Reform has pledged to do everything it can to block green energy, but doing so will increase energy prices. Why do they want to do that when there are so many better things to do?
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Why are Reform so keen to increase energy prices in the UK?
To put it another way, why are Reform so keen to destroy the cheapest source of energy creation that we have in the UK?
I ask the question because Richard Tice, who is the deputy leader of Reform in the UK Parliament, has said in the light of English council election successes by that party recently, that he will want to use 'every lever' available to his party to assist those new local councillors to block renewable energy projects in the areas for which they are now responsible, and this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
I'm going to put up a chart of the cost of production of electricity from various types of energy source in the UK at present. And the sources, by the way, to produce this chart came from all over the place and they are bound to be wrong, because these numbers vary by the moment, but they are pretty indicative of the cost per kilowatt hour of producing energy - that is, electricity - from various types of source.
And, as you'll see, onshore wind and offshore wind, coupled with large-scale solar power, are by far the cheapest ways to generate electricity in this country at present.
The only thing that comes close to it is hydropower, which is, of course, only available in certain parts of the country, and in particular, Wales and Scotland, with very little being possible in England.
And after that, we jump up significantly in terms of what electricity costs to produce, to gas, which costs roughly three times onshore wind.
And then there is nuclear power, which costs roughly three times offshore wind.
And we go up even further when we go to things like floating offshore wind and tidal power, but those last two are, of course, at the present point of time in their experimental stage, so of course they're expensive. We'd expect them to come down in cost dramatically, just as have other renewable sources over time.
So, if Richard Tice is desperate to block access to renewable energy in the UK by using every lever that is available to the local authorities that Reform now controls, what he's really doing is trying to put up the price of electricity in the UK. In fact, he's trying to put up the cost of production by roughly threefold on average, which is bound to be passed on to you in the form of the price that you pay for electricity. It cannot be otherwise.
So, there is something clearly very odd here. In rural areas, what Richard Tice is talking about is increasing the cost of energy when, in practice, rural areas should be benefiting from the fact that locally generated electricity should be available cheaply in those areas, as a matter of fact.
And he's also blocking the route to low-priced electricity for powering cars in rural areas, and we all know that rural areas are particularly car-dependent.
When we come to urban areas, what he's talking about is actually doing something quite different. He's trying to, of course, give the car power over communities, power over children, power over cyclists, power over buses and everything else, because he claims there is anti motorist wokery going on, but what he actually means is that he wants to boost the profits of the car companies, of the petrol and diesel companies and to harm local communities as a consequence.
None of this makes any sense, but what is required is a narrative to answer this madness that Reform is putting forward. So what is that?
What is it that Labour, or any other party, let's be blunt about it, could promote that, would provide the alternative strategy that would counter the Reform narrative and actually support local communities?
Well, the first thing to say is that there must be a pro-local energy policy in the UK, the exact opposite of what Richard Tice is proposing.
And this pro-local energy policy would all be about community generation of power in this country.
As a matter of fact, my suggestion is that any local group that applies for planning permission to put up no more than, say, two wind turbines to fuel electricity in their area, should get automatic planning permission to do so within a few months of the application going in. There shouldn't be any long delays. There shouldn't be any rigorous planning process. A couple of wind turbines in an area are not going to cause harm, but they will generate local power for local communities, which local communities should be able to buy at the cost of local production.
It should also be the case that the energy companies who manage the grid network should be required automatically to provide support to these energy systems, so that locally generated power can be logged into the local energy system, so that people can buy it. There should be no excessive charges from the National Grid for carrying locally produced energy over distances of, say, five kilometres, maybe 10 kilometres, until it reaches a consumer. This should not be allowed, so that local energy produced for local people, at local cost, should be provided at local low prices, so that people could benefit.
And there should be a law that says that banks should be required to support these facilities. They should, in other words, be expected to provide low price loans to these facilities on long-term lending so that they can put these arrangements in place for the benefit of local communities, because the biggest cost with regard to local energy production is the upfront cost of installing the couple of wind turbines I'm talking about. Put them in and thereafter the cost, the marginal cost that is, of producing the electricity, is tiny. And on that basis, requiring that banks fund that upfront cost with low-price loans is a prerequisite of successful local energy generation, which is, of course, also a prerequisite of the recovery of local, and particularly rural, economies in the UK.
The government should support this whole activity. It should be looking at ways to fund these programmes, and if banks don't want to be a part of it, I've already suggested, for example, that ISAs should be available to fund this programme, and if not, pension funds.
