From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
I missed OFGEM’s publication of the annual Feed in Tariff costs back in December:
FITs are one of the items not included by the OBR in its table of Environmental Levies, even though they used to be until a few years ago and plainly meet the same definition applied to other renewable subsidies – costs imposed by government on energy bills.
We had solar panels installed in 2011 with a 30 year FIT fixed contract. Over the past 15 years new FIT contracts have become significantly less lucrative than ours. Truth be told had it not been for the FIT we wouldn’t have had the panels installed.
Yes but the prices you paid for the equipment have dropped significantly. Using 2nd hand equipment discarded by upgraders and my own labour counting as free I have built a system with a 5 year payback and nil export payments, as I have no MCS cert. But if those morons had not sent the electricity prices so high in the first place plus the increased risk of brownouts then I would not have bothered.
I totally agree with you.
Warren Buffet says the only reason to invest in windmills is for the taxpayers subsidies that make it profitable.
Without taxpayer subsidies and special privileges, windmills and solar would go out of business.
Windmills and solar are the reason prices have gone higher.
There were no blackout warning on the electrical grid before windmills and solar were added. Today, there are grid blackout warnings every winter and summer. That’s because windmills and solar are unreliable. Fatally so, in very extreme weather.
There is a reason why they are trying so hard to sell you Solar and Wind as cheap and great.
Because they are shit AND they absolutely know it.
If renewables were the superhot chick they pretend to be they’d be flying of the shelves on their own as there is always high demand for great stuff,
but they actually are the ugly fat chick whose daddy has to advertise her like crazy on top of a massive dowry to somehow get rid of her.
Indeed. Look at what happens when the subsidies approach a chance of lapsing for wind and solar (they never do). The amount of whining is astounding. It becomes the “end of the world as we know it.” (h/t to REM).
JohnC’s description is how of subsidies for new technology are supposed to operate.
1. earliest adopters get a sweet deal
then, IF the subsidized thing turns out to be a good idea
2 later adopters get a good-enough deal
or, IF the subsidized thing turns out to be a bad idea
3 earliest adopters ride it out with a happy little gain and everyone else is safely offboard
Ed Miliband says…
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Story tip – That clean green utopia
Ed Miliband accused of ‘covering up’ evidence Labour’s Net Zero plans will increase electricity bills
There will never be Net Zero in the UK because it has long cold winters. Agriculture will never be Net Zero. The heavy industries and the heavy transportation systems will never be Net Zero.
Humans in the UK exhale about 70 million kgs of CO2 everyday. To this should be added the CO2 exhaled by all the domestic animals ranging from cattle to canaries.
Is there any heavy industries left in the UK?
There will not only be Net Zero,
ABSOLUTE ZERO is the actual goal and name of a strategic paper of Englands top Universities, to be reached by 2050(including end of air travel(phasing out just started) and red meat).
And there’ll be always heavy industry for war – especially after UK’s 100year contract with Ukraine.
For other who don’t watch tv news:
“The UK and Ukraine signed a “100-Year Partnership” agreement on January 16, 2025, aimed at strengthening long-term military, economic, and cultural ties. This non-legally binding pact pledges to deepen defense collaboration—including joint manufacturing and maritime security—and supports Ukraine’s future NATO accession, providing a framework for cooperation lasting over a century.”
The words that jump out at me are: “non-legally binding” and “maritime security”
Why TF does England care about the Black Sea?
Why TF does Ukraine care about the North Sea?
Maybe “maritime security” means – “Okay we don’t want any of our people shot at, but we’ll send you a big metal boat.”
More likely the whole treaty is a bunch of pretty-looking words that makes the higher tech nation feel better about selling army tools to the lower tech nation.
Also: The word ‘framework’ is achieving legendary status for making handwaving arguments seem like well managed agreements.
Never is a long time.
e.g. if CO2 percentage were to increase .001% per year for 100,000 years, oxygen breathers would suffocate.
Did you forget to mention that plants also release CO2 during the night?
Whilst it takes aproximately 40 square metres of leaf area to release as much C02 as a single human during the night, on a global scale plants will release significantly more C02, at night, than all animals and humans combined because the leaf area, globally, is so huge.
What surprised me, from an internet search, is that the amount of CO2 released by plants during the night, is several times the amount of C02 released by the burning of fossil fuels by humans, both day and night.
Plant Respiration: Approximately 110–120 billion tonnes of CO₂ annually.
Human Fossil Fuel Burning: Approximately 34–40 billion tonnes of CO₂ annually.
Of course, plants absorb about twice as much CO2 during the day as they release at night, which is why they are a net carbon sink.
I wish I knew what this article was about. It might be useful information. But not useful enough to spend 20 minutes researching what an FIT and an OBR are and how they impact something.
I wish I knew what this article was about.
You could try taking the word subsidy – costs imposed by government on energy bills – and then working it back to the funding – the taxpayer.
FIT – Feed in tariff – a policy mechanism designed to accelerate investment in renewable energy technologies by offering long-term contracts to renewable energy producers. This means promising renewable energy producers an above-market price. Quelle surprise, eh.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) allegedly gives independent and authoritative analysis of the UK’s public finances.
These things are not hard to find out.
Using MS Bing, I did this search: What is FIT for electricity? Search result: Feed-in-Tariff. There was an explanation of the purpose of the FIT.
I first tried: What is FIT? There was no mention about electricity, but much info on many subjects. The first result was about physical fitness.
The term “feed in tariffs” lends itself to humor. 🙂
Every article dealing with feed in tariffs needs a clear explanation in plain English what a feed in tariff is. A strong minority of rate payers and tax payers won’t know what they are and won’t look them up. It is the rate payer and the tax payer that we must convince CAGW is a load of crap. When they realize that the game is up, we win.