Energy Policy is not front and centre of this election campaign. However, Ed Miliband took to X last week to claim that a report cited by Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary supported his claim that Labour’s 2030 clean power plan would save people money on their energy bills.
As a reminder, the Conservatives have set a target to decarbonise the grid by 2035 (NZ2035) and Labour wants to accelerate that by five years and deliver a Net Zero grid by 2030 (NZ2030). Time to dig into the report, examine Ed’s claim and the accuracy of the analysis.
The report in question was published in March 2024 by Policy Exchange, which acknowledges the modelling work was carried out by Aurora Energy Research. The report and associated slide deck and data book can be found here. Policy Exchange describes itself as the most influential think tank in the country. Aurora was founded by some professors from Oxford University and claims it is the largest dedicated power analytics provider in Europe. However, as we shall see below, it looks like doubling the brains on this report has halved the collective IQ.
Problems for Ed Miliband
The first problem for Ed is that the consumer costs in the quoted post from Aurora Energy Research cannot be found in the report, slide deck or data book. At the bottom of its thread, it does say you can get in touch if you have any questions. I did reply to its tweet thread asking what it meant by “total consumer costs” and how it arrived at them. Sadly, I have not received a reply.
The second problem for Ed is much more substantial. The slide deck says on page 6:
Technological and policy barriers are unlikely to be overcome to reach Net Zero in the power sector within the timescales of current political targets.
In other words, we are unlikely to hit a Net Zero grid by either 2030 or 2035. It goes on to say on page 25:
Further accelerating Net Zero in the power sector to 2030 requires more extreme policy action and is likely to be out of reach.
To give a flavour of how unfeasible both plans are (see p19 of the slide deck), to achieve NZ2035 requires the pace of offshore wind deployment to accelerate by a factor of three, from about 1GW per year to 3.2GW per year. However, the pace of offshore development needs to increase six-fold to meet the NZ2030 target.
In other words, a Net Zero power grid by 2030 is simply not going to happen.
However, the headlines are only the start of the problems for Ed Miliband, Policy Exchange and Aurora.
Missing Grid Costs
The Aurora slide deck (p28) says that to achieve a Net Zero grid by 2030, we will need to spend £116bn on wind and solar capacity up to 2035. As an aside, it also says we would need to spend a little less or £105bn to achieve the same thing by 2035.
However, despite acknowledging that the extension of the transmission grid must be accelerated, it appears to have glossed over the costs of this grid expansion. The National Grid ESO has announced £54bn of spending on the electricity transmission infrastructure up to 2030 and a further £58bn in the 2030-2035 period, a total of £112bn. These extra grid expansion costs broadly double Aurora’s cost estimates. Moreover, given that there is expected to be additional demand on the grid from electric vehicles and heat pumps by then, even more spending on the distribution network is likely to be required.
Missing Generation Capacity Costs
The Aurora slide deck (p7) indicates that to achieve a Net Zero grid by 2030 or 2035, extra generation capacity will be required in technologies such as BECCS, gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS), hydrogen gas turbines and both long term and battery storage.
However, some of these technologies do not yet exist (BECCS and ‘gas-plus-CCS’) or are extremely expensive (hydrogen and battery storage). Yet, it has not included a cost for this extra spending.
Unrealistic Costs of Renewables
The capital cost estimates it uses for renewables are also unrealistically low. Working through Section IV of Aurora’s data book, it assumes capex per GW of installed capacity can be calculated.
It indicates that to hit a Net Zero grid by 2030, a total £116bn will have to be spent on renewables capacity by 2035 (p28), with £93.5bn of this by 2030. This spend would deliver 26GW of solar power, 12.5GW of onshore wind and 36GW of offshore wind. The bulk of the money, nearly £70bn of the £93.5bn will be spent on offshore wind.
