Norway To Reap £1.6bn Subsidies From UK Energy Users
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul
It does not get any better. The Telegraph report:
Two Norwegian state-controlled energy companies are in line to receive £1.6bn in subsidies from UK consumers, after deciding to invest £1.5bn in building a wind farm off the coast of Norfolk.
Statoil and Statkraft said they would begin work on the Dudgeon offshore wind farm after receiving a contract from the UK government, guaranteeing they will be paid roughly triple the current wholesale power price for every unit of electricity the project generates.
The 67-turbine wind farm is the first to proceed under the Government’s new system of green subsidy contracts, pending state aid approval from the European Commission. It could be fully operational by late 2017 and generate enough power to supply 410,000 homes.
Statoil said the project would create at least 70 direct permanent jobs and that during peak construction phase there would be 350 further temporary jobs.
The National Audit Office last week criticised the way in which ministers awarded subsidies to Dudgeon and seven other projects, which received contracts early with no competition. The NAO said this could result in “excessive” returns for energy companies and poor value for money for consumers.
The NAO calculates that Dudgeon will receive £1.6bn in subsidy over 15 years – implying it could cost every UK home roughly £1.50 a year on their energy bills.
The announcement came on the same day that Tata Steel announced 400 job losses at Port Talbot, blaming high energy costs.
Dr John Constable, director of Renewable Energy Foundation, a group critical of green subsidies, said the coincidental timing served as “a stark reminder that renewable energy subsidies that increase prices to consumers will also destroy jobs elsewhere in the economy”.
Offshore wind critics have also highlighted how as little as 10pc of spending on existing farms has been in the UK. Statoil said it would “work towards a 50pc target” for “UK content” for the Dudgeon project, based on both construction and operation contracts over the lifetime of the wind farm.
It will use 6MW Siemens turbines but was unable to say whether these would be sourced from the manufacturers’s planned new factories in Hull.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“The NAO said this could result in “excessive” returns for energy companies and poor value for money for consumers.” Hahaha! Who gives a toss about consumers? This is the UK we’re talking about. We’re all Ed Davey’s energy bitches.
Bar stewards.
Now Paul, be fair to our Norwegian friends, whilst not short of a bob or three:-
Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Ramps Up Investment Plans
But they do have their heads screwed on and are prepared to go their own way, making the welfare and well being of their citizens their first priority:-
Sorry, link didn’t work:-
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/norways-sovereign-wealth-fund-ramps-up-investment-plans/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
So we can’t even subsidise our own companies properly.
This must be the simplest metric yet for measuring just how desperate Ed Davey et.al. must be, resultant from their assiduous development of what will finally be shown to be the single most stupid energy “policy” (?) that even a front bench politician could come up with.
The government will apparently pay anybody any price to help dig them out of the hole they’re in. The price correlates perfectly with the level of desperation. Then again, it’s our money not theirs.
One question though, who are they going to pay to build the extra fossil fuel capacity to give this windfarm the support it will require?
The article by Emily Gosden seems to have an error in the sums.
A subsidy of £1.6 billion over 15 years is a little over £100 million per year. There are about 23 million families in the UK so that works out at over + £4.3 pa not +£1.5 pa.
does this explain why they can afford electric cars?
How to explain the unexplainable Ed and al. energy policy? Simple: Look at their pockets and bank accounts: Becoming very thick…