Government must decide: Save the economy or save Net Zero
By Paul Homewood
London, 8 September: The Prime Minister must take urgent steps to reduce the astronomical cost of her borrowing plans to limit consumer energy bills (which could cost £130-170 billion), or face potentially disastrous increases in public debt.
Net Zero Watch is today publishing a concise statement of the measures that Liz Truss can take to bring energy prices down in the short term, thus preventing an economic meltdown.
Net Zero Watch Director, Dr Benny Peiser said:
The choice is clear. Liz Truss can save the economy, or she can shuffle the deckchairs once again”.
The policies recommended are unapologetically radical. The current crisis is the result of two decades of deeply misconceived energy policy and undoing these errors will take many years, with much harm and damage now inevitable.
The situation can only begin to improve if radical measures are applied immediately. Any attempt to maintain Net Zero “business as usual” will only prolong the agony and result in still deeper problems.
Amongst the measures Net Zero Watch believes to be mandatory are:
1. Suspension of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme.
2. Restriction of trade over the gas and electricity interconnectors to the EU to emergency aid and system balancing only.
3. Reduction of the value of the Renewable Obligation certificate to zero (subsidy is unnecessary at current high market prices).
Together with other suspensions, such as subsidies to EVs and heat pumps, these policy changes could deliver savings in the region of £1500 per household in the coming winter, and a further £1200 in the winter of 2023/24.
This will reduce the cost of the Government’s plans by up to £70bn.
The government should also pay for replacement of the gas turbines in the UK’s power stations to improve the efficiency of the electricity industry, give a green light to shale gas drilling, and enable the securing of longer-term gas supply contracts by publicly recognising the centrality of natural gas to the UK energy system until such time as new nuclear can diversify supply.
The plan is authored by energy economist Professor Gordon Hughes and Net Zero Watch’s deputy director Andrew Montford.
Professor Hughes said:
The time for conventional wisdom is over – radical measures are required to avoid disaster. We must get energy prices down rather than pushing the costs onto future generations.”
Andrew Montford said:
Unless the new Prime Minister bites the bullet and undertakes the reforms described here the current crisis will rapidly become a catastrophe. The situation is now desperate. Radical action is mandatory.”
Net Zero Watch director Dr Benny Peiser said:
We have given Liz Truss a clear plan to dramatically reduce energy bills. But it remains to be seen whether her ministers and MPs will back the necessary policy changes. There is a serious risk that many will prefer to sticking with the Net Zero status quo rather than prevent the economy from falling into chaos.”
Gordon Hughes and Andrew Montford: Fixing the energy price crisis (pdf)
Below are the detailed costings from the report:
They also address some of the red herrings wheeled out by the Committee on Climate Change:
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I’m afraid even GBNews was as bad as the BBC this morning, the female presenter even reeling out the ludicrous anti-fracking scare stories. As long as the majority of the public and supposed experts seem to believe the narrative that it is gas making renewables expensive, and more wind is the solution, onshore for speed of construction, no debate, were stuffed. Yet growth is only going to come from a fresh wave of fossil fuel exploitation.
Why don’t we disconnect fossil fuel generators for a day? A week?
With the current state of affairs, that would just be hailed as proof that more windmills are required.
What on Earth is meant by “replacement of gas turbines in the UK electricity idustry”? This is utter nonsense. CCGTs are the most efficient generators of electricity ever. All that is needed is adoption of the Ireland Alternative Fuel Obligation and oblge the operators to change the fuel from gas to a lower cost liquid fuel. Kerosene was the prefered when they were developed as aero engines but I believe that the most attractive economically will be light naphtha designated FBP 106 aka straight run natural gasoline which was the basis for the ICI steam reformers which provided our town gas through the 1960s. A similar approach should also be taken to reviving our fertiliser manufacturing industry which originally ran on naphtha.
