Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Reabold Resources (a UK-listed oil & gas investment company) has just received an Environment Agency licence to carry out limited (“gentle”) fracking and well workover at the West Newton A site near Hull. The field is one of the largest onshore gas discoveries in Britain in recent decades, with estimated resources of up to 8 billion cubic metres of gas — theoretically enough to meet roughly a tenth of the UK’s annual gas demand if extracted all at once (though real-world recovery rates and production profiles mean the actual contribution would be spread over years and smaller).
Reabold Resources (a UK-listed oil & gas investment company) has just received an Environment Agency licence to carry out limited (“gentle”) fracking and well workover at the West Newton A site near Hull.
The field is one of the largest onshore gas discoveries in Britain in recent decadesReabold Resources (a UK-listed oil & gas investment company) has just received an Environment Agency licence to carry out limited (“gentle”) fracking and well workover at the West Newton A site near Hull.
The field is one of the largest onshore gas discoveries in Britain in recent decades, with estimated resources of up to 8 billion cubic metres of gas — theoretically enough to meet roughly a tenth of the UK’s annual gas demand if extracted all at once (though real-world recovery rates and production profiles mean the actual contribution would be spread over years and smaller).
Instead of immediately piping the gas into the national grid, Reabold is exploring a pilot project: build a small on-site gas-fired power station using the initial flows of gas after the upcoming workover. That electricity would power a Bitcoin mining data centre.
Bitcoin mining is being positioned as a quick-revenue, flexible first step — not the permanent, exclusive fate of the entire field.
Giant Yorkshire Gas Field ‘To Mine Bitcoin Instead of Boosting British Energy’
Reabold Resources plans to build data centre powered by West Newton field near Hull
A giant new natural gas field in Yorkshire is to be exploited for mining Bitcoin rather than boosting Britain’s energy supplies. The Telegraph has the story.
Reabold Resources has been awarded a licence to carry out “gentle” fracking in the West Newton field near Hull, which is estimated to contain up to eight billion cubic metres of gas.
That would be enough to meet more than a tenth of the UK’s annual needs and makes it one of the largest onshore fields discovered in Britain, with the potential to bolster energy security for years to come.
However, Reabold instead plans to construct a small gas-fired power station on the site and use the energy produced to “mine” Bitcoin.
“A private gas supply means we can run a data centre to mine Bitcoin relatively cheaply,” said Sachin Oza, the co-chief executive of Reabold Resources, which has just been given a drilling licence by the Environment Agency.
“Initially, this would help fund the further development of the gas field and prove the concept – meaning it could become the precursor to a far larger data centre.”
The scheme has angered environmental groups opposed to new gas fields and fracking in particular.
It is also likely to raise questions in the Government after the war in Iran prompted fears of fuel shortages in the UK.
Bitcoin mining is one of the most energy-intensive of all digital activities. A power station would need to burn around 150,000 cubic metres of gas – the volume of 50 Olympic swimming pools – to generate the electricity needed to create one Bitcoin.
Reabold’s West Newton gas field is so large that it could theoretically power the creation of 50,000 Bitcoins.
Alternatively, it could help provide gas for the whole of the UK. The drilling site lies within a couple of miles of National Gas’s transmission pipeline and so could easily be connected.
Lorraine Inglis, a leader of an anti-fracking campaign group in southern England, said: “The West Newton permit exposes everything that is wrong with the UK’s current approach to energy and climate. A new onshore gas field in 2026 is fundamentally at odds with our climate commitments.
“Using that gas to power Bitcoin mining is not energy security or any genuine public benefit but the deliberate burning of fossil fuels for one of the most energy-intensive and socially questionable activities at a time of high bills and missed climate targets.”
Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, imposed a ban on full-scale fracking last year. The process involves injecting high-pressure water laden with chemicals into rock to create cracks through which gas can flow.
The ban emerged after a fracking operation near Blackpool generated a series of minor earthquakes.
