewable energy’, such as wind and solar, is much more expensive than cheap, reliable fossil fuel energy. For example, wholesale electricity prices are currently £65 per megawatt (MW) – about half from fossil fuels and the rest from renewables including wind, solar, hydro and nuclear. But we are paying £102/MW for fixed offshore wind, offering £246/MW to operators for floating offshore wind, £89/MW for onshore wind, and £85/MW for solar.
Being a lawyer rather than a mathematician, Keir Starmer doesn’t seem to have noticed that renewable energy costs of £102/MW for fixed offshore wind, £246/MW for floating offshore wind, £89/MW for onshore wind and £85/MW for solar are rather higher than the current wholesale energy cost of just £65/MW. Given that wind and solar are clearly more expensive than our current energy, you might be tempted to wonder how Starmer can claim that moving to more renewable energy like wind and solar will lower our energy bills? Here’s possibly one reason why Starmer and the herds of Net Zero fanatics keep insisting that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels.
There’s a Government report titled ‘Electricity Generating Costs 2023’. It concludes that electricity produced by gas costs £114/MegaWatthour (MWh) while offshore wind only costs £44/MWh, onshore wind just £38/MWh and large-scale solar a mere £41/MWh.
So, according to our Government, it’s obvious that cheap, reliable gas is much more expensive than expensive, unreliable renewables, which need cheap, reliable gas as back-up for those times when the wind doesn’t blow and/or the sun doesn’t shine. Confused? You should be.
At the risk of boring you with more numbers, here’s how our Government manages to achieve this mathematical miracle of making cheap, reliable gas power look expensive, and making expensive, unreliable renewables look cheap.
The Government’s first trick is to load energy from gas power stations with a supposed ‘carbon cost’ of £60/MWh. This ‘carbon cost’ is some kind of calculation which takes account of the amount of CO2 released when gas is burned to produce electricity. I’ve no idea where this supposed ‘carbon cost’ comes from or how it is calculated. But if we subtract it from the £114/MWh cost of gas energy production, that brings the production of energy from gas down to £54/MWh. That’s still above the Government’s claimed costs for wind and solar. That brings us to the Government’s next trick – hugely exaggerate the output from wind and possibly solar.
Onshore wind will (according to Professor Google) typically generate about 24% of the theoretical maximum output – what’s often referred to as ‘the nameplate capacity’ or ‘installed capacity’. Yet our Government bases its cost estimates on an output of 45% to 48% – almost twice what is currently achieved. This, of course, hugely reduces the supposed cost of onshore wind. Offshore wind typically generates around 41% of its theoretical maximum capacity. Yet our Government bases its cost estimates on an output of 61% to 69% – around one and a half times what is currently produced. As for solar, our Government bases its costs on a seemingly more realistic output of just 11%. I haven’t been able to find out the typical output of a U.K.-based solar farm. But I do remember the chief executive of one of Germany’s largest power companies explaining that trying to generate solar power in Northern Europe was like trying to grow pineapples in Alaska. I can’t recall seeing any ‘Grown in Alaska’ pineapples in my local supermarket recently. Moreover, if our Government believes that U.K. solar farms only generate 11% of their nameplate capacity, it seems rather pointless to take productive agricultural land away from food production in order to build unproductive solar farms.
A study of the relationship between the level of renewables (wind and solar only) with energy costs, conducted in 2015, suggested that the more wind and solar a country used, the higher its electricity costs:
More recently (2023), I wrote an article for a South Korean newspaper in which I tried to predict what would happen to energy costs in South Korea as the country moved from around 6.7% renewables to the Government’s targets of 21.6% by 2030 and further to 30.6% by 2036. According to an international comparison of household energy prices conducted by the World Population Review in 2023, in South Korea, with 6.7% renewables, electricity costs around US $0.09 per kilowatt hour (kWh). This is similar to Taiwan, which has about 6.5% renewables and household electricity costs of also $0.09 per kWh.
Then, I looked at developed countries which have levels of renewables at around South Korea’s 2030 target of 21.6% and 2036 target of 30.6%. Around 21.1% of Japan’s power comes from renewables, and households there pay $0.25 per kWh. In the U.S. renewables provide 23% of electricity, and household electricity cost is $0.18 per kWh. So, this suggests that if South Korea hits its 2030 target of 21.6% renewables, its household electricity costs will at least double from $0.09 per kWh to the U.S.’s level of $0.18 or even go higher towards Japan’s level of $0.25. The exact figure will depend on what other sources of energy South Korea develops.
