Fortunately it has not been too cold in the last few days. Nonetheless the UK has been relying for three quarters of its electricity on burning gas and wood, with imports helping out. Solar and wind have been producing very little. How much worse it will be if we have a cold dark windless period during the winter when we will be very dependent on imports at a time when the rest of Europe could also be short of power.
Mr Miliband still has no answers on how we keep the lights on when renewables let us down if imports are scarce. He keeps telling us more wind capacity is the answer, but it is not when the wind drops.
He also keeps telling us more wind and solar will bring prices down. That is not true. He is offering guaranteed prices for many new renewables well above current average prices. He refuses to take into account the extra cost of needing stand by gas generation for windless days.He is not allowing for the cost of battery or hydro storage schemes or putting enough of them in.
The government is at last talking about getting electricity prices down. There will be no thanks if they shuffle costs off our electricity bill onto our gas bill, and few thanks if they take renewables costs off the power bill and put it on the tax bill.
What they need to do is to take carbon taxes off gas to make gas fired electricity cheaper, and only back renewable projects which do offer cheaper power . Getting more of our own gas out would help, as we now have unused pipe and platform capacity waiting for some gas making new sources much cheaper to exploit.
October 18, 2025
“A cold dark windless night in winter “which is exactly when we will need vastly more electricity and grid capacity to power the heat pumps that Ed is trying to make us all use. The CoP of heat pumps is at its worst when it is cold too often under 2, This vastly expensive extra capacity will then be unused for most of the rest of the year. The policy is mad. Storage in “batteries” etc, very expensive and v. energy wasteful too.
Best to store electricity as gas, coal, oil, nuclear fuel or a hydro reservoir!
October 18, 2025
There aren’t nearly enough batteries manufactured worldwide to provide the storage we’d need in the UK, regardless of price.
October 18, 2025
+1
October 18, 2025
They are currently building the biggest battery storage plant in the world in California at huge cost. To supply one day of UK electricity needs we would need to build 1000 of them and hope the wind would blow again on Day 2. Anyone who mentions battery storage as a solution is simply broadcasting to the world that they are clueless.
October 18, 2025
Utter madness
October 18, 2025
Typically Californian.
October 18, 2025
Nothing Ed says is remotely true and very little that Starmer says is either. Good interview with Truss on the late edition GB new she has come a long way since he LibDim PPE days. One correction – she said the Tories did not undo the disasters of Blair true – but worse still they actually built on them and made them even worst for 14 years! Then the fake Tory MPs and the blob removed her and Sunak and Hunt did even more damage!
October 18, 2025
Ideology trumps common sense
Milibrain must know that for the past 6 days, today included. That gas and nuclear have been providing 75% of our electricity
He says he wants 57gw of solar which means carpeting thousands of acres of productive farmland
This for a product that on average generates about 12,% name plate rating. This is interesting because in winter when we need the power it starts from zero at 8am, slowly rising to peak at 11am ond zero by 3.30 pm. None of it is available during the two peaks at 7am and 6pm
If when Hinckley Point comes on line at 3.2 gw thos will not cover the 4gw nuclear due for decommissioning
Large gas turbines have a waiting time of 7 years so if we order today it will be 2033 before they’re online.
We are in for a very interesting few years when the uniparty vandalism comes to fruition
I hope if we get a Reform government all persons voting for or involved in this state sponsored vandalism will be charged with malfeasance in public office.
Of course they won’t they’ll go on to swan through life denying any responsibility
October 18, 2025
Indeed the huge problem with Solar (on farm land or elsewhere) is you get little or no electricity when really needed which is on dark, short winter days. Plus it cannot be stored cost effectively and certainly not stored for 6 months!
October 18, 2025
Ashly
Yes viewed it as well, she started off a little bit timid, but grew bolder as the interview moved forward, what she said made a lot of sense.
Many who caused her downfall are still in place, which is why the Conservatives still have a problem, many have not changed their thoughts or ideals at all, and the newer ones do not seem to havre what were true conservative values at all, which is why people are flooding to Reform (like it or not).
