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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“Jacob Rees-Mogg responds to the revelations in the Telegraph, saying: ‘This obstruction and wokery is designed to stop democracy working.‘”
And which “democracy” might that be Mr Mogg? Democracy left these shores many years ago.
Simon Case’s department will now be preparing 42 golden parachutes for the signatories and once these reprobates have been cleared out it will be “as you were,” with extra doubling down.
Simon Case may in fact be a ‘Young Global Leader’ or out of Common Purpose but whatever the situation one of Klaus’s little helpers will now step in to steady the ship and keep it on course.
RT was warning of incoming Woke many years ago but it’s Russian so must be disinformation.
Rees-Mogg who was silent during the “covid” tyranny.
Indeed.
Fully on board with it. Said many times that LDs and Stabs would save the world. He is silent on the dead and injured.
But his bank account is probably loud and proud.
Sounds like a threat to national security. Where are the intelligence services in all of this?
Does this happen because they are a) ineffectual or b) it serves other interests that they align with?
Interesting that Peter Wilby, being a newspaper editor, didn’t undergo some scrutiny from the intelligence community – or maybe he did and it turned out he was the right man for the job.
I suspect the days of the security services taking any interest in media or public sector appointments was abandoned years ago.
Perhaps because the required mindset had been established.
“woke takeover of Whitehall” that risks “improperly” influencing Government policy.”
That ship sailed a long time ago!
Shock! Horror!
There is more bad news if only anyone in government wanted to look: the whole of Whitehall, quangos, education and all other government agencies has been taken over by big government, globalist socialists.
It would be instructive to have a report from someone like JRM to explain just how the civil service has come to decide on policy, appointments, spending and much else which Ministers claim to know nothing of. Is there no procedure for approving staff levels, recruitment policy, spending budgets and outturn.
“No, Minister” could be a working heading for a brand new dark comedy show, if anyone wants to create one. Plenty of ideas for the script – if anyone’s brave enough to sell it.
To whom might they sell it? There’s no channel that would show it.
And here is the big kill mechanism:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/un-president-approves-pandemic-declaration-privacy-experts-warn-digital-gulag/5833360
The idea of an impartial civil service that is an impartial instrument of government policy is a fantasy.
The only way to make sure people aren’t subjected to government policy that is hijacked by civil service ideology is to (a) have fewer government policies and (b) to have fewer civil servants. Far far fewer ideally.
Equally true in local government. Established Borough Solicitors and the like can be a hard nut to crack, e.g.
Do what US Presidents do- the entire previous White House political staff are fired and replaced by people selected by and loyal to the incoming president
Sadly those “loyal to the incoming president” all too often turn out to have their own agendas.
It seems to me the answer must lie in the legal relationship between ministers and civil service, management structures and reporting. In this way a PM should do very little policy work other than adjudicate between competing priorities on Ministers tasked with delivering government policy.
Reporting through the layers of civil service to Ministers and then to Cabinet should be regular and a key accountability issue. We shoul dnot be faced with complaints by Ministers about spending, recruiting or operational data – these should all have been seen on their dashboard long ago.
You mean to tell me there is someone called “Civil Service’s head of human resources” and he professed not to know about the issues raised until the letter was handed to him by his boss?
How many years did take for this blinding revelation tgo manifest itself?