Europe is now pivoting—lifetime extensions, SMR funding, and treating nuclear on par with renewables in policy. Retaining existing plants would have delivered cheaper, cleaner, more secure energy during the transition. The blunder cost billions, extra emissions, and competitiveness; learning from it means pragmatic technology-neutral policy, not picking losers.
Europe’s nuclear phase-out policies, spearheaded by Germany’s Energiewende and echoed in Belgium and others, remain a documented blunder even into 2026.
Recent admissions from top EU leaders, updated emissions analyses, and persistent economic fallout confirm it: ditching reliable, low-carbon baseload power for intermittents and fossils raised costs, increased short-term emissions, eroded energy security, and slowed decarbonization relative to what a pragmatic mix could have achieved.
Latest 2025-2026 data on Germany’s phase-out (post-2023 shutdown)Germany’s last reactors went offline in April 2023.
By 2025–early 2026:
Emissions impact: The phase-out caused 730–800 TWh of lost nuclear output since ~2011–2025. This was mostly replaced by coal, lignite, gas, and imports—adding ~730 million tonnes of extra CO₂ cumulatively (through 2025 estimates). At 2025 EU ETS prices (€78/t), that’s €57 billion in social/environmental costs alone (€1,390 per German household). A 2026 study pegs potential CO₂ savings from retained nuclear (2015–2024) at 609 Mt if it had displaced fossils directly. 2025 power-sector CO₂ emissions stayed flat (~160 Mt) despite renewables growth—nuclear’s absence kept fossils in the mix longer. anthropoceneinstitute.com
Prices and competitiveness: Wholesale electricity averaged €86–89/MWh in 2025 (up ~11% from 2024). Analyses (PwC, others) show prices would have been ~23% lower (€18/MWh savings) with the pre-phase-out nuclear fleet. Germany still faces Europe’s highest industrial/household rates; the French-German wholesale spread hit €22–30/MWh in 2025–2026 contracts. High prices contributed to industrial slowdowns and recession risks—Merz called the energy transition “the most expensive in the world.” foronuclear.org
Renewables vs. reality: Renewables hit 58–60% of generation in 2025 (strong solar/wind growth), but intermittency + grid bottlenecks forced curtailments (13 TWh) and fossil backups. Net generation fell; coal/lignite/gas still covered gaps. No seamless “renewables-only” transition materialized without economic pain. energy-charts.info
Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU, post-2025 election) and his energy minister labeled the phase-out a “huge mistake”—explicitly citing lost 20 GW of affordable, CO₂-free power and added reliance on gas/imports. They rule out restarting closed plants but push SMRs for the future. Decommissioning continues, but the political narrative has flipped.
Broader European shift: explicit regret in 2026
Ursula von der Leyen (March 10, 2026): At the Nuclear Energy Summit in Paris, the Commission President declared reducing Europe’s nuclear share (from ~33% in 1990 to ~15% today) a “strategic mistake.” She called nuclear a “reliable, affordable source of low-emissions power” Europe turned its back on—directly referencing the policy choice. New actions: €200 million guarantee for SMR investments (from ETS revenues), EU SMR strategy targeting first units by early 2030s, and updated Nuclear Illustrative Programme (PINC) calling for €241 billion in nuclear investments by 2050. reuters.com
Belgium reversal: Fully repealed its 2003 phase-out law in 2025 (Bihet Law). Extended Doel 4/Tihange 3 to 2035 (with further talks to 2045); aims for +4 GW new nuclear capacity. Older units decommissioned, but the pivot is clear—industry is now lobbying to reopen recently closed plants. reuters.com
EU-wide: Nuclear Alliance (France, Poland, etc.) is expanding. Von der Leyen highlighted vulnerability exposed by global events (energy crunch, Iran tensions). France’s nuclear-heavy mix keeps its prices ~€20–30/MWh lower than Germany’s.
