Reposted from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
OCTOBER 28, 2021
By Paul Homewood
More evidence that offshore wind will cost much more then claimed.
From Net Zero Watch:
London, 28 October – New data confirms that offshore windfarm costs remain at very high levels, having only fallen slightly in recent years.
Net Zero Watch has compiled the audited accounts of every commercial UK offshore windfarms, together with the associated generation data from Ofgem. This work updates a series of earlier studies of offshore wind in the UK, which reached similar conclusions.
The Prime Minister told MPs recently that the cost of offshore wind power has dropped by 70 per cent in the last decade. He used this to justify his claim that Net Zero can be achieved at modest cost.
The new findings show that he is wrong about the cost of wind energy and that Net Zero will cost hundreds of billions of pounds extra.
Ministers’ claims have been made on the basis of the low bids made to Contracts for Difference auctions by several offshore windfarms. However, the first of these – Moray East – has now published its 2020 accounts, which suggest that its construction cost will be similar to other recent windfarms.
Net Zero Watch’s Andrew Montford said:
“Except for the wind lobby, there is now widespread agreement that Contracts for Difference results do not reflect underlying costs. The hard data from audited accounts is now giving unequivocal backing to this reality. It is clear that offshore wind is extremely expensive, and will remain so for the foreseeable future”.
The chairman of the parliamentary Net Zero Scrutiny Group, Craig Mackinlay MP, said:
“Boris Johnson assured me that the cost of offshore wind has fallen by 70%. Sober analysis shows beyond all reasonable doubt that this is not the case. Not only does this show that the PM is being given flawed information by his advisers, the public is being led into a cost and energy security disaster.”
Details of the findings can be found at the Net Zero Watch website.
And where do these claims about cheap wind power come from? The Committee on Climate Change:
The “cheap” claims comes from the fact the wind is near constant and free in the offshore shallow-water wind fields. Harvesting that “free” wind energy to make electricity though is far, far from cheap in a salt marine water environment.
The “cheap claim” is thus just a half truth. A Half truth in order to deceive that the Marixist Climate Scammers love to foist on the ignorant public to buy their poison pill of socialism to save their religion against the key photosynthesis fertilizer.
It is also ‘cheap’ because they can offer to sell it to electricity generators at well below cost, because they get almost double again in revenue from whatever carbon credit schemes exist at the time.
They can afford to drop the headline ‘cost’ of their power, knowing that it unlocks the key to a massive flood of other people’s money.
With politicians, big tech and media in on the scam, anyone pointing it out is condemned as a heretic and unpersoned.
We have ZERO information from this article ( and the full article if came from ) because it never explains what “levelised cost” means and how it is calculated.
As soon as I see weasel words like “levelised” I stop reading until I get a definition of the that term. It necessarily means the data has been “corrected” to take account of other factors but unless we have a clear account of what adjustments are made and what adjustments are NOT made, it is all opaque creative accounting.
The argument seem sensible but I long ago learnt not to take anyone’s statistics on trust.
They tried to hide the actual costs of unreliables generation a couple of years ago by changing the way they were paid .It was under a “Renewable Obligation Certificate ” , but now it is called ” Contract For Difference ”
https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/370-offshore-wind-subsidies-per-mwh-generated-continue-to-rise
This link does show some of the real costs .Which for offshore wind is about 4 or 5 times the grid price .
The way the price is being pushed up now for customers , the massive subsidies for wind & solar will not notice as much in a few years time .
I am impressed with the link. Gives a neat outline of CFD and it’s predecessor ROC. Thank you.
https://www.ref.org.uk/
Renewable Energy Foundation seem to be honest brokers…_
Here is another link .https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/cfds
It shows the price that unreliables are paid per MWh .
As the grid price , and price to customers goes up , [ about 30% this year and probably the same next year ], the total amount of subsidies goes down as a percentage .
So , by carbon taxes & government policies , the price of electricity is climbing , but the percentage of it which is subsidies is slightly less .
ITRW
“So , by carbon taxes & government policies , the price of electricity is climbing , but the percentage of it which is subsidies is slightly less .”
Yes
So the consumer pays more; the taxpayer less.
But
consumer ~ taxpayer.
Smoke & Mirrors.
Auto
“Levelized costs” is an engineering term that reflects the total lifecycle cost per KW-hr of any source of electrical energy, or any other infrastructure. It’s not bogus nor hiding the ball as you claim. It’s not a scam.
To conduct an engineering evaluation of the total cost of anything that requires a significant investment expected to operate for a long time – coal power plants, gas plants, wind, hydro, solar and nuclear, as well as any other significant capital investment like roads or buildings or pipelines or bridges, aircraft, trains, motor vehicles, ships, etc. this is the normal engineering analysis performed to compare alternative investments.