It indicates an additional 36GW of offshore wind would need to be installed by 2030, giving a spend of £1.9bn/GW of capacity. By way of comparison, the 3.6GW Dogger Bank offshore windfarm is currently under construction and in 2021 was estimated to cost £9bn, and in December 2023, the cost estimate had apparently increased to £11bn. This gives a cost per GW of £2.5bn/GW (2021) or £3.1bn/GW (2023) which are 29-58% more expensive than Aurora’s assumption. Dogger Bank A was awarded its Contract for Difference (CfD) at £39.65/MWh (2012 prices) in AR3. Since then, strike prices have gone up considerably with developers being offered £73/MWh (2012 prices) or £102/MWh (2024 prices) for new offshore wind in this years’ AR6 auction.
Moreover, even Aurora says that the CfD subsidy scheme needs to be updated to prioritise securing capacity over price competition. Any way you look at it, Aurora’s estimates are way too low.
Similarly, Sneddon Law onshore windfarm recently came online with a reported spend of £50m to deliver 30MW of installed capacity. This works out at £1.7bn/GW, some 70% above Aurora’s assumption of about £1.1bn/GW.
In addition, Aurora assumes that 26GW of solar power will be delivered by 2030 at a cost of £10.8bn. This is around £415m/GW. However, the most recent Government figures show the median cost of installing solar panels for 10-50kW installations was £1,376m/GW in 2023 or more than three times Aurora’s estimate. Larger solar farms may well be cheaper, but they are unlikely to fall to anywhere near Aurora’s estimate.
In summary, Aurora’s cost estimates for new renewables are ridiculously low, meaning its overall spending estimate is similarly too low.
Fantasy System Costs
Aurora’s report does not repeat the claim in its tweet about consumer costs being £109/MWh in a Net Zero by 2035 scenario or £107/MWh (or 10.7p/kWh) if we achieve a Net Zero grid by 2030.
However, we can challenge these numbers in two ways. First, if we spend more money earlier in the NZ2030 scenario than in the NZ2035 alternative, then any discounted cashflow model would put system costs higher under NZ2030.
In addition, the latest Ofgem price cap is 22.36p/kWh plus 60.12p daily standing charge. For a typical household usage of 2,700kWh per year this works out at a total cost of 30.5p/kWh or 2.8 times Aurora’s NZ2030 calculation.
The current day ahead wholesale price for electricity set by gas is £73/MWh or 7.3p/kWh, so the full retail price is approximately four times that of the wholesale cost. The basic CfD cost of currently installed offshore wind CfDs is around £145/MWh or 14.5p/kWh.
The idea that total retail prices can fall by two thirds and come in below the current price of offshore wind after a further spend of £200-300bn or so by 2030 is clearly for the birds.
Conclusions
Aurora is assuming costs for renewables that are a fraction of what we know apply in reality. It has also left out the costs of grid upgrades, BECCS, hydrogen storage and carbon capture. There are hundreds of billions of pounds missing from it analysis. The cost savings it claims are completely spurious.
It would not be surprising if the actual cost of delivering a Net Zero grid by 2030 is three times Aurora’s estimate once realistic costs are considered. The total consumer cost estimate from Aurora is clearly an untruth based on fantasy assumptions that bear no resemblance to reality.
It is not easy to be sympathetic to politicians. However, when they are fed shonky reports from thinktanks that purport to be the most influential in the country, it is easy to see how they become caught up in Net Zero mania.
However, when Ed Miliband seeks to use the report to claim his Net Zero grid by 2030 will save money when such a dodgy report clearly warns his plan is “likely to be out of reach”, then any sympathy that might have been forming rapidly evaporates.
Our democracy is in real trouble when misleading and false claims are made to justify policy action when the reports those claims are based on are built on such dubious assumptions.
David Turver writes the Eigen Values Substack page, where this article first appeared.
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A threat to identity? He should be looking at mass psychosis.
You’re looking through the wrong end of the kaleidoscope pal!
Because, funny enough, on the list of 30 pre-approved dissertation topics, mass hysteria wasn’t on it, and students don’t get the last say in what their dissertation subject would be. What do you think this…. academic freedom?
Out of curiosity – was the dissertation topic about the identity process theory you mention below in a general sense, with your choosing the face mask aspect, or was the topic very specifically identity and face masks?
