Offshore wind needs bigger subsidies, warns government adviser
By Paul Homewood
State subsidies for new offshore wind projects may not be generous enough to drive the projects needed to achieve targets for boosting clean energy, a leading climate adviser to the government has warned.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge, chairwoman of the adaptation sub-committee of the Climate Change Committee, the independent non-departmental public body, said Britain had been “slow” and “not very clever” in its handling of offshore wind auctions.
The government has raised the so-called strike price, a guaranteed price that generators are paid for the power they produce, to £73 per megawatt-hour for this year’s auction and has set the budget at a record £800 million in the hope of attracting new offshore wind schemes. Last year’s round failed to secure any bids to build.
Of course, this was not what the Baroness was saying a few years ago:
https://www.carbontrust.com/news-and-insights/insights/offshore-wind-a-uk-success-story
All that has happened in the interim is that the wind industry is now admitting that wind power is not as cheap as the Baroness and her chums on the CCC have been telling the government and the public.
We have been sold offshore wind, which is supposed to be the bedrock of Net Zero, on a lie propagated by the CCC. Now that lie has been exposed, we are left with the bill.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
No need to worry, because we will soon have Ed Microbrain in charge. He still thinks offshore wind power is dirt cheap, so it must be true.
It doesn’t matter what you think when you are sociopathic and mightily rewarded for pushing an agenda.
Here he is to tell you
is it a big enough lie, repeated often enough?
“What a maroon.” — Bugs Bunny
Nationalize windmills.
Pay for it with ‘windfall profit tax on those oil and gas giants that have been making record profits’
. . . driving them out of business.
You are sofa king dead.
A nationalized windmill company will have the advantage of not being subject to the whims of local councils. Labour has the potential to piss off everyone, everywhere.
My god….Minibrain, a man for whom it is a challenge to walk and talk at the same time. The first living example of “intelligent” spinal chord!
We are inviting a perfect storm with Laburrrrr under that chameleon/weasel Starmer. I wonder how long it will take the FARlefties to get shot of him? They allow him to be in charge because he gives Laburrr a pretence of being electable. Once they can in, the covers will come off, they will get rid of him asap and then get on with their real agenda of destruction.
The lunatics will be really in charge of the asylum.
Never mind.
The sixteen year-olds will love it.
Even if they have to wait another couple of years to get married or try a ciggie.
That’s this Baroness Brown – Non-executive Director, Ørsted (energy) (the member’s annual earnings for this work are £40,000). Good to see Orsted getting something back .
That’s the one, Baroness Brown has been on the Climate Change Committee since it started in 2008 and is currently chair of the Mitigation sub-committee. She joined the Board of Ørsted in February 2021. They knew what they were getting.
https://renews.biz/66254/orsted-to-anoint-king-as-new-board-member/
“Ørsted board of directors chairman Thomas Thune Andersen said “She possesses a deep knowledge of renewable energy and government policy perspectives from positions, among others, as member of the Committee on Climate Change and non-executive director of the Green Investment Bank.“
She has been involved with this stuff a long time:
https://www.renewableuk.com/news/news.asp?id=452421
Tuesday 21st May 2019
“The Offshore Wind Industry Council says a major programme of work has just begun to ensure that the UK’s low-carbon energy system makes the best use of the increasingly large proportion of electricity we are generating from renewable sources, including offshore wind.
The task force is led by Baroness Brown of Cambridge, the industry’s Offshore Wind Sector Champion, and includes senior representatives from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Scottish Government, the Committee on Climate Change, National Grid, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, the Energy Systems Catapult, Atkins, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and companies including ITM, Good Energy, Shell, Equinor, Vattenfall and Ørsted.“
You couldn’t have interest more vested than that. My Conservative MP has never responded when I notified him of this on a couple of occasions.
Soooo, she’s as bent as a nine-bob-note then?
Remember more than a decade ago when the wind lobby said it needed certainty in the energy markets to justify the enormous investments? Most probably thought that meant the market would buy what they generated. In reality that euphemism really meant guaranteed profitability. Now that interest rates are at a more realistic 2% above the rate of inflation they will hide the true cost everywhere but people’s electric bill.
OT but BBC on Climate Change again, in a far away village.
Climate change means I don’t have a village anymore
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cmj34zmwm1zt
I love the picture of the flooded shopping area, all paving slabs and no drains! It’s much more about bad town/city centre planning than more naffing water.
