If Ed Miliband’s promise to cut heating bills by £300 and deliver “100% clean power by 2030” were a movie, it’d be a sci-fi comedy, complete with magical wind farms and planning commissions that work as efficiently as Santa’s workshop. Unfortunately, the joke is on the UK, as this farce comes with a hefty price tag for everyday Brits. Strap in, folks, because this is where green pipe dreams meet the cold, hard wall of reality.
The NESO Report: Reality’s Not-So-Subtle Smackdown
The National Electricity System Operator (NESO) has essentially dropped a truth bomb on Miliband’s fantasy. Let’s recap the highlights:
- No £300 Savings: At best, Miliband’s grand plan won’t save anyone a penny. Even with NESO’s so-called “Herculean effort,” costs remain the same. Best case. This isn’t a vision—it’s a mirage.
- Infrastructure Mayhem: To even stay in the ballpark of this plan, we’d need to double the number of pylons and cables in the next five years. For context, that’s twice the infrastructure we’ve built over the past decade. Oh, and all this while communities object and supply chains choke on global shortages.
- Deadline-Driven Disaster: Miliband’s team insists every single network project must finish on time. But let’s face it, nothing in government ever finishes on time—except maybe raising your taxes. Miss those deadlines, and we’re stuck with “constraint payments,” where wind farms literally get paid to do nothing.
Green Dreams, Green Levies
While Miliband fantasizes about a carbon-free paradise, ordinary Brits are stuck with the bill—literally. Green levies on electricity are set to rise by an extra £120 per household annually. That’s right, you’re funding this delusion, one painful payment at a time. And as the pace of wind power contracts accelerates, those levies will only go up, because why not pile more weight on the middle class?
But wait, there’s more! The entire plan hinges on gas prices hitting 100p per therm and carbon prices tripling by 2030. Right now, gas is priced at a far more modest 70p per therm, with carbon stuck at £38 per ton. Unless Miliband has a crystal ball—or a way to manipulate global energy markets—these numbers don’t pencil out.
The Offshore Wind Fiasco
Let’s talk offshore wind, the cornerstone of this green utopia. NESO insists we need to contract as much offshore capacity in two years as we did in the last six. Ambitious? Try laughable. Even if every turbine magically appeared on time, we’d still rely on gas to set prices nearly half the time. So, for all the expense and upheaval, you’re barely making a dent in “volatile gas pricing.” Brilliant.
Why This Plan Fails—Spectacularly
Here’s the harsh truth: Ed Miliband’s plan is a house of cards built on shaky assumptions. It assumes gas prices will soar (the International Energy Agency thinks the opposite). It assumes we’ll build infrastructure faster than ever before (despite worker shortages and community resistance). It assumes carbon prices will triple (without triggering a political revolt). And all of this for what? To cut gas pricing from 58% of the time to…47%. That’s not progress; that’s rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Conclusion: Don’t Fall for the Green Grift
Miliband’s proposal isn’t a plan—it’s an ideological fever dream dressed up as policy. It’s the kind of scheme only a true leftist could love: long on promises, short on math, and guaranteed to make your life harder. While elites sip their soy lattes and pat themselves on the back, you’re left footing the bill for their green fantasies.
The NESO report doesn’t just poke holes in Miliband’s vision—it torpedoes it. So, let’s stop pretending this plan is anything other than what it is: a colossal joke at the expense of the British public. You deserve better than this shameless grift. If Ed Miliband wants to play superhero, he should stick to Halloween costumes, not your heating bill.
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Meanwhile in Germany
I’m so thankful that we dodged that bullet in the U.S.
I’m so saddened for Germany, however.
Germany has been smug and arrogant for years.
But they have good words
Schadenfreude.
I realized the situation in Germany was bleak a little over a year ago when flying out of Munich the only beer choice in the economy cabin was Michelob Ultra.
I can only imagine Tante Angela’s face
Agreed, but it may be premature. The Progressives are firmly entrenched in the administrative state [aka deep state] so they won’t go quietly, and the enviromental NGO’s are flush with money to fund lawsuits to halt any roll-back in current policies. The new administration will need to do the hard work of changing the laws, not just a blizzard of Executive Orders (as important as those are!).