Did the dissertation topics focus on matters relating to the current mass manipulation or was there greater freedom than that in how you chose to flesh out a topic? I’m not having a go, I’m just curious as to whether the topics were chosen to fine-tune the ‘nudging’.
Think it’s a her – am I allowed to say that? He/She/Him/Her/They/Them/It.
I would have liked to contribute but it seems to require an identity.
Why ‘treats to identity’?
Why can one’s desire not to wear these rags not be about the simple desire to breath (a rather fundamental need in the grand scheme of things) unfettered? To not end up with a headache after 10 minutes? To not want to be inhaling plastic particles or cotton from masks which are evidently pointless? To not want to be inhaling the bacteria/viruses that research has found on the outside of masks?
Or to not want to be picking up throw away masks off the roads, to try and stop it from causing harm to wildlife?
Or the simple fact that it has been presented as a legitimate excuse for some people to let their inner nazi out? There is no end of people who, with own mask firmly under their nose/chin, have no problem calling out someone else for not wearing their mask properly – usually so frightened from being infected, they must come within 2 inches of your face to make their point.
In terms of ‘identity’, it might make more interesting research to find out how many law breakers have made grateful use of the face rags to hide their identity.
Identity Process Theory is integral to Nudge techniques. It’s vastly more important than you realise.
So how do we break it?
Muzzles will be socially acceptable for years to come enabling the criminals to hide their faces for the foreseeable future. You can’t scare people into wearing muzzles for 18 months and expect to just turn it off one day. We’re going to be seeing a minority of people wearing muzzles for years or, maybe, even decades. This will provide an excuse for anyone who wants to hide their face—they can just claim to be part of the OCD set.
The dealers round our way just LOVE the nappies! Face panties and hoody in the winter; face panties and shades during the summer. Can’t even tell whether they’re male or female: just arseless wasters.
Indeed, and about a dislike for going along with something you know is a Big Lie
The mask wearers that baffled me were the ones who would pull them down under their chins to smoke a cigarette – I have no problems with people who smoke – everyone to their own I say – live and let live etc … but that fact that they would religiously wear a mask to protect themselves (or think they are potecting themselves) from a virus with a 99+% survival rate while at the same time inhale all kinds to harmful toxins from cigarettes that could potentially cause much more serious life-threatening lung diseases seems not to have crossed their mind at all.
There was no face rag mandate in NL until 1 December 2020.
Following pressure from Brussels, end of October 2020 it was said a mandate would come into force 1 December for indoor public spaces, but it was ‘advised’ as of 1 November. As of that date I’d say a good 80% of the people immediately started wearing them. At that time, at the local shopping centre, I noticed several people (at that point wearing them voluntarily) walking out of the shopping centre, pulling down their mask and having a smoke – I had a good laugh.
One thing I can say – during the month of November, being one of the few still enjoying breathing freely, it was clear that not wearing face rags greatly contributed to physical distancing (nothing social about it). Standing out in a sea of masked faces, when I was in a shop everyone would stay about 3 metres away from me – while happily getting very close to fellow maskees.
Smoking takes away far more life-years every year than SARSCov2.
That will change once the injections kick in.
Mainly in people with preexisting respiratory conditions who smoke excessively.
Ah but nicotine binds to the ACE2 receptors and helps protect them!
Because you don’t get to pick what you study. There is a BPS pre-approved list of dissertation topics, and although you can voice a preference for your top choices, the assignment of what you will be studying is out of your control.
Do the topics look like conditioning?
Having done research myself in a previous life, I have a natural instinct to help out anyone pursuing this path, if I fall into the range of possible subjects.
But, I’m afraid that, although identity is obviously a relevant factor the mask wearing issue, this take on it is too tangential to the issues of real interest.
I would also question that there is a clear distinction between those claiming exemption and those not – its a spectrum of principle and pragmatics.
I was going to do it but stopped at that question. In reality from memory I only had to claim an exemption once. I think claiming an exemption is demeaning and almost defeats the point of not wearing one. So I didn’t know how to answer and left it !
