President Trump is in Scotland right now. Before rinsing Keir Starmer to his face at a press conference earlier, POTUS slammed the ugly wind farm visible from his golf course in Aberdeenshire…
Guido has been looking into the wind farm, known as the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre. It only has 11 turbines and was intended as a ‘demonstration’ facility – e.g. a proof-of-concept wind farm designed to be shown off to developers. 2023 is the most recent year for which its financial accounts are published. According to these, the wind farm generated 270,562 MWh, and received £45.2 million in subsidies, and £24.3 million in income from electricity sales. In other words, 65% of its income is from government subsidies, that is, from ordinary payers in their energy bills…
We also know that it received an average price of £256.8/MWh, which compares to average wholesale electricity prices in 2023 of £94.17/MWh. So the hated wind farm slammed by the President is receiving an insane 2.73 times the market price for its output. Trump called the wind farm a “con job.” By Guido’s maths, he’s absolutely right…
UPDATE: Commenting, Harry Wilkinson from GWPF said:
“We’ve been locked into appallingly expensive deals with offshore wind. These are correctly described a ‘con job’, but Miliband is threatening to make things worse with his 2030 clean power plan. Decades ago we were promised that renewable subsidies would not be needed for long and would eventually get prices down. The plan hasn’t worked and we’re still paying through the nose.”
British bill payers have already forked out a staggering £650 million this year just to pay wind farms not to produce electricity when it’s too windy, according to campaign website Wasted Wind. The National Grid can’t cope, so turbines are told to switch off, leaving the public to pick up the tab. That number is only rising…
In 2024, the cost to switch off turbines totalled £1 billion in so-called “constraint payments”. At this rate, 2025 will blow past that – landing at a projected £1.26 billion. That’s a 26% increase…
According to Renewable Energy Foundation, bill payers have also coughed up £102,500 to solar panel farms to switch off this year when there’s been too much sun. Here comes the sun, and I say: “It’s more bills”…
For 13% of last year the taxpayer was paying for wind farms to be switched off. The National Energy System Operator’s annual report shows the grid operator paid £2.7 billion to “balance” the electricity supply and keep the wind farms switched off. This is a record. Miliband is proposing to build far more in the South of England…
Wind farms have long been constructed outside of grid constraints and it is common for them to be “constrained off.” In those cases taxpayers are on the hook twice…
Neso said in its report: “Wind curtailment is currently a major driver of balancing costs. This is because a large proportion of wind capacity in GB is connected in Scotland, which at present is a constrained region of the network.” Those damned high summer winds are also blamed…
Analysis shows that had the UK continued with gas-power systems since 2006 consumers would be approximately £220 billion better off in 2025 currency. Chance would be a fine thing…
It is not only oil and gas projects going out of business. The globe’s largest offshore wind developer Ørsted has today announced it is cancelling all contracts and funding for Hornsea 4, a 2.4GW wind farm project in the North Sea for which it won a UK government contract last year. One of the largest to be in development with 180 plannes turbines – the contract breakaway costs range from £399 and £513 million…
CEO of the Danish renewables champion Rasmus Errboe blames “adverse macroeconomic developments, continued supply chain challenges, and increased execution, market and operational risks have eroded the value creation.” Follows similar decision by Vattenfall to cancel the 1.4GW Norfolk Boreas offshore contract in 2023…
The National Energy System Operator’s November report, which Miliband claimed proved the viability of his Clean-Power-By-2030 plans, specified that among numerous other things his goal requires a sustained rollout of offshore wind at over double the highest rate ever achieved in Great Britain – which means tripling capacity – as well as a tripling of solar power and doubling onshore wind. Good luck…
DESNZ claims today it will “work with Ørsted to get Hornsea 4 back on track” and that it has “a strong pipeline of projects to deliver clean power by 2030.” There will be nerves in the energy department as businesses increasingly struggle to get renewables projects over the line…
Another cold day, another example of Red Ed’s climate crusade proving to be a vanity project the UK can’t afford. Over the last 18 hours, wind farms supplied between 0.1% to 3.7% of the UK’s electricity, while solar hit a low of 0%. Gas has been providing between 59% to 70% of electricity. No surprise that wind and solar farms are effectively useless when it’s a cloudy, windless day…
Meanwhile, due to renewable energy sources not providing enough electricity, UK power prices have jumped to their highest level in more than two years, with the day-ahead price reaching £241.49 per megawatt-hour as the country imports electricity from Europe at record levels. Just a few weeks ago, Britain was on the brink of blackouts because unreliable renewables failed to supply sufficient energy. Yet Miliband is still pushing to reach 95% ‘clean energy’ within five years…
The UK’s electricity grid came worryingly close to blackouts yesterday – just 580 MW shy of the lights going out – in what independent energy consultant Kathryn Porter described as the “tightest day since 2011 or before”. National Grid ESO had to issue its first Electricity Market Notice of the winter, along with a third Capacity Market Notice, though the latter was quickly binned. No surprise that cold weather means more heating and energy…
A sharp drop in wind output combined with limited electricity imports from Europe left the grid scrambling to keep the lights on. Yet Red Ed is still pushing to fast-track planning permission for a wave of new wind farms — despite the inconvenient truth that these turbines have to be switched off when there’s too much wind and the grid can’t handle it. Meanwhile Labour is ploughing ahead with their plan to make wind and solar the backbone of our energy system to hit 95% renewable energy by 2030. Never mind that they’re effectively useless when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”