But the point is, the government has to be proactive here. It has to help local energy sources to become the basis for local energy production, for the benefit of local communities. Do all of this, and what you could end up with is community interest companies owned and managed locally that would deliver for their communities. And they would be delivering something that would absolutely revive their local economies.
This is the way to answer Reform.
Don't try to outcompete them with regard to being anti-green.
Ignore all the woke nonsense, because it is just nonsense.
Come up with something that is easy, clear, and practical, and what I've just suggested is easy, clear, and practical.
We could have this local energy production at low cost for the benefit of local communities, and it could start very quickly if only the legal, rather than the practical obstacles, were removed and banks were required to support this process, which they should do as part of their own license to operate, granted to them by the Bank of England.
It's time for Labour to talk about this.
It's time for the Greens to talk about this.
It's time for the Lib Dems to talk about this.
We need to beat the fascists in the Reform Party on their home territory, which at the moment is in local, rural communities.
Local communities should benefit from the Green Revolution. This is the way that they can.
My thanks to Mike Parr for ideas that informed this video.
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I suspect that
Firstly Reform havnt got a clue
Then there is the issue of Motornormativity applied to other areas as well, we will keep things as they are and see that as the accepted way of doing things.
Clearly renewables break the status quo, everything from a few solar pane.ls on the roof up to some sizeable windfarms funded by individuals/small business/new players in the energy market is – well the new kid on the block. Either Reform – and The Conservatives just dont get it OR they realise that to get funded they need NOT to get it.
Agree with all. As it just so happens: Der Spiegel – Wirtschaft – last weekend. “Strom zum Dorftarif”. The article was wondering why the residents of a smallish place 80km south of Berlin were enjoying elec’ @ 12eurocents/kWh (from a mix of local renewables, including biomass) when the rest of Germany is paying in the range 35 to 41eurocents/kWh. & that 12eurocents is without subsidies.
Regarding the LCEO numbers – one can argue them up or down, makes not a blind bit of difference – they are mostly in the right ball park. Many UK serfs could enjoy elec @ around 15pence/kWh from local renewables. What’s not to like? Does Deform and fart-rage want them to pay top-dollar.
PS: over the past couple of weeks UK elec traders have been making + £3m/day buying cheap in mainland Europe and selling expensive in neo-libtard UK. I guess Starmer and other imbeciles are happy with that (wrod salad emerges from Starmers mouth).
Thanks Mike
And thanks for informing this video
Thanks Mike. Of course we need to expand renewables, not just because it is cheaper but also because it is more sustainable.
But as I understand it the prices paid by consumers of electricity under the UK’s bizarre pricing mechanism would still be set by the most expensive provider necessary to meet demand, without any reference to cost of production. So solar and wind generators are being paid handsomely, as if they were using gas or nuclear.
The government does not seem to be paying any attention to the pricing mechanism. Why? Does any other country do it this way?
That is the other issue we need to address.
Actually, because of the strike price from renewables supply auctions, any money above the strike price goes straight back to the Treasury. This is not the case for other power sources. So There is a 100% tax on ‘excess’ profits from renewables and a 0% tax on any fossil fuels below the market price, with the hapless consumer paying the bill. This is the true scandal.
Agreed
Living in Ireland, I have just checked my last electric bill an the cost of electricity was 33 cents per KWhr.
By the way we do get some power from the UK but it does not go into that detail.
The values for Offshore Wind, Solar and CCGT exactly match the data in this report
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1179359/electricity-generation-costs-2023.pdf
and uses LCOE – levellised costs of electricity.
Previously the government attempted to give us something called enhanced levellised costs of electricity to take into account reliability of supply. I wonder if Mike is aware of the difference in the measures and why the government has moved away from the more complex measure.
Here’s the link to the enhanced levellised cost of electricity for the main contenders – tables 7.1 onwards are the ones
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f450b9be90e07529c25a9c5/electricity-generation-cost-report-2020.pdf
It’s complicated, and as the serious economists have said, this is something probably best left as much as possible to markets with a suitable carbon tax applied.
Oh dear, you mean a neoliberal, market fetishist who has never been near the real world or actually noted how it works when you refer to an economist, I think? Don’t call agin.
Yes, I am aware of how LCOEs are calculated – I regularly do it as part of my job (developing renewables – or trying to). “Discounted cash flows – r – us” .. as it were (that’s how you get to the LCOE that “works” for a given project)..