As to Germany, de-industrialization will not be pretty.
And I note that in the video there was no suggestion to be able to defend your home with all those emergency supplies. Lol
It’s the same story across all government departments. No plan other than making life difficult for the many, not the few[dal].
Britain’s plans to become a clean energy superpower will not come cheap. Figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility have estimated that the levies used to support renewable energy projects are expected to rise from £12bn in the year 2024-25 to £14.8bn in the year 2029-30.
…
However, reducing Britain’s reliance on volatile global gas markets could help costs to fall overall. Neso has estimated that the wholesale market cost of electricity could fall by more than 10% by using more cheap renewable energy and less gas-fired power.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/05/what-will-the-uks-clean-energy-by-2030-plan-mean-for-the-industry-and-public
The dunkelflaute hasn’t shifted. These people are mad and they’ve got a big majority. And they can’t be recalled before the next election.
Renewables are not cheap.
They don’t seem like a real political party. They seem to be a civil service trade union political arm. The mechanism is, the party awards pay to the unions who then bung it back, or some of it, in the form of campaign contributions. Its old fashioned machine politics with British characteristics.
And with a sort of lunatic fringe of far-left activists, in this case with an obsession with getting to net zero because climate, though they never explain what the UK getting to net zero in generation is going to do for the climate. Liberal arts graduates grabbing at every crazed woke fashion out of America.
They do the student politics of protest.
Don’t forget the £ bn going to a place at war never to be seen again.
Elections have consequences! Unfortunately for England they will have to pay dearly for some time to rectify this dilemma.
Today here in the UK wind power is generating all of 1.5GW of electricity. It has been at this useless level for the past week the extension leads we have plugged into the French nuclear fleet of generators along with our own (for now) gas fired generators have been carrying the demand load.
Solar in this past week has been below measurement levels.
That is the reality here in the UKs real world.
Miliband and his ilk, by contrast, are living in a make believe Alice in Wonderland place and think their wishes/dreams can be translated into our real world. They can’t.
The Everly Brothers hit song, Dream is running through my head as a I write this.
‘All I have to do is Dream, dream dream dream’…..
Thursday probably averaged 5GW, and Friday 4GW, but yes, not exactly performing. And 3 or 4 days had very low output indeed.
And solar PV has been particularly poor because of the time of year mostly, but also the gloom.
For those who might be interested, the gridwatch website shows the contribution of wind and solar to our electricity demand during the present dunkelflaute.
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
Yes, How anyone can think you can run a country on wind and solar, given this?
But they do.
Well since the 1st November gas has supplied about 3.2TWh. Over 5 times as much as wind. Maximum from gas was 23.5GW, on the other hand Wind 7.5GW. Minimums 4.3GW and 0.6GW. Currently 19.7GW and 1.7GW
Until I read this i was sure I’d managed to mess up my “data copying and pre-processing” procedure.
Has it really been that cloudy (/ foggy, given the lack of “Wind” as well as “Solar” ?) back in Blighty for the last 9 days or so ?
The UK leads the world at one thing!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GbzS-NSWYAcmuzH?format=jpg&name=medium
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1973497/graph-uk-electricity-prices-compared-world
There are as few people in my domain who believe in ‘Green’ policy and even fewer who would trust ANY politician, let alone the liar Miliband and his typically unfit for purpose Party. Miliband is agenda led as are most UK politicians and the agenda hasn’t yet negotiated its infantile beginnings which rest in the improbability that we know enough about climate and weather to make predictions of any worth for the future. The most efficient fuel is the one we should burn for whatever task we have..
Back in the twentieth century we predicted that life would be unsupportable unless we stopped burning fossil fuel and yet here we are still burning it. We could have had a nuclear UK long ago if there really had been a problem with fossil fuel. Politicians and their favoured scientists cannot be trusted because they gain far too much power and money from the agendas they push. We needed intelligent political leaders but it seems they do not exist in our main parties. It’s time to pin our politicians down with awkward questions of what the risks of burning fossil fuel in the UK are when our quota is so tiny and almost immeasurable compared to the many others. ..
Actually, you needed intelligent “business” leaders. Hopefully, we in the U.S.A. will have one safefully in place in late January.
