An ITV News report following the increase in Ofgem’s energy price cap last week was seriously misleading, indeed utterly fallacious in places. All it did, in effect, was recycle Ed Miliband’s propaganda regarding Net Zero and renewable energy.
The title probably gives the game away: ‘Why aren’t renewables making energy bills any cheaper?’ The report proceeded to claim that renewable energy is cheap, but electricity prices are set by the much higher cost of gas power.
To quote a couple of snippets from the presenter, Philip Sime:
Everyone agrees that things like solar and wind power are cheaper.
But if renewables are so cheap and we are generating so much of it, then why are we not seeing it in our bills. Well, it’s down to the way we set our prices for electricity… even though gas is a minority in our energy mix, it tends to set the overall price we pay.
The statement was accompanied by a graphic of the electricity mix, showing the “cheapest”, wind and solar, going into the grid first, followed by slightly more expensive nuclear, with the most expensive gas topping up.
As with most fake news, there is a grain of truth. Yes, wholesale power prices are set by the most expensive bids, and yes, these are usually gas. But none of ITV’s analysis explains why the UK has some of the highest electricity prices in the world or why our electricity bills will continue to increase in leaps and bounds in the
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Weather-Dependent Wind and Solar “Renewables” aren’t effective power sources: they can only ever be intermittent fuel-savers.
Anyone who thinks that is a good idea to replace power generators that work at large scale and consistently at ~90% productivity 24/7/365 with technologies that are dilute, unreliable, widely distributed and intermittent working at a measured productivity” ~18% or less, (~15% in Europe 2025) must be in error or malign.
The low productivity of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” means that installations must be about 5-6 times larger just to contribute the same amount of power to the Grid. Even so they are still unreliable. If the installation costs of “Renewables” were equivalent, (they are in fact much higher when fully accounted), their power costs more than conventional gas, coal and even nuclear technologies.
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/a-few-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/
Gas sets the price about 90% of the time. For the first part of this year it has been £65 to £75 per MWh compared to £70 to £100 for the whole of 2025. So in fact gas-electric is trending cheaper overall this year.
And nearly half that price is the carbon tax, without which gas would be £30 to £40 per MWh.
So with gas setting the price at say £70 per MWh, wind input gets that PLUS it is made up to the £128 per MWh “strike price” under the latest CfD scam paid by NESO and passed on to retail. That means even if “cheap” wind cost £0, it still gets £128. Consumer pays.
“Energy bills” is very misleading. 15% of our energy in the UK comes from electricity, 85% comes from fossil fuels. So what means “energy bills”? Perhaps we should stop talking “bills” and start saying “costs”.
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Exactly – the reason why it sets the price is because with gas, if you need power generation, you switch it on and it works… it’s fully dispatch-able , unlike the unreliables…
Break the link, gas generation won’t be funded, and the lights go out a second or two later… I struggle to see how the masses don’t seem to understand this concept.
Its not helped by our dozy press reporting things like ‘renewables generated 60% of our power needs today’ as a part of the total, not saying that if the 40% gap hadn’t been filled we’d all be sitting in the dark…
Didn’t one of the energy company bosses tell the Morons of Parliament that even if gas was free, their policies would keep our bills going up.
And the other simple point is that if wind and solar are so cheap why do they need ever increasing taxpayer subsidies.
They aren’t listening though, or even pretending to. Remove the subsidies, and it all collapses – they are merely subsidy harvesters…
I strongly suspect that the vast majority, if not all, of those reading the DS are aware that Milibrain is a Cult Devotee when it comes to Net Zero and the Climate Crisis Hysteria. In other words, it is impossible to debate the matter with him. The same applies to the Bollox Biased Corporation. It is no surprise that ITV is equally ‘captured’. In my view, the real scam here is that this article by Paul Homewood (along with all his other excellent articles) has not been published by any of the major national newspapers. Their refusal to really lay into this, and previous, criminal governments over the issue, with exactly the same precision and detail as do Paul Homewood and Ben Pile, is beyond shameful. Where are the really hard-hitting, data supported, financially literate articles in our major newspapers to really expose the wealth-destroying, industry-wrecking, nutjob energy policies of this government ?? It should be a high priority major campaigning issue for AT LEAST one high circulation paper. They “campaign” on all sorts of other far less important issues, so why not this one, too ?? The truthful answer would be most revealing.
You do not mention that Reform UK, Restore Britain and the Heritage Party (and probably some others) are campaigning for the Climate Change Act to be assigned to the dustbin and all that goes with it including Milliplonker!
At what point does this become outright lying?
Good article, Paul.
You highlight the two most salient points:
Consumers do not pay wholesale prices.
“Renewable” generators do not get paid wholesale prices.
It’s an absolute scam.
“Ruinable”.