The Reform Party were the only main party to fight the last election on a platform of scrapping Net Zero. But their recent press conference on more detailed energy policy left a lot to be desired 🧵(1/n) They proposed:

1) A windfall tax on renewables
2) A solar farm tax on farmers
3) A ban on batteries
4) Force new transmission cables underground

(2/n)

Recent announcements by the Government about Allocation Round 7 (AR7) renewables auction and the subsidies for tree-burning at Drax show Net Zero isn't working. A thread 🧵(1/n) First up, we have the Clean Industry Bonus. Effectively an extra bung for wind farm developers to build manufacturing facilities in the UK. But if wind is so cheap, why do they need extra subsidies at all. Up to £27m is on offer per GW of installed capacity. (2/n)

Government revisions to EPC regulations will be used as a stick to beat us. A thread 🧵(1/n) The Government wants EPCs to act as an enabling tool to improve the energy performance of buildings, to support their Clean Power 2030 plan that called for residential electricity use to fall be 20% by 2030 (2/n)

🚨BREAKING🚨 REMAgate - How the Government’s Review of Electricity Market Arrangements is being subverted by bad data, conflicts of interest and a web of activists. Link to full article at base of 🧵 (1/n) The Government is considering changing the way wholesale electricity prices are set from a single national price to locational pricing, either several zonal prices or hundreds of nodal prices (2/n)

Later this month, the Climate Change Committee produce their latest carbon budget setting out how we are going to impoverish ourselves out to 2042. We have got to hope it's better than the incoherent nonsense their new CEO was spouting before Parliament last month. A🧵(1/n) Emma Pinchbeck managed to chirp the word "cheap" (or its derivatives) 17 times when giving evidence before the Scottish Affairs Committee claiming renewables are a cheaper technology (2/n)

Last month I gave a talk to Sacred Cows entitled "Net Zero Cure is Worse than Climate Change." The video is now available below and this mega-thread sets out my argument in more detail🧵(1/n) The talk and slides also serve as a useful rebuttal to the Government's response to a petition demanding the repeal of the Climate Change Act (2/n)

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/7016…

Orsted cuts investment plans and probably torpedoes Miliband's Clean Power 2030 plan. A short thread 🧵(1/n) Yesterday world leading offshore wind developer Orsted made an announcement to cut its investment plan out to 2030 by 25%. (2/n)

orsted.com/en/company-ann…

The US is the largest oil producer and has cheap & abundant energy. The UK, with expensive energy & dwindling supplies has banned North Sea development. Time for the Great British Energy Emergency. A thread 🧵(1/n) US energy use per person is some 2.7X that of the US and has been falling, but at a slower rate than the UK. Since the 2008 CCA, UK energy use per capita has fallen 31%, while US has fallen 11% (2/n)

A week or two ago, I posted a chart of the record £2.4bn in CfD subsidies in 2024. Now I've done the analysis to show where all that money goes. A thread 🧵(1/n) The bulk of the money, £1.9bn, goes to "cheap" offshore wind with most of the rest, nearly £400m, to some form of biomass (aka burning trees) & waste incineration. Onshore wind got £73m & solar just over £1m. (2/n)

The fallout from the blackout near-mess on January 8thcontinues. In their Winter Outlook NESO boasted of higher operating margins that last year. So why did NESO suffer its very own margin call? A thread 🧵(1/n) NESO calculate operating margin by adding all the available generating capacity & applying a de-rating factor to each technology to arrive at a re-rated capacity. They compare this with an estimate of peak demand & the difference is the De-rated Margin of 5.2GW (2/n)

A group called Zero Hour is promoting the Climate and Nature Bill circulating in Parliament. Sadly, their name invokes an alarming echo of Pol Pot’s Year Zero and the measures in the Bill do nothing to assuage those concerns. A thread 🧵 (1/n) The name of the Bill sounds innocuous enough: who could possibly oppose measures to protect and enhance nature? But when you dig into the detail, the Bill starts to look very sinister indeed (2/n)

Fake It Until You Make It.

