December 2023 CfD Subsidies
January 11, 2024
By Paul Homewood
Just a few simple numbers behind December’s CfD results:
- Generation: 2.6 TWh
- Subsidy/MWh : £86.68
- Market Price/MWh: £75.00
Market prices have ranged from £142/MWh at the start of the month when wind power was at a minimum, to £6/MWh during Storm Gerrit.
If this does not show the worthlessness of wind power, I don’t know what does! Its value is minimal when the wind blows; it only has any real value when the wind does not blow!
But because of subsidies, wind farms rake in the money whether the wind blows or not; their price is guaranteed. It is dispatchable generators, such as gas and nuclear, which have to pay for this market volatility.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Can anyone spell “S. C. A. M” ?
It’s not the government who pays – it’s electricity bill payers.
Aside from some energy intensive large industrial users everyone else gets to pay a per MWh charge, raised from electricity retailers mainly via the Interim Levy
https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiOGUzYmZkOGMtNGZmNy00NmU3LTg5YmItMTM2ZjRjZmMxM2E3IiwidCI6IjE4NWQzYzI1LWE1ZmItNGUxMS05ZWQ1LTgwNDVkMGJjNjU4NyJ9&pageName=ReportSection80209e97cbd805a10aea
with an advance deposit which is adjusted quarterly, and a retrospective true-up which is usually a refund, since the ILR and payment in advance are designed to ensure that the LCCC has enough cash to pay out on CFDs. CFD refunds tend to be much in arrears, as the ILR is never negative.
Labour’s election leaflet claims “Labour’s plan to switch to GB Energy will cut your energy bills for good, making families up to £1400 better off a year”! The starting numbers for this claim include this, in their policy document:
“Last summer, the price of gas was nine times higher than that of renewables, and it remains significantly higher. In 2021, industrial users were paying 62 per cent more for their electricity than the international median, even before Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.” They don’t appear to be using the same set of statistics.
I don’t think they’re using any statistics at all. The numbers are entirely made up. If you can point to online sources I can cite, I think I might make a complaint to the https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/contact-us/
According to the ASA
Who do I contact if I’m concerned that a statistic used in an online political ad is inaccurate or misleading?
The UK Statistics Authority and its executive arm the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) work to promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics. In advance of elections and referendums, the UK Statistics Authority and OSR encourage political parties to ensure that:
statistical sources should be clear and accessible to all
any caveats or limitations in the statistics should be respected
campaigns should not pick out single numbers that differ from the picture painted by the statistics as a whole
If you see an online ad which doesn’t take this guidance into account, then they can help.
The sources are unclear, other than the spoutings of Miliband: there are no caveats, and the cherry picked numbers are entirely misleading and wrong.
We voted the demonstrably insane Labor Party in 2022 replete with its swivel-headed propellor-hat-wearing climate zealot “energy” minister along with cast iron (aka “jelly”) promises of $275 off our electricity bills. Well I’ll be damned, Australian bills have sky-rocketed and the cretins in charge promise us much more of the same. It’s time you re-colonised – hmmm, hang on, I just checked out your political scene. We’re all stuffed!
Gosh! £1400 a year better off, they will be paying me then!
But they do say ‘up to’. So could be anywhere between 0 and 1400!
Who is in charge of the CfD scam, Al Gore?