In any case there's a particular nonsense at the heart of the UK's emission reduction policy as defined by the 2008 Climate Change Act: it applies only to emissions emanating from within the UK. As a result, we're closing GHG emitting activities in Britain in pursuit of Net Zero (and because of high energy prices) and then importing the relevant products from countries that commonly burn coal for electricity generation – thereby increasing global emissions. Of course the same criticism applies to much of the electricity imported from Europe and to the import of the many products - such as computers, mobile phones and solar panels - that we're unable to manufacture ourselves anyway.
An excellent financial analysis of a very complex subject in easy to follow language, only lightly touching on the fatal flaw that current policy is almost certainly going to lead to cascading grid shutdowns (like Spain in April 2025) and rationing (controlled rolling blackouts) due to electricity supply shortfalls, e.g. during cold, dark midwinter Dunkelflautes when power is needed most.
It nicely skewers the vulnerability of relying on international interconnectors, a policy I suspect was largely driven by the petty motivation that the emissions associated with imports, including electricity, don’t go on the UK’s books.
The analysis doesn’t even mention batteries and the inconvenient fact that the storage capacity of the current deployment of batteries is only enough to power the grid for about 10 minutes.
The revelation that the cost of renewable subsidies will substantially exceed the UK’s defence spending in 2030 is particularly striking. Who knew?! Does Burnham?
As the final paragraph points out, it’s long-overdue time for the authorities in charge to give an honest, repeat honest response to analyses such as this.
I'd love to see the renewable zealots walk the walk and power their lifestyles on wind/solar all year without someone else footing the bill (aka subsidies).
I live on a boat with a solar/battery setup. In the winter it's utter shit and I need a generator. And that's with very very lower energy demand - no electric cooking, no electric heating, no dishwasher, no washing machine and a tiny 12v fridge.
I haven’t looked at the underlying calculations as I couldn’t quickly find them on your website Gordon. Will have a proper look when I get back to my laptop! But on the face of it the headline is a bit misleading as the comparison made in the text is to the wholesale price of electricity, not to the total price - which is what you would guess from the headline.
The original article on how the subsidies were defined and calculated is on the REF website. It covers the period to 2023. I had planned to update and extend the figures to 2025 in a revised version by the time this article was published but got caught out by other commitments. I will publish the extended version on both Cloud Wisdom and the REF website as soon as I am able to complete it.
I am not responsible for headlines but all of the text is clear that we compare average total subsidies with the average market prices.
Thanks - that is helpful- will have a look at REF. Not to be too picky- but presumably you could stop them writing a misleading headline if you wanted to. It is your name that the article is attributed to.
Sorry, but what world do you live in? Almost every writer has a story about how sub-editors change headlines and even text. In my experience, writers are rarely told about or asked to approve changes made by sub-editors for either print or online news/opinion publishers. The one case where I was consulted was the Wall Street Journal which published an article in a weekend edition with 1-2 weeks lead time.
That is one of the reasons why Substack is popular with some writers because it gives final control to writers, who are free to make their own mistakes. On balance, (good) editors are well worth their role and I am not prissy about being edited. Still, you have to accept the loss the control.
Fair enough - I don’t know the relationship between you and the Climate Skeptic substack obviously. On another note thanks for the reference to the REF website - it’s a useful source.
This article includes some good points, particularly on the hidden costs of intermittency, the massive capital costs needed to build a grid that can handle distributed and intermittent generation, the increased dependence on energy imports and the impact of high energy prices on the UK’s manufacturing base. There are also relevant points on how the costs of subsidies should be transparently reported and met. Where it has for me less credibility is in its one dimensional rejection of most if not all aspects of the regime. All forms of energy benefit from various government incentives and renewable energy subsidies were designed explicitly to remedy the previously uncosted negative externalities of climate change causing carbon emissions. The speed and scale of the roll out of renewable energy and the carbon reductions achieved is far greater and has happened with far less disruption than originally envisaged and the cost of renewables has been far lower than originally forecast. Describing solar and wind as niche sources of energy is not credible given the scale of their adoption around the world. Describing renewable energy subsidies as a boondoggle and developers as grifters is an insult to the many people I know who work hard to develop high quality projects that reduce carbon emissions. Likewise, blaming the Texas blackouts on renewables is a major deviation from what I understand to be the evidence. I also wonder about the impact of the ETS. While it has pushed up power prices, the auction of permits should have also generated revenue for government. That was omitted from the article. There are also two gaps in the article. First, the article is silent on evaluating the benefits of the CFD regime compared to the ROC scheme, given the different levels of subsidy require to achieve the same goal. Secondly, I don’t follow the claims about why negative power prices are a bad thing. I assume that the authors would like to see lower power prices but I think the article would benefit from a more detailed articulation of why negative prices are a bad thing. This country would benefit from a more balanced debate about renewables rather than clashing polemics, but the lack of balance in this article does not make this more likely to happen.