It’s explained in the document (download pdf), replace older less efficient turbines in CCGT plants that have suffered from lack of investment because of uncertainty caused by Net Zero BS.
What – and keep burning gas in them?
” improve the efficiency ”
To what the other comments say, I’ll add:
South of me in Washington State is a nuclear facility – Columbia Generating Station. Every two years it is shut down for about 40 days for refueling and upgrades. A gain of up to 10% was obtained the last time, about 30 months ago.
Large autos of 50 years ago had milage of 1/3 of those of today.
The article does not say how old the current gas turbines are, but Nigel S. suggests there is an issue with them.
These problems are self-inflicted because of the anti-carbon-based fuel nonsense and will not be quickly solved. Replacement likely isn’t going to happen soon.
Yes, absolutely burn gas in CCGT plants, fracked from under my house if I have any say in the matter.
Agree Nigel, they can frack in my fields anytime.
In the late 1960s three new ammonia plants were built by ICI at Billingham, designed by Kellogg (not the cornflake firm).
The three steam reformers were designed to run on North Sea Gas, they were initially run on naphtha, but encountered so many problems that the engineers nicknamed them Snap, Crackle and Pop (after the adverts for Rice Krispies made by the other Kellogg).
Once North Sea Gas came on stream the plants ran without problems.
Thanks. I was puzzled by that one — had they found a way to repeal the laws of thermodynamics?
JF
NetZero is a load of codswallop anyway, based on misconceptions and shady ‘experts’. Whilst this country zealously follows the mantra and ruins our industry the rest of the industrial world ignore it and laugh at our naivety.
Yes, twenty years of insanity, lets hope that Lord Deben getting the boot along with the rest of his CCC crew is an early step by J R-M.
You are Sooo right . . . I have Proven that all the clean green energy is Lies . . . Not one journalist will publish these truths . . .
https://www.allaboutenergy.net/270-energy/today/multiple-energy-types/world/3208-clean-green-energy-net-zero-fairy-tales-on-steroids?highlight=WyJqaW0iLCJsZSIsIm1haXN0cmUiLCJqaW0gbGUiLCJqaW0gbGUgbWFpc3RyZSIsImxlIG1haXN0cmUiXQ==
Jim that’s brill, I will circulate it as much as possible
👏👏👏
Well done Gordon Hughes! Just hope and wish Truss and Moggie get cracking (could be a typo!) and deliver soon.
I’m also mightily teed off by the media’s slight of hand in not explaining what the £2,500 ‘Cap’ really means.
Some people I’ve heard being interviewed think it means they will not get an energy bill greater than £2.5k: they fail to realise it’s a way to cap the kWh price. So if they are profligate users they could still end up paying more. Am I right?
The price cap will be for a “typical” household, so yes, the more you use the more you pay.
It is surprising how many people think that the price cap relates to a maximum bill per household. This can only be because of poor explanation by the media.
If, as we are led to believe. Liz Truss checks all the facts before she reaches a decision, in all logical reasoning, her statement today must mean that she has not personally checked the facts but is being advised by alarmists – Lord Deben ?
Deben and his crooked gang of Green troughsnouters seem to be out of favour.
https://nydailypaper.com/climate-change-tsar-hauled-coals-warning-liz-truss-against-lifting-fracking-ban-htmlns_mchannelrssito1490ns_campaign1490/
Every thing I read about Deben makes me wonder whether he is Obi Wan re-incarnated. A wave of the hand and “These are not the eco-jobs I have that you are looking for!” How anybody can claim with a straight face that the members of that Committee are anything other than committed climate activists beggars belief.
Worse, no-one except yourself, Paul, seems inclined to challenge even the more outlandish claims and figures it produces.
Look him and his cronies up on the Parliament register of members’ interests, but perhaps have a stiff drink first..
There is no choice. Net Zero achieves NOTHING but poverty. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is only 0.04% of greenhouse gases and is saturated already. More than 90% consist of water vapour and clouds about which we can do nothing. We must use all our resources including fossil fuels until there is a good alternaive energy source.