Pro-phase-out arguments emphasize renewables scalability, safety fears, and waste. Renewables did expand, and nuclear has its challenges (high upfront capital, regulatory delays, waste management). But data shows the rushed exit amplified short-term fossil lock-in without proportionally faster decarbonization. Models claiming seamless replacement often assume perfect conditions (massive storage, demand response, grid expansion) that underperformed in reality amid energy crises.
Hindsight is clear: ideologically driven phase-outs ignored nuclear’s role as a proven, scalable, low-emission firm power source. Europe is now pivoting—lifetime extensions, SMR funding, and treating nuclear on par with renewables in policy. Retaining existing plants would have delivered cheaper, cleaner, more secure energy during the transition. The blunder cost billions, extra emissions, and competitiveness; learning from it means pragmatic technology-neutral policy, not picking losers.
After Friedrich Merz in January, Ursula von der Leyen has now also admitted that the abolition of nuclear power was a major “strategic mistake” not only by Germany, but by the EU. The American researcher Roger Pielke Jr. shows with some simple calculations how big the EU’s strategic blunder has been.
Suddenly there was the next remarkable twist. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, admitted during the Nuclear Energy Summit near Paris that the phasing out of nuclear power was a “strategic mistake”. What does that remind us of? Indeed, Chancellor Friedrich Merz used exactly the same words at the beginning of January during a lecture in Germany (Indepen also reported on this at the time). This said Von der Leyen: “Phasing out the share of nuclear energy was a choice. I believe it was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable, low-emission source of energy.”
This is a huge turn. Think back to all the times that European Commissioner Frans Timmermans, responsible for the Green Deal, the ambitious program with which the EU wants to reduce CO2, spoke out about nuclear energy. In an interview with NRC in 2020, he called it “not sustainable and also very expensive”. He reluctantly defended the decision to label nuclear energy as ‘green’ in the so-called EU Taxonomy, but only under strict conditions and saw it solely as a transitional form on the way to a society that runs entirely on ‘renewable’ energy sources, especially solar and wind.
Irreversible
In Germany, Von der Leyen’s words were of course the talk of the town. Merz himself now said that he “regrets” the nuclear phase-out, but that as far as he is concerned it is “irreversible” and he added: “that’s just the way it is.” The German environment minister Carsten Schneider (SPD) spoke of it as a disgrace and called any new construction of nuclear power plants a “backward strategy” and a “dead end”. According to Schneider, that “backward strategy will consist of new subsidies for nuclear power plants.”
Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, the German ambassador of the Clintel foundation (and once politically active with the SPD), noted on Welt-TV that Von der Leyen was Minister of Labor in 2011 when Angela Merkel decided in a hurry after the Fukushima disaster that all German nuclear power plants would be closed. “That has cost us 600 billion euros since then and led to the highest electricity prices and massive deindustrialization.” According to Vahrenholt, Schneider shows, with his comment that electricity from solar and wind energy is cheaper, that he does not understand it. “We spend twenty billion euros a year on subsidies for solar and wind. With that money, we could build two nuclear power plants every year and have reliable, cheap electricity for eighty years. Dear Comrade Schneider: At least don’t disturb our neighbors when they build next-generation nuclear power plants. We will beg for that flow again.”
The reactions of German politicians are very similar to what we have heard in the Netherlands in recent weeks from politicians about the gas fields in Groningen. There, too, the word irreversible was used, while more and more energy experts, in view of the war in Iran, are arguing in favor of keeping Groningen gas available, even if only for emergencies. In the Netherlands, the gas wells are filled with concrete to make extraction permanently impossible. But that process has not yet been completed and can therefore certainly be reversed.
In Germany, the situation is similar with the nuclear power plants. Although they are all closed, a study last year by the American Radiant Energy Group, presented during the Anschalt Congress (on restarting nuclear power plants) in Berlin, shows that nine power plants could be ‘saved’ from demolition, if the political will were there. Apparently, Merz is not there yet, he wants to build gas-fired power stations.
