Hornsea: Lies, Lies, And More Lies -- Continued -- June 13, 2020

Have I ever blogged about Hornsea? Yup. From August 16, 2019: lies, lies, and more lies. LOL. So, now an update, from Not A Lot Of People Know That: BBC brags about Hornsea Wind Farm -- but forgets to mention the cost. Lies, lies, and more lies. From the BBC.

In his puff piece for renewable energy today, the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt noted that:

Now the UK has the biggest offshore wind industry in the world, as well as the largest single wind farm, completed off the coast of Yorkshire last year.

Nothing could sum up the moronic obsession with renewable energy better than this statement. There is in fact a good reason why we have the biggest offshore wind industry – we are the only country daft enough to pay the exorbitant bill for it.

The largest wind farm, of course, is Hornsea, a 1200MW project. It may be the biggest, but it also happens to be one of the most expensive sources of electricity in the world.

The contract price for Hornsea is £162.47/MWh, which under CfD is a guaranteed price, which will be index linked for 15 years. In short, a licence to print money.

The current market price for electricity is below £20/MWh, so Hornsea is getting eight times what it would get if it had to trade in the market.

And then this:

Hornsea, by the way, is joint owned by Oersted (formerly DONG) and Global Infrastructure Partners LLP, a global wealth fund. I find it hard to understand how sending hundreds of millions of pounds every year to either of those companies can possibly benefit the UK economy.

Wiki entry here.

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Whatever Happened to Fukushima?

Published 16 Hours Ago By The Economist

From The Economist: blocked by a paywall, but you can see the entire article here. Archived here.

The hoped-for transformation [to renewable energy], however, has been “slow and almost invisible”, Mr Yamada laments.

Renewable generation has grown from 10% of the power supply in 2010 to 17% in 2018, almost half of which comes from old hydropower schemes.

Most nuclear plants, which provided more than a quarter of the country’s power before the disaster, have been shut down, at least for the time being.

But for the most part they have been replaced not by wind turbines and solar panels but by power stations that burn coal and natural gas. The current government wants nuclear plants to provide at least 20% of electricity by 2030. It also wants coal’s share of generation to grow, and has approved plans to build 22 new coal-fired plants over the next five years. The target for renewables, by contrast, is 22-24%, below the current global average, and far lower than in many European countries.