An article of ~3,000 words cannot cover every issue that one might think is important to a discussion of policies to promote renewable generation. You might read my piece on variability of electricity market prices available on the REF website which discusses variability in general as well as negative prices. The key point about the switch to CfDs was that they were an attempt to control the total cost of subsidies borne by electricity users (noted in our article). That was better than having no limits but doesn't change the fact that the whole exercise is extraordinarily poor value for money - i.e. the very high cost per tCO2 saved.
You object to our use of the terms boondoggle and grifters. I am sure that many of those involved view themselves as engaged in God's work. But that doesn't change the fact that in classic US parlance those terms are commonly used to describe activities which tap the gullible for large amounts of money to produce little or nothing of value (reductions of CO2 emissions at excessive cost). If your friends were really committed to improving the world they should only accept subsidy arrangements that pay no more than, say, £50 per tCO2 for reductions in CO2 over the system as a whole. That is the real test.
Environmental costs of manufacture of batteries and panels. And the environment cost of changing the grid to allow the connection of solar. For starters.
In reply to your comment misplaced on the thread “Please explain why solar power systems are not green”, it seems you really don’t know much about the subject you’re so keen to pontificate about. It shouldn’t be down to me to educate you on such basics, but out of the goodness of my heart:
You seem to think that it is a good thing to deploy expensive, low-ERoEI, weather-dependent wind and solar power systems which are not at all “green” and are not even compatible with how the grid was designed to operate. The reality is that their deployment is a catastrophic mistake which is wrecking our energy infrastructure and economy to no useful purpose.
Your comment also denigrated John Constable’s excellent Renewable Energy Foundation but you seem to have edited that bit out.
There was an interesting comment, I think by Dieter Helm, musing what was the breaking point for our energy plans.
One was the simple inability for people to pay the bills charged including all these vast subsidies. There is already plentiful sign of that. Some may be chancers but the level of arrears is now staggering. Those arrears are added to the bills of others. You are in essence building a reverse ponzi scheme with the last man standing paying everything.
Helm (if it was he) imagined that in the end, the state would have to shove it onto general taxation, but our room for manoeuvre is such, that there is little scope there. You want net zero? Then you can't have your heart operation.....
The comparison of observed CO2 abatement cost relative to the market price of carbon via ETS markets is particularly striking. £400-500/tes for the easy low cost solar and wind is so far above CCC view of expected cost that it makes any CCC view on economic cost/benefit of decarbonisation invalid.
Recall electricity is the “easy” thing to decarbonise- the government is still trying to decarbonise the hard stuff like transport, industry and flight. There even quick estimates come up with carbon abatement costs in the £1000-3000/tes range.
Shedding some real light on these costs matters - too much of conversation is done on emotion and “it’s cheaper” narrative that so far seems patently false.
In any case there's a particular nonsense at the heart of the UK's emission reduction policy as defined by the 2008 Climate Change Act: it applies only to emissions emanating from within the UK. As a result, we're closing GHG emitting activities in Britain in pursuit of Net Zero (and because of high energy prices) and then importing the relevant products from countries that commonly burn coal for electricity generation – thereby increasing global emissions. Of course the same criticism applies to much of the electricity imported from Europe and to the import of the many products - such as computers, mobile phones and solar panels - that we're unable to manufacture ourselves anyway.