Renaissance
Von der Leyen acknowledged in her speech that there is a global renaissance of nuclear energy and said that Europe wants to be part of it. However, she seems to be referring mainly to new types of nuclear power plants, including the small modular reactors. These are still under development.
In a fascinating article on his Substack page The Honest Broker (behind paywall), the American researcher Roger Pielke Jr. shows with some simple calculations how much the EU has missed the mark in recent decades with its energy policy, which was supposedly aimed at reducing CO2. He works with two scenarios. In the first scenario, he converts the decrease in nuclear power plants in Europe between 2000 and 2024 into an equally strong increase. In the second scenario, the number of nuclear power plants grows at the same rate as in the period between 1970 and 1990, when France built more than 50 power plants at a rapid pace.
In black, the number of nuclear power plants operating in Europe. Source: Roger Pielke Jr.
He then looks at the extent to which Europe could have become independent of Russian gas and LNG from Qatar with these scenarios and to what extent the use of coal could have been reduced. The table below shows the results.
In both scenarios, we would no longer need gas from Russia and Qatar at all. In scenario 1, with slight growth in nuclear energy, 66 percent of coal use would also have been reduced and in scenario 2 even all coal use. There would even be energy left to replace about 129 billion cubic meters of gas. The Netherlands uses about 30 to 35 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually.
Of course, the sums also have major consequences for the EU’s CO2 emissions. Had we followed scenario 1, the EU would have emitted 15 percent less CO2 in 2024 than it did now, and even 21 percent less in scenario 2.
European energy policy over the past four years has been dominated by two major crises: the Russian gas boycott following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the recent transport problems caused by the war in Iran. Both crises could have been avoided, or at least considerably mitigated, if Europe had continued to build nuclear power plants at a leisurely pace after 2000. Fortunately, the tide is now starting to turn, but much will still be needed before a real nuclear revival will take place.
Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has just announced the results of the new CfD auction, in what must go down as one of the most blatantly dishonest and arguably fraudulent Government press releases in recent years.
Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has just announced the results of the new CfD auction, in what must go down as one of the most blatantly dishonest and arguably fraudulent Government press releases in recent years.
Britain has taken a monumental step towards ending the country’s reliance on volatile fossil fuels and lowering bills for good, by delivering a record-breaking offshore wind result in its latest renewables auction.
The results deliver the biggest single procurement of offshore wind energy in British and European history – confounding the global challenges facing the industry – a major vote of confidence in the UK’s new era of energy sovereignty and abundance.
The Government inherited the fiasco of the previous government’s failed Auction Round 5, in which not a single offshore wind project was secured. The last auction round, AR6, got the industry back on its feet. Now this auction round, known as Contracts for Difference AR7, has secured a record capacity of 8.4 GW of offshore wind which will generate enough clean electricity to power the equivalent of 12 million homes. The ground-breaking result puts Britain firmly on track to achieve its clean power mission by 2030.
These results show offshore wind is cheaper to build and operate than new gas. In new figures published today using the LCOE industry metric, the cost of building and operating a new gas fired power station is £147 per megawatt hour. By contrast, the results for fixed offshore wind in today’s auction were £90.91 per megawatt hour on average – or £65.25 in the commonly used benchmark of 2012 prices – 40% cheaper than the cost of building and operating new gas.
This auction will unlock around £22 billion in private investment, supporting around 7,000 jobs, bringing growth and good jobs to all regions of the country – and particularly to the country’s industrial heartlands. Clean power is also essential to tackle the climate crisis, the greatest long-term threat the country faces.
Below are the successful schemes:
Let’s start with the big lie:
Price for offshore wind agreed at 40% lower than the cost of building and operating a new gas power plant …
These results show offshore wind is cheaper to build and operate than new gas. In new figures published today using the LCOE industry metric, the cost of building and operating a new gas fired power station is £147 per megawatt hour. By contrast, the results for fixed offshore wind in today’s auction were £90.91 per megawatt hour on average – or £65.25 in the commonly used benchmark of 2012 prices – 40% cheaper than the cost of building and operating new gas.
