Dale Vince Demands Labour Borrow Billions For Wind Farms
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Millionaire Labour donor Dale Vince is urging Sir Keir Starmer to borrow billions of pounds to boost net zero and rid fossil fuels from Britain’s energy infrastructure.
The electricity entrepreneur, who severed ties with Just Stop Oil last year as part of his commitment to Labour, said the party must not be “ashamed” of spending vast sums if it wants to instigate change.
Vince’s argument for taking on greater levels of debt comes as Labour rows back on its flagship £28bn pledge for green energy projects over claims it is no longer affordable.
Starmer confirmed on Thursday that Labour will now spend just £4.7bn a year on its clean energy policy as he blamed the Government for “maxing out the credit card”.
However, Vince argues that Labour should ignore the “public narrative mindset” that “borrowing is bad”, and instead push ahead with plans to spend..
He told The Telegraph: “Borrowing to invest is how you grow economies.
“Borrowing to invest in projects that pay their own debt, meet interest payments and make money on top of that, that is what businesses do.
“The money will allow us to invest in green technology that will pay for itself. For £50bn, we could power the entire country from wind and sun.
For £50 billion, you might get 33 MW of offshore wind power, based on BEIS levelised costs of £1500 million/MW. This would take us up to around 50 GW, which is already the government’s target.
But you could not power the grid on wind and solar alone, as Vince surely knows. How does he propose we manage when the wind is not blowing?
And if it was all so easy, why does the government even need to borrow money? Surely the financial markets would be queuing up to build wind and solar farms, without any need for subsidy, as they would be so profitable?
Maybe Mr Vince should put his own money where his mouth is!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Aye, thes “new labour” type Uni-Party governments just love spending spending spending. SPENDING other folk’s money. Didn’t we go through Hell & High water when Maggie kinda sorted it out, if Gramps remembered correctly ? If that gonk is Con-Vinced that so much has to be sent, then why doesn’t he offer all his ££££s . THat would be a good Dale then, eh ?
He already makes a good living out of Ecotricity. Millions in subsidies.
UK wind energy is mostly useless . It only puts out less than 20% of its rating for most of the year . http://www.iesisenergy.org/agp/Aris-Wind-paper.pdf
So to make up when the wind is not blowing , there are thousands of DIESEL generators which have to keep the grid going .https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/uk-must-use-diesel-generators-to-back-up-wind-turbines/
It is claimed these diesels run on Bio fuels and are therefore renewable generation , so are paid subsidies . Which are over £600 million for the diesel plants .
But they will never let facts like this stand in the way of their scams .
Are these diesels Generators what the other is or are they hidden under biomass?
https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
In reply to platform zed .
The real facts about diesel generation are well hidden , so not easy to find the truth . But possibly they are included under Biomass .
Just like EV charging . https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/09/09/electric-cars-generators-national-grid-ev-charging/
A large amount of EV chargers are powered by Diesel generators because it is impossible to get enough supply to charging stations , and they always claim that using Bio fuels makes them renewable energy so that they can claim subsidies .
May I ask exactly what and where you think “thousands of DIESEL generators” are?
For Ray S .
If you actually look at the link and count up .It lists several sites with 52 diesels putting out 20MWh .
And a total of 1500MWh of diesels listed for subsidies .
Now , I do not know exactly where every site is , but a bit of simple arithmetic should give an idea on how many there might be . Which has almost certainly increased since the original listing was published .
In other words you have no idea at all what you are talking about and still have not learnt the correct units. 20 MW (not MWh) is a tiny amount of power on a national scale and Open cycle Gas turbines are neither “diesels.” nor measured in MWh.
Looks like he is off again , spouting more ignorance .
Hardly worth saying anything when he refuses to understand the difference between power and energy . [ Energy is what comes out of a generator }
You clearly have no qualifications whatsoever in this subject do you. Generators are power rated in MW – if you do not understand that you are a complete charlatan.
Obviously EDF are as “wrong” as I am!
https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuses
Here is a link for Ray S .https://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com/stories/1485-How-Generators-Work.html
It explains that generators actually produce Electrical ENERGY , which is measured in KWh .
But I doubt he will understand it , or refuse to .
You really are that much of an idiot you simply cannot see your own stupidity. Dunning Kruger at its finest. The only problem I have is that you devalue this blog. Outsiders reading comments like yours are laughing at you. you would fail a science GCSE with your standard of knowledge. Grow up.