I disagree. Net Zero makes winners in a losers.
Those who subscribe to the Net Zero policies will not be the winners and the sanctions against Russian gas without a replacement supply will hasten the transition. A web site called Oil Price dot com has two articles that highlight this.
The first is about European aluminum producers shutting down capacity. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/European-Energy-Crisis-Causes-Major-Aluminum-Capacity-Cuts.html. When energy and electricity prices are normal, about 1/3 the price of the metal is from the energy to refine it. In the last 18 months, the price of electricity has sky-rocketed 6 fold. The breakeven point for Aluminum producers is 250 Euros/MWh and current prices are 50% higher than that.
The second story is on China. They are buying up Russian LNG at a 50% discount. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/China-Is-Aggressively-Buying-Up-Cheap-Russian-LNG.html. While they may be using some of this internally, much gets re-sold on the global market at a substantial profit. Domestic electricity prices in China were already only about a 25-35% the price in Europe at the end of last year before Russia invaded Ukraine. How can any energy intensive industry survive in the EU with such imbalances?
A world class aluminium smelter will operate at about 13MWh per tonne of aluminium, and an inefficient one at up to 20. The current aluminium price is about $2,250tonne, while you will need $660 worth of alumina and $150 worth of carbon anode to produce a tonne, plus assorted extras such as cryolite and a potline and workforce. To be profitable power prices need to be comfortably below $100/MWh, and below $50/MWh for an inefficient one.
“A review is being launched into making sure the Net Zero target is hit in an economically efficient way.
This will be chaired by Chris Skidmore.”
(Telegraph)
Questions for Chris Skidmore:
If you go all-out for NZ, how will you KNOW when you (we) have reached it?
What will we notice about OUR UK climate compared to current day?
ps Skidmore MP is a pro-Net Zero supporter so we can expect the review to be fair and balanced…….. (cough).
My impression is that this otherwise excellent report greatly underestimates the savings from exploiting our own shale gas . Crude Oil and natural gas markets see huge price swings on relatively small changes in net demand/supply.
I have read the PDF and it is entirely ambiguous and refers to two levels of effeiciency. In fact the difference is explained by whether the plants are open circuit gas turbines (OCGT) or closed circuit gas turbines (CCGT). The choice is made on many considerations but certainly not age. The answer is so straightforward – CCGTs with liquid fuel and appropriate storage (defined in the Ireland Obligation) giving security as well as economy. And they don’t all have to be done at once. Even changing, say, the 2.2 GW facility at Milford Haven would help to reserve gas for domestic use.
What the PDF says is pretty clear I think.
‘Replacing marginal gas generation plant
Electricity prices in the UK are set by old, inefficient gas-fired power stations. Average thermal efficiency of UK gas-fired units is 48%. Marginal units will be lower. A 5% more efficient marginal unit reduces market prices by around £15/MWh,7 bringing savings of £5 billion, or £184 per household. However, since net zero policies have destroyed investor confidence, plant replacement – new turbines, in other words would need to be paid for by the taxpayer. These should be dual fuel units – capable of running on gasoil, which is likely to be cheaper in times of tight gas supply. The government should also pay for gasoil storage facilities at the power stations. There may be a queue for new plant, so time is of the essence.’
OCGT hardly used (0.3 GW at moment, 1835 (unusual, more often zero) v. 17.2 GW CCGT).
https://gridwatch.org.uk/
48% overall efficiency? That is extremely low given that modern CCGT units can provide 62% if run continuously. Older units were likely to be around 55%.
OCGT units can get 40% if run continuously but with stop/start operation are more likely to be around 35%.
It seems that either the current CCGT units are due for the old age pension or they are being run with stop/start operation to accomodate variable supply from renewables.
If fracking works then new CCGT units could be installed as dual fuel types (less need to process the gas) and run in continuous mode. Allow those variable wind turbines to supply only when needed e.g. when their output can be exported to Europe.