The PDF analysis contains this table – I have highlighted the relevant column for Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) technology:
The data annexes confirm that the cost of new CCGT is estimate as £109 per MWh at 2024 prices – but this includes £41 per MWh for carbon tax, which is not a “cost” at all but a Government imposition. (It relates to the Emissions Trading Scheme, which could be torn up tomorrow, if the political will was there.)
The Government claim that offshore wind is 40% cheaper than gas implies a cost of gas power of about £150 per MWh. That is a fake claim, even if you allow for carbon costs.
The simple reality is that the real cost of new gas power would be £68 per MWh, around a quarter less than these new contracts for offshore wind. Of this, fuel costs account for £45 per MWh.
The second lie concerns the use of “2024 prices”, on which the “90.91 per MWh” price for offshore wind is based.
It has probably occurred to you that we are now in 2026! Since 2024, CPI has risen by 4.5%. As CfD strike prices are index linked, that “£90.91” has already risen to about £95 per MWh.
The wholesale price in Q4 2025 was £74.44 per MWh, according to the Government’s Low Carbon Contracts Company. Offshore wind will therefore be subsidised to the tune of £20 per MWh at these prices.
Indeed, the Government admits as much, because the AR7 published results confirm that subsidies could top £1.9 billion a year by the time all the schemes are operational. These subsidies will have to be paid for 20 years, and index linked.
Note: The “monetary Budget impact” is the expected subsidy payment i.e., strike price minus market price.
Then we come to the third big lie.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is comparing new offshore wind with new CCGT. The true comparison however should be with existing CCGT, as we already have under-utilised CCGTs. It is generation from these that new wind power will replace.
As we have already paid for all of the fixed costs anyway, the only cost of producing additional electricity at CCGTs is the fuel cost, which as we have seen is around £45 per MWh. That means the cost of sourcing power from these new wind farms will be about £50 per MWh dearer than the gas power they are replacing.
We are tight on CCGT capacity and will need to construct new plants if older ones close as expected. But – crucially – we will have to do that anyway, whether we build new wind farms or not as gas will remain our back-up for intermittent renewables for the foreseeable future.
What Miliband wants is to spend tens of billions building offshore wind farms in addition to paying for that new gas capacity. It will not “lower bills for good”, as the presa release blurb states. It will raise bills yet further.
Britain risks electricity rationing by the next general election unless its fleet of ageing gas-fired power stations is urgently upgraded, a new report has warned.
Britain risks electricity rationing by the next general election unless its fleet of ageing gas-fired power stations is urgently upgraded, a new report has warned.
More than a dozen of Britain’s gas-fired power stations are so old that they may not last until the end of the decade and key parts required to upgrade them take years to arrive on order, energy consultancy Watt-Logic said.
It called on Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, to face up to the threat amid growing concern over UK power supplies, which still rely largely on gas despite the expansion of renewables.
“Without urgent action to secure dispatchable generation and stabilise the gas network, the UK faces escalating risks of supply shortfalls and widespread system failures well before 2030,” the report warns.
“It will be difficult to meet existing demand without rationing, let alone any additional demand from electrification.”
About a third of the UK’s electricity is generated by gas-fired power plants – but on windless days, this proportion can double.
Kathryn Porter, from Watt-Logic, warned that in five years time – just after the next general election – many of those gas plants could be offline and there are currently no plans to replace them.
She said a third of the fleet had been built in the 1990s and “while most received upgrades in the 2000s, in most cases this did not involve replacing rotors [a key component prone to wear]”.
“This means the anticipated retirement dates are becoming imminent and there is no replacement and minimal upgrade plans in place,” she added.
It means the risk of electricity rationing during the winter months will increase over the next five years – peaking between 2028 and 2031 – because of the loss in energy production.
