The Government’s Low Carbon Contracts Company, LCCC, has just updated the costs of the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme for the third quarter (Q3). This is the scheme which hands out subsidies to wind farms and biomass plants.
The subsidy cost between July and September 2025 totted up to £657.7 million, all of which is added to our electricity bills. The cost for the last four quarters was £2.4 billion, equivalent to over £80 per household. The details are shown in the chart below:
Most of the subsidies go to wind farms: £502 million last quarter. Much of the rest is paid to Drax to subsidise its burning of trees.
CfDs guarantee an index-linked strike price to renewable generators – if the price they earn on the market for selling electricity is lower, the Government pays a top-up subsidy. If market prices are higher, the generator pays the difference to the Government.
As the above graph shows, the only time when generators paid back was during three quarters in 2021-22, at the height of the Ukraine war energy price spike. Since the scheme began in 2016, subsidies have totalled £11.3 billion.
The LCCC dashboard also includes the average market price for each quarter. In Q3, this was £69.83 per MWh, which compares to an average strike price of £151.85 per MWh. In other words, we are paying more than double the market price to renewable generators under the scheme.
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Budget suggestion for Rachel from Accounts: abolish subsidies, £11.5 billion knocked off the deficit at a stroke! Seems too simple. Must be a flaw somewhere.
Both Russia and China suffered massive famines because they perverted science to line up with their political goals. Miliband is following in their footsteps, as the Stalinist that he is. Massive energy shortages will inevitably lead to food shortages, and economic collapse (it’s collapsing already).How far will we go towards penury before Miliband’s diktats are reversed?
It’s in Milliband’s interest to keep the price of gas high by banning local production. Apart from the obvious trying to dissuade people from buying gas at all he keeps telling us that the price of electricity is set by the price of gas… So if the price of gas falls and causes the price of electricity to fall the CfD mechanism will mean the cost of the subsidies will become even more absurd.
He needs to drive up the cost of electricity (and gas) so that the wind/solar electricity generators pay a reverse subsidy back to Government. They will pay this because they will charge their customers the high energy prices. It’s an indirect tax on energy consumers – us and our industries. As far as Milliband and his ilk are concerned – ‘to Hell with them’.
Just another government backed protection racket….
It’s straight up fraud.
I’ve prepared for the blackouts to come.
I feel sorry for the vast majority of people who take no notice of what’s really going on … numbing their brains with Eastenders, Strictly and the rest of the hypnotising nonsense the MSM pumps out.
They are sheep, being led to the slaughter.
Yup, we have a two burner camping gaz stove, an open fire, 3 log stores, I collect my own logs from woods 5 minutes away. Yes I have permission from the owner. Plus a Big Green Egg charcoal grill and oven. We cook whole chicken and all sorts all year long, it’s partly under cover. Bring it on.
You will be fine if you are at home when the power cuts happen or we get a warning.
However, must buildings now rely on electronic doors which can only be opened with a manual emergency device or sledgehammers and bolt cutters.
The one scenario that they could prepare for in advance …. and they haven’t.
But we are saving the planet, aren’t we? Aren’t we?
Planet looks fine from where I’m sitting. So either we have already saved it (and can stop paying subsidies), or it didn’t ever need saving.
And meanwhile, as I write (8.50 am on a calm, dull Sunday) wind is generating 2.8% of our electricity. No prizes for guessing how we’re getting over half.
As I sit here having my breakfast, renewables are 6.7% of generation but only 5.4% of demand. Wind = 2.75%, solar 1.3%, price £88,41/MWh. Bearing in mind renewable are 9 times cheaper than gas, we need much more renewable generation, surely?
Why minus 1. Don’t get irony?
Renewables are NOT 9 times cheaper than gas, that untruth has been comprehensively debunked. It totally ignored the enormous building cost of renewables, as well as their only 10-20 year lifespan.
on Gridwatch at 8.55 today, it is saying 48% gas, 12.5% nuclear, around 30% from the interconnects to France, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Denmark etc and a stonking just less than 1% from solar. The 6% from biomass must mainly be the Drax contribution.
A price well spent for despoiling our countryside with windfarms and solar farms.
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
I used to visit that site but find grid.iamkate.com easier on the eye.
Wonder if Eddie Minibrain might be interested in explainng this?
The Kommissar for Energy Insecurity never lets facts get in the way of fallacy, fantasy and folly.
“That’s my policy and I’m not going to discuss it.”
Hardly any wind and solar for days now. Anything to say Ed?
We might be under a blocking high for a week or more and while the sun is out in my corner of Surrey there can also be a lot of cloud cover.