October 18, 2025
Sorry Sir John. Most of what you write is both wise and common sense. One only wishes that the powers we have had thrust upon us would take heed. (Hint: they don’t.)
But on the subject of wind you keep bleating on about days when there is no wind. Who are you trying to kid? As an aviator (PPL, not commercial or military) I have never been able to avoid HAVING to take account of wind in my navigation calculations. When you are in ‘holding’ or on the descent to landing you had BETTER take proper account of wind. Any pilot would say the same. The British Isles are a windy place.
Reply Often not windy enough to turn a large heavy rotor
October 18, 2025
Not windy enough, or sometimes too windy. It is not so much the weight of the turbines it is the reverse force put on the rotor by the electrical generator to generates the electricity . They ideally want about 30MPH winds for max output but typically only get 30-45% of full capacity even in good locations. Then you have the back up costs, vastly more expensive to connect up large wind arrays undersea than a few gas power stations too. So expensive intermittent, high maint. electricity is what you get. They do not even save much CO2, indeed they bring CO2 emissions forward in the medium term.
Over their lifetime of say 20 years they do save a little CO2 but maint. and backup means this is very little.
October 18, 2025
Robert, I’m afraid like minibrain the leftie , you are , despite your aviator skills, out of your depth when it comes to heavy engineering. I know the skills of pilots as my son owns Northern Light Aviation in Co Londonderry , NI. so in this caseI must say Sir John is again correct.
The public are being misled by communist bullies who talk out of their rear end!
October 18, 2025
Not enough wind and it is very expensive to collect, back up, maintain & connect up too. Not even that low in CO2 if you do the accounting properly for all this expensive & fossil fuel consuming activity.
October 18, 2025
Until the lunatics are removed from managing the energy asylum the madness will continue.
Ed Miliband is the ultimate example of blinkered uneducated management. He wants ever more of the very energy options that are making UK manufacturing impossible. Why? Because world prices are less than half what our present UK energy policies can deliver.
No one with access to world markets will be manufacturing in the UK when products can be made at lower cost and profitably in other areas of the world operating sane energy policies.
October 18, 2025
Is he actually true believer in this mad religion or is he just lying and doing it for some other evil reason such as economic and defensive vandalism, and a desire to have the most expensive energy in the world, or vested interests. I will give him the benefit of a doubt and assume he really is just a mad Zealot & deluded idiot.
October 18, 2025
Well said Rod !
October 18, 2025
Clueless and couldn’t care less is the attitude of windbag Labour ministers. They are systematically undermining and destroying the UK’s business and industrial capacity.
October 18, 2025
Home Office was told last week about potential Maccabi Tel Aviv fan ban, police football unit says.
So what has the Home Sec. got to say?
October 18, 2025
She seem to think the problem is “hatred and violence causing divisions” whose hatred and violence might that be Ms Mahmood or is it just inanimate “hatred and violence” that she is going to root out.
October 18, 2025
One day you ban a race/group going to a football match, the next day you ban them from going to the cinema, the third day you ban them from attending a theatre, for their own safety …..we all know where this ends; and our government is doing nothing to reverse the decision, oh they’ll talk a lot but do nothing
October 18, 2025
All this best explained in Enoch Powell’s famous speech.
October 18, 2025
I believe that the situation is now becoming dangerous. The longer we go on not extracting our own energy from the plentiful supplies beneath our feet the more we risk the wellbeing of our country and its people. We are in this dangerous situation because of Theresa May’s ‘net zero’ pledge (which she only came up with because she, like all political egos, was looking for her ‘legacy’). Subsequent governments (Tory and now Labour) somehow fell under the spell of the climate change activists, and because of the egos of those, especially Ed Miliband, we have been inexplicably signed up to the ludicrous and totally unnecessary net zero without any consultation or even-handed debate.
