As readers know, this site does not provide investment advice. It is,however, a site that analyses public policy and public investments.
Over the last two decades advanced country governments have used subsidies, managed prices , tax breaks, direct state investment and regulations to achieve a large surge in capital spending on renewable energy, especially wind and solar electricity.
They have also used higher taxes, windfall taxes, regulations, managed prices and bans to put their oil and gas industries into decline. President Trump in the US has opposed this approach. China which claims to back net zero has expanded its own use of coal.
So what have been the investment results so far? Taking the Clean Energy Index and comparing it with the Global Energy Index whose top four holdings are big oil companies representing 40% of the index we see both long term and over the last four years the oil rich index has greatly outperformed the clean energy index
Global Energy 2021 +43% 22 + 42 % 23 + 4% 24 -0.9%
Global Clean energy 2021 – 24.1% 22 – 5.6% 23 – 20.5% 24 -26.1%
Figures from ishares website
Global clean energy has provided a return of minus 5.5% a year since 2007 prior to bank crash. Global Energy produced a return of minus 0.3% a year since 2011, a start date after index recovery from banking crash.
Past trends are not necessarily guides to the future. They do show us throwing so much money at renewables and transition has led to no longer term returns on quoted energy investments, and to a last four years when the Ukraine war helped drive oil and gas prices up in the west giving fossil fuel companies a boost.Each year the world has used more fossil fuel despite government attempts to stop it.
July 3, 2025
Good morning.
Sorry, off topic.
Following yesterday’s PMQ’s debacle and the Chancers girly moment, it is becoming increasingly clear that the wheels of the UK are coming off. Witness the Sterling sliding against the US Dollar and I believe, although I have not checked, the Bond Markets taking a bit of a fright.
I saw a clip on YT of PMQ’s of the aforementioned moment and, could not help but look at the Deputy PM’s face. She seemed unmoved by the events, almost like a Praying Mantis before it is about to strike 😉
Only some 1,500 days until the next GE. 🙂
July 3, 2025
Mark
Just envisage what damage this pile of excitement can do in 1500 days. Just look at the past year for an indication.
July 3, 2025
Sadly, Ian, you’re right. I’m still spitting blood over Reform’s and the Conservatives’ unwillingness to cut a deal before the last general election. Had they done so, both parties would now have far more seats.
July 3, 2025
Ian
Agreed. I forgot to put ‘/sac’ at the end 🙂
July 3, 2025
The pound has generally slid against the Euro over the past month, whilst against the dollar it is still up on what it was a month ago. 10 year bond yields were higher a month ago.
Yesterday was just a small blip.
July 3, 2025
Yeah, a 3 billion blip when we are already skint and they were scratching around trying to save 1.5 billion by killing pensioners.
July 3, 2025
We know confidence is the key factor in currency index, unless world events shatter the calm and peace.
So consider the relative comfort the EU has experienced deep in its own navel gazing, compared to the UK being helter-skelter backwards and forwards with government edicts rarely lasting a week. And finally talking of forward/ reversing it appears Trump leaves the US clueless as to what policies will survive 5 minutes and which friends are now stabbed in the back, with hostilities forgiven and new frriendships with leaders becoming his new Foreign Policy.
July 3, 2025
It’s pretty well ensured that Starmer will not be able to sack Reeves no matter what happens.
July 3, 2025
The whole point of the green investment scam is to transfer money from the many to the few
Just look in government who past and present are benefiting from the scam.
Lord Gummer who loudly promotes the use of renewables is a major investorin this field.
The only wat this deceit can continue is for ever more taxpayers subsidy. Far from making us an energy superpower, it’s making us bankrupt.
The first thing a new government must do is halt immediately any more subsidies and stop the ruinous contract for difference scam.
July 3, 2025
Indeed. When governments “invest” they so often mean pissing your money down the drain often in the direction of their mates pockets often lubricated by “consultancy” fees and vested interests. Reducing CO2 tree crop and plant food, the gas of life is not even a good thing on balance!
My rules of investment is if everyone is saying invest in this (like green energy, property… it is probably time to get out and when they are all telling to get out time to get in. Also when the banks are all keen to lend to you let to buy properties it is shortly time to get out, Perhaps time to buy when they will not lend so easily if you can.
July 3, 2025
Isn’t that approach how Warren Buffett claims he made his fortune?
A certain level of bravery required.
July 3, 2025
What else is new .. the whole point of any government investment scam is to transfer money and control from the many to the few. Governments are just another predator in the market that you have to survive and mitigate to prosper.
July 3, 2025
Indeed another predator in the market but one who cam keep changing the laws of the game to suit them and to cheat the private sector! Rigged by government markets all over the place.
July 3, 2025
Governments are NOT ’just another predator’. They make and amend the rules. Also they don’t use their own money.
Perhaps they should be forced to use State Sector Pension funds for their brilliant schemes, that might turn the blob.
