Essay by Eric Worrall
Obviously the illusion that renewables drive up prices is caused by greedy green energy developers, right?
Climate change: State-owned wind farm ‘could cut bills’
By Sarah Dickins
Economics correspondent, BBC WalesPlans for a publicly owned energy company could see bills reduced and renewable supplies directly benefit communities, a minister has said.
The proposal is for a joint venture between the Welsh government and developers.
Profits would be used to construct wind turbine sites owned by communities.
Climate Change Minister Julie James says “it sticks in my craw” that foreign governments get profits from wind farms in Wales.
Ms James said communities would benefit from either owning turbines, getting homes fitted to save energy or from lower bills .
“This will be a company that brings more of the profits back to the people of Wales directly, in the form of a state developer, but we will have to do that in a joint venture partnership with a range of other providers,” she said.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-63917570
I enjoyed my time living in Cardiff, Welsh people are very friendly and welcoming, once you get past the initial reserve. But it was obvious even in my short stay that something was very wrong.
Wales in my opinion is one of the most over governed places in the world, more so even than Northern Ireland and Scotland. Nothing moves in Wales without government funding, largely supplied by English taxpayers. My impression, pretty much the first thing anyone does when trying to set up a new business in Wales is apply for a government grant, otherwise they can’t compete against everyone else whose businesses are backed by the government.
This deluge of government cash has led to significant levels of fraud.
So it comes as no surprise that Wales would attempt to point the government money hose at renewable energy.
I would like to say the Welsh Government are about to discover the hard way that renewables drive up energy bills because they are really expensive to build and operate. But this new Welsh wind project will be buoyed up by so much government money, it won’t take much fancy accounting to present it as a win, rather than the money haemorrhage it would be if it wasn’t for all the government support.
There are plenty of better things Wales could spend taxpayer’s money on.
One of the people I worked with in Wales was heavily involved in a charity which helped the young adult children of multi-generation drug addict families. She painted a horrifying description – kids who had grown up in such neglect, they didn’t know how to speak or wash themselves, let alone read and write.
Wales has a huge problem with alcohol and drug abuse. A few times I came face to face with Wales’ drug problems. After a particularly bad confrontation with a bunch of thugs who came to collect from someone who lived upstairs, one of the police officers who attended gave me his card, so if I got into another confrontation he could put in a good word for me.
Of course, this all happened over 20 years ago. If someone confronted a bunch of Welsh drug dealers today, they would probably be shot with an East European manufactured handgun. In Britain, only criminals get to bear arms.
That could be true if the lobbyists leave out the new transmission line upgrade costs that tend to get pushed along in a separate step. Then there are other terms and conditions often not covered in the switch.
Take it to the bank, the Climate Change Minister will welsh on any reasonable commitments.
‘Climate Change Minister Julie James says “it sticks in my craw” that foreign governments get profits from wind farms in Wales.‘
The ‘profits’ arise from subsidies paid by ratepayers. I suppose it might be preferable to keep these in-country, but ideally the ratepayers would be better off with cheap and reliable energy sources, regardless of ownership.
I live in Wales, and we have our share of all the problems of modern society, including incompetent government, but gun crime isn’t one of them.
Just curious how you know that. Maybe because the news doesn’t report it? Yes, my cynicism is showing.
Everytime there is a shooting , it would be reported , as 1) they are rare and news and secondly its a very serious crime.
Its the US where shootings are so common that they dont get reported as news anymore, even the ‘small’ mass shootings are only local news
You really do live in an alternate reality.
Well, here in Australia we have strict gun laws … only a couple of days ago, police officers were called out to a disturbance, ambushed and murdered, police stations get shot up, gang warfare is rife with shootings, armed home invasions, etc.
So much for gun laws … seemingly, criminals have no restriction in their access to firearms and the innocent public pay the price.
Socialists are consistent in that they can never figure out why their simple solutions to complex problems, never work.
Gun crimes are not a big issue in the UK
They weren’t a big problem prior to the passage of your current gun laws either.
The link I provided included England and Wales :- https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/01/gun-rising-in-two-thirds-of-police-force-areas-in-england-and-wales
I was living in Roath in Cardiff, which at the time was a fairly rough place. I’m sure there are nicer parts of Wales.