The UK’s auctions and symmetrical CfDs are the point where those wanting to compete rip lumps out of each other to win the auction (= market). & that’s good. The problem is that the gov’ (and various market religious fanatics) impose another market layer via marginal pricing – & the results are there for all to see – for those that have the capacity/willingness to look. The 1st report from 2020 was written based on the halcyon days of 2019 when for example LCOEs for off-shore wind were circa £45/MWh. Sadly those days have long gone & the gov recognised that time between auction (and LCOEs based on various price assumptions) & build was such as to introduce inflation risks. So changes were made. Off-shore wind is going through a rough patch @ the moment – but if the UK want’s enough elec for all the EVs and heat pumps then absent various nukes owned by e.g. Saudia Arabia (clever!) then perhaps gov’ action (GB Orsted/) is needed.
When people want to raise prices that do not need increasing, the motive is often the same: profit.
The private sector seeks to maximise profits.
The public sector seeks to minimise costs.
Reform UK is funded mainly by oil and gas interests and climate science deniers. The Labour government have been influenced by the hydrogen lobby, which is tied to gas. Despite Trump’s ‘burn baby burn’ ideology in the US, renewables continue to steam ahead there. It’s an unstoppable force because private enterprise knows it makes economic sense. For those sceptical of how solar and wind farms and increased power network pylons will spoil their views of the countryside, it’s worth bearing in mind these aren’t necessarily permanent fixtures in the landscape. They can be as easily dismantled as erected, and are likely to be superceded by yet to be invented, superior forms of clean energy production in the future.
I think that their energy policy probably does make sense, at least to Tice and his cohorts. No doubt he, and his equally rich mates, will see this as an opportunity to further enrich themselves, at a cost to real people.
Richard – This is not just about the cost of electricity as delivered to homes. More importantly it’s about the release of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Wind and solar are so much less polluting over the lifecycle of their technologies that it’s unsurprising that homeowners are being encouraged to replace their gas boilers with heat pumps run on electricity.
Here’s a good table to add to yours:
UK Electricity Generation – Lifecycle CO₂e Emissions by Technology (2024 Estimates)
Technology CO₂e (g/kWh) Notes
Onshore Wind 11–12 Very low emissions; mostly from construction and maintenance.
Offshore Wind 12–14 Slightly higher than onshore due to marine infrastructure.
Floating Offshore Wind 14–20 Early-stage data; slightly higher embodied emissions.
Large-scale Solar PV 37–48 Emissions from manufacturing panels; lower during operation.
Hydropower 1–24 Very low; depends on size and environmental impact of reservoir.
Tidal Power ~17 Still emerging; mostly construction-related emissions.
Biomass 120–230 Wide range; includes transport, combustion, and processing of feedstock.
Natural Gas (CCGT) 375–490 High due to combustion and upstream methane leaks.
Nuclear ~12 Low emissions; includes fuel processing and decommissioning stages.
Every consumer should be given this information when they enquire about the government £7500 grant for replacing their gas boiler.
For readers wanting more information and sources follow this link and ask more questions of ChatGPT. https://chatgpt.com/share/68259242-1348-8002-a37e-dd75abd7df88
This is a particular interest for me as I’m putting together good details to help volunteers and professionals run local Energy Cafes in the Bath/Bristol area. Here, homeowners can come to discuss how to reduce their energy usage & costs, their carbon footprint (CO2e) and to to be warmer.
Thanks
Mr Wood, I agree with you ref the CO2 footprint of wind etc.
My main interest is motivating people to develop community energy systems. I have found that speaking to their pockets (low cost elec – halve you bill) tends to work. Some people will also be motivated by the CO2 footprint, but this is likely to be a subset of the main motivator: money. I am perfectly happy to be proved wrong in this.
All that said, ultimately, launching any project has to be based on a business case & the main USP for renewables is their much lower cost when generating locally compared to other forms of generation. In this respect (the business case), the CO2 footprint is largely irrelevant.
Last comment: the UK is not a sunny place in winter (doh!!). It is a windy place. The best you can hope for, from a PV & batt scheme is perhaps 65% energy independence (households). To get to 80% or 90% elec into a community you need other RES, ideally wind, maybe hydro, possibly biogas. I can see wha PV is attactive (cheap & easy) but is only gets a community part of the way there and, most importantly, if that community starts installing heat pumps, then, for the reasons given, PV is incapable of delivering energy when needed (= winter). A total system approach is needed.
Mike – agreed re cost saving as the driver for many homeowners’ decision making. It’s the big obstacle for attempting to convert from gas boilers to heat pumps when there’s only a £7.5k grant. In my case the installation would total ~£20k for a Victorian house – and I’m far from alone, here in ‘beautiful’ Bath.