The levelized costs of anything are its actual cost to design and permit, build, operate, and maintain over the lifespan of the infrastructure, including fuel as well as periodic replacement and including any salvage value. Assumed financial discount rates are used to account for the time value of money – a dollar spent 20 years from now is worth a lot less than a dollar spent today.
But does the levelized cost include the backup required to deliver dispatchable power? That could be the added cost of batteries, pumped hydro, or gas turbines, but something has to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow.
And of course the cost of subsidies. Also factory shutdowns and spoilt food.
Duane & Robber:
Yep. LCOE can be nebulous if they don’t include all costs.
Also should include: transmission, which discount rate they use, capacity factors, maintanence & replacement schedules, subsidies, tax preferences, sweetheart loan terms, mandates and finally, depreciation rates [many wind farms are depreciated over 30 years even though they have a 15-20 year lifespan – which of course makes them look less expensive].
According to a 2019 Manhattan Institiute article the EIA estimates of LCOE do not include backup generation, transmission, property taxes or utilities’ profits.
Most LCOE = Smoke & Mirrors!
No it does not! And in actual practice, it penalizes dispatchable power for acting as backup. As an undergraduate my engineering classes taught me that a solar system must have a backup, and its cost is calculated as a part of the cost of the system. Under (former) government contracting rules, the contractor must provide a complete and usable system, that produces what the specifications say it must produce, or the contractor does not get paid. But under LCOE, that is not what happens.
LCOE takes the total revenues received over the life of the “system” (the quotation marks are because the LCOE does not evaluate a complete system, it only evaluates a discreet component of that system, and ignores probably the most important part, the required backup), and divides by the amount of power output. Since both wind and solar are intermittent, and when they drop out can be completely unpredictable, the backup must be in standby mode ready and waiting to take over. So for a fossil fuel powered plant acting as a backup to any unreliable, this means it is up to temperature and spinning at the appropriate speed, but it is producing no power. This is hours on the system, so the life of the system is being used up even though it is producing no power, yet since it’s not producing power it is generating no revenue. The more unreliables that are parasited onto the system, the worse it gets. Furthermore, the “revenues” portion completely ignores the subsidies received, it only calculates what a customer pays for the energy produced.
What this amounts to is not only does LCOE dishonestly calculate the true cost of a system, it penalizes the reliables for having to act as backup to the unreliables!
So, are the assumptions for the LCOE identified and available? Yes it is a known terminology, but without a number of other assumptions and data points to clarify, it may just be a claim or an assertion. As a financial analyst, I can report that the numbers in ‘out-years’, certainly past five or ten, tend to be wild ass guesses without substance.
LCOE is a very common term, the definition of which you can find everywhere.
the fact the wind is near constant and free in the offshore shallow-water wind fields
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Experienced sailor begs to differ. Wind is fickle at best. Perverse more likely. Always blows from the direction you are headed, regardless of course.
Diesel is cheaper than wind at the instant you try and turn them into power. Otherwise ships would use wind. Owners do not willingly throw money to Poseidon.
You just have to look at the UK wind generation figures for April through to September this year on gridwatch to see that wind droughts do happen and can last for a long time.
As a cyclist I can confirm two things first the wind is always in the wrong direction. Second and more important a wind of 13m/s is very strong.
13m/s is the steady wind speed for optimum output for a typical wind turbine. In units your average person is familiar with it’s 30mph or 47kph. Today in the East Midlands of England the wind speed is between 10 and 18m/s so a good day for the likes of Griff to tell us how wonderful wind is.
Yes Ben I can concur as to wind direction. In my gap year I had to cycle 9 miles to Smiths Industries. Funny how the wind diirection always changed through 180 degrees between morning and evening, always in the wrong direction.
but the gap year guy on the other side of town who worked for smiths at the same time was eternally grateful for the wind always at his back .
And you had to ride uphill, both ways.
…through 6 foot deep snow drifts under the blazing sun!
I don’t know where you get the idea that wind is near constant in the offshore shallow water wind fields. When you get a static high pressure system over the North Sea it can be totally calm for weeks on end.
Once the electricity is being generated, selling it for a small amount is better than not selling it at all.
Finding the lowest amount that generated electricity is being sold for, tells us nothing about what the cost of generating that electricity is.
I wonder how “cheap” this energy appears when the turbines age and need constant maintenance and replacement? People are going to regret they went down this path – not the elected officials and green wonks but the people paying for all the waste. And it won’t make one degree of temperature difference in 100 years.
put wind turbines in an ocean marine environment of never ending salt spary and salt air, and they corrode. They rot at least 4X the average of on-shore turbines.