We missed a blackout by the skin of our teeth yesterday because we have clueless clowns running and advising on our energy system. A thread with article link at the end 🧵(1/n) On Monday, Red Ed was boasting wind power was our biggest source of electricity in 2024 and this was a "huge moment on our journey away from energy insecurity". (2/n)

Ed Miliband's claims of lower bills from his Clean Power 2030 plan do not add up. We spend £6-8bn on gas for electricity, so how can spending £260-£290bn on CP2030 make electricity cheaper? A thread 🧵(1/n) In the run up to Christmas Miliband appeared on BBC Radio 4 Today and said:

"We're laying the foundations for an energy system that will lead to lower bills because the costs of running a system which is largely based on renewables is significantly cheaper" (2/n)

There is no limit to our electricity bills as new spending on renewables has diminishing impact on emissions intensity. Our bills are going to infinity and beyond. A thread (1/n) First up, we need to acknowledge that measuring the emissions intensity of electricity generation is an imprecise science. Three different datasets from Ember, DUKES and NESO give different results although have a similar shape. (2/n)

Shortly before Christmas, Ofgem published its latest report on the Feed-in-Tariff scheme. Record costs impacting the poorest hardest and benefiting the rich the most. A thread 🧵 (1/n) Electricity generation und the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) scheme is actually down year-on-year and it now looks like there is a gentle downward trend emerging (2/n)

I was going to write a serious thread about Miliband's Clean Power 2030 plan, but it's just a rehash of the NESO effort. So we will explore it through the medium of a play list to explain the impact (1/n) Analysts have shown that 4,000 pensioners could die from the removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance. Many more non-pensioners could die because they lack the means to pay extortionate electricity prices. So we have Kill the Poor by the Dead Kennedys (2/n)

open.spotify.com/track/0HKbXwW3…

How do electricity suppliers manage to supply "100% green electricity" when like this week, the wind runs out of puff? A thread 🧵(1/n) As a reminder, there was a wind drought across Europe thar sent prices spiralling upwards, with day ahead prices hitting €936/MWh in Germany and Denmark (2/n)

Not too long ago, the Government launched the Subsidy Control Transparency Database. Last week it was updated with figures from renewables auction AR6. I counted £328bn of energy/Net Zero subsidies. Where is all the money going? A thread 🧵(1/n) First up, there's energy generation subsidies. £45bn for AR6, £5bn for AR5 (no offshore wind), £15bn for AR4 & £15bn for earlier rounds. An extra £3.4bn for Hornsea wind farm, £2.1bn for Walney & £1.9bn for Beatrice. £15bn for remote island wind & £31bn on FiTs. (2/n)

Electricity suppliers are in some turmoil about zonal or locational pricing, with Octopus and Greg Jackson being passionate advocates and others like SSE being much more circumspect. So, will consumers get reamed by REMA? A thread 🧵(1/n) On the one hand, Octopus commissioned a report from FTI Consulting that claimed locational pricing could reduce electricity costs by up to 99.5% for electrolyser-type loads. Effectively they could receive almost free electricity (2/n)

New data came out yesterday comparing energy prices across Europe for Jan-Jun 2024. The UK has by far the highest industrial electricity prices in Europe. This thread explores why that might be and how we fare in domestic markets too. (1/n) For medium UK industrial users, prices are 188% higher than the EU14 median. For large & v large users the relative position is worse with UK prices >150% above EU14 median prices. Bear in mind, in 2023 UK prices were also 4X those of the US & 2.6X Korea. (2/n)

COP29 has finished with an agreement to provide $300bn/yr of public funds, up from $100bn/yr but much less than the demand of $1trn/yr. Starmer has also committed UK to an emissions cut of 81% by 2035. Just how effective are these COP meetings? A thread 🧵(1/n) First up, global emissions have soared off the chart, so the $100bn/yr has made no difference. Last year emissions rose by more than UK emissions that now make up just 0.81% of the total. (2/n)