Bill payers to fund £60bn Net Zero overhaul of National Grid
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
This confirms what we learnt a few weeks ago:
Bill payers are to fund a £30bn overhaul of the electricity network as the National Grid “rewires the nation” to hit net zero.
National Grid unveiled the investment as it prepares to build thousands of miles of new cables by 2030, to carry electricity from wind farms in Scotland or offshore to power-hungry cities mainly in England.
This overhaul will eventually cut greenhouse gas emissions – but will lead to thousands more pylons being built across Britain and extra charges on customers’ bills.
The announcement, planned for weeks, comes as net zero is expected to play a major role in the forthcoming general election campaign. Labour is seeking to decarbonise by 2030, but Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has argued that this is too fast.
John Pettigrew, National Grid’s chief executive, announced the move alongside the company’s full year results for the year to March 2024, including another £30bn to be invested in the US.
He said: “We’re announcing today a new five-year financial framework. We will be investing £60bn in the five years to the end of March 2029 – that’s nearly double the level of investment of the past five years.
As the National Grid now admit this expenditure is inly needed to connect wind farms in Scotland and offshore to the market, surely they should be made to pay for it.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
By which time the entire fleet of demonstrably-useless, giant industrial bird-mincers will look like this –
Ageing Wind Turbines are Literally Falling to Pieces:
Catastrophic Details here —
https://stopthesethings.com/2024/03/15/gravity-strikes-again-ageing-wind-turbines-literally-falling-to-pieces/
In the ‘old days’ Transmission Use of System ( TUoS) charges used to contain entry and exit charges for new Generation or large demand customers, to reflect the extra costs incurred for placement on the grid.
If that were still in operation there would be no off shore wind , far less on shore wind and solar and no increase in Scottish generation. The entry charges would have made most of these projects unviable.
Exceptions were made in terms of ‘national security’, now it seems that national insecurity is the only game in town.
The executives at NG are going to be made very rich as they are incentivised to maximise rate of return on assets. The more assets , the more the executive ‘benefits’. There is absolutely no hope that they will operate in any other way other than to spend tax payer’s money.
Only £30 billion for the UK grid, which should definitely be paid by wind farm owners.
Trouble is if they have to pay for it they will simply add on the cost to the CFD prices at which they will build, so we get to pay for it anyway. There would only be a marginal incentive to locate more wind not off Scotland.
We really need a complete change in policy to a dispatchable grid with power stations located at existing grid locations. Then there is no need of the grid extensions and interconnectors. The only issue then is how much extra capacity might be required. The grid previously handled 400TWh in a year. Now we seem to be down to about 270TWh with deindustrialisation and reduced household consumption, despite adding some EVs.
Given most likely that Minibrain (Milliband) will still be in charge of Energeee and the Enwyroment when approaching this religious target in 2030, what I wonder will be their “Plan B”, as we lurch towards this suicide cliff, if in spite of all of their virtue signalling, “creative accounting” and wasting of billions of Pounds, the numbers do not work and we do not meet the target?
What “contingencies” I wonder will be on the table? Blackouts for 3 days a week perhaps? Bans on driving for 3 days a week? No eating for 3 days of the week? No travelling and certainly no flying? How about no breathing which actually is my suggestion to those who “worry” about the human output of CO2?
Do not underestimate these dangerous lunatics and their singlemindedness when it comes to forcing the square peg which is our supposed emissions into their tiny arbitrary round hole. All we need to do is look back at Covid and the mindless and arbitrary enforcement of pointless rules and regs while ignoring real data and the fact that their actions ACTUALLY KILLED PEOPLE! Do not expect anything less as we approach this religion based target and they see they have to get rid of a lot of the gas of life which their accounting weasels cannot hide.
Actually it is easy when you have unlimited money to throw around and are completely shameless. All they have to do is pay people to look after forests all round the world and thus obtain the carbon credits. Remember the target is NET zero, not simply zero.
I understood that and ultimately rich people get richer running their “carbon credits” scams.
This would all be suicidal even if there was any evidence to support their claims that CO2 is a temperature control knob ( which there is’t).
Science only exists when there exists statistically significant empirical data produced by a repeatable and falsifiable theory which supports a given thesis. They have a thesis, but no empirical data to support it. No data means no science Q.E.D.
A Labour government will be in a crisis within a year as this time round the socialist Tories have spent all the money AND borrowed up to the max so there is no way Labour can borrow to fund their version of a Net Zero grid. In addition to that there is not the physical capacity to deliver their 2030 plans, notwithstanding another election in 2029. The juvenile student politics of Labour will be on the receiving end of a huge punch in the face. Liz Truss’s overhasty desire to return her party to conservatism showed how much power the global markets now wield on borrowing. That leaves Labour with raising a tax burden that is already the highest in living memory to fund their nonsense which in addition to the demands of their union paymasters will drive the economy down and provide even less spending money. And now we are on the road to where the polling will actually mean something, I think Labour’s projected majority will shrink even down to a hung parliament.
There dumping the costs on energy users as theres no way Reeves is going to allow blow here fiscal credibility
I have felt a hung parliament has been on the cards for a long time. Labour are daft enough to get locked into a fight with the SNP over seats which are already opposition seats and make no difference to their overall result. That detraction will bizarrely possibly cost both of them seats to the Conservatives in Scotland.
The logistics of boundary changes, early summer holiday time polling and the imponderables of turnout will quite possibly favour the Cons.
My only hope is that Reform can get just a few seats to be the kingmakers. Probably both Labour and the Conservatives would love to have a small partner to “take the blame” much as the Lib Dums were made to after 2015.
Labour “Government”…….. sounds like an oxymoron to me.
The Net Zero insanity will only stop when the money runs out.
It has. They’re borrowing from your grandchildren now.