I well remember when the prepubescent Greta Thunberg was first forced into our everyday lives and how politicians lined up to gaze at her besottedly while she spouted her uneducated and ill-informed theories about saving the planet while at the same time herself using the very resources that she wanted the rest of us to stop using. Miliband in particular was completely captured by her. He is still captured by the ‘planet is doomed’ brigade. Meanwhile, because her dire predictions of the end of world have not – and will not – materialise, she has jumped onto other bandwagons, currently the Gaza one because the ‘climate change’ one is no longer giving her the attention she craves. We wait to see what the next bandwagon will be but you can bet your life that many politicians and airhead celebrities will be jumping on it with her.
We have COP30 starting imminently. The ’30’ means that this is the thirtieth year this backslapping self-congratulatory wind-fest has been going on. Nothing comes of these jamborees except more hot air and more impossible-to-meet (because they are unnecessary) targets. This time the organisers, with the obvious blessing of the bandwagon-jumping attendees, have even had the audacity and lack of regard for what really matters to our environment and our natural world, and ripped out a great chunk of rainforest simply to accommodate their cavalcades of vehicles.
I don’t think that the UK can go on for much longer being dependent on other nations for our energy, paying the highest prices in the world for it and, in particular, with our most vulnerable being too scared to put their heating on in the depths of winter simply because they cannot afford it. Promising us a £300 reduction on our energy bills by the end of this parliament is insulting, especially while we are even paying Miliband’s electricity bill for his second home! How is this fair?
Is there anything that we, the taxpayers, can do about this madness? Everyone I speak to is sick to death of it.
October 18, 2025
Kathy, I agree with every word. We need rid of the fools who believe the lies ,as we as those pushing the rubbish
October 18, 2025
Lets stop blaming the vagaries of the British weather on the ridiculously high price of electricity in the UK.
Almost a quarter of the average business energy bill in 2024 was funding corporate profits. This 25% went to the major electricity generators, networks and household suppliers. The privatised energy networks that distribute gas and electricity to the UK’s homes and businesses had a gross profit margin of 55% between 2020 and 2024, compared with a FTSE 350 average of 14% – source; FT
Under the current ‘marginal cost pricing system’, the wholesale price of electricity is set by the most expensive method needed to meet demand, this is always gas. The UK still generates ~45% of it’s juice using CCGG plant (of which 50% of the energy is lost because of poor conversion efficiencies) when our competitors use much less. France is mainly nuclear with gas at ~5% and Germany is mainly domestic coal with gas at ~15%
Third, the regulator allows the supply companies to impose the extortionate Standing Charges which are about 60% of domestic energy bills
And lastly, the onerous Electricity Generation Levy imposed on our renewables producers by Hunt in 2022 (following relentless lobbying by the fossil fuel industry) is a tax of 45% on “exceptional” receipts that groups realise from electricity generation in the UK.
In 2025 renewables produced 50% of our juice for the first time ever, including the 9% that was exported through the interconnectors, of which there are now no less than 10
Reply Regulated profits are much lower than your statement. Gas carries a large carbon tax and renewables get big subsidies. New renewable contract# are priced well above the normal gas price.
October 18, 2025
To reply:- correct and the gas would be far cheaper or lower on CO2 if produced and used locally and old coal is far better and far cheaper than the forests they import and burn at Drax.
October 18, 2025
SG : The standing charges are largely the renewable subsidies which are currently running at £25bn/year and when we export our wind energy it is often at negative prices as this is cheaper than paying constraint payments. Of course gas sets the wholesale price of electricity because renewables are gven priority and they are incapable of load following and hence gas has to step in at the last minute to save the grid from collapse. The NESO Clean Power 2030 project shows quite clearly that their prediction is that electricity imports will be at expensive prices and exports at cheaper, if not negative prices.
October 18, 2025
SG : The wholesale price for electricity is around £70-£80/MWhr (based on the price of gas we are told and which includes a carbon tax). The current weighted average fixed offshore wind CfD price is £149/MWhr. The lowest operating CfD is Hornsea 2 at a CfD of £80/MWhr. Hornsea 2 lost £150m before tax in 2024 more than the loss of £107.5m in 2023 and this is despite Hornsea 2 Phase 2 receiving £4.1m in constraint payments at an average of £46/MWhr. The biggest AR6 project, the 2.4 GW Hornsea 4 project, was cancelled by Oersted citing rising supply chain costs, higher interest rates and increased execution risk. This shows that their £85/MWhr bid was uneconomic The CfD price for fixed offshore wind for the next auction is £113/MWhr. Furthermore, the CEO of GBE has said we will need to use floating offshore wind as we are running out of shallow water. The CfD for floating offshore wind is £271/MWhr.