The loss will be made worse by the planned shutdown of the UK’s ageing nuclear stations. Eight of the 10 remaining reactors face closure before or in 2030.
But still NESO and DESNZ continue to bury their heads in the sand and gaslight us:
Responding to the report, a Neso spokesman said: “Great Britain has one of the most secure energy systems in the world… our engineers are confident Britain’s grid will continue to operate safely and securely as more renewables connect to the network in the years ahead.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “The National Energy System Operator, has been clear the faster we decarbonise, the more secure we are.
“Gas will continue to play a key role in our energy system as we transition to clean, more secure, homegrown energy.
“That’s why we are also delivering the biggest upgrade to Great Britain’s electricity network in decades to deliver clean power by 2030 and beyond.”
Yes, we used to have “one of the most secure energy systems”, but we certainly have not now. As for more renewables making us more secure, NESO know this is untrue.
It was them who warned in their Clean Power 2030 report in 2024 that we would still need our full fleet of gas power stations for many years to come. They know full well that wind and solar power cannot supply all of the power we need day in, day out, even with contributions from nuclear, biomass and imports.
You can triple wind and solar power capacity, but three times nothing is still nothing.
Miliband knows that the real problems will start to kick in after the next election, so he will do his utmost to destroy the country before then, knowing he won’t have to face the consequences.
The main factor is the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS), effectively a carbon tax. CCGT plant operators must purchase allowances to cover the amount of CO2 emitted. The current market price for these allowances is around £50/Tonne CO2.
As we know, the new Administrative Strike Prices for offshore wind are well above wholesale market prices, which have been trundling along at between £70 and £80/MWh for the last year or so:
It is generally accepted that wholesale prices tend to be set by the marginal cost of gas power. But as I noted the other day, the marginal cost of a CCGT plant, i.e. the fuel cost, is currently £49/MWh – so why the discrepancy between this and £80/MWh?
Carbon Pricing
The main factor is the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS), effectively a carbon tax. CCGT plant operators must purchase allowances to cover the amount of CO2 emitted. The current market price for these allowances is around £50/Tonne CO2.
This equates to a surcharge on CCGTs of about £18/MWh.
So although the cost of fuel might only be £49/MWh, the carbon tax increases this to £67/MWh.
Market prices, of course, reflect supply and demand – when wind power is plentiful, for instance, prices fall. Often the market price might also be set by interconnectors or the most expensive gas generators when supply is tight.
But ultimately, at current gas prices, the new strike prices for offshore wind are more than double the cost of a modern CCGT plant.
California Democrats are reportedly rushing to find a buyer for a refinery scheduled to shut down in 2026 as a potential gas crisis looms over the state, according to Reuters.
California Democrats are reportedly rushing to find a buyer for a refinery scheduled to shut down in 2026 as a potential gas crisis looms over the state, according to Reuters.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) is reportedly actively seeking buyers to stop the upcoming closure of the Valero refinery in Benicia, California, according to three people familiar with the matter that spoke to Reuters. Democrat officials are now reportedly scrambling to keep the refinery operating in California after enforcing stringent regulations that have helped prompt refineries to close across the state for years.
CEC did not specifically confirm that it is looking for a buyer to Reuters, but did say that it is working to ensure that the refinery stays open. Valero announced its Benicia, California, refinery closure in April, and Phillips 66 refinery is also scheduled to shut down by the end of 2025.
A spokesperson for Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom pointed the DCNF to Newsom’s recent comments about working with oil refiners and producers to help keep fuel supplies steady, as well as his April letter to CEC urging them to “redouble” efforts to cooperate with refiners.
Golden State residents already pay some of the highest prices at the pump across the U.S., though two major refineries scheduled for closure and strictregulations may spike gas costs to as high as $8 per gallon as soon as next year, according to one study from the University of Southern California.
