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.
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.
The report and the statement aren’t made to be accurate. They are made for people to stop resisting their plans. And then when it’s more expensive, we’ll, then… f**k em.
That’s how it is with pretty much everything.
We are going to control migration. When migration grows… f**k em.
We are going to cripple Russia with sanctions, Ukraine will defeat Russia. When the opposite happens… ah, f**k em.
Jabs are safe and stop you getting covid (I.e. a cold). When they don’t stop covid and actually cause harm… ah, f**k em.
These people literally don’t get anything right. Nothing. They are worse than useless. But they have the power and more importantly have all the contempt in the world for the public.
Not just Labour. All of them.
I heard on the BBC PM radio that climate ‘scientists’ have wrote a letter wanting the climate policies accelerated. Probably getting desperate given the EU elections with the Greens getting a good shafting, and people questioning was May really that hot.
And believe it or not, the first signatory was an accountant. Not a climate scientist at all.
There’s loads of other non-climate related signatories too.
It’s just a PR stunt. Where’s BBC Verify when you need it?
Very few at the UN IPCC are actually scientists. It is a bureaucracy, full of government people and the people who write the Summaries are doing so for political purposes. This idea that the IPCC is a scientific body is false. It is a political one and its final conclusions are all political.
When government are paying you money to look for a purple horse you are not going to be in a big hurry to say you cannot find any. You have a mortgage to pay and a family to feed. It really is as crude as that. Global warming is a trillion Dollar Industry. Truth and scientific Integrity is irrelevant.
If its cheaper, how come as we use more renewables the subsidies and surcharges keep growing. Shouldn’t they be going the other way..?
If this unseasonably cold weather continues (I am referring to the UK) and summer eventually drifts into a terrible winter, which isn’t beyond the bound of possibilities, I am really looking forward to all the reverse ferrets about ‘global boiling’.
“These people don’t get anything right”——Right according to who? Certainly not the public. They are getting things right according to them and what they want. The Political class do not serve us, they serve the UN and WEF.
“These people literally don’t get anything right.”
Not so Stewart. Given the agenda these people are working to they do get everything right.
Think destruction and depopulation.
How can it when we have to pay for it twice?
Once, for ‘green’ tech.
Twice, for the backup.
Remember, CO2 is 0.04% of our atmosphere.
Most of that is naturally produced by the sea, volcanoes.
Of the miniscule proportion of man’s contribution, the UK = 1%.
That’s why they lie saying it’s going to be cheaper. The cat’s sort of out the bag now that it’s pointless and useless. So they need to come up with some bullshit to keep the zero carbon train running.
There, it’s cheaper. If the media says it enough times enough NPCs will believe it. At least for a while. After that they’ll figure out the next lie to sell.
OFF-T. Mark Steyn arrives in UK tomorrow to fight state censor OFCOM.
~I am en route to London for Tuesday’s hearing in the High Court in my suit against the UK’s state censor Ofcom over The Mark Steyn Show‘s coverage of the Covid vaccines. It was a rough time for me health-wise last week, and I would rather not be making this journey. Aside from anything else, it seems faintly absurd that it is necessary to litigate this matter at all. The official narrative enforced by Ofcom – that the vaccines are 100 per cent “safe and effective” – is now obsolete and indefensible; the principal British vaccine has been withdrawn worldwide; and the United Kingdom’s legions of celebrity telly doctors are belatedly known to have been paid by Big Pharma to promote the efficacy of the jabba-jabba.
But they still have their TV gigs, don’t they? And Ofcom has no plans to do anything about that. Even though what they did – to receive compensation for promoting a medical product – is supposedly illegal.
Good luck Mark.
Miliband said similar in 2008 when he gave us the Climate Change Act. What actually happened was a doubling of bills and heading in the direction of a trebling of bills. How do bare faced liars get away such blatant deception?
They get away with it because there is a Climate Industrial Complex of Bureaucrats, the scientists that they fund and a bought and paid for media that present this climate crisis narrative daily to an unsuspecting public who have been fed this diet of global warming junk science for decades now, and think that Liberal Progressive Governments have the answer to that manufactured problem.
One of the things that has camouflaged their deception is the Ukraine situation. This muddied the waters and gave the parasites the excuse to blame price rises on Russia. But ofcourse prices were already rising year on year since Milibands Climate Change nonsense in 2008.
I want to ask Labour supporters to take a look at their electric bill TODAY. How much are you paying a month for electricity? In one years time I will ask you the same question again? So in June 2025 let’s see how much you are all paying? Do you realise how much a heat pump will cost you? Do you know that Net Zero via the smart meter will be bringing you “Dynamic Pricing” so that you will be charged based on if there is enough wind and what the demand at the time of day is? The National Grid estimates the cost of Net Zero to be in the region of 3 trillion. Where do you think that money is coming from? —It comes from YOU.
