Thread by @7Kiwi

The results of the AR7a renewables auction expose government lies about the cost of renewables and net zero. A thread 🧵(1/n) (link to full article in bio)

AR7a awarded contracts for 4.9GW of new solar at a clearing price of £68/MWh (in 2025 prices), 1.3GW of onshore wind at £75/MWh and a further 21MW of tidal stream capacity. (2/n)

Superficially it looks cheap, leading @Ed_Miliband to claim new onshore wind & solar are 50% cheaper than gas & he is lowering bills. But his claims are based on lies (3/n)

The raw costs of the auction don't represent the full costs of renewables. When you add £33/MWh for grid balancing and backup through the capacity market, prices are above recent gas-fired electricity including carbon taxes, without even considering grid expansion costs (4/n)

Miliband's claims rest on a flawed reading of the recent Electricity Generation Cost 2025 report that shows new gas plants running at 30% load factor costing £145/MWh (5/n)

But this is a flawed analysis. First, gas plants on have such a low load factor because of renewables. Running them more could reduce costs as low as £109/MWh (6/n)

Second, the costs of gas-fired plants are loaded with £41/MWh of made-up carbon costs. If we cut that then the cost of gas would to £104/MWh (30% LF) or £68/MWh (93% LF) (7/n)

Finally, as NESO acknowledged in their Clean Power 2030 Report we will need 35GW of unabated gas-fired generation in 2030 & the gas fleet is aging so the capex needs to be spent anyway (8/n)

The prices for renewables awarded contracts in AR7 & AR7a is much higher than assumed by either NESO in their FES report and the CCC in their 7th carbon budget. Solar strike prices are roughly half those assumed and would be even higher if contracts not extended to 20 yrs (9/n)

Onshore wind strike prices were also higher than assumed by NESO. CCC didn't even bother to cost onshore wind (10/n)

The headline fixed-bottom offshore wind strike prices were 2.5 times those assumed by the CCC and ~50% higher than NESO assumptions (11/n)

And floating offshore wind was even more expensive - ~6X CCC assumption for generic offshore wind & ~58% higher than NESO assumptions (12/n)

Miliband claimed to be “lowering bills” and @mgshanks solar and onshore wind are the cheapest power we can build and operate. As we have seen, both claims are outright lies (13/n)

The agencies of government like NESO and the CCC are making even more egregious claims about the cost of renewables to make the whole Net Zero project look cheap (14/n)

This sham cannot be allowed to continue and there must be legal penalties for telling lies and misleading the nation (15/n)

If you enjoyed this thread, please like and share. You can sign up for free to read the full article on the link below (16/16)
open.substack.com/pub/davidturve…

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