October 18, 2025
‘In 2025 renewables produced 50% of our juice for the first time ever,’
But never for 50% of a 24 hour day! There are hours and hours when the juice is simply not available.
Don’t kid yourself this is an answer.
October 18, 2025
When the chips are down lets hope we can rely on our European partners. Sadly I have my doubts.
October 18, 2025
At one point last week 20% of our energy was coming from the EU. Try stopping the 12 year fishing giveaway and they’ll turn it off.
October 18, 2025
The french have already weaponised the energy interconnectors to secure french fishermen a great deal of english territorial waters ….they can turn off energy 100% to the channel islands and 25% of UK energy needs at any time
October 18, 2025
The energy companies are bribing customers to install smart meters by offering free electricity at weekends. There’s no way I’m getting one until they force us by law. Giving them the ability to switch off my energy supply remotely is not something I want them to have the power to do. I expect by this winter the UK will have rolling blackouts. I’m glad I have invested in a wood-burning stove. When thousands of elderly people start dying in their homes this winter, it will be the end of Minibrain and maybe this Government.
October 18, 2025
Any day now they’ll make smart meters compulsory ….like I.D’s
October 18, 2025
Christine:
You are correct that smart meters are all about control. In fact the real goal of Net Zero is not to net zero our CO2 emissions as they know that their anti CO2 propaganda is false but to provide them with an excuse to force through electrification of heating and travel which they can use to have control of each household, if not each individual. No other explanation makes sense as all the required electrical devices are more expensive and less practical.
October 18, 2025
indeed with a wood or gas burning stoves & heaters plus using a car battery and inverter you can easily cope and retain some led lighting, cook, keep warm and keep your TV or computers and Wi-Fi going and even a gas boiler and pump running!
October 18, 2025
To the surprise of many, the Labour government have started investing heavily in upgrading the nuclear submarine facilities at Devonport.
After Thatcher closed our only other SSN facility at HMNB Chatham six months after the Falklands War, (putting 6000 highly skilled submarine engineers out of work) Devonport became our only facility capable of refitting SSN
Construction is now underway on key elements of the Submarine Waterfront Infrastructure Future (SWIF) programme at Devonport, apparently the largest modernisation effort in the history of the UK’s submarine support facilities
Work on the non-tidal maintenance berth has also now entered the construction phase. According to Defence Minister Luke Pollard in a written reply to Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, more than 18,000 cubic metres of material have been excavated to create a 280-metre-long tunnel that will carry electrical, water, communications and air systems essential to the nuclear safety and maintenance of berthed submarines.
The SWIF programme forms part of a broader effort to ensure that the UK’s submarine infrastructure can support current and future generations of nuclear-powered boats, including the Astute-class and Dreadnought-class submarines
Source; ukdefencejournal.org.uk
Reply Faslane, Rosyth, Devonport all handling nuclear subs. Margaret Thatcher made sure there was capacity to maintain and house our submarine fleet.
October 18, 2025
Would be good to see a post on the private credit market.
My take is that over 15 years of low interest, banks have become more constrained, WEF policies like the net zero grift has pushed up energy prices and inflation, mass migration have pushed up taxes and lowered growth, the rise of the internet has reduced retail profits, over use of universities has deflated the value of degrees, etc.
These costs have created a large number of zombie businesses reliant on loans rather than real profits. Such as universities, car sales, and bricks and mortar retail businesses. A shake up is long over due and bad loans need to be wound down.
I also add that Government services have a strong correlation here and there are a large number of “luxury services” that need to wind down.