I had a lot of fun, though looking back it was a kindof crazy experience. Like one time I was walking home from the office, when two guys stepped out of a doorway and asked “what have you got in the briefcase?”. I said “cocaine”, and they ran away. I think they thought I had a gun under my business jacket.
Of course I didn’t have any cocaine – but it was funny to see the look on their faces.
I lived in Inverness Place (off Albany Rd) 1947-1974. It was fine then, I understand it’s rough now.
Walking distance to where I lived. At the time I didn’t care about the violence, I grew up in a place which was almost as bad. But Roath wasn’t somewhere I wanted to grow old in.
Good and quick thinking!
So on a website that regularly and rightfully ridicules the Guardian for the rubbish it puts out, you quote the Guardian as evidence for your hit piece. Well done.
“but gun crime isn’t one of them”
Strange that you say that …
https://www.cambrian-news.co.uk/news/999/gun-crime-increases-in-north-wales-574029
hehehe
‘25 firearm offences in the year to March this year, up from 18 the year prior.”
Theres rural counties in US with more ‘shootings’ than that, as its undisputable that the US has 20x the gun crime of places like UK
We’ll see. Northern Ireland has a lot of guns, maybe Wales is just playing catch-up
False equivalence.
No other nation in the world is as inculcated in firearms culture, and preparedness to exercise that culture with little reservation as the residents of USA.
That BS in overall murder rate with guns the US is about middle or the pack. As to the rest see JamesB_684 comment. If you compare murder rates just throw in Mao’s and Stalin’s records. Governments murder far more people than the amateurs that are call common criminals, Pol Pot was no slacker either.
And in the U.S., major crime is concentrated in places like Chicago, NYC, NO, Houston, LA, Baltimore, Philly and DC. All places where gun laws are relatively strict.
And you’re right about democide. It often follows from a government that doesn’t fear its citizenry.
Typically, the first right taken is free speech.
Supreme court has never said speech and gun rights are ‘absolute’ hence the restrictions on all except hand guns.
these are the worst counties per 100k population ( you forget to adjust for rate per person)
Lots of small counties in MS , LA, AZ
St Clair county IL and Greene County MO , its your time to show, around 300k pop
… and overwhelmingly ‘liberal’ Democrat run cities.
Complete nonsense
‘violent’ Gun deaths per capita (2017, 100K) for US is 4.43 while UK is 0.06
which is higher than the 50x estimated at 75 x UK rate
Gun ‘violence’ excludes accidents and self inflicted.
Where did I mention murder rates?
I stated that firearms culture is endemic in the USA as in no other civilized nation.
(Note – I said “civilized”, which excludes the shit-hole countries in the Middle East, Equatorial & South America, Africa, etc)
In what other civilized nations do ordinary residents in cities & towns strap on a side-arm before doing their weekly trip to Walmart for some mundane shopping?
My twin does in South Africa … but that country has rapidly regressed into another African shit-hole.
a bit exagerated- personally, I don’t have a gun, don’t want one and I hate them- but I like to reserve my right to get one
Crime rates were low in Europe, even before the government took guns out of the hands of the law abiding.
If the big Democrat run cities were removed from the U.S. crime statistics, the U.S.A. is one of the safest places on Earth. 50+% of the crime happens in 3% of the zip codes.
I should have gone on to read your comment. You are absolutely correct.
hes not adjusting per person . The normal way
Even the safest US county will still be way ahead of UK for gun violence
Most people of course will never experience it in a lifetime, but 40,000 deaths pa is a lot of people
and then this
New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town Americahttps://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new-york-city-more-dangerous-than-rural-america
Bloomberg doesn’t do facts, they do narratives. And there narrative for the last few decades is to support government intervention into all aspects of society.
Rural counties are some of the worst.
Cherry picking as removing large cities just manipulates the numbers.
Cities have hardly any gun controls anymore thanks to Supreme court and of course guns get traffiked from the states with no restrictions to the bigger populations.
Overall country wide figures show US is 75x the gun violence rates of places like UK and similar countries.
What is it with socialists and their willingness to describe any minor decrease in regulations as if they had all been removed.
Agreed
The highest per-capita murder rate in the US used to be in Cabot Cove, Maine.
