A Mirage in the Wind
In the ever-evolving landscape of so-called renewable energy, offshore wind power has been lauded as a promising solution. Yet, recent revelations from the UK government’s auction process seem to further validate the skepticism surrounding these projects.
“No new offshore wind projects have been bought by developers at a key government auction, dealing a blow to the UK’s renewable power strategy. Results showed no bids for new offshore wind farms, but there were deals for solar, tidal and onshore wind projects.”
The Economics of Wind
The crux of the matter appears to be the economic viability of these offshore wind projects. Developers argue that the set price for electricity generation is simply too low to make these ventures feasible.
“Firms have argued the price set for electricity generated was too low to make offshore wind projects viable. The government said a ‘global rise’ in inflation impacting supply chains had ‘presented challenges for projects’.”
This sentiment is echoed by industry insiders who believe that the auction’s price floor failed to account for the escalating costs of developing these wind farms.
“Industry insiders told the BBC that the £44 per megawatt hour price floor set for the latest auction failed to take account of higher costs.”
Lost Opportunities and Questionable Ambitio
Keith Anderson, chief executive of Scottish Power, labeled the auction’s outcome as a “multi-billion pound lost opportunity” and a stark reminder for the government.
“He said the contracts had been ‘recognised globally as a lynchpin of the UK’s offshore success’, but said ‘the economics simply did not stand up this time around’.”
While the UK has been a frontrunner in offshore wind, with some of the world’s largest farms, the recent auction results cast a shadow over its future prospects.
“The UK is a world leader in offshore wind and is home to the world’s four largest farms, supporting tens of thousands of jobs, which provided 13.8% of the UK’s electricity generation last year, according to government statistics.”
A Stain on Renewable Energy’s Image
While many activists and politicians continue to push for renewable energy, this recent debacle serves as a stark reminder of the inefficiencies and pitfalls associated with offshore wind power. The very need for such emissions reduction strategies, especially through wind power, remains questionable at best.
“Officials in the regions pushing for renewable energy say they are worried that the bribery scandal hurts the image of renewables when the energy needs to be further promoted.”
We’ve seen evidence of multiple cracks in the offshore wind industry lately:
In Conclusion
As the world grapples with the complexities of energy sources, it’s essential to critically evaluate the true benefits and costs associated with each. The recent auction results in the UK serve as a testament to the inherent challenges with offshore wind power and the misguided ambitions surrounding it. It’s high time to demand transparency, accountability, and a genuine reevaluation of the so-called benefits of wind energy.
H/T peta of newark, Dave A
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Whatever happened to “Save the Whales!”?
We need to “Save the Whales!” …
… for lamp oil when the lights go out (just like in the good old days ).
But what about “Save the Wales”?
How about “save the great lakes whales”? That should be appealing to people who believe the climate crisis malarkey.
My friend Willie Soon asked me to post this note:
Dear Friends of CERES-science.com,
Here it is.
A good and science-based reply to Dr. Gavin Schmidt ofNASA GISS concerning our paper in Climate specifically.
https://www.ceres-science.com/post/reply-to-erroneous-claims-by-realclimate-org-on-our-research-into-the-sun-s-role-in-climate-change
We hope you will feel free to share this reply far and wide and with passion and enthusiasm, don’t hold back!
We are counting on you to make this solid science press release viral.
Let Gavin Schmidt hear all of us.
Thank you
Best regards,
Ronan, Michael and Willie
Good to see that physics and economics are beginning to make themselves known to the eco-elitists and the general public.
All completely unnecessary unless CO2 is a climate driver and we all know it is not.
The bottom line.
“All completely unnecessary unless CO2 is a climate driver and we all know it is not.”
Agree 100% – Note the year – 2002.
My co-authors and I wrote the following correct observations about the Global Warming (aka “Climate” aka “CAGW”) and Green Energy scams in 2002:
1. “Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
2. “The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
– by Sallie Baliunas (Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian), Tim Patterson (Paleoclimatologist, Carleton U), Allan MacRae (Professional Engineer, retired, Queen’s U, U of Alberta)
Nothing has changed in the intervening 20+ years since we published our paper, except the huge costs of this global-scale fraud:
There never was any scientific or technical support for the Global Warming and Green Energy scams – it’s always been a false propaganda campaign concocted by extremists to harm our economies and promote their totalitarian agenda.
“According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), at the end of 2016 more than 341,000 wind turbines were spinning and generating energy.” So by now, there could be one million of them. The cost of a wind turbine is around $2-4M. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say we have spent over $1T just on wind turbines.
