By making a dissembling response to Claire Coutinho, the new chair of the CCC has made himself complicit in the Seventh Carbon Budget deceit. A thread 🧵 (1/n) In her letter to the CCC, Coutinho asked why the CCC were using £38/MWh as a cost for offshore wind in 2030 when Ed Miliband is offering >3X that, or £117/MWh in Allocation Round 7. She urged Topping to correct the costings before Parliament votes on CB7 (2/n)

There's a ticking timebomb in UK offshore wind: massive decommissioning costs that aren't properly funded. Like in "The Big Short," a forensic look reveals developers might be ignoring guidelines, potentially leaving taxpayers on the hook. A thread 🧵 (1/18) The scale is huge. In 2018, BEIS estimated £1.28-3.64bn for 37 wind farms, costs spiking from 2028. Now, with 16GW installed, my analysis shows ~£4.7bn over 10-15 years—at £293m/GW. More farms mean more costs. (2/18)

The prices that Ed Miliband is offering in the forthcoming AR7 auction for new renewables capacity indicate that he is going to blow the £260-290bn budget for his Clean Power 2030 plan. A thread (1/n) In NESO's CP2030 plan, they assumed onshore wind would cost £73/MWh, offshore £83/MWh and solar £71/MWh. This is well below their estimates for gas-fired generation, but gas costs were inflated by ridiculous carbon taxes (2/n)

Yesterday the Ofgem price cap went up, but both electricity and gas prices are down since the last price cap. Miliband & ministers lied and blamed fossil fuels for the rise, so now we're paying a moron premium on our energy bills. A thread 🧵 (1/n) The price cap went up £35 from £1,720 to £1,755 for dual fuel households paying by direct debit (2/n).

Ed Miliband keeps boasting about creating good jobs in clean renewables and of course, we're supposed to be in the midst of a Green Industrial Revolution. But the truth is, green jobs make us poorer. A thread 🧵 (1/n) The latest data from the ONS shows 690,900 green jobs in total. Of these 45,200 were employed in green charities (think billionaire funded propaganda units) & 19,400 were employed in “managerial activities of government bodies" (including government propaganda units) (2/n)

Orsted has shocked the market by announcing a £6.9bn rights issue. But investors are not the only ones feeling the pain of offshore wind. Orsted is leaving investors & consumers twisting in the wind. A thread (1/n) The rights issue announcement sent the share price into a tailspin, closing last week at an all time low, some 85% below the peak in Jan 2021. (2/n)

The Great Unravelling: The erosion of the social fabric of the nation, economic stagnation, soaring debt & deficits and energy scarcity. Net Zero must unravel before we can return to the road to prosperity. A thread (1/n) Recently, Fraser Nelson made the news with an article telling us we never had it so good. Falling crime was one of his main arguments (2/n)

Net Zero relies on minerals for wind, solar and batteries. However, the supply and demand outlook for silver and copper means prices are set to rise substantially and derail the whole Net Zero project. A thread 🧵(1/n) Silver is a key element for solar panels. Last year, the Economist predicted exponential growth for solar making it the largest source of primary energy. This has sent demand for silver for solar soaring and the price has more than doubled since 2019 to $38/oz today (2/n)

We're using less energy because it's so expensive. We're rapidly facing a Trolley Problem choice between saving society or the green blob.. If we choose to ditch Net Zero and save society, how low could energy prices go? (1/18) High prices and energy scarcity are stifling growth, leading to a huge wealth gap opening up since 2006 (2/18)

Octopus Energy has been in the news with a potential separation of their Kraken arm at a valuation of £10bn, and demands for it to stop taking new customers because of an alleged £1bn regulatory cash shortfall. Have we seen Peak Pink Octopus (1/n) CEO Greg Jackson says fundamentals matter, so how does Octopus stack up? Massive turnover growth but profitability has been patchy, requiring £1.66bn of capital from investors. In FY24 generated only £31.4m in operating cashflow, not enough to cover £1bn shortfall quickly (2/n)

Miliband is set to wreck the economy with the renewables prices he is offering in AR7. In 2025 prices, offshore wind is going to be offered £117/MWh, index-linked for 20 years which compares to today's price, set by gas of £73/MWh. A thread (1/n) Real 2025 offer prices for fixed and floating offshore wind have risen 10-11% and onshore wind 3% compared to last year's offer prices. Solar prices have dipped, but these changes mask the impact of contract extensions (2/n)