I have an exemption but mostly I don’t use it. I don’t like wearing my yellow star equivalent.
That’s quite right – it is a spectrum and was very difficult to define, because it means something different to everyone. Ultimately, it’s for the participant to decide if they would use that terminology or not. Ideally, however, looking for people who would call themselves “noncompliant” rather than “medically exempt” as one conveys that the person is a dissenter, and the other is woolly and unclear.
I hate yes/no answers. It means the questioner can tag whatever belief they like onto the answer.
BBC lying again
“‘Explosion’ in Covid infections in Poland”
reality
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/poland/
The funny thing is that when they had 30K+ daily cases in April they didn’t even bother to report it that much. I observe the same about Germany, looking at the past charts I am surprised there were days of 30K cases. Although I’m following the “news tickers” day by day, I don’t recall this ever having been reported much less made fuss about. There were plenty of “explosions” when the cases advanced by 20% or so week-on-week, and even some grand explosions when there were hardly any cases at all (e.g. at the beginning of the current autumn “wave”).
I also remember how during previous winter there was an incidence of 1000 per 100,000 in some cities in Poland – I had to calculate it myself because they did not even report it that way. Meanwhile Germans, hell-bound on incidence reporting from the get-go, were declaring approaching apocalypse with their incidences well below 100. Right now the incidence is >500 among kids in Germany and it is just being shrugged off (as it should).
I discovered early on when I was muzzled and tried to have a joke with my wife that she couldn’t see my wry smile. The muzzle really interferes with proper communication much of which is non-verbal. Whitty, especially, doesn’t look like the kind of person who understands interpersonal communication, maybe that’s why he didn’t raise this rather important issue.
The way to sum it up for me is: wearing a muzzle makes an in-person conversation feel like a phone.
It is because of “Hayekian liberals” we are in this mess. Under the influence of classical liberalism the right have been MIA for decades and stood by as as every institution was infiltrated and captured. Now that our enemies have us right where they want us liberals are slowly waking up to the seriousness of the situation and are crying about “muh freedom” like a football team losing 4 – 0 hoping their opponents will go easy on them.
Government bureaucrats and politicians being in league with corporations, ie; “corporatism “ is not Hayekian liberalism, although plenty of crony capitalists hide behind that label.
It’s much worse than crony capitalism. We’ve had that forever. This is something new and much more sinister, witness the “lock-step” progression across the world.
Absolutely. Unfortunately the ‘free market’ has given the Gramscian believers a foothold in the education system. Scotland being at the forefront of the brainwashing.
Free Speech is all very well, however when the Mullahs have control of the temples, you will need to purge the temples. No amount of understanding and reason works with fanatics.
Fauci and Daszak lied Who’d a thunk it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/nih-admits-funding-gain-function-covid-experiments-gives-ecohealth-five-days-report
As a youngster I had such low esteem that I tried my best to hide from other people; it got so bad that I at times I deliberately walked off-piste to avoid passing people in the street. So, from personal experience I know about fear and self-loathing. When this whole charade started off I was amazed when, one day, a youngster veered around me and walked into the road. That decided it for me – I will not go along with this ridiculous panic. So when I see people of all ages still wearing these stupid masks I know they are hiding – from their fellow man (meant generically) and from reality. They are still living out a fantasy of fear conjured up by the scumbags in charge.
In London in early 2020 walking in the road risking death was considered safer than walking near a fellow human on pavements,
They are living a fantasy that their government cares for them and that their well being is someone else’s responsibility.
The hypothesis sounds like a pre-judgement of non-mask wearers for being against mask wearing on British cultural, libertarian and political grounds. There may be some truth in that I guess, but I think sceptics a a little bit more intelligent than that.
The problem is with this study is that it will not look at the counterweights and counter-factual I’m guessing. The issue you have to grapple with first is whether the mask mandates and various other mandates are actually proportional and effective against the level of threat faced. Only then can you decide if someone is simply behaving rationally.
In truth, it is more likely that the mask mandators are guided by political and cultural identity than the mask refusers. Covid has become a great way for people to signal their virtue and stick their colours to political mast. Mask refuseniks just want out of the whole circus!