If we take developed countries that are around the South Korean 2036 target of 30.6% renewables, the two closest developed countries are Australia at 26.7% and Netherlands at 33.1%. Household electricity costs in Australia are $0.22 per kWh and in the Netherlands $0.34 per kWh. This indicates that South Korea’s household electricity costs by 2036 will probably be somewhere around $0.28 per kWh – three times their current level. Hopefully, while planning its huge increase in renewables, the South Korean Government has remembered to inform its citizens and businesses that their electricity costs will most likely double by 2030 and treble by 2036.
It can be difficult to establish the precise cost of different energy sources, as most of the organisations claiming to provide these have clear political agendas – either trying to push renewables as saving the world from what UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, terrifyingly calls “global boiling”, or else trying to expose the economically suicidal consequences of abandoning cheap, reliable fossil fuels and replacing them with expensive and unreliable renewables. One website does try to consolidate the costs from several supposedly reliable sources, such as the World Bank and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but found that: “LCOE (Levelised Cost of Electricity) calculations vary wildly (to say the least) and are subject to unmeasurable assumptions, uncertainties and interdependencies”. The report concludes: “We took on the mammoth task of aggregating some of the reputable LCOEs to decide which is the cheapest electricity solution to build. We got a ranking, but frankly, little did we know how useless it actually is!”
But one thing is clear, if renewables like wind and solar are so cheap, why do the electricity prices we pay include between £250 and £300 every year per household as subsidies for renewables? After all, if Keir Starmer’s GB Energy is going to lower our energy bills with more supposedly cheap renewables like wind and solar, there shouldn’t be any need to subsidise renewables like wind and solar now. I doubt the Greta-worshipping BBC or Channel Four News, or any mainstream media, will be asking Mr. Starmer this question.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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According to ONS:
£93bn saved for 28.4m households is £3,274 per household. I look forward to receiving my cheque.
Give him enough rope and all that.
The whole thing is a racket to line the pockets of those invested in the energy transition.
That is one aspect of it, but it was not designed solely for that purpose. It all emanates from the United Nations and their Sustainable Development Agenda. This filters down through all the national governments who sign up to it all with differing levels of enthusiasm, but typically the UK has to be the teacher’s pet and save the planet harder and faster than everyone else. This promise of cheap energy is about as deceitful as it is possible to get. It requires that we use even more wind and sun, but we already know that the countries with the most wind turbines (Germany, Denmark and the UK) have the highest electricity prices. Adding more wind will inevitably mean higher bills, but also higher costs for everything that is made using electricity. This cost will be passed on to us. ———-Green Energy is a complete FRAUD
It’s also to destroy the West.
The Government’s first trick is to load energy from gas power stations with a supposed ‘carbon cost’ of £60/MWh. This ‘carbon cost’ is some kind of calculation which takes account of the amount of CO2 released when gas is burned to produce electricity. I’ve no idea where this supposed ‘carbon cost’ comes from or how it is calculated.
CO₂ taxation.
It’s called carbon tax and is applied to any industrial activity that uses electricity or natural gas or oil in its production process.
We have been paying this tax for some years now, but few people know it.
Carbon tax is a Pigou Tax, designed to internalise an external cost into the selling price, otherwise not borne by the beneficiary, of a good. It is similar to Excuse Duty in that it is paid by the producer at their factory gate, then passed on and compounded through the supply chain to the end user.
It is an end-user tax, like VAT, except VAT does not get compounded along the supply change, and it is clearly itemised on the bill the consumer pays.
The carbon tax, like Excise Duty is hidden from the end-user to avoid a revolution.
These hidden taxes need to be itemised on bills, then something might get done after the lynchings start.
Carbon tax is a Pigou Tax, designed to internalise an external cost into the selling price, otherwise not borne by the beneficiary, of a good.
Better description: It’s an arbitrary fine people engaging in activities some politicians (claim to) disapprove of must pay to atone for their sinfulness. The sleight-of-hand with the external cost is just supposed to camouflage that. Even that there’s an external cost actually caused by the activity in question is a political opinion and the precise amount of it even more so.
Renewables appear to be cheaper than reliables because they government doesn’t artificially drive the price up through taxation/ fines for now.
Yes and then government and the bought and paid for media will try and tell you “Renewables are now cheaper than coal and gas”. A more disgusting example of false accounting and the picking of winners and losers for political purposes you could not get
In the Beatles song “The Taxman”, John Lennon sang of “taxing the air”. This was meant to be joke ofcourse as no one ever thought governments would do such a thing. ——They were wrong. We are now taxing the air.
The intermittency cost of wind/solar – that is the cost of gas power stations in continuous back-up, burning gas whilst not supplying the grid – is an externality that is not included in the supposed cost of wind/solar but which is included in kWh retail prices on electricity bills.
