How many times have you seen on TV or read on Twitter that wind power is cheap and that's where the Government should focus its efforts?
Let's have a look at why that isn't remotely true.
#windenergy #greenenergy #renewables
@BrknMan @aDissentient @7Kiwi MW not GW, it's late.
@BrknMan @aDissentient @7Kiwi I will say its possible for outliers. HR3 is a shallow, near shore farm and it was built before turbine costs shot up.
That's not the trend were seeing in the UK.
@halhod Though not covered here there are many that dispute it's greener credentials also
There are 35 tweets in this thread. Buggy Twitter doesn't always show them all in line, sometimes I see to 27, sometimes 30. You have to click on the last you can see to get the rest.
I notice the view counts for the later ones are much lower.
@halhod Also capex is 60-70% of the levelised cost and anything built recently is going to be 38% more expensive than pre 2021 just due to increased turbine costs.
@paterson_vm @fergustp Safe
@aDissentient @peterbatt Also there's the inconvenient fact that the IPCC says they are getting more expensive and why.
The global drop from 15 to 20 is due to a raft of near shore, shallow Chinese projects. It's not a true global trend.
@aDissentient @peterbatt Here's the study.
Its up to 2019 I think and the costs fall within both Hughes and Montford own estimates.
@peterbatt @fergustp @aDissentient Hughes, Montford, the Science Direct study I sent you and the IPCC all agree offshore wind is increasing in price.
There is only one person with a case of denialism here Peter.
@peterbatt @fergustp @aDissentient Let's make this easy.
Show me anything that says the costs of offshore wind are falling that doesn't include CfD bid prices.
@peterbatt @MingleDandy @fergustp @aDissentient And would save everyone hundreds of pounds a month, at least £400, and thousands over the coming years.
@peterbatt @MingleDandy @fergustp @aDissentient You started off your responses by saying that we should ignore such people. So maybe you should?
And the article you said contains science? It's arguments in order are,
1. It's really more than 1% (you can say that about everyone, in which case it's still 1%).
@peterbatt @MingleDandy @fergustp @aDissentient 2. 1% is actually big (It's not)
3. History matters (not to future planning it doesn't)
4. We are influencial (we can be influencial without crippling ourselves).
5. China is actually great (lol)
Zero science.
If you enjoyed this and want to read something interesting about UK water in light of the Thames Water news then read my thread below.
If for every child born today the Government paid £9,500 into the "Great Britain Pension Fund", a fully ring fenced and invested fund, this would cover the full pension liability for that child to retire at age 68.
That amount in 68 years would be £940k.
This is based on a 7% annual return on average. Which over a mixed portfolio I think is achievable. The US stock market on average has returned around 10% historically, the UK around 6%.
We need to have an uncomfortable conversation about pensions.
It was introduced in 1909, but it wasn't until 1950 that the average life crossed the threshold.
Now we live nearly 20% of our lives above the state pension age, and growing.
Had we stayed in line with 1980, the state pension age should now be 73 years old.
The average person does not contribute anywhere near enough in tax to cover 20% of their life in retirement. So we are taxing it out of the young.
The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that state spending on pensioner benefits will increase from 6% to 10% of national income over the next 45 years—a surge equivalent to £100 billion annually in today's terms.
Nobody on the right does this. When Labour won I didn't see any serious conservative voices writing long "woe is me" tweets about how the world was a darker place and doom and gloom was imminent.
2️⃣ The key tenet of the document is that pricing on the spot market is determined by the marginal generator, the last operating generator in the merit order.
The theory is simple, the cheapest get used first and the more cheap options the more likely the last is cheap too.
The popular narrative in UK politics, and subsequently social media, is that renewables are cheap and drive bills down while gas is the problem driving prices up.
This is propaganda designed to make you buy in.
1⃣ You could be forgiven for thinking that the following points are facts as they are repeated often enough.
🔸Renewables are 9x cheaper than gas
🔸Renewables are bringing prices down
🔸Solar is the cheapest form of electricity
🔸Wind is cheap, especially onshore
All lies.
2⃣ There are three renewables subsidy schemes in operation.
Contracts for Difference (CfD) that came into effect in 2017 and Renewable Obligation Contracts (ROC) which ran from 2002 until 2017. These cover all large projects.