David Craig, on July 27th, 2024weekend blog
A few weeks ago, I used this chart of electricity costs by source of generation. The chart comes from a government report which Mad Monk MIliband, the BBC Verify and the eco-nutters use to claim that expensive, intermittent and unreliable supposedly ‘clean’ electricity is cheaper than cheap reliable fossil-fuel energy:
(apologies for the chart being blurred. I don’t know why this has happened)
The problem with this chart is that it’s complete nonsense based on rather complicated theoretical assumptions – a LCOE (levelized cost of electricity) which I don’t fully understand or trust and therefore can’t explain. For a start, the chart is designed to make energy from gas (the first column) look much more expensive by adding on a supposed ‘carbon expense’ (the dark blue section on the first column). But even if you take off the ‘carbon expense’, gas still looks slightly more expensive than the �44 mWh for offshore wind (the second column), the �44 mWh for onshore wind (the third column) and the �41 mWh for large-scale solar (the fourth column).
At the same time as publishing this complete garbage, our useless right-hand-doesn’t-know-what-the-left-hand-is-doing government has also published the prices we will actually be paying for electricity by source:
(This chart comes from an official government Department of Energy and Net Zero report titled “Contracts for Difference (CfD): Core Parameters for the sixth allocation round, 2024”)
This gives a completely different and much more accurate picture of what we will be paying as these prices are based on actual contracts with suppliers and not on some mysterious and complex LCOEs:
- whereas the first (theoretical) chart claimed that offshore wind will only cost �44 mWh, we will actually be paying �73 mWh for offshore wind (66% more) and an eyewatering �176 mWh for floating offshore wind power
- the first chart (the one used by Miliband, the BBC Verify and the eco-fascists) tells us that onshore wind only costs �44 mWh. But the real price we will be paying is �64 mWh – around 45% more than the Miliband/BBC/eco-liars’ price
- the first chart (the theoretical nonsense used by our lying rulers and our Greta-worshipping mainstream media) tells us that large-scale solar is one of the cheapest energy sources at just �41 mWh. But in reality we will be paying �61 mWh – about 49% more than MIliband, the BBC and the greenies admit
Once you take the real prices we will be paying for renewables like offshore wind, onshore wind and large-scale solar, electricity produced by gas-fired power stations actually becomes cheaper than the renewables. But by using the LCOE prices from the first chart, the MIliband/BBC/eco-idiots can claim renewables will lower our energy bills, while the actual contractual prices we will be paying will massively increase our electricity bills.
When I was a schoolboy, many decades ago, I used to read a magazine called ‘Mad’:
But I thought it was fiction and satire. I didn’t realise it would come to be reality in the brave new world the Miliband/BBC/eco-idiots have planned for us.
Category: 
I don’t think they are mad. I think they know full well what the real costs are and, with the medias help, are straight out lying to us.
I think it was Thomas Sowell who made the comment that engineers used to be responsible for the energy supply system and now it is politicians. In the days of nationalisation the politicians used to interfere by instructing the CEGB to build unnecessary power stations either to keep the coal miners happy or to provide orders for failing manufacturers in the hope they would eventually get orders from abroad which never appeared. For a while the supply industry was free from government interference after privatisation, but now they have more control than ever through the regulators and environmental laws. It is, as you say, madness. The politicians couldn�t run a whelk stall on Brighton seafront.
It isn�t just the cost of it all, there is also the issue of maintaining the supplies when there are faults on the system. This was provided by steam generation because high pressure could be released to recover the frequency. I have no idea what they do when it is all closed down. There has been more mention recently of the extra costs of transmission. The best place for power generation is near to the demand centres and wind turbines at sea are the worst place from the point of view of transmission costs.
The madness is spreading. I met a woman when I was out walking yesterday. She was admiring the thistles and other wild flowers that a farmer has allowed to grow and is apparently paid to do this instead of growing food for us. Perhaps soon it will be covered in batteries. But she said the wilding was needed because there was a shortage of oxygen and plants released oxygen. I pointed out that we needed more carbon dioxide for that to happen and her reply was that plants don�t need carbon dioxide.
I didn�t watch the Olympic ceremony but I gather it was an anti-Christian, perverts paradise. The future looks bleak.