UK-Weather Lass,
there was a plan over twenty yeras ago to have a nuclear programme for the U.K.. However our technically illiterate politicians and their advisors went for the apparently cheaper wind generation.
If they had the humility and sense to get an understanding first of how the grid works that decision would not have been made and we would be in far better place.
As it is we are aiming to hugely increase these second and third rate generators.
Just because some devices can generate electricity does not mean they are suitable or even a replacement for conventional generation, because they are not.
Initially, they went for gas because it was quicker to instal; nuclear was shunned because it was more expensive in the short term (ie, needed more cash up front, though worked out cheaper in the long run). Those nuclear stations they didn’t build would all be working by now if they’d gone ahead…
Don’t worry chaps, Millibrain has it all figured out!! Whilst this week Wind has only produced c. 25% of the electricity for the UK he is going to build many, many more thousands so, come another Dunkelflaute, he will have resolved the problem.
I think Starmer may even Knight him for this excellent idea!!!
I do believe Labour have many more geniuses lined up with other great ideas like David Lammy. I bet not many of you could have managed all the scrutiny under the bright lights of Mastermind! Any Primary schoolchild could have made the same mistakes under pressure – (or ??).
BTW can someone amend Wikipedia to update HenryVIII successor as Henry VII. I just don’t have the time or inclination! /s
25%? It’s only got close to that on one day this week, and was less that 5% on Tuesday.
How much storage would we have needed to get through this week alone with a 100% renewables grid?
650GWh ($195,000,000,000 using batteries) for Tuesday alone, 4TWh ($1,200,000,000,000) for the week, and that’s without any safety margin, and it looks like this could persist into next week.
[ Enter “annoying pedant” mode … ]
There’s no such thing as “the UK grid”, there’s “the island of Great Britain (GB) grid” (operated by ESO) and “the island of Ireland grid” (operated by EirGrid).
I’ll assume you’re talking about the GB grid here.
[ Exit “annoying pedant” mode … as much as that is possible in my case … ]
.
Attached is a graph extracted from my “daily accumulators” spreadsheet.
I agree with “Idle Eric” …
PS : See also my reply to “MrGrimNasty” (who was replying to “Rod Evans”) 3 or 4 (top-level) posts above this one.
On the bright side (for Ed) an awful lot of cheap, lightly used windmills could be on the second-hand market from January.
If Miliband wants sustainable green energy he needs to get building big nuclear fast and not wait for modular reactors. Stop wasting money on wind and solar and get fracking and drilling and mining, while encouraging the market to find cheaper technologies before fossil fuels run out… whenever that is. The earth isn’t dying, it never was….come clean about that.
For that to happen, Ed Miliband would have to admit that he was wrong about renewable energy. That is never going to happen. The only solution is for Keir Starmer to perform one of his famous U-turns and sack Miliband.
That would be a good idea , I remember when Milliband passed the Climate Change Act in late October , it snowed in London which is very unusual at that time of year, it’s as if the gods wanted to remind him who is boss
Reality never visits itself on these people.
Starmer seems to be every bit as committed to Net Zero as Mad Ed, he’s already brought the phase-out for ICE cars forward to 2030, perhaps more significantly, the only thing he really seems to be interested in is international agreements, so the fact that we’ve committed to Net Zero means he’s committed too.
The only hope is Starmer gets ousted for someone else, and Mad Ed follows him out the door, to be replaced by someone with the ability to do simple maths.
Right now in the UK we have this:
gas 55% of supply, 18.6 GW
wind 5% of supply, 1.65 GW (from about 30 GW installed)
total demand is 34 GW
Some biomass, some nuclear (14%), some interconnect. A bit of solar, 3%, which will vanish at 4 pm.
So imagine its 2030, weekday at 4pm, January. Total demand is now 50 GW. Wind, now that Ed has got it up to 90 GW, is doing 5 GW. Be optimistic, maybe its doing 10 GW. Its dark, there is no solar. Its cold, around 2 C. The heating and the stoves and the EV charging are being turned on.
Gas has been turned off as it reached end of life, nuclear was decommissioned in 2027/8. The country has demand at least 30 GW over generation.