Yes, it does have a whiff of pre-judgement about it, as if looking for a rational way to explain why us risk-taking lunatics are non-compliant.
If non-maskees had been told to wear a covering over the nose/mouth, eyes, ears and behind (or a whole body condom, even better) and had questioned this, would someone be asking whether we were reluctant to comply because of identity, rather than the more logical and obvious reason that the demand was simply ludicrous?
Wearing something that restricts your breathing is not normal and is clearly not effective. Having said that, the ability to think logically and rationally is a part of my identity, so maybe he’s on to something…
She
Linguistic gymnastics are necessary in academia. Especially for those beholden to the grading system.
No one will have an identity if digital IDs get implemented globally.
We will be reduced to a bar code and facial recognition file.
Seen this short film?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8&t=3s
Perhaps a study is needed to see if people who wear masks are more like cattle in other ways as well.
“Vaccine” – from the Latin “vacca” meaning “cow”. Not that that proves anything, but it’s still funny.
I can’t believe how totally stupid the majority of people are. When I have challenged people to go analyse the data the fecking idiots tell me they don’t need to because the BBC told them … Aaaargh!
The BBC is pushing their mask agenda again, so I thought it would be an interesting experiment to ask the obvious question
“Why do I need to wear a mask if yours works?”
The level of cognitive dissonance was off the scale.
So I never got to question 2
“Why do you want to slow down catching a disease where the chance of a bad outcome are greater as you get older. Surely you want it sooner rather than later”.
Art degrees have a lot to answer for…
That argument doesn’t work for me. To play devil’s advocate, let’s say masks work and are 30% effective. If that’s the case, both you and the other person would want to wear a mask to maximise your odds, IF there were a really dangerous virus about.
But they don’t and there isn’t, so this is all very hypothetical.
90% of people are not considering probabilities when they wear a mask or take a jab? It’s the reasoning process he’s questioning
You are completely logical – how dare you!
If you haven’t seen the Australian vid on the futility of mask wearing here it is
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/dPsp917ky6Gj/
I think I would have to know one thing before I’d be willing to participate:
Does the researcher wear a mask?
I can see the identity angle. I identify as a sensible chap who appreciates science and reality. I believe in building a society that seeks truth, then uses this accumulated wisdom to improve things further. So wearing a mask that doesn’t work and simply creates fear is clearly counter to everything I believe in.
I’m more worried about the perception given to gullible people though – the act of obscuring my face doesn’t bother me in of itself.
Never.
The identity angle will be whether non mask wearers are right wing, nationalistic, low educated, libertarians probably – that’s the stereotype the mask wearing, right-on, goody-too-shoes’ are trying to prove …
Perhaps you should read the participant information available at the link before casting aspersions and stereotypes of your own?
Never
I have a modicum of sympathy for mask wearers. We can point at studies and they can point at studies, but the fact is that this is a very hard area in which to come up with firm answers. The number of confounding factors is overwhelming.
In such a situation I would advise people to:
If we did not know (or you did not know) that the virus was small enough to get through masks, and we did not know (or you did not know) that it spreads through aerosols, then it could make sense to wear a mask.
Now that we do know these things, it does not make sense to wear a mask to protect yourself, but nevertheless you may not want to have somebody (a customer in a shop say) talking straight at you two or three feet away, should they suddenly sneeze.
The evidence that mask wearing has no impact on infection rates at a social level obviously also means that in most circumstances there is no benefit to individuals of other people wearing them (and none from wearing them themselves, as noted above).
I consider the costs of mask wearing to be exceptionally high, as they help normalise the whole nonsense notion that there is a medical emergency going on, with all that stems from that belief. However, if I were to go into a shop and it had a sign on the window saying ‘I am old and vulnerable and my shop is small and ill ventilated, please wear a mask’ then I wouldn’t feel guilty putting a mask on. Of course, I don’t have a mask so I’d just have to stay outside.
