Energy: green lunacy

By Richard North - August 29, 2022

It was in October last year that the idiot Johnson took another step towards the final annihilation of anything resembling a coherent energy policy when he boasted that wind farms could power every home by 2030.

It was then that he announced that his administration was raising its target for offshore wind power capacity from 30 to 40 GW, as part of his commitment to the first stage of a 10-point plan for a “green industrial revolution”.

Not content with that lunacy, he was at it again in April this year when he lifted the offshore wind capacity to 50 GW, where it currently stands, all part of his plans to “accelerate our progress towards net zero emissions by 2050”.

Now, nearly five months later, with what’s left of the government’s energy strategy in an advanced state of decay, the Sunday Times has run an article headed “An offshore wind revolution has begun”.

Only a month behind the curve, author Ben Spencer, the paper’s science editor, asked whether this so-called “revolution” can meet the UK’s power needs, featuring the Seagreen wind farm which is just coming into operation.

This is a £3 billion joint venture between TotalEnergies (51 percent) and SSE Renewables (49 percent) and will be Scotland’s largest and the world’s deepest fixed bottom offshore wind farm when complete. The installation comprises 114 Vestas V164-10 MW wind turbines, with a planned capacity of 1.075 GW.

Next summer, Spencer tells us, 80 miles off Yorkshire, Dogger Bank wind farm, the world’s biggest, will be switched on, supporting his assertion that “a revolution is under way”, he says.

Some 42 offshore wind farms are operational, providing 11GW of power. A further 93 are in development or planning, to provide 95GW. The turbines are bigger and more efficient than ever, with each turbine used at Dogger Bank capable of producing 13MW. They will rise 260m above the sea. Each turbine blade is 107m long.

Wrapped up in the spectacle of the technology, though, Spencer – like many hacks before him – fails to do the maths. By mid-August 2022, the UK had 11,198 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of over 25.5 GW: 14.2 GW of onshore capacity and 11.3 GW of offshore capacity.

Yet, despite comprising more than a third of the UK’s installed generation capacity of 75.8 GW, last night wind was producing a mere 1.79 GW accounting for 6.7 percent of total production. This low contribution is by no means unusual and has characterised the last week. The day before yesterday, average production was 4.9 percent.

What these figures do is underline the unavoidable reality that wind generation is inherently unreliable. Even on the basis of global averages, offshore turbines can only deliver load factors averaging 42 percent while, for planning purposes, the national system must be able to cope with zero contribution.

This has profound operational implications. For every GW of wind capacity installed, which makes a contribution to the grid, there must be equivalent backup capacity installed, capable of taking up the slack at very short notice. If the idiot Johnson wants 50 GW of wind, and it is capable of contributing 21 GW to the grid, then we need matching backup of at least that capacity.

As it stands, government aims to eliminate coal-burning electricity generation by October next year, so the only realistic backup capability must come from gas generation. Thus, if Johnson (or his successor) wants an offshore wind fleet of 50 GW, they must provide at least 21GW of new gas capacity.

The best indication of the cost of this provision comes from the latest CCGT plant, currently being built in Teeside, where £900 million buys 1.7 GW of capacity, working out at roughly £529m per GW. On this basis, the additional backup would add £11 billion in capital costs to the wind programme.

But it doesn’t stop there. Helpfully, in July of this year, the National Grid published its investment plans to bring the network to 2039, stating that upgrades costing £54 billion would be required in order to connect 50 GW of offshore wind to the grid.

Taking the offshore build price at £3 billion per GW, this means that Johnson’s vainglorious ambition for 50 GW of offshore wind capacity could end up costing us north of £200 billion. Even Hinkley Point C, at an estimated £26 billion for 3.36 GW, begins to look like good value. To provide the equivalent amount of power would actually be cheaper.

However, there is a slight problem here in that, while nuclear could provide the base load, we need more flexible provision for the variable load. And if gas is ruled out because of the cost and availability, that leaves coal as the main contender – of which the UK resource may amount to 187 billion tonnes.

Already, it has dawned on our idiot government that it might have trouble getting through the winter without coal-fired generation, so it is now negotiating with the electricity producer Uniper to keep all of the operations at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal plant open through the winter.

Deals with Drax and EDF to extend the life of two units each from October to the end of March have already been agreed and additional coal stocks are being sourced.

Under the deals, National Grid is expected to pay the companies fees to delay the decommissioning of the plants – which had to be closed by October 2023 under government orders.

But if you want an illustration of quite how bankrupt energy policy has become, one learns that there is no intention to use these plants except as a very last resort. Yet the “upfront cost” of the series of deals to be “£220-420 million, subject to the procurement and use of the coal”, which must be paid from electricity consumers’ bills.

Thus, on top of all the other costs, we have to find hundreds of millions for facilities that the government hopes won’t be used, their only purpose being to provide backup in the event of another failure of wind to deliver.

Of course, none of these costs are factored into the headline prices of wind power, thus comprising additional hidden subsidies which keep the bloated wind industry in business. It is thus rather appropriate that the idiot Johnson is bleating about not giving up on green energy.

Even though our entire energy policy has been fatally distorted by the insane rush to decarbonise, the prime minister has insulated himself from the consequences of his own folly and is telling us that Britain is in a strong position to tackle the energy crises of the future and can pursue “net zero” at the same time as supporting those struggling with their heating costs.

The big problem is that, no matter what Johnson or his successor does, it will take years to rectify the errors of the past, and put electricity production back on an even keel, even assuming there is the political will to make the necessary corrections, which is by no means evident.

Rarely can there have been a situation in British history, therefore, where we have what amounts to an existential crisis, where the government’s reaction is to do all within its power to make it worse. Yet, despite this. the majority of people – including Tory voters – support energy nationalisation.

Nationalisation is hardly the answer. Until the government begins to realise that increased reliance on renewables is simply a recipe for increasing consumption of gas, there is no hope for us, especially if the government continues to treat the price crisis as a temporary problem and ignores the long-term structural aspects.