October 18, 2025
Agreed. Also germane is the amount of unabsorbed debt left in the major economies after the 2008 crash for it might explain much about the poor economic performance in the years since with zombie corporations able to survive only because of a low interest rate world.
October 18, 2025
Although it is still a long way off unfortunately, it’s time to start thinking tactically about the next election. Jeremy Clarkson talks of standing against Miliband. If he does so both the Conservatives and Reform should stand down from that seat to give him the best chance of unseating one of the most damaging leftists in politics. The same logic should of course prevail in many other seats.
October 18, 2025
@ Richard1 – Reform has thought it has prospects of winning Miliband’s Doncaster seat: why should it or anyone else stand aside for some sort of modern day celebrity? What would Clarkson do in Parliament that he cannot do now?
October 18, 2025
Clarkson could vote, that’s the advantage of being in Parliament.
October 18, 2025
and a 3-line whip would not apply!
(the curse of British so-called democracy).
October 18, 2025
Nuclear is also keeping the UK from blackouts in addition to burning gas and American trees. All but one nuclear stations is due to be closed by the time Mad Ed is removed. The gas stations were built 30 years ago and are also going to close, especially as they are not being run continuously but to suit fluctuating renewables. Mad has started to order new gas stations but these are supposed to capture the CO2 and this has not been done commercially anywhere. The only additional nuclear station is the disastrous French type which has been hugely delayed and expensive and this is unlikely to be available on time. He has decided to order another one. Even if we ordered more practical nuclear stations and gas generation it will not be available by 2029.
The death and injury caused by a week long blackout would be enormous. Ministers and civil servants responsible will face charges of criminal mismanagement.
October 18, 2025
I understood that the backup power stations were run all the time.
October 18, 2025
The MSM appears to have allowed Kathryn Porter as voice by mistake.
Hopefully, at last, some degree of intelligence will be allowed to permeate the discussion around energy pricing in this country.
October 18, 2025
Let’s not be surprised by any of this. Bringing on the new dark ages was a deliberate political act, done to bring us to our knees.
Never mind the Chinese spy scandal – Net-0 was contrived at the highest levels, to literally destroy what we had!
October 18, 2025
Agreed.
October 18, 2025
There should be no more wind farms put in place until a method of energy storage has been implemented. I favour liquefied air, which could store spare energy from summer to be used in winter. You could use it in automobiles too. Every car has a Dewar flask, evaporate the air and send it through a gas turbine to generate the electricity. Just a small battery back up to get you to the filling station if you’ve stored the vehicle for a while. Much quicker to fill than a battery charge and no battery degradation.
October 18, 2025
Net Zero as planned, is the policy of the madhouse !
October 18, 2025
Not enough common-sense is the real problem
October 18, 2025
Like Alok Sharma (Johnson’s Net Zero Czar) before him, Red Ed is applying for his highly lucrative post-Parliamentary career in the Global Eco Quangocracy with OUR money.
Destroying our energy security; driving up the cost of energy; freezing pensioners; despoiling our countryside with solar panels and ruining the economy with the most expensive energy costs in the western world is the price he is making us pay for it. As was Johnson.
I hope we do get blackouts this winter. It will – of course – be all Nigel’s fault 🙂
October 18, 2025
More wind capacity is not the answer regardless of how much wind there may be. Every extra wind turbine increases the costs of electricity, because of the required gas backup costs and the costs of new grid infrastructure to distribute the electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s needed. The pattern is clear worldwide: the greater the proportion of intermittent renewable electricity a country uses, the higher its electricity costs. It also adds to grid instability because wind (and solar) don’t provide the inertia that fossil fuel generators do.
October 18, 2025
Sir JR. I often sit here boiling, not from the expensive energy I use to warm the house. But from my total frustration with Labour/Ed Miliband/ the current net zero, climate change nonsense that is rammed into us daily, if not hourly.
When will someone with power speak up and explain to Miliband. The UK produces only 0.04% of global Co2 (400PPM) a tiny almost insignificant amount.
By importing LNG and wood to burn at Drax he is adding to this. Collecting our own gas would be cheaper, produce less Co2 and create jobs in the UK
Do Labour and Miliband not have the intelligence to see, relying on wind (as long as it’s blowing but not too strongly) will never supply stable energy.