Its a nationwide blackout. What other possibility is there?
http://www.gridwatch.co.uk
Pricing will be less determined by gas because falling CCGT capacity means that all gas will already be in use on less windy days. Prices will instead be set by what is needed to secure supply via interconnectors or to price out demand, forcing it offline. That is why Time of Use tariffs and metering are being imposed. We have already seen markets operating in this mode during the energy crisis. It is a convenient fiction to blame the result on gas prices.
Futures gas prices show the effect of anticipated increases in global LNG supply, with prices for 2031 (~55p/therm for NBP) being about half of the current prices for this winter. However, when the UK depends on imported power the price will depend on costs at the other end of the interconnectors or the prices at which they are prepared to curtail demand to supply the interconnectors.
The other side of the coin is that when it is windy there will be larger and larger curtailed surpluses, and spot prices will be low or negative. That just means that subsidies will be bigger, and that there will be side payments on a grand scale for ancillary services to try to keep the grid stable. Again pricing will not be set by gas.
It will not be set by the price of gas per se, but by the operators. They need to recoup their capex as well as their fuel costs. The more wind there is, the less in theory they will be used, but the size of the plant to step in remains the same, so total capex remains the same. So prices must be increased to recover capex on a smaller amount of power. IOW, the more wind there is, the higher the price of gas must go, so prices go up.
The NESO runs with a Capacity Market which supposedly provides the income for dispatchable plant to keep maintained and available, paid regardless of how often they are dispatched. Compare ERCOT, which is an energy only market, with no capacity payments. The price offered into the market for gas based generation is thus largely based on fuel cost plus green taxes, unless they are able to shadow price because all gas capacity is called on and prices are set by a more costly source or demand destruction. Sometimes they will get paid to generate to provide ancillary services – particularly inertia and short circuit current. The problem we face is that there has been underprocurement of dispatchable capacity, so we will be seeing more frequent cases of domestic market shortage.
In the same way, wind and solar have to earn their keep. That is done by subsidising them, either via a guaranteed fixed (inflation indexed) price for CFDs and FiTs, or with an inflation indexed subsidy per MWh generated (ROCs). Those on the highest subsidies have no incentive to curtail unless their subsidy is reimbursed. The ones on the lowest subsidies (and thus cheapest to run) get to be first to curtail because they need less palm grease. More recent CFDs have clauses that offer no compensation at all if the day ahead price goes negative, so these operations will become first in line to curtail as capacity increases. Moreover, the volume of curtailment will start increasing rapidly as more capacity is added. At the same time, the CFDs prevent participating in any upside when supply is tight – when in any case output is likely to be low, being the reason for the supply tightness. The financial performance of these newer operations is likely to be very disappointing under the current regime. Many have tried to delay commencing their CFDs as long as they can under the contract in order to take market prices that tend to offer a better average outcome compared with their foolishly low bid prices on their CFD.
The growth in curtailment means that renewables will get to be very costly, and require lots of extra subsidy if they are to survive.
It doesnot add up,
we need gas, it is the only source of demand and load balancing, (which must be done on an instantaneous basis) we have. You cannot keep a grid operational without something to keep it in balance. None of the other inputs have the capability or capacity necessary.
This simple fact seems to have been forgotten.
Pricing will be less determined by gas because falling CCGT capacity means that all gas will already be in use on less windy days. Prices will instead be set by what is needed to secure supply via interconnectors or to price out demand, forcing it offline. That is why Time of Use tariffs and metering are being imposed. We have already seen markets operating in this mode during the energy crisis. It is a convenient fiction to blame the result on gas prices.
Futures gas prices show the effect of anticipated increases in global LNG supply, with prices for 2031 (~55p/therm for NBP) being about half of the current prices for this winter. However, when the UK depends on imported power the price will depend on costs at the other end of the interconnectors or the prices at which they are prepared to curtail demand to supply the interconnectors.
The other side of the coin is that when it is windy there will be larger and larger curtailed surpluses, and spot prices will be low or negative. That just means that subsidies will be bigger, and that there will be side payments on a grand scale for ancillary services to try to keep the grid stable. Again pricing will not be set by gas.
Not sure why the post got duplicated.