I can never remember which Miliband is supposed to be the weird one, David or Ed?
They are both firkin weird.
Weird is OK. I don’t mind weird. ———–It is evil that is the big problem. Ed Miliband is going to besome energy and environment minister or other in the next Labour government and you could not find someone more evil and anti human than this eco socialist UN parasite.——-If I believed in Gods, I would praying to them all right now.
There was a Youtuber back in 2018 called Based Amy and remember her questioning him in the street back then. She was part of Tommy’s crowd but had a large following. She was assaulted in the street by a Muslim.
He doesn’t photograph well does he, Ed Milliband?
Haha! I’m waiting for another one of Diane Abbott with her gob open.
No but seriously now, this is way more photogenic than Miliband
https://x.com/UNIVERSE_FEEDS/status/1800181007167189211
In Post Modern Land 2+2 =5. ——-In Post Modern Land truth is all relative. In Post Modern Land you don’t use observations, you use “Climate Emergency”, Climate Crisis” “global boiling”. In Post Modern land you can claim closing down all the fossil fuels that power 80% of the world and keep everyone alive will be cheap. In Post Modern Land every failed projection is swept under the Official Science carpet and is never to be mentioned again. —————But if Miliband and all the other UN lackeys think all of this crap will be cheaper, why did they never discuss the cost in 2019 when Net Zero was waved through without a vote? If it was going to be cheaper surely they would be screaming that from rooftops.
Miliband is the Reinhard Heydrich of the Eco Socialists. Heydrich pretended he was the protector of the Czechs and Miliband pretends he is the protector of our prosperity. Infact he is the destroyer in chief of prosperity
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Miliband
Miliband needs to meet the same end along with the rest of the Globalist cartel.
Well I know how Heydrich met his.
Could’ve gone much smoother is the guys Gun didn’t jam.
“Our democracy is in real trouble.”
No corollaries required.
Still, this report will serve its purpose as it will now be being broken down into chewy little soundbites for the next batch of incoming Labour
MP’sgrifters.Cheese, Gromit?
My wife and I were talking about the Climate Change lie earlier. She said “We’ve had months of cold weather and I had to put the heating on this morning”. I pointed out that miserable grey skies almost every day have been with us for 9 months now. Yet the laughable Met report, via their fiddled data, that we are boiling hot in record temperatures, yet we are sat with the heating on and a jumper.
Millibacon is a liar. Back in 2008 he commissioned a report from East Anglia University. The data did not match the model so they altered the data to fit. Millibacon knew it was false data. They are still raking in millions, still falsifying data, and that data forms the basis of the Net Zero insanity the world over.
Yet people intend to vote for him to destroy their lives. People are most certainly certifiable at best.
Incidentally, why does no politician say to these companies and Universities “Come back to us when your models can accurately model the last 50 winters and can predict the real, on the ground, in my jumper, weather for the next week”? After all, what is the point of figures unless they are accurate?
They ARE right. When Net Zero culls half of the world’s population because of freezing temps and no food, there will be a huge drop in energy demand. That means energy bills go down for TBTP (with high fuel needs Gulfstream V jets and 200/ft yachts) and the people that manage to survive the Climate genocide.
Are they his own ideas or who is pulling the strings
It’s interesting that the proposals rely so heavily on offshore wind power. I just wonder how vulnerable these would be to attack by an unfriendly power. A few sea drones, or submarine assaults, could wipe out much of the generating capacity. It’s not an inconceivable scenario.
Let alone the radar issues with a sea full of Windmills.
Why does anyone think Ed Miliband, the son of a Marxist, who has a degree in Economics and who has never done a real job in his life, knows diddly-squat about physics and power-generation?
He’s an embarrassment.
Red Ed!
Is there such a thing as a human understanding, self knowledge and a wisdom test that politicians could take before being able to enter parliament? No? We are doomed.
Take a good hard look at that Mug. —–That is the mug that will be deciding all our prosperity in the next Labour government with his UN lackey energy polices that pretend to save the planet. This twerp Miliband will be part of the Labour Government that strips away our wealth and then tells us to stuff our houses full of foam if we feel cold.
They will then have the bare faced audacity to tell us “Renewables are now cheaper than Fossil Fuels”.
“the full retail price is approximately four times that of the wholesale cost”
Why?
Why did the UK wind auction fail?
https://enodatech.com/news-insight/unravelling-the-uks-failed-offshore-wind-auction
Offer price too low
These people are WEF puppets. They follow orders, they hate us.