Do they not see when Winter arrives and demand goes up. Solar panels won’t work on the short cloudy days that typically occur in the UK.
The whole idea of wind and solar is madness. Stable supply is what is required. Stable supply from gas and coal, but of course they’ve destroyed the coal option. The only other route is Nuclear and how’s that coming along !!
The whole energy policy of Miliband and Labour is nothing more than virtue signalling to the world. Destroying the remnants of UK industry as it goes along, causing a reliance on imports which in turn causes an increase in Co2,
Surely there are people with power who understand all of this, why won’t they speak up?
October 18, 2025
Who publicly calls out the Chinese, the Indians, the Americans who are refusing to stop their killing the planet?
Surely Greta and co assisted by Milibrain ought to be holding forth on the damage they are doing compared to our
0.04% of global Co2 (400PPM) a tiny almost insignificant amount.
October 18, 2025
….That 0.04 figure is naturally occuring …..depending on who you ask the human manmade element of that figure is between 5% and 30% over 200 years …”And that’s all she wrote”
October 18, 2025
Jeremy Clarkson is to stand against Ed Milliband, he of Net Zero, at he next GE. In Clarkson’s place of origin, Yorkshire. I do hope he knocks Miliband out of politics
October 18, 2025
Mystic Miliband would be fired in The Apprentice program as his track record has demonstrated. His inability to discuss his plans for the country ‘s vital energy dependency on wind and solar is bad and weak enough and is delusional being dependant on potential hostile sources, financially or otherwise.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, a billionaire expert was unable to get Miliband to even discuss this with him recently as he knew he would not have anything positive to say other than “I have made my policy” an arrogant and unworthy response.
October 18, 2025
There was a time when the consideration of what is now short-handed as net zero was conducted by examining the claims and assertions of those who feared a global disaster and those who robustly refuted the ‘evidence’.
I recall the long and serious tv programme fronted by Magnus Magnusson in 1975 explaining in detail the oncoming ice age.
1976 summer was a neat corrective.
Science and skullduggery have been employed and hijacked by various bodies, institutions, governments, and shady funders.
Battle lines were drawn long ago for those with the antennas to discern, and we see these clearly now with the ‘march through the institutions’, UN, WHO, etc., etc.,
That the leader of this should be the figure of Ed Miliband ought to be a wake up call to anyone with common sense.
( words left out ed)
To argue in detail over whether they were wrong is long past the futile.
Similarly, with net zero and other drivers of socialist advance ( socialism never works, FACT) we should be shamed into avoidance of the ad hominem, especially when we are talking of the preposterous being promoted by the absurd.
Humour is the best medicine.
Recently the Goons came to mind.
After hearing a lengthy lecture on gravity Eccles was asked to jump in the air.
When asked, “Why did you come back down?”, he simply replied, “Because I live here”.
Likewise, when asked the time he said,
“Just a minute, I’ve got it written down on a piece of paper”
Both of these absurdities would take screeds of explanation to refute the sense of the answers, they are patently and laughably absurd.
Almost like the bien pensant who, when asked for which Party she would vote at the General Election, replied that she would wait to see their manifestos.
October 18, 2025
Correction, “shouldn’t be shamed “
October 18, 2025
Agree
October 18, 2025
Sir John
You are using logic and common sense in your analysis. However, you have political ideologues with very, very personal agendas running the show. The masses, the people, are the slaves, the funders being played with so ‘personal ego’ can say look at me ‘I’m King of the World’
The nations wellbeing its future, is dismissed as irrelevant to personal self-esteem. I keep saying it but it is not one man, it maybe his ego, but it is also 2TK his team and the more than 50% of MPs that are supporting this destruction.
October 18, 2025
The whole net zero fraud is the work of bullies who buy the corruption. people like Gates and the rest who need defeated . And their puppets imprisoned!
October 18, 2025
Seeing Miliband’s personal domestic energy bill details would be revealing.