The rating in megawatts or gigawatts of a wind turbine is what it is theoretically capable of generating. What it actually generates depends on the wind. In theory, if the wind blew all the time at the right speed, a 2.8 GW capacity wind farm would generate 2.8 x 8,760 = 24,528 GWh a year. But in the UK you might get 25% of that, so 6,132 GWh. It sounds a lot, but in 2022 the national grid calculated that we used 1,763,000 GWh.
Am I missing something?
Jeremy 23846 , it was a long time ago that I qualified to be a AMIMech E in electrical engineering . And I have realised that very few people understand the difference between power [ KW ] and energy [KWh ] .
As the link I put up shows , a generator produces energy , and no power is produced until that energy is used .
So the correct definition of output at any moment from a generator is in KWh , and if that output was used for instance to charge up batteries , then no power is produced .
But that does not fit in with some people , who resort to Ad Hom attacks .https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ad%20hominem then claim it is not them who are trying to bring this site down .
Thanks to both you and Ray for an interesting “discussion.”. As a complete layman, I do struggle with the concepts. In my ignorance, I think of a wind turbine’s “rating” in megawatts or gigawatts as it’s capability of producing power, so at full capacity a 2.8GW wind farm should produce 2.8GWh of electricity an hour. Some hours it will produce half this, and some hours it will produce none at all. There will be transmission losses and other losses along the way to the consumer.
A fully efficient diesel generator rated at a megawatt either produces a megawatt per hour or nothing, depending on whether it is fired up or not. I had not thought about the issue where the output is stored in batteries. As the batteries store the output rather than using it, I can see that power is only “produced” when the battery is used. That I guess is where the electrical engineering qualification helps.
“In the Real World” You are lying so please stop trying to BS your way out of your make believe. You are not qualified at all and everyone can see that. Jeremy 23846 clearly understands things that you get nowhere near to.
If you really qualified you would know better. Why not tell Leo Smith he is wrong when he posts Gridwatch in GW?
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Everyone else is wrong and you are the only one who is right? Really? Grow up
Hi, In 2022 I checked the Government figures re the energy used by the UK in 2021
The total energy (TWhrs) used to supply electricity and gas for the heating of homes, to supply industry and businesses was 1246 TWhrs. Wind, wave and solar only provided 71 TWhr, that is 5.7% of our energy used.
For Mr Dale Vince to claim that “The money will allow us to invest in green technology that will pay for itself. For £50bn, we could power the entire country from wind and sun.”
We would have to build & install wind & solar to supply the 94% currently supplied by gas, nuclear, and others. Also connect them to the infrastructure and provide a back-up system for night time and windless days. How do we stop this madness?
No you are not missing anything jeremy. Just ignore “In The Real World” as he/she hasn’t got a clue.
Vince is a liar or a fool. Growth is not having higher cost production which people are forced to pay for, with the profits obtained not by providing consumer surplus but consumer deficit. Not only does that make us poorer but the use of scarce resources in doing that rather than something that would make us better off is a double loss. As ever with the Left, he misunderstands government spending as increased production when it is simply more allocation of resources by the state.
Spot on.
“…allocation of resources by the State.”
In traditional National Income Accounting, expenditures by the State are valued at cost, with the assumption that the benefit must be as great as the cost and probably much greater. This convention* based on fond beliefs similar to those expressed in 1937 by the future Labour Cabinet Minister, Douglas Jay, “in the case of nutrition and health, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people themselves.” Even at that time, the idea that the gentleman in Whitehall cared much about ordinary people, except as an efficient resource for the State, was risible.
*Similar to the accounting convention of valuing assets at the lower of cost and value. But different in that the possibility of value being less than cost, right from the get-go, is a tabooed notion in the public sector. “Never mind the quality, feel the quantity.” Or the old joke about two grumbling ladies at a resort in the Catskills. “The food is terrible!” ”Yes, And so mean; they don’t even give you second helpings!”
Vince is a really disgusting piece of work.
He has been that way for a long time. He has never cared what misery he inflist upon people who live near his wind turbines. His only care has been to get hold of other peoples’ money through the subsidies they are forced to pay through their electricity bills.
I have to be careful what I write, following on from the Steyn/Mann court case, free speech is now not allowed (well in the US), so Dale Vince is NOT a conman creaming off subsidies.
Can we say that he must be very ignorant if he thinks that windmills are a viable investment opportunity given that taxpayer subsidies props the whole scam up?
When will they realise that during a serious wind drought or Dunkkelflaute it does not help to have more windmills, when there is next to no wind power then ten times next to nothing is still next to nothing.