The National Energy System Operator (NESO) just released their Future Energy Scenarios 2025 (FES 2025) report. It's like a hallucinogenic dream: uncosted plans forcing consumer demand flexibility and relying on uneconomic, unproven tech. Let's dive in. (1/11) Money No Object: They don't optimise their pathways for costs. They’re planning to transform our energy system and calculating the cost of this programme is merely an inconvenient afterthought. Shocking oversight! (2/11)

Ed Miliband is extending CfD contracts to 20 years, offering contracts to projects without planning permission & offering CfDs to support "repowering" onshore wind projects. He's making his CP2030 plan irreversible even if he loses his job. Short thread 🧵(1/n) Nothing says "cheap renewables" quite like extending contracts to 20 years. The impact assessment suggests that extending the contracts will reduce strike prices & reduce short term subsidies, but concedes that consumers will likely pay more subsidies overall (2/n)

The hidden costs of renewables from grid balancing and backup are set to rise to 2X the cost of gas used to generate electricity. It's not gas driving our electricity bills higher. A thread 🧵(1/n) Many have by now heard that renewables subsidies cost us a fortune, about £12bn per year made up of ROCs (£7.6bn), CfDs (£2.4bn) and FiTs (£1.9bn) (2/n)

Yesterday, the OBR released its Financial Risks Report that old us about the dire state of the public finances. The OBR also told us that Net Zero would cost the public purse £803bn out to 2050. But part of their analysis relies on fake numbers from the CCC. A thread🧵 (1/n) The public cost of Net Zero is made up of lost tax revenue and increased spending and the overall cost at 21% of GDP is down from 29% the OBR's last report (2/n)

How did Dale Vince become a green energy tycoon? Is it because wind is cheap as he claims? Or is it through subsidies? Declining performance and expiring subsidy support could spell trouble ahead. Let’s dive in! (1/16) Dale Vince’s empire, Green Britain Group, includes Ecotricity and Forest Green Rovers. At the heart is Ecotricity Generation Limited, with wind and solar farms harvesting subsidies from Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs). (2/16)

UK’s energy policy is failing: high costs, low reliability & environmental harm. A physics-first approach - focusing on EROEI, reliability, environmental footprint, security & cost—can save us. Why we need to ditch renewables ideology & embrace nuclear, gas, and hydro. (1/17) Ed Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 plan relies on wind and solar, cutting gas to 5% and virtually ignoring nuclear. Result? UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world. Net Zero’s low-energy future risks economic stagnation. (2/17)

A friend told me I needed to simplify my articles and produce a Net Zero for Dummies. Well, here goes, the folly of Net Zero in eight charts (1/12) Net Zero is sold as a climate fix, but it’s ineffective. UK’s 0.8% of global emissions means our cuts barely dent the climate (2/12)

Net Zero is a far-left tyrannical Death Star, cloaking state control as climate action. It crushes free markets with subsidies & bans. Time to fight for freedom! #NetZeroTyranny (1/11) On the Political Compass, Net Zero is far-left: massive subsidies for renewables, bans on oil/gas, & Soviet-style plans like Miliband’s Clean Power 2030. No free market here! #NetZero (2/11)

Late last month, the CCC released their Methodology Report that gave a little more insight into their thinking, or lack thereof, when they produced the 7th Carbon Budget. How did they get it so wrong. A thread 🧵(1/n) First up, they assume even lower costs for fixed-bottom offshore wind than the Government's woeful Generation Cost report from 2023. The CCC's assumed costs for 2030 are less than half the value of contract awards in last year's AR6 auction. (2/n)

Last week, the Government released new data about energy costs in the UK & EU, and by extension the developed world. The bad news is that the UK still has the highest industrial electricity prices in Europe. But what else is going on in the data? A thread 🧵(1/n) The chart above is for medium consumers, where UK prices are 89% higher than EU14 median. Large & v. large UK user prices are 132% & 113% respectively higher than the EU14 median. Very large UK users pay 22.32p/kWh compared to the lowest Finland with just 4.19p/kWh (2/n)