Claiming there will be a £300 reduction in a far future bill is amongst the sleaziest rhetorical tricks being pulled. There is no way to know if a bill in 2030 is £300 less than it would have been. It could be £3000 more and they could still claim victory, “Because it isn’t £3300”.
And if they do feel a moral obligation to visibly knock £300 off our bill, they can just pay a portion of it out of general taxation and (more likely) borrowing, and say “Look! £300 off.”
They probably won’t do that though. If my 2030 bill goes down by £300 in 2024 terms it will most likely be as a result of reduced consumption owing to
demand managementrationing/blackouts.Or reinstate the Winter Fuel Allowance and ‘bingo’ , you have reduced the winter fuel bill for pensioners by £200.
This and Donald Trumps election reminds me of the Scottish independence fiasco back in 2014.
Alex Salmond was insistent that Scotland could afford independence because oil was $100 a barrel and the trajectory was only upward.
The independence lunge failed as clear thinking Scot’s understood it was a busted flush and voted to remain in union with the rest of the UK.
Almost immediately afterward the price of a barrel of oil crashed to $30 and, if i recall correctly, the oil companies couldn’t give the stuff away.
With Trump back as POTUS and willing to ‘drill baby drill’ we are likely to see the O&G price fall which, I believe, will make wind and solar simply way to expensive for any rational nation to even consider.
Dr. John Constable of the GWPF (Global Warming Policy Foundation) predicted around 3 years ago that within 5 – 10 years there wouldn’t be a functional wind turbine left anywhere in the UK.
Yes the price in $ short delivery went negative as the tankers got filled 100% and there was nowhere for the oil to go. If you could find an empty tanker it could name its price to take on the oil and then just sit there.
That happened to the WTI price at Cushing and Midland, where the tankage and export pipeline capacities are constraints. It didn’t happen to Brent prices because there are enough ships to take it away – and in any event the low prices encouraged shut-ins for maintenance. Those caught were laregely financial speculators who had no capacity to take oil delivery and use it, so had to sell out futures positions. Any still caught long would have had enormous costs of having to put up collateral for full value including potential losses, if they had to pay a producer to shut in and they would have been beholden to whoever had rights to mainly Texaco storage. Having no expertise in trading physical oil rather than futures would have made them even more vulnerable to high costs.
How nonsensical. Thanks goodness for Brexit.
Corrigenda,
Brexit hasn’t happened. Yet?
The 2023 electricity prices… no m ore need be said.
It is worse than it seems. GB News checked with Companies house to find the “Controlling person” on the board of NESO. Turns out that person is Ed Milliband himself. Conflict of interest does not come close to covering this fraud.
A realistic view of the costs for Australia to hit the Nut Zero nirvana of the Labor Government
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRhNOv1Uo4M
Gerard Holland lays out the staggering cost of renewable energy at ARC Australia
Another fly in the ointment for Ed Miliband which he is probably as unaware of, as he is of most things, is that the offshore wind manufacturers are having a torrid time at the moment.
In August Equinor pulled out of its offshore projects in Spain and Portugal having previously exited Vietnam and also said it was considering exiting other markets. It told Reuters “It’s getting more and more expensive and we think things are going to take more time in quite a few markets around the world”
https://www.offshore.wind.biz/2024/08/29/equinor-axes-offshore-wind-plans-in-spain-and-portugal-weighs-further-market-exits/
Then in OctoberGE Vernova announced changes in “our Offshore wind business globally”. 900 jobs were at risk. “The proposal reflects wide challenges for wind and aims to transform our offshore wind business into a smaller, leaner and more profitable business”
“With this move the company aims to return its offshore wind business to profitability”
They also noted “That many of the issues were industry wide and that their competitors were facing similar challenges”
https://www.offshore.wind.biz/2024/10/02-ge-vernova-slimming-down-offshore-wind-business-move-could-impact-900-employees/
Not one red number, no red flag, quite sad really. I always look for the counter argument on here but it seems there isn’t one sole solitary redeeming feature of Ed Milliband’s folly. But then again the writing was on the (stone) wall.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32580534
We in UK were lucky that the past days of dunkelflaute happened when these islands were unusually warm for early November.
We are now expecting a cold snap next week, with daytime temperatures halved and nights around freezing, and with a ‘gentle breeze’ 21-24/11. Wish us luck!