An excellent financial analysis of a very complex subject in easy to follow language, only lightly touching on the fatal flaw that current policy is almost certainly going to lead to cascading grid shutdowns (like Spain in April 2025) and rationing (controlled rolling blackouts) due to electricity supply shortfalls, e.g. during cold, dark midwinter Dunkelflautes when power is needed most.
It nicely skewers the vulnerability of relying on international interconnectors, a policy I suspect was largely driven by the petty motivation that the emissions associated with imports, including electricity, don’t go on the UK’s books.
The analysis doesn’t even mention batteries and the inconvenient fact that the storage capacity of the current deployment of batteries is only enough to power the grid for about 10 minutes.
The revelation that the cost of renewable subsidies will substantially exceed the UK’s defence spending in 2030 is particularly striking. Who knew?! Does Burnham?
The calculated reduction in CO2 emissions by renewable generation of 51.6 MtCO2 in 2024 is only 16% of the UK total according to OWID, so nothing to rave about: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=GBR~OWID_WR~OWID_WRL.
As the final paragraph points out, it’s long-overdue time for the authorities in charge to give an honest, repeat honest response to analyses such as this.
I'd love to see the renewable zealots walk the walk and power their lifestyles on wind/solar all year without someone else footing the bill (aka subsidies).
I live on a boat with a solar/battery setup. In the winter it's utter shit and I need a generator. And that's with very very lower energy demand - no electric cooking, no electric heating, no dishwasher, no washing machine and a tiny 12v fridge.
I haven’t looked at the underlying calculations as I couldn’t quickly find them on your website Gordon. Will have a proper look when I get back to my laptop! But on the face of it the headline is a bit misleading as the comparison made in the text is to the wholesale price of electricity, not to the total price - which is what you would guess from the headline.
The original article on how the subsidies were defined and calculated is on the REF website. It covers the period to 2023. I had planned to update and extend the figures to 2025 in a revised version by the time this article was published but got caught out by other commitments. I will publish the extended version on both Cloud Wisdom and the REF website as soon as I am able to complete it.
I am not responsible for headlines but all of the text is clear that we compare average total subsidies with the average market prices.
Thanks - that is helpful- will have a look at REF. Not to be too picky- but presumably you could stop them writing a misleading headline if you wanted to. It is your name that the article is attributed to.
Sorry, but what world do you live in? Almost every writer has a story about how sub-editors change headlines and even text. In my experience, writers are rarely told about or asked to approve changes made by sub-editors for either print or online news/opinion publishers. The one case where I was consulted was the Wall Street Journal which published an article in a weekend edition with 1-2 weeks lead time.
That is one of the reasons why Substack is popular with some writers because it gives final control to writers, who are free to make their own mistakes. On balance, (good) editors are well worth their role and I am not prissy about being edited. Still, you have to accept the loss the control.
Fair enough - I don’t know the relationship between you and the Climate Skeptic substack obviously. On another note thanks for the reference to the REF website - it’s a useful source.
All crazy
How dare they!
Stupidity is to be celebrated as secular religion.
This article includes some good points, particularly on the hidden costs of intermittency, the massive capital costs needed to build a grid that can handle distributed and intermittent generation, the increased dependence on energy imports and the impact of high energy prices on the UK’s manufacturing base. There are also relevant points on how the costs of subsidies should be transparently reported and met. Where it has for me less credibility is in its one dimensional rejection of most if not all aspects of the regime. All forms of energy benefit from various government incentives and renewable energy subsidies were designed explicitly to remedy the previously uncosted negative externalities of climate change causing carbon emissions. The speed and scale of the roll out of renewable energy and the carbon reductions achieved is far greater and has happened with far less disruption than originally envisaged and the cost of renewables has been far lower than originally forecast. Describing solar and wind as niche sources of energy is not credible given the scale of their adoption around the world. Describing renewable energy subsidies as a boondoggle and developers as grifters is an insult to the many people I know who work hard to develop high quality projects that reduce carbon emissions. Likewise, blaming the Texas blackouts on renewables is a major deviation from what I understand to be the evidence. I also wonder about the impact of the ETS. While it has pushed up power prices, the auction of permits should have also generated revenue for government. That was omitted from the article. There are also two gaps in the article. First, the article is silent on evaluating the benefits of the CFD regime compared to the ROC scheme, given the different levels of subsidy require to achieve the same goal. Secondly, I don’t follow the claims about why negative power prices are a bad thing. I assume that the authors would like to see lower power prices but I think the article would benefit from a more detailed articulation of why negative prices are a bad thing. This country would benefit from a more balanced debate about renewables rather than clashing polemics, but the lack of balance in this article does not make this more likely to happen.
