The huge cost of paying windfarms to switch off – so-called constraint payments – hits the headlines from time to time. It’s a scandal, of course, but it’s even more scandalous than you think (THREAD). The main grid constraint is across the Scottish border. The windfarms that are getting the big money for switching off are therefore north of the border.

As the CPS’s @rcolvile has set out, @NESO has produced a veritable dodgy dossier to support Ed Miliband’s plans to decarbonise the grid by 2030. But the scale of the deception Colvile has uncovered is only the tip of the iceberg. (THREAD)

https://x.com/CPSThinkTank/status/1862419396893057073

The public have been deceived on an extraordinary scale, and Mr Miliband’s department has been at the centre of it. That’s because almost everyone in the field uses DESNZ’s estimates of the cost of renewables.

With the government having announced subsidies for hydrogen for industrial heat, we will see a lot of this kind of thing. But the underlying agenda is not what you think. (THREAD) The new regime for hydrogen guarantees a price of 24p/kWh. This covers the costs of the electrolysers, which would otherwise be able to compete with natural gas at 8p/kWh.

At the Climate COP, the Prime Minister announced a new subsidy for windfarms. This is yet another scandal. (THREAD) The Clean Industry Bonus (a rebranding of a plan put together under the last government) hands out cash to windfarms that say they will develop UK supply chains. The rewards are substantial - £27 million per megawatt of capacity.

A few weeks back I wrote a long thread about overproduction in the renewables sector, and some murkiness surrounding the responses to the problem. It has now become very murky indeed. (THREAD) In 2023, the renewables fleet started to overproduce from time to time. When both solar and wind were producing at high levels, supply outstripped demand and market prices crashed, as everyone tried to offload their surpluses.

One of the hidden horrors of Net Zero is the need to pay out very large sums of money for things that were previously free. A recent Government data release reveals an eye-watering case in point. (THREAD) Back in the olden days, coal fired power stations naturally stabilised the grid. Huge rotating turbines essentially acted as a store of energy – ‘inertia’ in the jargon.

Last week, I noted important new evidence that official estimates of the cost of offshore wind are wildly incorrect, and that Net Zero will therefore be much more expensive than thought. This week, there is more. (THREAD) Link here in case you missed it.

https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1846488011631911145

Claims that Net Zero can be done cheaply all have, at their centre, the same wild prediction. I have just had new evidence that it is completely incorrect. (THREAD) All these claims cite the prediction of the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) that offshore windfarms commissioned in 2025 will be extraordinarily cheap, delivering power at £44/MWh, half current market prices.
gov.uk/government/pub…

If you think things are crazy now, wait until you hear how bonkers they are likely to become. (THREAD) From time to time, the renewables fleet is now generating more electricity than the country needs. When this happens, market prices collapse, and sometimes even go negative.

Last week, I looked at some of the implications of Ed Miliband’s mad plan to expand the renewables fleet. I’ve now taken the analysis further to see what it might mean for household bills and the rest of Mr Miliband’s plans. This is rather startling. (THREAD). (The link to the original post is here, for those that missed it).

https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

It's fun to look at what electricity supply and demand will look like once Labour's bonkers energy plan - double onshore wind, triple solar, quadruple offshore - is in place. (Thread) I've crudely estimated the Labour Party fleet as 90GW of wind, 42GW solar, plus 6GW nuclear, and assumed a modest rise in demand to 330TWh.

In this thread, I will try to explain why electricity is going to get much *much* more expensive. As I’ve said before, there is evidence of some cost reductions for offshore wind – Hornsea 2 and Triton Knoll are the first developments that might have costs below £100/MWh.

Two different figures are bandied about for the cost of Net Zero. There are a lot of misunderstandings of what they represent. In fact, they are not even comparable. But it doesn’t matter because they are both junk. Here’s why. (Thread) The two estimates are £1.5 trillion from the Climate Change Committee and £3 trillion from National Grid ESO.

From @RossjournoClark, I learn that @Policy_Exchange and @AuroraER_Oxford are claiming Labour's energy plans will cost £116 billion by 2030.

The number is preposterous. Here's why (thread). It’s straightforward to calculate that Labour’s plans involve building 40GW offshore windfarms, 20GW onshore plus 36 GW of solar.

In a week where we have heard about the terrible human cost of the Government machine covering up the use of contaminated blood, it’s interesting to consider Whitehall doing exactly the same thing - hiding the painful truth - in another area. (Thread....) This is the claim that offshore wind power is cheap.

It simply isn’t true.

Electricity storage thread

@afneil is being bombarded with every misconception about the energy system out there, as people remonstrate against his simple factual observation that we need something to deliver power when the wind doesn't blow. Pumped hydro doesn't cut it. There are not enough suitable sites. National Grid concluded that we could quintuple capacity. That would represent just a few hours of demand.

So about these alleged subsidies for fossil fuels…

1. Oil and gas companies have to pay the Supplementary Charge on profits, as well as Corporation Tax.
Renewables companies don’t... 🧵 2. Gas, coal and oil-fired power stations have to buy Emissions Trading Permits, and renewables don’t.
3. Renewables get direct subsidies in the shape of the Renewables Obligation, Feed-in-Tariffs and Contracts for Difference. Fossil fuel power stations don’t....

The argument that global warming is a serious problem rests on the output of climate models, vast computer simulations of the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere. But are climate models good enough to inform policymakers? This thread argues they are not. Not even close. 🧵 Climate models are *really* big. Millions of lines of code attempting to reproduce the physics of a highly complex system, creating an artificial world, its surface divided into cells of up to 100 km × 100 km in size, multiple layers of atmosphere above, and ocean below.

Yesterday, Lord Deben gave a speech in the Lords about adaptation. While getting going, he said “I look forward to a debate with my noble friend [Lord Frost] when I shall be quoting the science and he will be quoting the prejudices.” 🧵
https://t.co/OaDA8CoEBFhansard.parliament.uk/lords/2023-07-…
I thought it would be amusing to look at the detail of what he had to say, to see how much of it was science, and how much was “science” and prejudice. Take this, for example...

Today, Grant Shapps is saying that everyone is going to need a heat pump by 2050. By coincidence, I've just written a paper on the subject. It shows that Shapps is utterly wrong. Heat pumps are a mistake for most people. 🧵 The economics of heat pumps are mainly driven by:
• the ratio of electricity and gas prices
• the heat pump ‘gain’ – the units of heat energy emitted for each unit of electricity used.
Heat pumps are therefore mostly deployed in countries with cheap electricity.

Hi @ELPinchbeck You said that you were happy to debate windfarm costs on the basis of facts and data, so this is an attempt to do so. (1/12) I suggested you pick a windfarm from 2018, so we could discuss the cost data. As you haven’t suggested one, I’ve picked one myself: Glenchamber Windfarm. Feel free to suggest another.