A land-based wind turbine might last 20-25 yrs in an environment. But put it offshore in a marine salt envirionemt.. 10 uyears maybe tops, more like 7-8 before it craps out with a major overhaul.
It’s not just the corrosion, but erosion too. The blades erode from coming into contact with water droplets as they turn – the faster they turn the greater the erosion.
This reduces their efficiency and at some point the blades need replacing/refurbishing.
The increased need for maintenance and repair will be supported by helicopters and boats, and they won’t be wind or electric powered. Net Zero is a political term to allow the legal theft of workers money.
I suspect Net Zero is actually the name of a unicorn.
No no no, you don’t understand. They put the turbines out to sea because that way they’re outside the environment.
Let’s just hope the front doesn’t fall off.
For the uninitiated, watch this, it’s hilarious!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
I’m U.S. and one of the uninitiated, and it was great!🤣🤣🤣
Thanks, Zig Zag. I’ll be watching some more of those.
OK, that was 2.5 minutes well spent!
Very funny. Was that after an actual tanker incident or just pure comedy?
Mr. M: It couldn’t have been pure comedy. In pure comedy, it’s always the rear!
I’m pretty sure it was an actual event. These guys were, as far as I can tell, political satirists. I don’t watch tv, so never saw how current they were, but I think very.
Hahahaha.. Okay that was pretty funny. Thanks for that!!
Let’s just hope the front doesn’t fall off.
https://www.oedigital.com/news/491518-jack-up-vessel-drops-turbine-blades-overboard-at-vattenfall-s-ormonde-offshore-wind-farm
with a public advisory alert on debris examples – using a ruler as scale.
RoT: Exactly right. The cost of wind energy in 2030 should factor in the replacement of virtually all currently and soon to be installed off-shore turbines. It should also include decommissioning, dismantling and disposal of current turbines. And unless some major (and no doubt costly) improvements are made in design and reliability, it will need to be done all over again before 2050.
And so many are getting very rich on the back of this at taxpayer expense.
Think what the wasted money could have done to improve recycling systems and clean up real pollution.
Tragic.
My own pet comparison is one large wind turbine equals sixish MRI scanners.
I am shocked. This must be the first time that Boris Johnson has ever lied.
Nope, just like all climate apologists, you can tell when their lips move.
I know that was not serious.
But he had a oven ready Brexit deal, the Northern Ireland part is still causing problems as is the fishing “deal” to name a couple. The man is an innumerate compulsive liar. What you’d expect for a man who made his living as a not very good journalist.
No kidding, these eco warriors will do anything to hurt mankind including subsidizing intermittent energy sources.
But Griff told me it was true as well.
Did he now? Best check to see if you still have your wallet then!
Yeah but historical emission liabilities have been updated to 2021 for COP26 and Loydo lied as well she said China didn’t have much historical blame. China was a distant 3rd in 2019 and as I projected now in 2021 they are a clear second and in just over 3 years time they will be number 1 both in current emission and historical blame game. Given they just announced they are building 320 new coal power stations over next 4 years they may get there a little sooner.
Which is why China will lead the charge to torpedo the idea of reparations for historical emissions and put a nail in that coffin at COP26. Grab your popcorn and watch the game play out peeps.
+1
Now, where is the real Izaak and what have you done with him, Senator Collins?
SO you are admitting that the “climate crisis” is a lie then?
The fox always supplies the lowest bid to guard the hen house. Final costs may be higher.
They don’t care… as long as it looks like they are doing something.
More expensive… no problem…
Less energy… no problem…
Less reliable… no problem.
Lower standard of living… the reality.
On a cold night put a log on the fireplace and light it. It will keep you warm and if need be cook your dinner.
Now instead of a log, place the wind on your fireplace. Not only will it not keep you warm nor cook you dinner, it will likely make life miserable. Your kids will hate you and the wife will want a divorce.
That is why the wind is free and firewood costs money.
Offshore windpower. Electricity and metal and electrolyte. Electrolysis.
Electrolysis rots metal at an atomic scale. Unlike rust it gives almost no warning before failure. Even the most carefully design can suffer.
I had the somewhat exciting experience of being catapulted overboard mid-pacific due to electrolysis.
No one else on deck, but my lifeline held and surprising what a jolt of adrenalin can do.
Haven’t the ship operators got a semi solution to the electrolysis problem in Sacrificial Anodes? 60 years ago when I was at school it was blocks of zinc.
A friend with a narrow boat told me it wasn’t 100% reliable and required monitoring.