Graeme No.3 – You raise a good question we need to ask what is the efficiency penalty of running the grid around renewables (see link from Ireland) & to put an end to some of this virtue signalling particularly regarding fuel mixes which don’t appear to factor in primary energy needed by thermal power station & energy use by power station when not generating e.g starting up.
Thermal efficiency not wind must be prioritised on the grid
http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/dublin-electricity-generation-analysis_27.html
Nigel Sherratt –
The OCGT many be hardly used but based on at least 1 of the OCGT you probably saw Indian Queens in Cornwall
which I suspect is running more for grid stability reasons especially since Hinkley Point B closed & there are probably times gas oil is cheaper than natural gas it would be interesting to see what its current thermal efficiency is & what it could be if was converted to a CCGT.
Graeme
62% is lower heating value (the “useful” heat in gas), but gas is traded in higher heating value therms (the total heat) the difference between the two is about 11% because gas produces a lot of water in combustion, and this needs to exit a power station flue as a vapour.
So 62% LHV (which is new and clean) is equivalent to 55.9% HHV.
An older CCGT with the 55% efficiency you mention (which is a fair enough estimate) is 49.5% HHV.
We need to be careful about units, but if we want to talk about the gas cost of operating a CCGT, heat consumption has to be expressed in HHV units, and 48%-56% is a fair range for CCGT from the older units to a new and clean unit.
On another point mentioned on the thread, a CCGT will only be new and clean for a few months. If we burn oil in the combustion system (dual fuelling), the CCGT will not be clean after the first oil burning experience. As I have said before, this costs a lot of money for various reasons, including the extra gas associated with “not clean anymore”.
Vernon E. – Do you know how many GW of gas generation we can run at the same time as high heating demand on the island of Great Britain as I’ve heard 22 GW (but can’t remember where) but it can’t be that low surely and how much CCGT capacity can currently use liquid fuel & have fuel stored onsite?
I think this issue (onsite fuel storage) need a campaigning blog of is own to raise awareness (let me know if anyone can help set 1 up) & to deal with related issues like the quasi religious ideological demolition of coal & oil power stations which should have being at the very latest mothballed (especially standby power station e.g. Inverkip, Grain, Littlebrook D) & preserved as it highly likely we could have repowered many of these units with small modular nuclear heat reactors (don’t forget many older coal power station were converted to oil in 1950/60s).
The fact this was not a like for like replacement regarding fuel storage (coal/oil vs gas storage) is scandalous and is deserving of a public inquiry at some point. This mess reminds me of Meredith Angwin’s book shorting the grid.
A quick back of an envelope calculation shows we have about 14408 MW of steam capacity that has not being fully demolished and could be refurbished to burn the thermally most efficient fuel (which I doubt is biomass) so coal or heavy fuel oil & be run similar to the way nuclear capacity is run 24/7 at full load only being shut for maintenance.
I also wonder if the steam turbines at Dungeness B, Hinkley Point B & Hunterston B still exist & could be repowered in some way so they could be fuelled by heavy fuel oil (a coal conversion may be too complex) as thats about 3GW of non gas dispatchable capacity we could add.
Power station, Current status, MW
Aberthaw power stations,closed ,1560
Lynemouth power station,biomass,420
Uskmouth power stations,biomass,363
drax,biomass,2640
drax,coal,1320
Fiddlers Ferry power station,closed ,1989
West Burton power station,coal,2000
Cottam power station,coal,2000
Ratcliffe on Soar,coal,2116
Total capacity 14408 MW
I think you have confused yourself with CCGT. CCGT can refer to combined cycle gas turbine or closed cycle gas turbine. Power generation from gas uses the former whereby the hot exhaust gases from the gas turbine are routed to a steam boiler. A closed cycle gas turbine is just that. The gas is recycled continuously and heat is added via a heat exchanger that could be powered by combustion or by nuclear. Open cycle is the same principle as a turbo prop/fan engine – the hot exhaust is routed to atmosphere.