By the way, the man in charge of our gird development did his apprenticeship working on the British system. Would you buy a second hand transition plan from this man?
Meet_Daniel_Westerman.pdf
… serious wind drought or Dunkkelflaute it does not help to have more windmills,
Wind turbines can become a load on the grid during Dunkelflaute if electrical energy is required for ongoing maintenance of the turbine and operational purposes e.g. wind turbine heating, lubrication and control systems. There could also be a demand for electrical energy to rotate the rotor to reduce the risk of brinelling and other issues created by a static rotor.
I can’t see any accurate record or calculation of the cost of this particular load, sometimes known as establishment services or “hotel” services with other machinery, which can be confusing terms. Obviously, lots of turbines creates the possibility of lots of energy required for establishment services.
Thats a good point and it was picked up by Paul MIskelly in his landmark paper in 2012 that got no circulation or attention, even Australia. When the grid was still almost entirely coal power I didn’t think the small load mattered much but times have changed and it may be larger than I thought.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1260/0958-305X.23.8.1233
Thanks Rafe, I’ll have a read through
It is easy to spend Other People’s Money – as has been rightly pointed out the investment community would sell their own mothers to access an investment that showed a easy Return On Capital Employed.
We accept that the direction of travel has been set, Wind, Solar, Tidal & Hydro have a contribution to make but there must always be a base load ready to switch on available “just in case” the wind speed drops, the sun fails to shine.
The disaster will come if we put the whole bet on Renewables without base line support, most if not all of the under 55’s in the Climate Crisis/Emergency camp have never experienced power blackouts – those of us who remember the early 70’s recall the rotation of power cuts during the miner’s strike- the difference will be that those were power cuts lasting a few hours at a time, if we go totally Renewable without sufficient base load alternative support, any power cut will prove disastrous- the National Grid is designed to switch off should power fail, the problem comes when you go to switch it back on, it is not a matter of flicking a switch, the grid needs to be balanced to avoid surges – a slow process which cannot be rushed – best guess with Gas, Coal and Nuclear power stations to supply base load is possible 60% power back on line in 24hrs, 5 days to 100% – but without fossil/nuclear providing the required secure base load – it is unknown if any of the grid could be brought back on line. No Power – Nothing – Nett Zero
As far as I am aware, nobody has experienced bringing a dead grid back to life so it is unknown as to how long it would take as the deaths pile up depending on the season. Texas was less than 5 minutes from experiencing this before carrying out a controlled reduction in demand by shutting off areas. Given they were in a big freeze that ended up killing around 700 people who knows how many more would have died.
The main issue is one of synchronising generators. You begin with a “black start” unit which is one capable of exciting its own main generators. Typically this would be the likes of Dinorwig or any ones with battery start up diesels. Once running power is transmitted to the next inline to excite their system generators and synchronise them together before moving on to the next etc. It is a time consuming process and load can only be brought on to match generation capability locally and maintain system frequency.
After the 1987 October storm most of Southern England was in blackout. The restart came from the *legendary Littlebrook D oil fired plant at Dartford. This had large battery packs to start up 3 diesel generators which in turn fired up 3 Concorde based gas turbines which ultimately started up the 3 huge oil fired unit’s generators. Back then it took several days to get the system back up and it was estimated a national blackout would take two weeks to restore.
I suspect it would take longer now as there is much less synchronous generation having to support much more asynchronous generators (i.e. wind and solar) that are dependent on the former to operate. The interconnectors could not work until full system stability was established so no imported power. Worse still most modern electronics cannot survive a “brownout” so restoration can only take place when full power is available to any area.
All in all a major problem should (when!) collapses.
*Probably the only power plant ever to operate for over a year at a 115% capacity factor being run in “destruction mode” during the miner’s strike.
“But you could not power the grid on wind and solar alone, as Vince surely knows.”
But he’s not just relying in wind and solar – he’s also pushing grass, as the story in the Telegraph notes:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/26/grass-powered-gas-heat-homes-first-time/
Nowhere in the article can I find an answer to what happens in the 5 or so months when the grass doesn’t grow, or what the haylage replacement would be.
Most of our post today, on the subject:
‘In July last year, Grant Shapps wrote to Keir Starmer suggesting in no uncertain terms that Labour pay for the damages caused by Just Stop Oil, mentioning that Dale Vince, one of Just Stop Oil’s biggest donors, had just donated £1.5 million to the Labour Party.