Add in all the other climate policies like solar farms, electric cars, shutting down coal plants, blocking pipeline projects, divesting from fossil fuels, etc. We have spent a LOT of money into ‘fighting climate change’. Yet when you follow the news, the weather is getting worse. What am I missing here?
First, don’t confuse “climate” with “weather”. Second, while we’re cutting emissions (that comprise about 1% of the world’s total), other countries (mentioning no names) are increasing their coal, lignite and oil usage.
They changed the definition of climate to be only 30 years now instead of the thousands to millions of years it was before. With that definition the climate is always changing. Maybe the old climate is called geological climate.
What you are missing is that none of the things you mention have been implemented on a large enough scale even materially to affect UK emissions. Which are of course only a bit over 1% of global emissions.
So you can’t really expect any of these policies to have any effect on weather. Why would reducing emissions by a fraction of one percentage point have any effect?
But the second thing is that the weather is not getting worse. Every weather event anywhere in the world is reported in tones of breathless alarm. But if you look at the statistics, nothing unusual is going on.
Not only is the weather not getting worse, but the reported warmth has something odd about it. here is from CNN:
As heat waves continue to bake parts of the world, scientists are reporting that this blistering, deadly summer was the hottest on record – and by a significant margin.
June to August was the planet’s warmest such period since records began in 1940, according to data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Notice anything? Its since 1940. If you take a period of centuries, how unusual is it? What was it in August 1935? Or 1720? Or during the Medieval or Roman Warm periods?
Who knows? But in any case we are all doomed, and the 1.5C rise in average global temperatures since the pre-industrial period is driving extreme weather like never seen before. Quite how its doing that is never explained.
More energy is the usual explanation. Like explaining that the car he drove was speeding because there was more fuel in the tank, thus more energy in the system.
““According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), at the end of 2016 more than 341,000 wind turbines were spinning and generating energy.””
What a *horrible* thought picture!
What they don’t tell you is that around 600,000 wind turbines have been built across the world – the 341,000 are the ones that are still in place, whether they are actually ‘spinning’ or not.
As per the conclusion, the benefits of wind are small and the costs are large, the best choice is no wind.
Hopefully this will happen, albeit by accident, unless our goverment will allow higher prices, but that then makes a mockery of them claiming wind is cheap.
Wind farms are coming to scenic areas near you and solar PV to productive farmland, asssuming it hasn’t been rewilded already.
Maybe the absent wind energy developers have notices an uncomfortable fact about the macro economics now evolving in energy costs and world trading.
The UK will this year April 2023 to April 2024 be paying £111billion in debt interest payments. The increase to this lunacy level is caused by the inflation rates pushed into the developed economies by the high cost of energy and hence increased bank borrowing rates. The borrowing interest cost to the UK debt repayments is greater than the entire budget spent on defence and education combined. The level of national debt relative to the economy is now 100% of GDP. The highest evah! level in peacetime.
Maybe the grifters and grant harvesters that populate the renewables sector have realised the money in central government is actually all gone and their opportunity to suck yet more out of the tax payers pocket has also gone.
Maybe the penny is finally dropping. Just like the wind energy industry.
Today as I write wind fleet UK is producing 1.4GW from a fleet capacity of 28GW yesterday it was actually recording zero.
This comment is key: “Maybe the grifters and grant harvesters that populate the renewables sector have realised the money in central government is actually all gone and their opportunity to suck yet more out of the tax payers pocket has also gone.”
The BIG change in the latest UK offering was the elimination of the option for SUPPLIERS to sell on the open market versus complying with their negotiated price(s) when market prices exceeded contracted prices.
Couple this with inflation raising development and O&M costs faster than subsidies reduced their opportunities to farm subsidies and price differentials for profits.
The sum required these subsidy farmers to actually compete with with reliable sources versus for those electricity demand surge periods. No more windfall profits!
I’ve shown my calculation on here before, promptly lost the xlsx file so have re-done it
Re:The Boreas/Vanguard windfarm, by Vattenfall, off the north coast of Norfolk.
It is/was rated at 3.6GW output (nameplate) and Vattenfall assured that it would cots £10billion
Check my numbers:
Money:
Thus to cover that, the least they can (wholesale) sell the electricity is:
(£40billion divided by 140millionMWh) = £285 per MWh
(Double that figure by the time retail consumers see that juice)
Just how why where and when does that ‘Contract price’ of £55 per MWh fit in?
Even worse, when Vattenfall embarked on Boreas Windfarm, the Contract Price was £37 per MWh
How the H£ll did they ever expect to make any money from that?
We know exactly why, UK Government Lied.
Massively. Repeatedly
…….and is why UK retail power prices are so high.
Government has (mis)managed to create a power market where the supplier quoting the highest price – gets to ‘set the market’ and supply the power.