The would not be enough naphtha to power the gas turbine fleet. Most is consumed in catalytic reformers ( gasoline) and steam cracking (ethylene). There is no meaningful surplus.
Vernon E: you’ve raised the idea of switching to dual-fuel CCGTs a few times and it’s good to see it in the Net Zero paper. Are there any studies or even reports on actual conversions? It would be interesting to read up on the details.
Wrt to the availability of liquid fuels, there’s a lot of disruption in the oil market with the sanctions on Russia changing the types of oil available which impacts the product slate of refineries. Also demand for diesel has fallen. So, afaics, given the lead time of a programme of dual-fuel plants, it should be feasible to obtain ample fuel.
Jordan: Are you seriously suggesting that aero engines which run on ATK (kerosene) loose efficiency after a few hours operation?
Over at the BEEB Rowlatt is reeling out the same old rubbish about “oh so cheap” wind power.
And very noticeable that a comments thread was removed when I pointed out that wind isn’t cheap!
My solution to the Net Zero problem is that we give up all these absurd calculations about windmills and refueling American airliners and just sequester our one per cent of global CO2. 31%
will be Chinese of course but we will have done our bit. Need a carbon (dioxide) capture machine of course.
Why? CO2 is greening the planet, we need more of it.
Another excellent and realistic post Paul. However, until Joe and Joanna public understand the reality, we will blunder on into disaster triggered via the great green scam. I fear that, only a major outage could really focus minds – in Parliament and as the public fulminate and the consequential rioting the noise – can be heard inside the walls of the House of Commons.
Start mining coal again and build ultra supercritical coal plant, up to 47%+ efficiency:
https://www.ge.com/steam-power/coal-power-plant/usc-ausc
David: Ever been down a deep UK pit? I have and its a horrific experience. Today’s youngsters are not going to replace our old miners at any price. Maybe bring in child labour from the DRC? I don’t think so.
Modern semi-automated coal mining is a completely different game to the old pick and shovel processes, especially in a modern mine such as Drax.
And yes, I have been down a pit, also been in in a steelworks (Appleby-Frodingham at Doncaster) and was employed for some time as a technician in the last running UK coal gas plant in the mid-60s, when we worked on the retort house passes checking the temperatures with an optical pyrometer through the “pennies” covering the inspection holes in the flues you could spit on the catwalk and it danced, if you brushed the handrails with your bare skin it stuck, if you went in with coins in your pockets they blistered you.
Victorian engineering and Victorian H&S standards, curiously I rather enjoyed it!
You could do that for about twenty minutes, then you needed a pint or two of water and a couple of lemon flavoured salt tablets.
But yes, I really can’t see today’s snowflakes putting up with any of that for very long, perhaps we could get the dinghy tribe to do it!
There’s always in-situ coal gasification, of course…
I would not trust the veracity of anything you say
Catwhatever: you are talking nonsense. My son after graduating in mining engineering from MINEX (Cardiff) became the NCB’s youngest recorded Statutory Under Manager. He took me down one of the most modern pits in the UK. Have you been on a “manrider”? A knee-height converyor belt that takes the miners to the face, about fifteen minutes in toal darkness, lying prone with the roof skimming one’s hesd. I still have bad dreams about it. Today’s “snowflakes”? No. I don’t think so.
Yes, of course I’ve been on a “manrider”, how else do you think I got to the face?
Clearly you are less resilient than me, have you ever been down a long cave system with some wet sumps?
Try that some time – if you think you’ve got the bottle for it.
I doubt you’ll ever sleep again.
Pah!
And your point is….?
My point, sunshine, is that despite having zero knowledge of my antecedents and never having met me, you have publicly insulted and called me a liar, which says a great deal more about than it does about me.