October 18, 2025
“Mr Miliband still has no answers on how we keep the lights on when renewables let us down if imports are scarce.”
He doesn’t have a plan because he doesn’t want a plan, not that a viable transition to renewables is feasible anyway as renewables being cheap is the second biggest lie after CO2 controlling global temperature. His plan is to sabotage our energy, economy and national security and impoverish us with the rationing of energy, food and transport. NESO’s Clean Power 2030 project requires between 20-40% of demand destruction, aka rolling blackouts, the amount depending upon how much electricity we can import, to ensure the grid as a whole does not collapse during peak periods. So rolling blackouts are actually part of the plan for 2030 – an example of the “significant changes in our lives” that the Chair of ES&NZ Committee at an evidence meeting last week said is required for the transition to take place.
October 18, 2025
Correct. It’s all deliberate.
October 18, 2025
I agree!
October 18, 2025
“He [Miliband] also keeps telling us more wind and solar will bring prices down. That is not true.”
Absolutely correct. According to Professor Gordon Hughes of the Renewable Energy Foundation the UK taxpayer has already funded £220bn in renewable subsidies (£8000/household) since 2002 (2024 prices) and is currently funding £26bn/year. NESO has costed its Clean Power 2030 project at “over £40bn annually”, so another £8000/household by 2030 by which time it will be necessary to not only subsidise the renewables, the grid upgrades and the battery backups etc. but also the gas generated backup which will be needed to be available at any time to provide full power whilst only used for 5% of the time. NESO’s plan also necessitates rolling blackouts, called euphemistically, Demand Side Response (DSR), at times of peak demand and when electricity over the interconnectors is not available or insufficient and this will also have a cost to each household. So high are the subsidies, aka “policy costs” or “non-commodity costs”, that a CEO of an energy company at last week’s ES&NZ Committee evidence meeting said: “If I look at the non-commodity costs, policy costs, network costs, then some of the modelling we have suggests that you could get to a position by 2030 where if the wholesale [electricity] price was zero bills would still be the same as today because of the increase in the non-commodity costs.”
October 18, 2025
UK has the highest percentage of renewable capacity of any major economy. It also has the highest electricity prices of any major economy. The net zero fans think this is just a coincidence.
October 18, 2025
Ed Miliband is a man who won’t be confused by the facts. Question 1. Why are we building two power systems when we only need one? Question 2. If renewable power is cheaper, why does it need subsidising? Q3. Why is there no sign of any effect of Global Warming? ( Every GW event since 2016 has been researched and shown to have happened before, so nothing to do with human activity.) Q4. Why do you think CO2 is a problem when it is not now, nor ever will be? Q5. When the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, wind farms and solar farms produce no energy. Could you tell me why you don’t know this simple fact? Q6. If sea levels are rising, why are you not building huge sea walls around the entire coast of the UK to protect us ( they are not, around 8 inches in the last 120 years )? Q7. Why aren’t we utilising our resources to achieve energy independence, thereby providing reliable and more affordable energy? Q8. Why are you such an idiot?
October 18, 2025
Answer – to Q8 – -family genetics ie. the gene pool.
October 19, 2025
He isn’t stupid, he’s a Communist. In that respect your comment about genetic inheritance is correct. The apple has fallen very close to the tree.
October 18, 2025
As at 11:30am national grid wind generation is at 23% and we’re still importing via inconnectors 22% energy ……because wind generation is max out
Government reports that renewables (and imported energy) is cheaper then coal & gas generation …..so why do they need £billions in subsidies and why is domestic energy & fuel so expensive …something doesn’t add up
October 18, 2025
A worthy weekend read, the item, especially the comments… Reminds me of ‘Labour isn’t Working’ from 1979 all over, its true history repeats itself when the same mistakes are made. Still Labour is working for the get out of jail free human rights industry, that has to be protected and rewarded
The vigilante putting police to shame by confronting, chasing and filming London’s pickpockets – while alerting potential victims with his signature battle cry…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15203199/Pickpockets-Diego-Galdino-vigilante-London-tourists-Guy-Adams.html
To his millions of fans, Diego is a bona fide hero on a noble mission to restore law and order to a city where ‘thefts from a person’ increased by 28 per cent last year, to more than 100,000. Some have dubbed him London’s version of Batman. Others say his videos represent the most effective means of shaming criminals since we abolished the stocks.