Merchant ships either have zinc anodes sized to just do the job, not too much, not to little and inspected every 3 years or so along with Hull openings and bearings. Some vessels have an impressed current system where you inject a dc current from injection points through the local sea to the rest of the Hull. Potential being measured. I understand many pipelines do the same.
The sea is a harsh environment for man-made structures
Those sacrificial anodes only address the electrolysis going on between the steel hull and the (slightly) acidic seawater. The water is looking for ions, the aluminum anodes give up their ions quicker and easier than does the steel, thereby protecting the steel. But a problem not addressed by sacrificial anodes is electrolysis between dissimilar metals. If you connect a copper pipe directly to a steel pipe, you have dissimilar metals in contact and corrosion happens. Fast. With or without sacrificial anodes. And the more corrosive the water by itself, the faster it happens in cases of electrolysis between dissimilar metals. I’m about to write two Opinions of Probable Cost, both will have something to say, and therefore money in the budget, to address correcting the dissimilar metals contact. If they don’t spend that money, they spend even more money correcting leaks and the damage caused from the leak.
If you look at the overall cost of a complete renewable grid the costs are even worse. Probably between 2-3 times a fossil grid .
No, it’s somewhere between 30x and 50x. You multiply by 4 because unreliables onky work 25% of the time. You double that because EVs use as much as a home, then add 50% to allow electric heating, cooking and hot water. About 10x in all. Then multiply by the number of days when you may get no unreliable electricity, say 5 days, making 50x.
Then add an impossible amount of storage, eg 5x existing daily reliable capacity, but add 150% for the additional requirements for EVs and electric heating etc.
50x the existing reliable capacity for generation, then 12.5x existing daily reliable capacity for storage.
Don’t forget the batteries that will need recharging after a wind drought.
Well you left out the part, after the 4x because unreliables only work 25% of the time, then you have to take that resultant figure and multiply by 2 so that the unreliables can both produce power and charge the batteries that (are supposed to) act as backup. Otherwise, I think you’re starting to get the cost about right.
A politician lied? I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you!
You should listen to the one we have in New Zealand as our Prime Minister!
I thought Jacinda got around that by making herself Queen! Princess at the very least!
Off shore wind is very cheap, however the capture of and conversion to electricity then the transfer of it via cable to land station is horrendously expensive, It will get no less expensive with additional units placed ever further out at sea. In the North Sea, when the wind blows no sane individual puts to sea. Maintenance of any off shore plant is abandoned, until weather conditions allow safe boat access. Helicopters are a non starter for maintenance activities. That is the reality of wind turbines out at sea, no one wants to go there, so the financial inducements to get maintenance crews to turn too. is also horrendous.
No one with an ability to add up, listens to what Boris says, and certainly nothing he says involving numbers.
NB I like Boris, I am also grateful to him for taking one for the boys. If only he could differentiate between hype and facts, its all Nuts,Nuts I tell ya.
Aren’t those maintenance jobs some of the high-paying Green Jobs we are always hearing about that will change the world?
Yeah, Pamela. And what about the wind turbine demolition jobs. Aren’t those Green Jobs, too?
But, but the UK is going to be the Saudi Arabia of wind and the Qatar of hydrogen!
If wind was cost effective it wouldn’t be subsidised nor given preference by law in the energy market. Ditto biomass using wood pellets.
Boris is the biggest disappointment ever. He was once a sceptic, but is now driving the eco-train at top speed into the buffers.
Waffle and hubris is no match for physics and reality.
This deception relies on the hype that comes with prices being determined through “Contracts For Difference”……financial weapons of mass theft. A visit to your search engines will show they are as mystical as financial derivatives.
It’s a sophisticated version of the teaser offers made to shoppers to get them in the store. Then they put their hands down the throat of the duped punters and rip out every penny of profit they can…_
And the real give away, electric prices havent come down. If the supply was cheaper the end user would pay less because we have a lot of competition in this mix. A lot.
And it hasnt. So it is clearly expensive.
This sort of thing with Government mandates/contracts happens over and over and over again.
Basically its a monopoly but in reverse although the end result is the same = massively escalating costs that no-one can ever rein in.
There Is No Real Control – and hasn’t been for a very long time
I saw it time and again while farming….
Because farmers get/got ‘Support’ or subsidy and because, by being Government funded it is made to be highly visible, all the merchants and suppliers to the farmers can see it
And they are utterly convinced that they should have their share – meaning that The Farmers become the back-to-front monopoly and their costs rise so as to soak up all the subsidy
I saw it 40+ years ago with the price of Roundup. In the subsidised UK it cost £49.95 for 5 litres no matter where you went to buy
Apart from unsubsidised Australia & New Zealand where the exact same Monsanto branded product cost £5 per 5 litres
A story came in very recently from the Farmer’s Weekly magazine’s emails about the soaring price (no surprises there) cost of fertiliser.