There’s a name for people like you, and it is not complimentary; it has however got inter alia coward in it.
Catw: I can’t resist another word. Were your antecedents working in a gasworks in 666? I too worked at one of the last coal retorts in 1962 at SWGB Exeter. I saw nothing of what you describe – they were a tough but unionised and happy bunch. The plants were moderately automated. The only inhumanity I saw was when periodically the cider drinkers from the canal pubs were brought in to dig out the sulfur-satured iron oxide boxes. Yes – awful.
In 1967 I worked on perhaps the last house of Woodall-Duckham continuous vertical retorts in the UK on the NWGB shortly before it closed down during the Dash for Gas.
There was little or no automation, the producers were charged from hoppers through heavy cast iron circular covers in the tops, the retorts were charged with coal from hoppers at the top of the house so there was always a thin dust of coal drifting down that stuck to the tar on your helmet that dripped from the foul mains.
The coke was drawn from the hoppers and fell onto the conveyor, unless you got a “hangar”, that was a nightmare involving swinging the extractor aside and prodding up into the red hot maw of the retort with long steel pokers and getting out off he way quick when it fell down, that could melt your plastic safety helmet.
As to the filters one of my jobs was to to round every week and check the pressure drop with a manometer, smelly…
I also wound up all the chart recorders and filled the pens with ink and read the water meters.
Dr Benny Peiser said:
The choice is clear. Liz Truss can save the economy, or she can shuffle the deckchairs once again”.
________________________________
False dichotomy.
In the case of Natural Gas, I understand that we can extrapolate the cost of electricity derived from that source by multiplying its price by a factor of 2/2.5.
As the current price of UK NG is around £140/ MWh, we assume an electricity price of £300 /MWh.
Unsurprisingly the price of coal has also risen sharply this year. By way of comparison, could anyone explain how we can calculate what would be the cost of electricity per ton of coal?
When did we ever get to vote on whether we wanted net zero with its associated expense & restrictions ?
uncle klaus ordered his minions to instruct ‘our’ elected representatives to do the dirty for us, never were any questions asked about carbon zero or the green agenda, it was mandatory you see. green is all about communism and dominion = total control, saving the planet is the lie they sell it on.
And those who sell it will have high positions in the WEF New World Order.
I find Herr Schwab and his philosophy somewhat scary. And look at who is his frontman as identified in this (slightly weird) video: King Charles.
The video also touches on the logic(!) behind the pressures on farmers in Netherlands (at about 8 minutes). Lis Truss might have a bit of a fight on her hands to get UK energy onto a realistic path.
Disappointingly the report does not address one of the root causes of today’s prices – the link to the cost of gas.
It’s bizarre to accept astronomic prices for all power, based on the marginal cost of gas.
The EU is talking of capping the price of all non-gas generation while supporting the gas-fired ones for the extra cost of gas.
We could do something similar rather than persisting with a system which generates (!) enormous profits for producers while costing many billions in subsidies to keep power bills down.
But that is probably too obvious for the PPE geniuses.
I’ll let Prof Dieter Helm of Oxford answer that
“A gas station in an electricity market with lots of wind generation runs only when the wind is not blowing. This is devastating to the economics of gas generation and for two reasons: it means the recovery of the fixed and sunk capital costs takes longer and is more uncertain; and it means that the contracts for supplies to the gas power stations have to be provided on demand, without the gas supplier knowing when the gas will be required. The result is that the cost of capital and the cost of supplies of gas go up. The more wind, the higher of both these costs”
http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/energy/climate-change/the-coal-question/
In short the greater the penetration of unreliables the lesser the ability of gas power stations to secure any long term gas supply contracts.
(Prof Helm is by no means a climate change sceptic but he is an expert on energy policy)
Dave: in all my posts promoting the idea of using liquid fuels in our CCGT stations I have always added the proviso that some imaginitive financial engineering will be required. Since renewables always trump fired generation there has to be a way to make useof our established wind resources but at the same time to give the CCGT generators sufficient continuous load to be viable. I am sure that some subsidies will have to be factored in but the turbine generators must have a continuous load. It follows that we don’t need any more windmills.