October 18, 2025
the Germans actually have a word for the cloudy windless condition “Dunkelflaute” which they often use in relation to renewables for weeks on end
I see your friend Mr B of E Bailey has been blaming brexit of the long lasting growth drag (again no mention of Covid)
October 18, 2025
Everything you say is correct, Sir John. The question is, who is on the side of the consumer as we hurtle to Net Zero? It certainly isn’t Ofcom. The CEO of Ofcom has made it perfectly clear that they see their role as promoting, facilitating and legislating to speed our progress to Net Zero. The trouble is Net Zero and consumer protection are opposites. We need Ofgem to return to its original purpose to protect the consumer and any Net Zero promotion moved to the other quango, Mission Zero. At the moment the consumer hasn’t got a say or chance
October 18, 2025
Not only are wind and solar technically inefficient they are very expensive to install, including the complexity of connecting a 12vdc system to a 220vac national grid system over long distances reliant on maintaining a 50hz frequency. Wind and solar owners receive huge subsidies all added to energy bills. Gas has a carbon tax added making gas artificially more expensive. Now even energy suppliers are complaining energy bills are too expensive, but Mr Miliband ploughs on regardless. Drax Power plant burns biomass shipped vast distances emitting more Co2 than a modern coal fired power plant yet receives huge subsidies, indeed they couldn’t function without them. Flawed political judgements over two decades has resulted in an energy system unfit for purpose operationally and economically caused by an obsession to meet an unachievable arbitrary target of Net Zero 2050. It’s madness.
October 18, 2025
The net zero policy assumes that climate science is ‘settled’. It is not. To be pedantic, if an area of science really is entirely settled then it would be religion, not science. Only religion allows for that kind of certainty.
I recommend reading Dr. Steve Koonin’s interesting 2022 book ‘Unsettled’. Koonin is both an excellent scientist (originally a theoretical physicist from Caltech) and a stickler for scientific integrity.
A retired UK engineer, Dr. Ray Sanders, has been pestering the Met. Office for several years now about the siting of its weather stations and publication of figures based on non-existent recording sites. The Met. Office activity is most irregular.
Was summer 2025 really hotter than 1976? Possibly not, were all the more recent temperature readings to be re-checked and the low-quality ones jettisoned.
A Conservative MP briefed by Sanders has been asking the government questions on the topic. More MPs need to wake up to what is at best sloppy work, if not much worse. If the process of ‘government’ was still functioning, a select committee – helped by hired experts – would be grilling people from the Met. Office and demanding answers, preferably on oath.
October 19, 2025
Agree with what you say John but what happens next as economical resource extraction won’t last and then we are back to square one.
My suggestions.
1. remove all green/carbon taxes on all fuels to reduce costs
2. Licence mineral and resource extraction for UK use only – there must be a benefit to UK not just the extractor business
3. No guaranteed prices and Corporation tax only for sole UK use. Hefty penalties for any company that engages in accounting gimicks such as “internal value transfer” to cheat UK taxpayer.
4. Hefty taxes on raw asset export – fuels must drive UK economic activity.
5. Tax and other associated revenue to go to sovereign wealth fund to drive longer term energy projects including micro grid systems and nuclear – (re-activate) R&D into breeder and throium systems otherwise you become dependent on foreign sourcing.
6. Move country away from domestic and non-industrial gas to electricity.
Note on solar – Solar Panels are a viable investment for domestic and small scale commercial/industial use, can’t speak for large scale. Don’t provide direct grants (like now) but do advance the grid to support micro-grids that allow small scale generators to contribute energy. A distributed energy system is far more resilient and less wasteful than having a couple of reactors and CCGT generators.
October 19, 2025
If the country was behind renewables and net-zero …..why isn’t everyone voting for the Green Party ?