One of the farmers said that if he cut back the fert by 33% to offset the price rise, growing wheat as he did would become unviable
Do bear in mind that this guy normally got yields of 4 or 5 tonnes per acre and that wheat is a Globally Traded Commodity – the price is similar everywhere
Help yourself to Brain-Ache at this point…
What is going on with Australian and US farmers growing/selling/trading wheat they’ve grown at 1 (one) tonne per acre and selling at similar prices? How are they viable?
If you survived the brain-ache, you’ve now get an idea of the scale & magnitude of cronyism/corruption endemic in the UK
Even before the UK price for Ammonium Nitrate (AN) fert was always, always & exactly £100 per tonne more than the same product bought in Europe.
Hello hello, that was = Brexit. We knew they hated our guts and with every move they’ve made since the moment the referendum result was announced have gone out of their way to prove it
The whole of Europe is a complete dump.
Overrun by cronies, lawyers, bureaucratic little H!tlers and myriad other parasites
It was all made with Russian natural gas anyway and even they worked out that AN was a very good & safe way of storing and transporting the energy that was contained in the gas – they made fertiliser at the well-head
(If you build a pile of AN inside any normal small or large shed ##, chances are it’ll still be there next day. Not so with Methane
## Beirut excepted – Do Not Let AN Get Wet or forget where you put it
edit to PS
There is a story out there come from Vestas – the windmill maker.
Seemingly they are in the similar position to how I described UK farmers – they are struggling, seemingly and so they say, to make a profit.
Just what. How. wtf is going on…
Where on Earth do you start to unravel that, even if you ain’t the diabetic alcoholic that the UK has in its driver’s seat
This analysis does not even include the costs of energy storage. At present wind is backed up with gas turbines for when the wind does not blow. Net Zero means getting rid of those gas turbines.
The cost of wind energy should fairly include the cost of producing excess in the good times and then storing it for the bad times. Even this study fails to do this.
The amazing thing about the greens is whatever they claim nature does the opposite and makes them look foolish
No more snow
Ice free Arctic
Don’t mention the volcanoes and magma chamber under Antarctica, it’s warm water busting through the Antarctic circumpolar current
etc etc
Nothing about the renewables industrial thing is cheap and it never will be. And now there’s precious little wind anyway.
If it were cheap, it wouldn’t need subsidies.
Hypocrites like to smear capitalists as greedy for profits above all else, and simultaneously too stupid to recognize the easy profits available from renewable energy.
I look forward to the day when Big Wind execs will be called to testify before the House Oversight Committee, about all their filthy lies in order to make a fast buck off the backs of the American people, and to the detriment of the environment. But, I won’t hold my breath.
The current regime will get right on it! Just as soon as they prosecute all the parents protesting against their kids being taught to be racist, and the coverup of rapes in school!
Oil, natural gas and uranium ore are all ‘free’ in the same sense that wind is ‘free’. But finding them, getting them out of the ground, transporting them, processing them, getting useful energy out of them and so on all costs money…
One guy’s cheap is another guy’s cost.
When you have the mantra that: “The end justifies the means” then a cheap lie becomes an expensive truth.
It’s the thought that counts….. definitely not the facts.
Who would have thought that building and maintaining structures in areas with the roughest seas (because they have to be windy) could be expensive?
Offshore wind power is only cheap if you think wind turbines are built on rainbows with foundations of unicorn poop.
What a surprise! Our lying oaf of a Prime Minister lying once again. If you want to be charitable you could say that he is just repeating lies fed to him given that he is very ignorant.
In other words:
“Lying liars lie”.
And they cheat as well
You can use that
Not to worry, just reach developing nation status and you can get grants from the UN green fund and borrow from the IMF.
It doesn’t matter what wind power costs. The only reason to build any at all is to reduce atmospheric CO2. Otherwise, why bother. There are currently over 341,000 wind turbines on the planet.
Meanwhile, 30 years since the Kyoto protocols, worldwide CO2 levels keep rising as measured by the Mauna Loa observatory.
If you can’t make onshore wind viable without subsidies, it does not take an Einstein to know that off-shore is less viable and deep water will be worse. Our elites are morons.
They are making too much money to be morons. The key to the scam is a non-performing press.
Wow! What did that report cost to produce? Does that cost get added to the LCOE for wind farms to pay or does the ever suffering public wear it?