This week, the Daily Telegraph published an interview with Octopus boss, Greg Jackson, regarding energy policy.
Interview is probably the wrong word, because Jackson was not challenged about anything he said, despite much of it being pro-renewable energy nonsense. Jackson has long been an ardent supporter of renewables, telling the Telegraph three years ago that he wanted to start “a new industrial revolution powered by electricity from renewables”.
Inevitably the interview revolved around the UK’s high electricity prices, which Jackson blamed on wind constraint payments
The Telegraph reported:
He [Jackson] now fears that renewables are making household bills more expensive because of the flawed way the energy system operates. In particular, he is highly critical of the policy of paying wind farms huge sums to switch off when the grid can’t handle their power.
While this is true, the annual cost of constraint payments, around £500 million, is chicken feed compared to the £20 billion or so that we pay out in subsidies every year for renewable energy. The various costs of subsidies are not figures plucked out of the air; they are officially published by the Office for Budget Responsibility and Ofgem. They include direct subsidies such as Renewable Obligations, Contracts for Difference and Feed in Tariffs, along with indirect costs such as paying for standby capacity, grid balancing and those constraint payments. All of these indirect costs are incurred as a direct consequence of the intermittency of wind and solar power.
In addition, there is also the
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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.
Btw I believe Octopus were one of a number of companies that stopped advertising on GB News because of Stop Funding Hate. Can anyone confirm this?
It is only a matter of time before we suffer weeks on end of freezing windless midwinter conditions, as happened in 2009-10. We survived then without any power cuts or rolling blackouts because at that time we had minimal reliance on unreliable wind and solar power.
In order to keep the lights on, the power output of intermittent wind and solar has to be 100% duplicated by conventional plant to provide grid backup and balancing. Anything less implies inevitable electricity rationing. Building out more and more fickle wind and solar is only going to increase the risk of blackouts. The sooner we give up deploying pointless, technically unsuitable wind and solar and start decommissioning the redundant existing fleet, the better.
For more, see my post: https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/the-charade-of-net-zero-2/.
“a new industrial revolution powered by electricity from renewables”.
What, one where people only work when the weather is right? In isolation this could work but in a globalised world there is no chance. The EU is trying to errect a carbon tax wall around itself to compensate for making its goods more expensive than the competition.
So is this saintly genius saying he’d like to stop the public paying him for energy we don’t need? It’s all crocodile tears. He’s so invested in the whole renewables scam he couldn’t care less about the cost to the consumer. As long as he gets his nice little public-funded pay packet he’ll be perfectly content.
Agree – massively poor effort by the DT’s Luke Barr.
As with any invention, or product, if people want it they will buy it, it needs to compete and prove itself against competitiors. Unfortunately the entire renewables is a sham, and an expensive one for the forced to purchase customer, without us being forced at virtual gunpoint to pay for Governments medieval fantasies would these companies, any of them survive? of course not.
What I want to know is how they get green electricity and normal electricity down the same wire and split it according to the consumer’s desires.
I also would like to know why green power consumers don’t lose their power on windless nights.
You’ve got to wonder just how many people actually believe they get “green” electricity when they’re sold the lie.
That’s what we actually need it to do – consumers can choose either renewable based power or traditional power – one stays on 99.99% of the time, the other is up and down all the time…
people would get it then…..
… And let only those who choose the green energy pay the subsidies too. That would really bring it home to them.
Good idea, totally unreliable power provision, at twice the cost… tempting proposition or what?
As he makes a shed load of money, I suppose he would like renewables. Shame about the rest of us.
Just for fun, I subscribe to Wind Europe which is yet another wind advocate / grifting group. It emails daily figures for performance. As I speak, for the EU and Scandinavia (ex UK), wind is generating 0.8% of electricity needs from offshore turbines and 7.6% from onshore. Also the Capacity Factor (actual output compared to the oft quoted theoretical output) of onshore is 12% and onshore 11.1%. Way to go cheap energy!
In other words, operators are paying for 100% of the operation, but only actually getting 11% useful power out, while the public pick up the other 90%+ (inc profit) cost of the inefficiencies today…
what a business eh! Madness
There is the Pollock Factor which sets the amount of unreliables you can have on your grid before you find it can generate more than the demand. You can see from Mr Hart’s figures that to supply 100% from unrelaibles would need a massive over supply which is not feasible and even then it could still not work if it is too windy for the windmills so you still need relaible back up.
Snivelling weasel grifter.