Re: Brown, NED for Orsted. Corruption at work. Oh that oil and gas industry executives had such truth-telling freedoms (i.e. that without oil and gas we are sunk).
Meanwhile as I said below another article:
We know April was cold. Many commented on this. May too has been poor apart from brief warmer days.
Whatever the conspiratorial BBC or Met Office say about a “warm May”, I can confirm that when I returned from music night last night it was 4 degrees here and the weekend generally was cool and showery here in the English Lake District.
Cold and wet in south Lincolnshire for both months too. We’ve still got the coal (replacement) that is what it is called now) room heater/central heating going as so naffing inclement at the moment.
Read this on Instagram a few weeks ago:
«Wind turbines are like strippers. They stop working when you stop throwing money at them.»
LOL
Not Zero- this is the true cost of Nett Zero. If something is efficient and lowers operating costs, it will be sought out and purchased, even if it looks expensive against another existing product, it will not require massive taxpayer subsidies which everyone who remembers the halcyon days of the Seventies with the Nationalised industries – inefficiency was key, losses were sky high, strikes were a daily occurrence and all the costs were picked up by the Taxpayer. The current obsession with Wind and Solar but supported disproportionately by taxpayer subsidies means that R&D to improve Efficiency and Reduce prices is a non-starter, why improve when it will just reduce the amount of dividends you can pay to the limited number of stakeholders.
If they cannot stand on their own two feet and compete, shut them down, that is the first rule of business- do not run unprofitable businesses as they drain vital money.
The CCC and Energy Security department know that the true cost of Nett Zero is Not Zero, but a figure that makes the current National Debt look silly. Put bluntly it will be in excess of £5trillion- £5,000,000,000,000 or approx £158,000 for every adult- it could be as high as £12trillion.
A figure which is never included in this bloody big number is the cost of Unemployment, the mass decarbonisation of the Economy caused by inefficient Energy supplies, high Energy costs, Commitments to Nett Zero will lead to high levels of unemployment in Steel, Cement, Brick, Glass, Blocks, Clay/Plastic Construction products, Car production- these jobs will have to go “abroad” to ensure Nett Zero is achieved- with the reduction in employment will come a reduction in tax, the spiral then gets serious as every element of the Welfare State and State we have grown used to- Health, Eduction, Police, Military, Pensions and Benefits will have to be paid out of a shrinking pot that has a larger pool taking than giving- austerity will look like heaven compared to what will happen once the ability to spend more than we earn becomes so great that actual bankruptcy is inevitable- printing money will raise inflation to Weimar Republic Hyperinflation levels with all the misery that brings- of course the Government gains massively as £1trillion pounds of debt could equal the cost of an egg- no country would lend money to a bankrupt nation, regardless of its poverty plight- Nett Zero really does not add up, and the politicians know it.
Nett Zero is Not Zero.
you can have a modern advanced economy or you can have Nett Zero. You cannot have both.
correct, which is why the logical methodology would be to run in tandem the new “wonder” Renewables, clearly demonstrating that they are “cheaper, cleaner, efficient” than the existing proven fossil fuel technology- no subsidies, no flimflam, no hiding costs, just straight forward math- but of course since they know that this would give the WRONG result, it is off the table.
On the back of these devastating financial irregularities I take it there’ll be resignations by Honourable members? Obviously they’ll be mortified at having misled Parliament and the entire country, right?
Believing the lies is the not very clever part.
How come she gets money from Orsted and is in a position to influence the orders they get?
Not saying she is taking back handers but she needs to resign her climate change responsibilities to remain on Orsteds board.
Have yyou noticed how many Baronesses and Dames are involved in politics, unelected, most of them are really crap, look at the one who fiddled the money for covid protection gear, and my favourite Cathy Ashton, EU highly overpaid and totally failed to achieve anything, see Farage attack her on yputube, she was made a knigbt templar in coronation honours. All unelected(Cameron as well)
Wind farm operators agree to pay £33m for excessive charging.
The owners of one of Scotland’s largest offshore wind farms have been ordered to pay more than £33m after admitting to breaking a condition of its licence.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz55nzm7vgro
now 9 projects off Peterhead
madness indeed
yet no one questions the lunacy
I had to listen to Deben talk rubbish in front of 50 farmers recently. No one questioned his crap speech
has everyone lost their critical senses. ?
How much does she reckon is needed?