Oil refineries have been closing in California for years, and the state hasn’t seen a new major refinery built in decades, according to the CEC. Programs like California’s “cap-and-trade” program combined with strict low-carbon fuel standards are contributing to regulatory pressures that are driving refineries out of the state, industry experts have previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Critics like Republican California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones also note that stringent regulations imposed by Democrats have pressured refineries to leave the state. The refinery closures, in tandem with more regulations going into effect, have led some California officials to worry about a potential gas crisis in the state.
CEC and Valero did respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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It destroys once and for all the myth that renewables are cheaper than gas. The price for offshore wind, for example, is set at £113/MWh, at 2024 prices. But we can already add 3% to that to bring it into current prices – so that’s around £116/MWh.
These prices are more than 11% higher than last year’s auction round.
It may be the case that the prices bid will come in slightly lower than these ASPs, which are the maximum on offer. But they inevitably be much higher than the cost of gas power.
Natural gas is currently trading at 78p/therm. Assuming fuel efficiency of 55%, fuel cost for a CCGT would work out at around £49/MWh. We are already paying CCGTs to provide standby, so this covers all the other overhead and running costs.
Miliband needs another 25 GW of offshore wind power. At these prices, that will add £6 billion a year to the cost of electricity.
And this, of course, does not account for all the other indirect costs of intermittent renewables, such as grid balancing, grid upgrades and standby cover.
Worse still, Miliband has decided to extend the CfD contracts from 15 to 20 years – in short, we will be locking in these high prices for even longer.
Onshore and solar power are little better, still both costlier than gas power. As for floating offshore wind at £271/MWh, one can only conclude that Mad Miliband is intent on bankrupting the country.
Neso told to keep spare generating capacity on standby amid blackout fears
Neso told to keep spare generating capacity on standby amid blackout fears
Ed Miliband has opened the way for a fleet of new gas-fired power stations to back up Britain’s wind and solar farms. The Telegraph has the story.
He has told the National Energy System Operator (Neso) – the UK’s grid operator – that by the end of the decade it must keep 40 gigawatts (GW) of spare generating capacity on standby for days when wind and solar cannot keep the nation’s lights on.
The capacity market already costs British consumers about £1.3bn a year – but this will surge to £4bn by 2030 as reliance on renewables increases, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has said.
Mr Miliband’s letter to Neso has told it to ensure it has 40GW-worth of back-up generating capacity on the system, roughly equating to the output of 35-40 large gas-fired power stations. About two thirds is expected to come from gas and the rest from batteries, interconnectors and other sources.
The riches available to power companies via the capacity market has caused a mini-boom in construction of gas fired power plants. Neso’s list of projects seeking grid connections has more than 100 new gas-fired power stations planned around the UK.
Most are smaller than the large power plants built in the past but designed to be more flexible, meaning they can ramp their output up and down according to demand and the price of power.
They make their profits partly from being paid to be on standby and partly from operating only when power prices surge to unusually high levels – as often happens when low winds reduce windfarm output.
You wake up to an alarm, flick on the light, brew coffee, and drive to work. Every step requires energy – the stuff that shares the coin of physical reality with matter, the E in E = MC2. It keeps homes warm, food fresh and economies running.
You wake up to an alarm, flick on the light, brew coffee, and drive to work. Every step requires energy – the stuff that shares the coin of physical reality with matter, the E in E = MC2. It keeps homes warm, food fresh and economies running.
Supplying 80% of the world’s primary energy, coal, oil and natural gas make up the lifeblood of modern civilization. Yet, there continue to be calls for the abandonment of these fuels without any feasible, scalable replacement in sight.
It is dishonest for “green” lobbyists to claim that electricity from wind and solar can replace fossil fuels, when currently most of the energy used in the world is not even in the form of electricity.
Electricity represents only about 20% of global final energy consumption. That means four-fifths of the world’s energy use comes from fuels that power ships, planes, trucks and industrial furnaces. Oil fuels vehicles, natural gas provides heat for homes and industry, and coal is critically important for the manufacture of steel from iron.
Demand for hydrocarbons is expected to exceed that of electricity for many decades.
