The Low Carbon Contract Company (LCCC) manages the Contracts for Difference (CfD) subsidy scheme and publishes data to show how much it costs us. The data is usually published about 10 days in arrears and sometimes is adjusted. Now, we have the full data for August 2024, and it has settled down enough for some reasonable analysis.
Overall Subsidy Levels Rising
The headline is that overall CfD subsidies rose sharply in August 2024, recing a total of £237 million – the third highest total on record and by far the highest level for the month of August (see Figure 1).
The total is up £84.2 million from July’s total. The main driver of the increase is offshore wind, which is up £74.5 million from a month ago. This August’s total is also up £123.8 million from August 2023. Since August last year, offshore wind subsidies are up £72.3 million, biomass conversion £35 million, biomass with CHP up £10.2 million and onshore wind £5.1 million.
There are several factors driving the increase in subsidy since last year. First and most obviously, more wind farms have now activated their CfDs since last year. Moray East and Hornsea Project 2 offshore projects came online earlier this year, as did the Sneddon onshore wind farm. Moreover, the CfD part of Drax biomass plant was not used at all last August, but it attracted £25.6 million in subsidies in August 2024.
Load Factors
However, the number of turbines claiming subsidy is not the only driver of increased subsidy. Load factors are also up. This means that both onshore and offshore wind farms produced closer to their theoretical maximum during the month (see Figure 2).
Using the nameplate capacity recorded by LCCC for each installation, we can calculate the load factor for each project and aggregate it by technology. In August 2024, CfD-funded offshore windfarms achieved a load factor of 34.7%, the third highest August on record, the highest since August 2020 and up three percentage points since last year. Onshore wind achieved 24.9%, the second highest August load factor on record and up from 16.7% last year.
More wind means more generation and, other things being equal, more generation means more subsidy.
Subsidy per MWh
The other things that drive the levels of subsidy are the CfD strike prices and the reference price used to calculate the subsidy level. For offshore wind, the weighted average strike price has fallen by £23/MWh from about £178/MWh in August 2023 to £155/MWh this year. This is because of the aforementioned addition of Moray East and Hornsea Project 2, which both have lower strike prices than the earlier offshore wind farms. The strike prices for onshore wind are up a few pounds from last year to £113/MWh, and solar is up £4 to £110/MWh.
However, the Intermittent Market Reference Price (IMRP), which is used as the baseline for the price that renewable electricity was sold for in the market, is down significantly on last year. The average IMRP, weighted by generation, has fallen about £25/MWh from £76/MWh in August 2023 to about £51/MWh in August 2024.
The subsidy per MWh is calculated as the difference between the strike price and the IMRP. The upshot is that the subsidy per MWh for offshore wind is up a bit since last year and is up sharply for onshore wind and for solar power (see Figure 3).
Gas prices are lower this year than they were last, so that explains some of the reduction in IMRP, because gas often sets the market rate of electricity. However, adding more uncontrolled renewable generation can also affect the IMRP. There were two days in August when the weighted IMRP for offshore wind fell below £20/MWh and three occasions when the weighted IMRP for solar fell below £10/MWh. Provided the price stays positive, this does not matter to the generators; they just make up the difference with extra subsidies. If the price goes negative for a time, then some wind farms are not paid curtailment fees.
Conclusion
The addition of the newer, cheaper offshore wind farms has not had a significant impact on the subsidy per MWh. The reduction in average strike price has been overwhelmed by a combination of the indexation upwards in April and cheaper gas prices since last year. Even if gas prices stay at the current elevated levels, we are unlikely to see a significant reduction in the subsidy per MWh because increased generation from renewables pushes down the IMRP, thus increasing subsidies. For the generators it is heads they win, tails the consumer loses. We can expect more record subsidies between now and February 2025 as the seasonal load factors creep back up and Drax is kept running to replace our last remaining coal plant, which shuts shortly.
David Turver writes the Eigen Values Substack page, where this article first appeared.
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Perhaps the first ‘extra billion’ or so for the NHS will be spent on employing Toilet Monitors to ensure that proper ideology is observed?
So a woman who does not want to share her toilet with a strange strange man is transphobic.
Remind me why I pay NICs again?
F me.
“Do not remove this sign”
REMOVE THIS SIGN
The real transphobia is revealed when women refuse to be raped in the toilet by males claiming to be transgender. If a rapist wants to identify as a woman, who are TERFs to interfere?
Anyone would think that single-sex facilities were originally introduced for some genuine reason.
“F me.”
Careful not to say that in a women’s loo, or you might find it happens.
Yes I noticed that. Rather touchingly TPTB felt it necessary to put “do not remove this sign” which for me would be an open invitation
Although I do remember the case of that pensioner in Yorkshire who removed a LGBTQ (or similar) sticker and had the police turning up mob handed at her home.
I’ve removed quite a few of this sort of thing in the last few years
Women are “transphobic” if they do not want to share a toilet with transgender colleague, NHS staff have been told.
The inquisitors fly in, red robes flapping, and scream “Heresy! HERESY! HEEEERESY!”.
what percentage of the NHS workers do you think are trans? if its in line with the rest of society its less than about 1 percent, and yet all this money is being wasted on placating a miniscule segment of society, whilst people who are sick suffer and die. Its time the NHS was broken up and privatised, I am sick of having to pay for something that calls itself a health service when its priority seems to be political
Yes, it should be them going to get ready in the bloody broom cupboard. Women, hold the line!
Maybe the answer is for all the women to self-identify as brooms and pee in that broom cupboard. That would change the policy PDQ!