So we need another way to incentivise heat pump uptake. Why not have a fully funded government grant with nothing to pay upfront, but the capital + a low interest loan to be fully repaid on the sale of the house and not before?
And still people will not put two and two together and realise that Reform are no different from the Tories and LINO. They are there to serve their sponsors. The democratisation of power generation is an existential threat to the choke point capitalism of the energy industry. Not everyone can build a gas powered plant or nuclear reactor, but communities can afford solar and wind. And is Tice really going to block the clean energy schemes that will bring jobs to Lincolnshire? Good luck dying on that hill.
Planning reform should allow solar panels and domestic generation more generally, including in urban conservation areas – protecting the future is more important than protecting the past.
Government grants should generally make this more affordable, or loans at least, perhaps with guarantees that loan repayments will never be more than the amount calculated as saved by the panels.
After that, support local schemes as outlined.
The premise would be pitched as 2 main things – helping with the cost of living crisis faced by many, while also getting to energy security through eliminating dependence on foreign sources.
That it is greener and protects the environment is the part that many are skeptical about, particular when some supposedly green groups decry local development. It is important for our future, but the pitch to those who are not already convinced has to be about things they accept as beneficial.
My previous home was in both a National Park, and in a Conservation area – I asked Peak Park planning department if I could put solar panels on my roof – the reply was that they could not stop me, but they were not keen. I went ahead, and once installed, they were barely visible from the other side of the Dale, and no-one could actually see that part of the roof from either the lane or neighbouring properties. My house was south facing and above the tree line, and being a fairly remote hill village with little over 100 dwellings, we had no gas – so relied on electric, coal and/or wood fires (including back burners) oil, Calor or LPG. I researched the panels and had panels (Japanese) that ‘worked’ in sun, moon, & cloud although full sun was best. I did pay a lot for the panels, from memory £12000 or £14000, as this was quite a few years ago and prices have considerably reduced since then, but consequently I received the highest ‘feed in tariff’ inflation linked – the savings were amazing and I then relied solely on electricity. Slowly others in the village followed once I had proved their effectiveness.
On a trip by car through France, I sat in the amongst some wind turbines, and found the ‘swoosh’ sound very soothing. I have the copyright of this book, so I quote ” In the late 1940s there were the first rumblings of future energy shortage. I therefore made some experiments with generating electric power from wind, installing at my Sheffield house, in an exposed moorland situation, a 10 kW unit. The Yorkshire Electricity Board courageously allowed this to operate in parallel with their system, perhaps the first time this had been done in the UK. I persuaded my brother Tom to design and construct a unit based on helicopter blade technology. After personally overcoming many harsh physical working conditions of cold and gale, he commissioned for the North of Scotland Hydro Board a 100 kW wind generator at Costa Head in Orkney”. This extract goes on to state ” — it did achieve its rated output, and it rode out, without damage, a storm of hurricane violence, with wind speeds over 120 mph —– Much was learnt but it was too soon and at the time there seemed to be a never-ending supply of cheap oil.” This was 70 or more years ago – what progress has been made since? For the record, Tom designed this wind turbine based on the Vienna giant Ferris wheel – his model was donated to Imperial College (London), where he studied.
Incredible!
Thank you.
thank you – so I will quote a little more – written around 40 years ago “Electricity generation, particularly nuclear, and in due course, wind and tidal, calls for a means to smooth out peaks of supply and demand. This can be done by pumping water into an upper reservoir. Boving-Markham have built such schemes, at Cruachan, and Loch Ness, for example. In 1975 Markham received its largest order ever, for pump turbines for the Welsh Dinorwic scheme. This generates 1,860 M>W., that is two and a half million hp, within 15 sec.”
Reform are a joke.
They are just another political party with their rich sympathisers/funders’ hands up their behinds. Too many people do not see this unfortunately that the same sort of people who are shafting them are behind Reform too and that Farage should actually be called ‘mirage’.
It’s a good line of attack that you suggest.
My late husband had a pamphlet fron c. 1905, instructing rural communities how to build the kit and produce their own electricity cheaply. It was obviously a popular way to go at the time, when electrification had not reached many country areas and would be expensive when it did. Parallels?
Alas I sold the pamphlet.
Thank you for writing this Richard.
An invaluable tool in my campaign (steadfastly supported by Mike) to have (approx half price) Community Energy become the norm throughout the country.
Based on your post and previous comments from Mike Parr, I am unclear if the priority is such local action.
There seems to be a key structural problem that pricing is based on the cost of generation by Gas, and regional pricing based on distance from London? I think that this has resulted in Scottish users paying more than those living in London?