And pity the ‘poor’ little people who could have supplied cheaper – they **just** have to follow suit. aw diddums
(Now we understand the continuos and epic interconnector flow from France to the UK?
and Belgium. and Norway)
Everybody is milking UK energy users.
Of course, That Awful Mr Putin made them do it – it’s soooo perfect *AND* they get to Save The World while doing it.
Don;t forget the need to use GREEN Energy 1st over less expensive sources. How could that impact prices?????
As I write UK wind at five per cent of low post breakfast demand
This is far more worrying. 40GW turned off since May.
If you took away the legends and showed 100 MPs those charts 100 would say that red was wind, and blue gas (possibly even green was gas).
That’s the main problem at the moment, innumerate and ill informed politicians.
But isn’t that usually the problem?
MPs are not innumerate, they know exactly how much they are being paid to benefit the crony capitalists.
It’s going to be a lovely day. Cue the apoplexy
The big question at the media is… “”Why is offshore more expensive now””?
They’re genuinely gobsmacked
One probable reason is that there aren’t enough of the three vessels needed to build the offshore wind farms,exacerbated by the turbines getting bigger than the ships available This also has ramifications in the ports used. Wind Europe was warning about this problem 18months ago.
There have also been large increases in the cost of steel partly down to the fact ‘everybody’ is wanting to build offshore wind farms – good business for the steelmakers.
And what will the steelmakers do when they have to rely solely on ‘renewables’? IIRC, steel refining needs both electricity and coal for production. ‘Renewables’ can supply only one.
Wind energy – It is a useless disgusting environment wrecking industry, that needs to be destroyed.
Yes, the only good windmill is a dismantled windmill.
Offshore and onshore wind — Its either “livin’ the dream” or “livin’ the lie.” Or maybe, “OPM” — “Other Peoples’ Money.”
What it’s not … “Saving the Planet.”
If Himicane Lee takes a path that sweeps up the Atlantic seaboard, trashing the eco-crucifixes along the way, what will the Eco-loons and the MSM declare? More proof of Gorebal warming due to the same old, same old fear porn BS. As I will call it, it’s Gaia’s fault, Gaia doesn’t.like Eco-crucifixes.harming her whales. It’s not nice to F-Bomb with Mother Nature. /sarc
The Media were making a big deal out of Hurrican Lee reaching Cat 5 strength yesterday, and were claiming the quick spinup from Cat 1 to Cat 5 was due to human-caused climate change, and that we could expect future storms to spin up faster and stronger because of human-derived CO2.
And then Lee dropped off to a Cat 3 yesterday, and we haven’t heard a peep out of the Media about how fast a hurricane can decrease in strength. Was human-derived CO2 responsible for the spindown, too?
Weather-phobia: Coming from a news outlet near you.
The European Big Wind industry, drowning in RED INK, is finally telling the UK idiot bureaucrats, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Paris is “off course”, because it was, and still is, built on a lie;
many NATURAL forces cause the observed global temperature changes, already for 4 billion years
The increase in interest rates, long overdue, due to excessive printing of money, plus increased inflation, and increased energy costs, and increased materials cost, and increased skilled labor costs, and increased supply chain bottlenecks (lack of specialized ships) have combined to increase the capital cost per MW of installed wind/solar/battery capacity by about 70%, according to Bloomberg.
People are finally beginning to realize, the costs of Paris are astronomical, and even the richest countries on the planet cannot afford it going forward.
This gave rise to BRISC+6, soon to be BRISC+12, including two nuclear super powers, and two oil super powers, which will control the majority of the world’s resources.
Oil is at $95/barrel, as decided by Russia and SaudiArabia .
The US Strategic Oil Reserve is empty, due to grifting, grafting,Biden in-the-basement “planning”
BRISC does no longer want its resources used for the West to play world domination and climate fantasy games
It is curtains for the US/EU, Paris, and the arbitrary imposing of its self-serving, rules-based, bull manure
No bids for the 5th Offshore Wind Auction in the UK
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, OPERATING COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
US/UK 56,000 MW OF OFFSHORE WIND BY 2030; AN EXPENSIVE FANTASY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/biden-30-000-mw-of-offshore-wind-systems-by-2030-a-total-fantasy
Well, I see that they have a scheme to stop putting old windmill blades in landfills….they will chop ’em up and burn ’em…..you can’t make this stuff up.
Post link please.
Would like that for my link list.
Correctly calculated (excluding subsidy costs) the LCOE of onshore wind is about 2.5x CCGT. The EIA says (probably underestimated) that off shore wind is 3x on shore. So off shore wind is about 7.5x CCGT. The UK auction result just says these figures are about right.