Our money, not theirs.
The number keeps changing. I’ve seen as high as £200 billion.
It’s £220 bn (£18.4 bn x 12) between 2024 and 2035 :
https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/149501/download
They are saying the £18.4B is a “contribution” to GDP and not a cost.
In other words it will pay for itself, all according to the Oxford Economics, GB Networks Investment Impact Analysis, May 2023.
If you believe that I have a nice Moon plot to sell you.
The first thing I noticed in this article is that £30bn for the US. I trust UK consumers are not paying for this ?
Meanwhile in America:
There are people who say that building windmills will prevent tornados from becoming more extreme.
Mother Nature respectfully disagrees…
CK
I just saw this chap’s other video from the same storm is posted on WUWT:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/22/insane-tornado-pipe-intercept-with-windmills-toppled-near-greenfield-iowa/
CK
Two things of interest to me in the videos.
The turbine that was blown over – not the one that was shredded – was hundreds of meters out from the funnel. I didn’t realize high winds existed beyond the tornado funnel.
The multiple vortices around the base of the funnel were mesmerizing.
That’ll be spent on more DEI hires … won’t it?
Expansion of Fintan Slye’s butch harem.
“John Pettigrew, National Grid’s chief executive”
Just as incompetent and perhaps even more malicious that Paula Vennells.
Why isn’t he behind bars?
National Grid continues to be very coy about the true costs. They slice it up into different areas and time periods. Try £200bn as being closer to the overall truth.
It’s a never ending bill
The energy regulator will permit firms running the UK’s electricity and gas grids to add an average £12 to annual energy bills for the next eight years to pay for upgrades and maintenance.
Ofgem said it had cut £7bn from the total cost, external of work on UK transmission networks planned by energy firms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20753715
Then we’ll have to chip in for this
Construction has started on NeuConnect’s €2.8 billion energy link between the UK and Germany, set to be completed by 2028
https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/05/22/construction-begins-on-e2-8bn-uk-germany-energy-link/
The ultimate goal is eventually to not have any dispatchable electricity production – only wind, solar and interconnectors with no storage and just using DSR to balance the grid. The UK will be using far less electricity than many people think as the local grids can only take 1 – 2 KW of continuous load per household. So forget any idea of constantly running heat pumps when cold and ev chargers running overnight. The 3KW immersion heaters, necessary to prevent Legionnaire’s disease for heat pump owners may even struggle to be run once a day, especially with dynamic pricing.
But no new transmission cables to carry the load to the point of use, and no upgrade of local distribution.
Wind power has become a fetish, distracting from all else.
None of these costs are taken into account when working out the so-called Leveled Cost of Electricity, which is much beloved of renewables enthusiasts, who like to claim (wrongly) that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels:
We went to Tenby in South Wales for a short break after Xmas. For a large part of our journey in the south we saw numerous ‘NO PYLONS’ signs in the countryside and villages etc
Just announced by Government today Emissions Trading Scheme consultation, asking for comments, open to everyone. I am not knowledgeable enough to understand the implications here but these things are usually open to abuse. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/uk-emissions-trading-scheme-scope-expansion-waste
O/T – Paul, when I click on Like or Comment on your Spectator article today on EVs , it produces this message:-
“404: Page Not Found
We are terribly sorry, but the URL you typed no longer exists. It might have been moved or deleted, or perhaps you mistyped it. We suggest searching the site:”
Any suggestions?
I had to delete the post, as it had corrupted some links
It’s a WordPress thing unfortunately
A good day to bury unpopular news.
As ever, National Grid has been vague on the details- the HV cabling required is in high demand/short supply so 2030 as a target is out; the cabling will cost more than estimated due to the very high demand/short supply and no amount of “negotiation” will change this; the new pylon infrastructure entails building pylons that are approx 2.5x the size of existing – just cannot see NIMBY’s accepting this without a environmental fight which will lead to more delays, legal challenges (oh the irony), the steel to build the pylon, supply the reinforcement, the readymix concrete will be a major source of additional CO2 (oh, the irony), the pylons steel will have to be imported as the new electric are furnaces (CO2 friendly) can only produce secondary steel not structural steel- imported from India or China where traditional crucible furnaces are used, but with the danger that some of the Chinese steel will be “tofu” substandard unable to meet rigorous testing, but will off course arrive by ship belting out loads of CO2 (oh, the irony).
All in all, no mention that in order to decarbonise the Power network, the amount of CO2 emissions will exceed the UK total emissions for the last 100years.
Oh, the cost!, if National Grid think that £30billion will cover the cost, they are using the same accountants as this idiot Government did with HS2, everyone in the Civil Engineering Construction industry knows that the bill will exceed £140billion and is still rising.
National Grid shares have just tanked as they have announced a rights issue to raise money following a drop in profits.
Yes indeed. Nat Grid shareholders are picking up part of the tab here.
The rights issue is asking for more hard cash up front. The dividend will take a hit since the same distribution is across more shares. And the share price has fallen by about 20% because of the announcement.
Looks like a bad deal for shareholders all round.
I am reminded of this book that describes the process of selling power systems outside the USA, and the involvement of people from the CIA.
If the book is true (and I am inclined to believe that it is) it should provide the clues of where to look to audit this enormous roll-out of similar equipment.
I see there has been an update “The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” 2026
The wind lottery carries on regardless – 3.7% of UK generation at the moment, gas 42.9% etc.
And then there is small problem!
Copper cannot be mined FAST ENOUGH for EVs and Net Zero Transition | MGUY Australia (youtube.com)
Why does anybody believe that we, puny little humans can control our climate? The whole globe is subject to “climate” and our little corner in Britain is just as impossible to “control” as the rest of our globe ??!!! How much is it costing us ??
It is the deification of Man.