G’Day ol cocky,
“The highest per-capita murder rate …”
When you live in a city (incorporated in 1882), with a current population of just 1,300, one murder put’s the ‘per capita rate’ through the roof.
Like always, when in a pinch, just make it up.
In most of the UK criminals have gone back to pre-gunpowder technology. Most gang disputes are settled using knives and what the MSM call machetes. It’s the same for robbery.
I can’t imagine Wales is different
It’s a lesson in how humans, in this case the violent criminal subgroup, adapt to a change in the environment
Like I said, I live here so I know what its like. I don’t need newspaper articles to tell me about this one.
This article paints quite a distorted picture of Wales. There is no gun culture here because there are no guns. I don’t know anyone who has a gun or even feels like they might need one.
The link to the “corruption” in Wales shows nothing of the sort. It’s just an opinion on the presumed amount of corruption related to government budget, any government. No actual evidence of any Welsh corruption at all. I would have been very interested if there had been.
Wales isn’t any more “governed” than anywhere else in the UK. More nonsense.
You can sometimes get grants for business start ups, but it’s hardly enough to give a competitive edge against any competition. It’s just a way of lowering the unemployment rate after the loss of heavy industries like coal and steel.
The drug problem in Wales is much the same as the rest of the UK too, as the cited article shows.
I don’t think the author of this piece actually read his links or bothered to do any more than cursory research for it. Spending a month in an inner city district is hardly indicative of a whole country.
A lazy click bait article that skimmed over the real issue of the windfarm to paint a poor image of Wales.
I come to this website to get away from this sort of fake news in the hope of finding something a bit more realistic. This author has given me pause to doubt my judgement on that one now. I will certainly be checking his “evidence” from now on.
I was basically agreeing that gun crime is very low in the UK.
However the weapon of choice is a blade of some sort between criminals and on those who get involved with them either by design or accidently.
This isn’t new, razor gangs were common across major cities Glasgow, Birmingham and London between the wars and into the 1960s Glasgow gangs regularly made the news. So I can’t believe that places like Swansea and Cardiff were immune and havens of peaceful coexistance.
I’m sorry if that hurts your pride in Wales but I don’t think Wales is any different to anywhere else in the UK.
My dad was born and grew up in Govan between the wars and talked about gangs with razor blades sewn into the skips (peaks) of their skippit bunnets. As made famous in Peaky Blinders. He was quite happy in rural Perthshire after he settled down in the 1950s
I have already stated that Wales has much the same problems as the rest of the UK. I’m not being precious about the Welsh being angels, I know better than that because I am Welsh. I am peeved by the sloppiness of the research and the lack of a better analysis of the windfarm proposal.
I look to sites like this for some measured info on these things, but it seems as though I might as well go to the Guardian.
Want to guess how this will play out? If it does reduce consumer electricity bills it will be a first.
It will play out with high cost and rolling blackouts. If you don’t have the blackout the high cost is assured since every watt the wind turbines do not produce on a calm or overly windy day, needs backup, so the reality you are paying twice for the infostructure to furnish you power.
Also over 20 years ago, but I doubt things have changed a lot – I visited friends in the Republic of Ireland (the part of Ireland that is still in the EU). They were wealthy, with a large Georgian house and rural property, but they would not do any improvement to house or property without a government/EU grant. They did lots of improvements because they got lots of grants.
I live in North Wales and put a new roof on my house 17 years ago. A neighbour asked how I managed to get a grant and looked at me in horror when I told him I paid for the roof with my own money. 17 years on he still has a roof with slipped slates and missing ridge tiles but is still refusing to pay for the repairs himself. Such is the Welsh way, rely on grants and benefits and expect the state to look after you.
I’m all for letting Wales have its own grid and pricing, separated from the rest of the UK. It might speed up the onset of reality such as is going to happen in places like California and South Australia.
Play green games, win green prizes.
Thats a fantasy for Wales to ‘have its own grid’. Its a really small country ( about size of New jersey) that is of course still part of a not much bigger country
That nuclear plant on Anglesea would have gone a lone way towards supplying a Welsh grid – before it was shut down. There is no reason small nuclear reactors couldn’t supply Wales, other than political.