GB Energy – the NHS for electricity – will mean two parallel generating systems, one private and continuous from gas, the other State-owned inefficient, intermittent from wind/solar. Consumers will pay for both through both nostrils.
It is planned to phase out gas, but this will be impossible without grid failures and blackouts. However, if sales of gas generated electricity drop to make way for increased wind/solar input, revenues will be insufficient to attract investment to keep gas plants running or build new ones, and will not cover operating costs and contribute to profit.
Either gas back-up will cease and the lights go out, or Sir Kier Loonie will have to nationalise gas power stations. Alternatively, gas will require massive subsidies which has the advantage of keeping electricity retail prices down, but the citizens instead pay for it via their taxes.
Are our politicians this dumb, or is it just sheer wilful ‘up yours’ citizen insolence?
And don’t forget that there is always the prospect of using variable pricing to discourage use at certain times. Potentially feasible technically via “Smart” metering, including remote load management. A bit like a modern equivalent of the old fashioned offer of “Interruptible” supplies by offering lower prices as long as you want to gamble.
A government energy company whose sole aim will be to impoverish us with hard Net Zero is the last thing anyone needs, except possibly the brainwashed dreamers of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. I have a personal experience of why there is nothing that government does that private individuals cannot do better and cheaper. ———-I get my ear wax removed every 4 months at the local hospital, but this is the third time in a row that they have had to call me to cancel my appointment, with some pathetic excuses about staff being off sick. Can you imagine you are waiting for a new 3 piece suite to be delivered and you are told you cannot have it because the delivery man is not feeling well? This is absurd. But I can get an appointment at Specsavers to have my ears done in 2 weeks time. I would not trust government to run the church fair without making a pigs ear of it as they would turn into an excuse to brainwash us about global warming, gender self ID, or diversity.
You could have a look at this: https://grid.iamkate.com/ Lots of graphs for now, last week, last year etc. The prices actually vary continuously – the site mentioned uses APX spot market. Then there is Contract for Difference (CfD).
You need a decent size screen to make good use of that one, but it does cobble together a lot of data.
And dipping into it periodically shows that there are times when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining and it doesn’t matter how many bird choppers you have if you want to keep the lights on you need gas, nuclear and France who are often supplying 10% of our needs.
“Cheap clean energy”——Which means wind and sun. But wind and sun are the most expensive ways to produce electricity. So unless the taxpayer pays half of everyone’s electric bill then this is just more nonsense from another politician who knows full well that the public know next to nothing about energy or indeed about climate change which is the excuse used by the political class to fob us off with this Net Zero garbage which is supposed to be about saving us from a climate apocalypse all allegedly caused by the trace gas CO2, but is really about the UK bending over backwards to the UN and WEF by pretending to save the planet, and deliberately lowering the living standards of their own citizens because the UN’s Sustainable Development politics claims in their own words that “the lifestyles of the affluent middle classes are too high”. The whole political class (except Reform, or so they say) are fully on board with this eco socialism masquerading as science.
Anyone else remember “Free Broadband”? Starmer was running that campaign. This will be a hung parliament, get your votes in for Reform and get a slice of real change.
An excellent article filled with useful facts. The flat out lies used to inflate the supposed cost of gas generation while grotesquely overstating the energy production from onshore and offshore wind generation is hugely enlightening.
I doubt that a single Labour or Conservative candidate in the current election cycle has read and understood the information in this article.
The Reform Party should make opposition to Net Zero their whole campaign and position themselves as a proxy for the referendum that the Conservatives, Labour, SNP or Liberal Democrats will never allow.
It’s great to see a detailed breakdown of the misinformation/disinformation that is the government stated running costs of our energy.
In addition, I would like to see the effect of renewables on the upfront (ie now) captured carbon in the manufacturing of the windfarms etc to set against the long-term carbon of fossil fuel energy. And in addition to that, it would be good to see an economic analysis of the additional cost of keeping the dual sources of energy running because of the intermittent nature of renewable energy. Any experts out there?
I recommend eveyone reads David Craig’s book. It is simple to understandand and uses examples of media produced hysteria about that is happening to the climate going back 200+ years. It really is a a ‘no brainer’ to realise that the Net Zero and CO2 policies are going to be catastrophic for our economies with absolutely no gains for the main in the street.
I find it hard to fathom why politicians all over the world are so gullible and/or thick when there is so much evidence out there but unfortunately it is being manipulated by the green lobby who are making vast sums of monies, like the Big Pharma thieves and an apathetic public who do not question the false figures.
When he said he’s prefer DAVOS (WEF ) Thank The British Parliment, We knew he only has ONE plan: To Destroy Britain