However the regional variation is small compared to the disparity in price between the average cost of generation and the price based on gas. Mike also highlighted that it is more profitable to play games on interconnect pricing (trading!) than generation of electricity — because of the distortions in the price able to be charged and the price of generation / interconnect.
I am suspicious about requiring the grid to connect up many small scale generators set up by individuals / locals. That could be costly as well as time consuming when engineering solutions to adapt / upgrade the grid and large storage facilities might be more beneficial.
Whilst your suggestion of small scale, local action and delivering lower cost to rural users is appealing, my gut feeling is that market distortion / structural issues in pricing and regulation and larger scale grid adaptation might be more suited to benefit a larger number of people in the country.
I’d like to see the numbers though.
Both can be tackled at once.
The connections to the National Grid are usually reserved for large power generation projects and interlinks such as the Viking Link connection, Hinckley Point Connection and the Channel Tunnel Interlink. The relatively smaller projects tend to be connected to the DNOs on the 33kV network. So the tiered structure for connections is already there, notwithstanding the current delays for new connections.
Mr ExTeacher:
“I am suspicious about requiring the grid to connect up many small scale generators set up by individuals / locals. That could be costly as well as time consuming when engineering solutions to adapt / upgrade the grid and large storage facilities might be more beneficial.”
Fair comment. We need to distingiush between individual actions (which will have a cummulative impact on power networks and could lead to additional costs) and collective action that takes the form of a community energy scheme aimed at replacing electricity from somewhere else with locally generated electricity which by definition has no impact on local networks (and QED none on remote networks – ignoring for a moment fault level considerations). The network operators often argue otherwise, but this is self-serving nonsense aimed at increasing their asset base & thus revenues. What is very clear is that “how to deliver low carbon elec to the Uk” splits into two broad actions: First, large-scale generation e.g. big wind farms on & off shore, nukes (if you must) delivering elec to cities. Second, community energy delivering to small communities from 80 to 8000 households. Takijg such an approach minimises the “build big generation” & costly transmission work, whilst delivering to those living in small communites low cost elec.
Richard Tice should take a visit to Durham and visit the Freemans Reach Hydro Generator just near the passport office on the River Wear. It is one of the first city centre hydro schemes installed in 2015. It is an Archimedes screw powering. 100kW generator.
No doubt he would have something auspicious to say!
Any thoughts on the idea of zonal pricing which Octopus CEO said would give Scotland far lower costs but SSE I think is against it.
I have no problem with zonal pricing – but it is a deliberate distraction to stop the fundamental problem of over-pricing out of the limelight. I do not trust their motives.
100kW is the power required by about 70 people, or about 200 people if we only count electrical power. You will need a lot of them to make a dent in the requirements of the city of Durham.The UK really needs to look at repealing the ban on new hydro in national parks and landscapes, or there isn’t an emergency Ed.
Bath & West Community Energy is a not-for-profit community enterprise established in 2010 to build renewable energy generating projects such as rooftop solar schemes and ground mounted solar arrays (solar farms).
They are high profile and successful https://www.bwce.coop/invest/ and they invest profits in local projects https://www.bathnes.gov.uk/node/90957
MD Peter Capener recently gave evidence to the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee and the problems facing community energy generating businesses- https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/385f3145-34be-4b28-be16-ca07fe44020f
Thanks
It always perplexes me when people quote a cost for nuclear energy. All the spent fuel rods from decommissioned reactors are stored in concrete ponds at Sellafield. A start has been made in grinding them up, encasing them in glass, and storing them in steel cannisters. No progress has yet been made in creating the secure underground facility where they can be looked after for the thousands of years some of them will take until they have decayed to a safe level. Put a cost on that?
In Wales, Reform are tapping into the very real fears of people about the huge wind farms proposed by big corporations which, along with their sub/stations and long lines of huge pylons, will industrialise our landscape. Landowners are being taken to court for refusing access to these companies’ surveyors. If only we had the choice to pursue the community energy route you suggest. All the power generated in Wales will go to England.
Yup. However, I (& my business partner) have a cunning plan. No need for more power lines to carry elec to distant cities…….when you have a railway line nearby. I can’t say more at this point. I can note, that one of the developers wants to build a privaet 132kV line to carry power from a vastly expanded, existing wind farm. Begging the question: why doesn’t the gov demand that communities local to the wind farm have an equity stake? If I was a landowner, I would most definitely set the dogs on the surveyors (gives the surveyors much needed exercise and its fun for the dogs………..aw he’s a big softy really, …..down!! Stalin – stop trying to bite the nice mans head off etc).
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