What small nuclear reactors , no ones built one yet. they are only small for faster production purposes. Still required as a baseload generation
Its not political building new nuclear plants ( apart from usual nimbys) as its ongoing to have some sort facility replace the 40 yr old and problem plagued closed nuclear , which is the ideal approach
Mistake in comment
“…no ones (sic) built one (small reactor) yet.” LOL How about all the nuc ships that have been bouncing around the oceans for decades — Safely! Of course, their turbines spin prop shafts rather than generators, but that has nothing to do with reactor size.
Another uninformed poster. Most ships are diesel-electric today, big military ones are nuclear-electric. The “small” reactor on Anglesea was not one of the latest fad, the small modular reactor, just a somewhat smaller conventional one. This whole article and many comments are nonsense. Wales is a money pit for England though.
We live on Anglesey, North Wales; high pressure dominant for the past few days, so hardly a windmill moving, let alone generating !!
“it sticks in my craw” that know nothing politicians are allowed to make important decisions ( with no critical thinking or due-diligence ) based on the crap they are fed by ‘green snake oil salesmen’ .
I visited Anglesey once, beautiful place. Shame about the nuclear power plant, when I visited it was still operating and providing electricity for the aluminium smelter.
Also the site of some of the finest sea-cliff rock climbing in the UK.
How can anyone not be inspired by the mere name of the location
Wen Zawn at Gogarth?
Wind across the UK has been falling again since it peak at around noon yesterday when it hit about 10GW, now less than 6GW Hasn’t got significantly above10GW since 26th November apart from briefly on 4th December. That’s from a total of 28.5GW installed.
I always like to check out the authors of these sorts of things. Go here:
Sarah Dickins (welshstars.co.uk)
Reading about her I felt I was in a different universe – at a right angle to the one where she is.
It’s the socialist motto.
This time, it will work.
My son’s a sparky and you reckon they’re not rolling in it already in Oz?
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/it-s-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-gas-adam-bandt/ar-AA15hZlS
https://theconversation.com/to-clean-up-australias-power-grid-were-going-to-need-many-thousands-more-skilled-workers-and-fast-195906
It’s not a case of how much but more a case of when do you think you could fit me in? You certainly don’t want an electrical emergency nowadays.
The energy situation in the UK this winter is essential study for anyone who seriously maintains that wind and solar and storage can power a modern economy.
This is a good source of the raw data, and you can get csv downloads of any historical period you want:
https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=generation/fueltype/current
Or if you want the last 30 days, its done for you on templar:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
You can also get the bmreports data from gridwatch.co.uk (this is different from templar), but the site owner charges for csv downloads which are freely available from bmreports, so if you want raw data I suggest going there.
Solar is non-existent at this time of year. If you look at the last 30 days for wind, you see that wind fell off a cliff on November 26. At one point it fell as low as 269 MW. This is on an installed base of about 25GW.
On Dec 2 it picked up to about 10GW, which lasted for a week or so, then it fell again to almost nothing, and picked up again lately to 10GW. Meanwhile, gas does 20-25GW – drops off, of course, when wind picks up.
To get through this on a wind+solar+storage basis you’d have to have at least two weeks, maybe three, of battery backup, which would have to supply a continuous output of 25GW for a couple of weeks. But then, you would also have to have enough power when the wind picks up again to recharge them. So double the wind installations solely for the occasional few weeks of the year when these blocking calms occur. Absurd.
No working example of the battery storage required, anywhere. An impossible scale, unknown operating costs and issues, and unaffordable anyway.
In other news the UK is going to make all home boilers hydrogen compatible from 2026. There is no source of hydrogen, there is no pipeline grid to carry it, even if there were a source. And you would have to replace all the in-house pipework to carry it, even if you could get it to them.
The boilers are the least of the problems.
But this and the Welsh dream from this piece, and the Net Zero project, this is the climate fantasy world that the UK political class is living in.
At least some firms are being clever about this, Worcester Bosch are making a Hydrogen ready boiler at about the same price as their current combi boiler and when/if the changeover occurs, they can change a few components to make it work with Hydrogen. If you watch these videos, you do get the impression they don’t really believe in it.
Before the 1960’s the UK was supplied with town gas which was mostly hydrogen without problems. When it was replaced by natural gas all that was needed was a change in the burner jets. This was done district by district and typically took a few minutes per house, the reverse should be as simple.
