Renewable Energy
The pervasive narratives about off-shore wind in recent years have been that costs are falling, and that wind power is cheap. But as I noted in a previous blog, and in my latest article for The Telegraph, things are not quite so rosy as [...]
Earlier this month, the UK Government completed its latest subsidy round for renewable electricity generation - the fifth allocation round ("AR5") for the Contracts for Difference (CfD") scheme. And it has widely been seen as a failure since no off-shore wind projects bid. At [...]
In my latest article for The Telegraph, I revisit the myth that renewable energy is cheap. Predictably, some people have come back at me with “ah but Lazard says renewables ARE the cheapest form of energy – see their levelised cost analysis”. So let’s [...]
There has been a consistent narrative that the cost of building new wind farms is falling, with falling subsidy prices being offered as evidence. I have challenged this narrative in the past, pointing out that evidence from the accounts of windfarms themselves does not [...]
Yesterday the new Chancellor. Jeremy Hunt, issued a new Budget for the UK in his Autumn Statement, reversing most of the policies in the Truss/Kwarteng Growth Plan. The Statement heralds significant tax increases for just about everyone, with several announcements relating to the energy [...]
Over the past few days I have been invited to comment in the mainstream press about the current energy crisis, both in terms of security of supply and high costs. These two legs of the trilemma now dominate the news as people rightly worry [...]
The Californian energy market has been in the news recently: first there was the much heralded announcement that the state had managed to meet 100% of electricity demand with renewable energy sources. This magnificent feat lasted for almost 15 whole minutes mid-afternoon on Saturday [...]
Over the past few months we have been inundated with claims from interested parties that more renewables are the (only) solution to the energy crisis. They also claim that renewable energy is cheap, deflationary, and will deliver lower bills to consumers. They tend to [...]
While Britain has been struggling with unprecedented retail market chaos, there have been unprecedented events of a different sort on the other side of the world in South Australia, which saw negative demand on the transmission system for the first time ever. In fact [...]
The Government has finally announced a review of so-called “green tariffs” to assess whether suppliers are communicating appropriately with consumers, or whether they are engaging in “greenwashing”. According to the Government, 9 million British households are now on green tariffs, with over half of [...]