An article of ~3,000 words cannot cover every issue that one might think is important to a discussion of policies to promote renewable generation. You might read my piece on variability of electricity market prices available on the REF website which discusses variability in general as well as negative prices. The key point about the switch to CfDs was that they were an attempt to control the total cost of subsidies borne by electricity users (noted in our article). That was better than having no limits but doesn't change the fact that the whole exercise is extraordinarily poor value for money - i.e. the very high cost per tCO2 saved.
You object to our use of the terms boondoggle and grifters. I am sure that many of those involved view themselves as engaged in God's work. But that doesn't change the fact that in classic US parlance those terms are commonly used to describe activities which tap the gullible for large amounts of money to produce little or nothing of value (reductions of CO2 emissions at excessive cost). If your friends were really committed to improving the world they should only accept subsidy arrangements that pay no more than, say, £50 per tCO2 for reductions in CO2 over the system as a whole. That is the real test.
Please explain why solar power systems are not green.
Environmental costs of manufacture of batteries and panels. And the environment cost of changing the grid to allow the connection of solar. For starters.
You seem to be detached from reality in your views about so-called renewables.
Try rebutting my recent post on the engineering impossibility of Net Zero: https://thinkscotland.org/2026/07/revealed-severe-setbacks-to-establishment-net-zero-narrative/.
Try rebutting my post debunking the science of the climate change hoax: https://metatron.substack.com/p/debunking-the-climate-change-hoax.
What is it about what I wrote that you made you think that I am detached from reality?
In reply to your comment misplaced on the thread “Please explain why solar power systems are not green”, it seems you really don’t know much about the subject you’re so keen to pontificate about. It shouldn’t be down to me to educate you on such basics, but out of the goodness of my heart:
Here’s an article I quickly found about solar (and wind) not being green: https://energybadboys.substack.com/p/how-green-wind-and-solar-could-trash
Here’s a good one-page summary of why wind power is unviable: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aa6878980bd4a173b608af89ce87e3290889623de66752e512e11b73b21cfb7f.jpg
Here’s a series of posts by Richard Lyon on the unsustainability of low-ERoEI renewables: https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/chapter-7-forging-a-new-realism
You seem to think that it is a good thing to deploy expensive, low-ERoEI, weather-dependent wind and solar power systems which are not at all “green” and are not even compatible with how the grid was designed to operate. The reality is that their deployment is a catastrophic mistake which is wrecking our energy infrastructure and economy to no useful purpose.
Your comment also denigrated John Constable’s excellent Renewable Energy Foundation but you seem to have edited that bit out.
There was an interesting comment, I think by Dieter Helm, musing what was the breaking point for our energy plans.
One was the simple inability for people to pay the bills charged including all these vast subsidies. There is already plentiful sign of that. Some may be chancers but the level of arrears is now staggering. Those arrears are added to the bills of others. You are in essence building a reverse ponzi scheme with the last man standing paying everything.
Helm (if it was he) imagined that in the end, the state would have to shove it onto general taxation, but our room for manoeuvre is such, that there is little scope there. You want net zero? Then you can't have your heart operation.....
The comparison of observed CO2 abatement cost relative to the market price of carbon via ETS markets is particularly striking. £400-500/tes for the easy low cost solar and wind is so far above CCC view of expected cost that it makes any CCC view on economic cost/benefit of decarbonisation invalid.
Recall electricity is the “easy” thing to decarbonise- the government is still trying to decarbonise the hard stuff like transport, industry and flight. There even quick estimates come up with carbon abatement costs in the £1000-3000/tes range.
Shedding some real light on these costs matters - too much of conversation is done on emotion and “it’s cheaper” narrative that so far seems patently false.