Actually, you probably should feel guilty about putting on a useless mask and approaching an old, vulnerable person in an ill-ventilated shop to give that person some false sense of security. Staying away from that shop is a much greater contribution to that person’s health during a pandemic.
We’ve know for decades (every scientist knows) viruses are smaller than the wavelength of light. At the beginning of the panicdemic scientists and officials said masks were not only unnecessary but counterproductive (see fauci et al), then, in mid 2020 all reversed course – unanimously. We must conclude virology, immunology, and fluid dynamics changed in 4 months, or something else was going on. You don’t need a science PhD to know you’re being bullshitted.
It’s really not at all difficult to come up with firm answers. The accepted wisdom was that they don’t work. That changed due to various theoretical studies which claimed the opposite, and governments imposed mask mandates on the back of those studies – but the enforced masking of whole populations produced no measurable impact whatsoever.
The purpose of models is to predict what will happen under particular circumstances – and when real-world data becomes available they are either modified, or discarded if they prove to be completely wrong. What we have seen with muzzles is unprecedented on such a large scale – all the actual stats show the the models are completely wrong and masks have no measurable impact, but their advocates, including many governments, still continue to insist that they work – which is demonstrably false.
I don’t wear a mask because I’m proud of my skin colour and my ‘identity’. I’m a man, not a sheeple and I will not submit to a fucking technocratic dictatorship that wants to kill me. I’m a sceptic and I question. Does that help?
Let’s get married, Patrick.
I have asked to be surveyed.
Should be entertaining.
Useless and lazy. Instead of videotaping volunteers the young researcher should just read through the commment section on this site.
Disagree. That would be wide open to personal biases.
Transcribing and analysing 6 hours of interviews for framework analysis looking for evidence of a specific theory isn’t lazy…. it’s actually extremely tedious and thorough. That’s the “real science” everyone here has been bemoaning no longer exists. What you’re suggesting would be “da science.” Utter schlock.
What a relief to come on here and read these comments. Just before I had ventured onto the Nextdoor app and was captured in a horror film of a thread where local people were shaming, blaming, judging, swearing at and otherwise failing to give any empathy whatsoever to the selfish and horrible excuses for human beings like me who choose to breathe freely and not see myself and others as biohazards. I felt quite sick. I tried to compose a friendly response but I realised there is nothing I can say – as far as they are concerned I’m in that Kafka trap where whatever I do or say will just prove how guilty I am. That masks are saving lives is for them a foregone conclusion. May I have a hug from someone?
Just shows how shallow people’s virtue signaled kindness is.
Walked through the outdoor precinct this morning. Maskholes everywhere. It’s great not engaging with news, I’m so much happier. These people are getting sucked in again for a long hard winter of existing. The highlight from clown world today was this guy, 65+, 6 degrees, damp with a biting wind and here he was in shorts and a face shield(!)
What is a ‘medical’ exemption? I’ve worn a lanyard to demonstrate I am exempt, but I’ve never claimed it was a medical exemption. It was/is (and will be, within a month no doubt) a self-exemption.
I was asked to mask this morning for a blood test at my surgery. I politely refused, no problem.
I asked the nurse if she’d heard of Dr Robert Malone (inventor of MRNA vax). Blank look. Shared his warning against routine vaccination and how natural immunity gives 20x the protrection of the vax. Blank look.
Told her how masking allows breath to escape. Blank look.
Her ‘facts’ came from last night’s BBC bulletin. She was fearful, ignorant and had a closed mind.
Interesting these people are supposed to be the medical experts.
Unfortunately, most (not all) nurses are just thick. I learnt this long before COVID, in hospital. There was one that was brilliant. I guess that’s what happens if you pay crap.
What the hell is “the identity process?” Sounds like academic pseudo- science, i.e. total bs.
The ‘psychologystudent’ is Tylean Tuijl look at the participation info sheet.
Tylan Tuijl is an actres/artist based somewhere near Lochcarron
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6696937/bio
https://archive2021.parliament.scot/S5_JusticeCommittee/Inquiries/JS520HC271_TyLean_Tuijl.pdf
YMMV but I bet this becomes a self promoting art piece.