You’ve probably heard it before: “Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels.” This is a falsehood supported by a misleading metric – the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). When Mark Twain spoke of “lies, damn lies and statistics,” he had LCOE in mind.
LCOE purports to present an apples-to-apples comparison between various energy sources. However, the measure is meaningless because it ignores key costs such as those of providing backup power to compensate for the intermittency of solar and wind. Something must be available to step up when the wind and sun are not available for power generation.
While it may be true that sunshine and wind are “free,” converting them to a form of energy that works with modern power grids and integrating them into the 24-hour operation of electrical systems supplying millions of customers is difficult and expensive.
First, LCOE assumes constant output, but solar and wind produce only 20%-30% of their designed capacity, compared to 80%-90% for plants running on coal, natural gas or nuclear fuel.
This commentary was first published by RealClearMarkets on July 7, 2025.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
We still keep being told that our sky-high power prices are due to reliance on gas.
Silly Jilly wrote this in the Guardian a month ago:
One of Labour’s key election promises was to cut energy bills by £300 a year by 2030 while making Britain a “clean energy superpower”.
The job is already halfway complete: renewable energy made up more than half the UK’s electricity for the first time last year. So why does Britain continue to have one of the most expensive electricity markets in the world? Industrial users complain those costs are driving companies out of business and discouraging investment in the UK.
The reason behind Britain’s sky-high wholesale energy costs is simple, according to experts. It is down to Britain’s reliance on gas – the price of which was sent soaring by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – in power plants and home heating.
“Great Britain’s dependency on gas imports has been the most important factor behind higher gas and power prices in the market,” Kate Mulvany, the principal consultant at the energy advisory company Cornwall Insight, said.
Prof Michael Grubb of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources said in a recent research paper that, although fossil fuels used to be cheaper than renewable energy sources, “that has turned on its head as gas prices shot up and the cost to produce renewables such as wind and solar power has plummeted”.
He said: “If we actually paid the average price of what our electricity now costs to produce, our bills would be substantially cheaper.”
It was accompanied by a deliberately deceptive graph, purportedly showing how wholesale price trends of electricity closely matched those of gas. The choice of the y-axis means that you could show anything you wanted. And, of course, wholesale prices only make up a minor part of retail prices.
There have been many attempts to unravel these Guardian lies, but here I present a very simple, unambiguous and undeniable analysis which totally shreds such claims.
According to official data, in 2024 the UK used 179 TWh of natural gas for power generation.
At the end of December 2024, the wholesale price of gas was 117 p/therm, or £39.93/MWh.
The value of that gas was therefore £7147 million.
Total electricity supply in 2024 was 303 TWh.
The OFGEM price cap for April to June 2025 was 25.74 p/kWh, excl VAT, giving a retail value of £77992 million.
In addition standing charges add approximately an extra £5 billion for domestic users, plus other users.
We can therefore see that the cost of natural gas only makes up about 8% of the total retail value of electricity.
We can analyse these same numbers using 2019 prices.
The wholesale price of natural gas was typically around 50 p/therm, so the value of gas used in generation was about £3 billion a year; the rise in the price of gas since has therefore added about £4 billion to the cost of electricity.
The OFGEM price cap in 2019 was 17 p/kWh, giving an annual value of £51 billion
In addition, standing charges were approximately £2 billion in 2019, compared to the current £5 billion.
The total retail value of the electricity market would therefore be about £56 billion at 2019 prices.
To summarise, the retail value of electricity has increased from £56 billion to £83 billion. Of this £27 billion increase, only £4 billion is due to gas.
The rest, in one way or another, can be described as “policy costs”. These include renewable subsidies, various system balancing costs, standby capacity and grid upgrades.
But they also include the structure of the marginal pricing mechanism employed, whereby all generators benefit from higher wholesale prices, on the back of higher gas prices.
The answer to all these problems lie with government.
What is certain is that the answer is not building more renewables.
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