If one were to make connection to the Grid dependent on guaranteeing a high capacity factor, say 93%, with penalties for failure, then the renewable energy barons would be forced to build a suite of generators that could cope with excess wind, wind drought, night, clouds etc. They are the kings of financial black arts such as contracts for difference, so let them apply their massive knowhow to squaring the renewables plus reliables circle.
JF
(I’d guess that they’d settle for straight CCGT generation.)
Good one Julian, but not burning gas please.
Having listened to Helm a couple of times at conferences I would not rate him as an expert on energy – he has diened out for decades on his professorship as most do. When he gave a pretty poor presenation about oil depletion a few years ago as soon as he was finished he did a high speed leggy and refused to anser any questions. The fact is is that his skill set is 100% academia and he has never got his hands dirty on an oil rig, a refinery or a power plant. As I get older, and after 44 years in the business, I am struck by the sheer ineptitide of the so called experts, useless management consultants and CEO’s unfit to run their business. BP is a classic of employing one useless CEO after another. Look at the Covid experts and Niall Ferguson’s model; the population fell for it because he was an expert. My definition of expert is rather different. It is someone who knows his business and is not afraid to invest his own money. Personally I cannot stand Elon Musk by I tip my hat to his ability to get things done, most of the time. One only has to look at the Falcon Rocket vs the Artemis cobbled together NASA disaster (built by experts).
The real problem there is a supply side tightness to all fossil fuels, that was exacerbated bu the oil price collapse in 2016. Sure we can produce some additional volumes but only after we have replaced natural depletion which is especially rampant on shale. The easy oil and gas is gone, now we are faced with sub prime resources that require much larger energy inputs to extract- it is called EROEI.
Sorry, video url re Schab omitted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKX6vPo6Cc
Yer ’tis, as they say in the West Country
The solution is to produce more gas to get the price back to normal. We use lots of gas for other purposes than electricity generation, so it should be a priority. If you want other cheap power you need to rely on coal or low cost nuclear (not EPRs). Wind is not the solution by the time you add in all the other costs in trying to use it, such as extra grid costs, extra balancing costs and extra backup costs. Those costs all increase as wind capacity rises.
The idiocy of Parliament
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11200761/Hydroelectric-turbines-8soon-power-Parliament-harnessing-tidal-power-Thames.html
From what I can find I estimate Parliament is probably chewing through about 30GWh a year. Windsor Castle makes use of a nearby weir where there are a pair of Archimedes screw generators that deliver about 1.4GWh a year, though not when the river is in flood, and probably not when there is drought either. I can find to trace of the project in the FiT register, so it appears not to be subsidised by us.
https://www.hydroreview.com/business-finance/windsor-castle-hydro-plant-to-rely-on-archimedes/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-25762695
The neatest weir is at Teddington, where there has long been controversy over a proposed scheme about twice the size of the one at Windsor. Noone us going to accept the flood risk from building a tidal barrage in central London. So we are left with tidal stream energy.
The O2 Orbital project has 2x1MW turbines that are 20m in diameter.
experts poured cold water on Sir Lindsay’s plan – with one saying that a Terrace-side turbine would probably only generate enough power to boil a kettle.
Neil Kermode, of the European Marine Energy Centre, warned that the river outside the Commons was too shallow to make a turbine worthwhile.
He said: ‘It’s about two metres deep at low tide so that would limit the size of machines.’
The power generated by a turbine is proportional to its swept area, so even at 2 metres the maximum output would be just 10kW. However, even in the much more favourable conditions of the Pentland Firth where some of the strongest tidal currents found anywhere flow, the average capacity factor is at best 30% .
So we have 3kW. An electric kettle. And we trust Parliament to vote on energy issues.