Starmer rowed back, and in October, Vince withdrew from Just Stop Oil.
He’s in the news again (he’s rarely off our page), urging Starmer to borrow billions to achieve net zero and get rid of fossil fuels.
This comes after Starmer has categorically stated that the previously stated £28 billion would not now be forthcoming as it is not affordable.
This is part of what Vince has said:
‘“Borrowing to invest in projects that pay their own debt, meet interest payments and make money on top of that, that is what businesses do.
“The money will allow us to invest in green technology that will pay for itself. For £50bn, we could power the entire country from wind and sun.’
Not even £28 billion. A cool fifty!
We went back to a piece by Chris Morrison in the Daily Sceptic, reproduced in What’s Up With That, which includes the eye-watering sums paid by way of subsidy to Vince’s companies, and also includes an interview with Ben Pile and Vince, where the latter states ‘We don’t have to pay more to get Net Zero’!!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/…/just-stop-oil-donor…/
We see that he’s on a roll about heat pumps versus his own grass-powered gas idea.
‘“There’s an opportunity to make a different kind of gas and we are making it now from grass,” he says. “I’ve shared the idea with all parties. Labour is interested.” ‘
If this is true, then maybe Starmer would do well to have a read of this.
In 2016 Biofuelwatch produced a critique of ‘grass gas’, to which Ecotricity responded, allowing Biofuelwatch to blast back, swinging a wrecking ball, politely called ‘a conversation’.
https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/…/ecotricity-conversation/
“Borrowing for investment” does not count as Government borrowing. Straight out of Sir Humphry’s handy book of slight of hand. So borrowing for huge renewables, which are “proven” to make profits, will be put in to that category. Being a Government investment though, probably HS2 comes under this heading, profits will be elusive and capex costs will rocket but that will be a problem for those that follow tens of years later, and of course the taxpayers of the future. Student loans are probably in another category and at least half of those won’t be repaid so thats more taxation coming our way.
Dale is an astute businessman and he can see huge profits/subsidies coming his way if he can convince the idiots in power to take his advice. Just blind them with business figures that look good and wave the Green card to finish the job. The evidence is littered up and down the country when we see how various councils and their politicians were hoodwinked in to various green “investments” believing they were being astute. Billions handed over when the councils believed they could be businesses instead of bin collectors etc.
Labour should ignore the “public narrative mindset
How dare you have a mindset.
I think it is essential we looks at mr. Vince’s investments and vested interests.
I think you’re being unfair. Dale Vince is a visionary and having trouble selling Ecotricity. I remember his foresight on the Iain Dale show (LBC) last September 13th when they were discussing the dangers of Putin getting missiles from Kim Jong Un. His contribution was an interuption where he said “bacon will kill you first is my answer – it won’t be Kim Jong Un’s missiles that kill us or harm us; it will be bacon – bacon will kill you first.” You have been warned – Ed Miliband understands the danger.
“…bacon will kill you…”
Missiles carrying bacon butties? I will believe that when pigs fly. Oh!
Did he mean “bacon” or was he referring to pigs? After all it has been said that “Napoleon represents Joseph Stalin, Snowball represents Leon Trotsky, and Squealer represents Vyacheslav Molotov.”……Animal Farm
Far too deep for me Ray. I was thinking more of the famous photo of Ed with his bacon sarnie. But come to think of it. I may have stumbled on something. He is obviously a liability but is hanging on like a leech. We’re missing something here.
I’ll bet he’s not lending any of his money.
On a serious note – Barry Gardiner was also on LBC the panel. They probably come as a pair.
Of course he does, it’s akin to asking Govt to give you another tranche of consumer/taxpayer subsidy, over and above the £100Mn+ he’s already received and for what? Inept, intermittent power sources that also rinse consumers in their bills with CfD & constraint payments – the whole farce would be comical, if not so serious, it’s legalised robbery of the highest order
The man has no shame.
For £50bn, we could power the entire country from wind and sun.
How many days per year would that be?
Clever chap. Get government to borrow the money, then use it to make a nice wedge for yourself. No doubt some politicians will be naïve enough to fall for that one,
I suggest we should all write to “The Telegraph” stop publishing rubbish!
£1500/kW is a trifle optimistic. I see little sign of cost falling much below £2,750/kW looking at wind farm accounts – that’s the figure for Seagreen. Of course, it exclude all grid integration costs.
Dale Vince could also use reading the Royal Society report, coupling it with rather more realistic cost figures.