Illustrating one way that “a picture is worth a thousand words” …
NB : For my “methodology”, see my reply to your first comment under the “UK’s Arctic blast …” WUWT article (direct link).
Having one line per day in a spreadsheet instead of 48 allows me to “zoom out” and check the bigger picture.
See the pair of my posts under another WUWT article just over a week ago (direct link 2) for a couple of examples.
The BEIS’s “ET 6.1” referenced there says the (total ?) wind “capacity” for the GB electricity grid … where GB = England + Scotland + Wales … was 26.27 GW in Q2 2022.
My guess is that it’s closer to 27 GW now.
PS : The bonus graph attached to this post shows the loss of detail going from “Settlement Period” (30 minute) resolution to daily resolution.
By the way, Eric may be right about Wales being worst, but Scotland too is in a government dominated world of its own.
In 2021 Scotland passed a hate speech bill, the Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which criminalizes so called and ill defined ‘hate speech’ not only in public or in media but in private conversations in your own home.
It is about to pass a law on gender, whose effect is basically that anyone who claims to be a woman will legally be one. The implications for women’s safe spaces and programmes are considerable and disturbing. If this were not bad enough, there is also a pending proposal to make what is called conversion a criminal offence by the reform of the Gender Recognition Act.
The effect of this would be to criminalize just about any conversation that does not fully endorse the trans ideology.
Then there is the saga of the ferries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferry_fiasco
And the latest is that the First Minister’s husband loaned 100,000 to the Scottish National Party without declaring it and for no known reason. There is also the case of the referendum fund….
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-600000-independence-fund-subject-24560873
So does Wales hold the record? Maybe, but it has a real competition.
A lesbian activist in Norway is being threatened with three years of jail time for writing in her blog that men can’ be lesbians.
Unreliables do lower power bills significantly for some with beggar thy neighbour Green policies-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/companies/california-to-vote-on-hotly-debated-change-in-rooftop-solar-policy/ar-AA15jiVc
Still it’s every citizen’s fundamental right to stick their hand out for whatever Gummint pork is going down eh lefties? To rephrase a wise Oz Treasurer: The easiest cut is the slushfunding you didn’t stupidly hand out in the first place if you had your head screwed on.
“Profits would be used to construct wind turbine sites owned by communities.”
What a great idea. No more subsidies but a redistribution of profits. You will be rewarded in Heavens.
Wind farms supply very expensive electricity when the wind blows, when the wind doesn’t blow, they don’t supply any (in fact they consume energy from the grid to keep themselves warm & online) – that’s the top and bottom of them – anyone that says they produce electricity cheaper than gas, coal or nuclear, is lying through their teeth
Without significant subsidies, or contract loopholes that allow them to sell their generation on the high spot markets, they are dead ducks, expensive, useless behemoths that spoil the vista and kill wildlife
“If someone confronted a bunch of Welsh drug dealers today, they would probably be shot with an East European manufactured handgun.”
It doesn’t take a grammar NAZI to see the problem here. “, he would probably be shot ..”, not the drug dealers.
Offshore wind is now the cheapest power on earth, and Wales has the potential to generate twice the amount it needs to reach net zero
Current costs are high due to the use of gas and the linking of the price of ALL power to the gas price, so while offshore wind is cheap to generate it sells into the wholesale market at a high price due to the Ofgem pricing rules
More wind power will bring down costs, particularly if we build it at immense scale out at sea
Nonsense. Wind farms on CFDs are being paid an average of £165/MWh. Wind farms on ROCs are being paid an average of £310/MWh for offshore and £260/MWh for onshore. There is no linkage to gas prices, particularly when supply is tight. Prices are determined by what is necessary to buy imports from the Continent or persuade industry to shut down (either in the UK or on the Continent).
You prompted me to do the work to assemble this chart of real prices for wind farm outputs. You will see that on average they consistently get above average market prices, although some contracts have proved to be much less lucrative than others (principally the small number of onshore CFDs).
Yesterday I drove up through mid-Wales and marvelled at the idle onshore wind farms. No wind, no electricity generation, if is not an uncommon sight.
If wind is so efficient, have private companies develop these wind schemes without subsidies and see how many are built.
You don’t explain how building more windmills will balance the grid.