Or maybe women in the NHS should identify as dogs and openly pee and poop in the corner of the bosses office, up their desks etc, if Ms Pritchard complains she can be accused of being discriminatory against Furries. Match fire with fire I say
I was thinking of the NHS managers as the wokust inquisitors, and the ordinary common-sense workers as the victims of the wokust inquisition.
While 1% of 16-24 year-olds self identify as trans, according to the 2021 census (using a controversial question which confused rather clarified). Across the population the figure was about 0.36%. So, about 1 in 270 people.
Nobody will expect that!
I see what you did there.
How is that going to go down with Muslim members of staff?
Who cares. It is bad enough for all women, it is not only Muslim women that care about their privacy.
1, They say they are underfunded, when they can spaff money on this sort of brainwashing trash. Perhaps someone could have a word with Ms Pritchard and remind her that the role of the NHS is to treat people who are unwell, not to preach political propaganda, if she wants to do that quit the job and become an elected MP.
2 It mentions the module has been pulled and will be replaced with another! Why? more money wasted, just don’t replace it at all.
3, These token, frankly incompetent women who it always appears are running organisations that are failing and always because of WOKE rubbish, they are ruining the chances for many women who are competent, who are good at their jobs, who have the sense to know what a woman is, who understand what the role of the business they work in is, they unfortunately are being tarred with the same brush of rank incompetence by the appointment of these Stepford wife, robots who are DEI placements, and who parrot the accepted psalms of the WOKE minority.
Excellent comment – well said.
I think that Amanda Pritchard is a perfect example of the women I keep referring to on here when I call them backstabbing traitors, because this is them in a nutshell. And how much you betting she identifies as a bloody feminist?
Imagine being a woman but being found guilty of sex discrimination against women. WTF kind of mental gymnastics are required to make that make sense??
And I’d be firing right back at them, ”No, YOU are guilty of sex discrimination by not upholding your duty of care towards your female employees and ignoring your responsibility to safeguard our right to privacy, dignity and safety when in private, single-sex spaces”, then I’d go off and find out my legal rights. Mind, what sort of person would work for the NHS now, given that we’ve seen exactly how they behaved during the scamdemic and what sort of people they are? Watch and see which Trust is the first to bring back masks this winter. Don’t we all remember the cultist mask-Nazi battleaxes, forcing everyone to muzzle up?
I just think only people with no scruples and without an intact moral compass would wish to work for such a hideously unethical and captured organization now. I could never forgive or forget how they all behaved and the iatrogenesis and general cruelty they demonstrated. They’ve literally gotten away with murder and even for those not directly responsible there was an awful lot of complicity going on, so forgive me if I show sod all in the way of sympathy for any of the rubbish workforce at this point. Nothing wrong with my memory.
”What people are calling “gender dysphoria” is not a medical condition. It is a manipulated state of mind being engineered by powerful, monied people.
It is literally cult indoctrination lacking a single charismatic leader, for which technology and social media has taken the place.
Follow the money.” Jennifer Bilek.
Precisely!
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/29/nhs-tells-staff-that-women-are-transphobic-if-they-do-not-want-to-share-a-toilet-with-a-transgender-colleague/#comment-989196
Belief in the legitimacy and the utility of ‘the state’ is an indoctrinated cult (and I mean each word precisely). If you work for such an organisation that coerces their staff to accept a grossly under-tested mRNA inoculant. If you work for an organisation that is funded with money taken via the threat of force (yes, taxation is theft), that put people on a death pathway because it was believed hospitals were going to be over crowded, that says a woman can have a John Thomas, that, that, that, well I could go on and on. If you work for such an organisation, you should leave. Find a more appropriate organisation to work with. If you stay, you are selling out, and you have to look inward at who is at fault.
Yes, it’s like they say how you can judge a person by the company they keep. Well I think you can get a pretty good impression of a person by the company they work for too. I’d have gotten the hell out of Dodge a long time back.
I did.
When this sort of stuff comes up, it always seem to involve ‘men’ who have become women and wish to invade women only spaces. Are there any cases of women who are desperate to use mens toilets and mens changing rooms?
Probably a silly question, but the fact that it is, should in a balanced rational world raise profound questions about the whole trans business. In such a World we would have a clear rational, biologically based understanding of why we need women’s only spaces? And we would have a clear rational definition of who is qualified to use them.
As it is we seem to be living in a world where style triumphs over substance, If you look a bit like a woman, you are now entitled to be treated like a lady, whatever your underlying biology. Whereas the biological differences between male and female humans are huge profound and immutable.
That’ll end well…
About 20 years ago at the hospital where I worked we had a similar problem. A surgeon decided he was after all a woman and the female medical theatre staff were asked about changing facilities. We flatly refused to have him in our changing rooms even after his surgery. A separate room was provided for him, subsequently, more recently another male doctor has decided he is in fact a woman. He is also not allowed to change with the female staff.
Managers can I expect bully nurses much more than they can consultant doctors. That the nursing union will go along with this travesty is the real issue.
I is no medical expert. But surely someone who has gone through 7 years of medical training should know the difference between a p*nis and a v*gina? I can.
Amanda Pritchard of the NHS, Ms Vennels of the Post office, the useless Cressida Dickless of the Met, that ghastly woman from NatWest – are they related? I think we should be told.
Who is “the NHS”
It’s always the NHS never an individual or a department. Anonymity gives them the confidence to advocate such nonsense
Exactly as Brian Gerrish (UK Column) always says it’s very important to personalise the decisions that are made. That way you can make more in roads as they then know they as individuals are being watched. Makes them think twice about making stupid decisions.
So the individual has the choice to use the facilities matching how they identify. What about women who identify as not wanting a man in their toilets? Do they not have a choice?