July 3, 2025
Governments mess up markets the more they try to influence outcomes.
Interesting figures, especially the “since 2011” ones. Were the latter from an open online source?
Reply Yes as cited
July 3, 2025
The Government currently rig energy markets, education, housing, universities, bank lending, transport, EVs v petrol and diesel cars, Heat Pumps V Gas boilers, employment markets, healthcare… doing vast net harms.
July 3, 2025
Why do they call it clean energy, when their is nothing dirty or polluting about CO2 and it does net good on balance. Better to call them “intermittent energy” and reliable “on demand” easily stored energy perhaps?
July 3, 2025
They even call EV cars zero emission they are just emissions elsewhere cars! As are bikes and walking!
July 3, 2025
re-titling needed ……’UK net-zero/China nowhere near zero’.
July 3, 2025
iShares.com then look for Global Energy ETF (IXC) or Global Clean Energy ETF (INRG)
July 3, 2025
China’s support (verbally) for Net Zero is predicated on the fact the West will never be able to compete with them on manufacturing costs, while the west embraces high cost renewable energy options. China enjoys the least cost energy via coal and has secured a unique position for itself as the worlds largest producer of renewable energy hardware.
Every year China and now India along with Indonesia increase its production and burn of coal. Their respective economies are growing rapidly, while the economies of the West teeter on the brink of recession.
It does not require a masters degree in economics to see why there is such a massive disparity.
While we are bankrupting our manufacturing industries and domestic strength, China is rapidly building u the largest military capability in the World? I wonder what they are doing that for? Who would ever think about invading China? Who do they fear? Maybe it is not fear for their own security, maybe they hold ambitions to influence World affairs via military strength….
July 3, 2025
Indeed and so many of our so called net zero tech. costs a fortune, is unreliable does not even save CO2 should that bother you. Exporting CO2 does nothing other than wreck jobs and the economy!
July 3, 2025
China supports the West switching to ‘clean energy’ aka ‘no energy’. As they say, if your enemy is destroying itself, don’t interrupt.
July 3, 2025
Absolutely. In fact they are keen to feed us the self destruct tools (dumped popular consumer products, industry killing EV cars, windmills, solar panels….they even invade the capacity of our Universities to train our young brains for future skills). They pretend to join the arms race, while encouraging the West to spend massively on items that end up killing each other not them!
July 4, 2025
…and taking over the UN
July 4, 2025
and WHO …any more bids for what they have taken over?
July 4, 2025
Africa & South America & Universities …..and the south china sea
July 3, 2025
Pushing the country to invest in expensive renewable energy and to tax out of existence low cost oil and gas based energy is the way to destroy industry. And it is working. The complete and utter failure and collapse of the Starmer/Labour government cannot come soon enough. After yesterday perhaps the markets have finally cottoned to the incoherent shambles of a government nominally in charge.
July 3, 2025
I fear that we have another four years of Labour to go. They have no motivation to call an early GE. Will Starmer last another year? I think not. Then we’ll have Rayner for as long as it takes for the disbenefits of her Employment Rights Bill to show. And then we’ll have Streeting!
July 3, 2025
Those pushing the country in those directions include, aside from the Weeping Wrecker, Wrecker Miliband of course who features in the Guido Fawkes site’s quote of the day, viz: –
“Speaking on The Fully Charges Podcast, Ed Miliband said: “I think my view is sort of climate first, party second.””
and sort of country nowhere at all perhaps?
July 3, 2025
The Confederation of British Industry issued a report last year, strongly in favour of the net zero sector. Their detailed analysis showed unequivocally that the net zero sector is growing three times faster than the overall UK economy, providing high-wage jobs across the country, while cutting climate changing emissions and increasing the UK’s energy security
The CBI report showed that the net zero economy grew by 10% in 2024 and generated £83bn in added value. 22,000 net zero businesses now employ almost a million people in full-time jobs. The average annual wage in the businesses – £43,000 – was also £5,600 higher than the national average. The report analysed the growth attributable to businesses working in renewable energy, electric vehicles, heat pumps, energy storage, green finance and waste management and recycling.
Net zero is the British industrial opportunity of the 21st century. The sector is expanding strongly, with the 10% growth in 2024 following a 9% jump in 2023.
Farage, Tice and their Reform head bangers oppose net zero, apeing Trump’s pro-fossil fuel views. Their message is clear; vote Reform and destroy a million well paid green jobs and British leadership in the sector
Reply Absurd over hype. need to look at all the well paid jobs being lost by closing down the oil and gas industry
July 3, 2025
Sakara,
There is one very telling fact about the renewables sector and its claim to be an economic opportunity to lead the world in a new energy direction.
All of the renewables position is dependent on state funding every one of them. That makes them inherently uneconomic You might come back and claim the fossil fuel sector receives state aid also. That would be an out and out lie.
Any industry that relies on and only exists by state funding is not self sustainable. Its reliance on tax payers and state agents for its survival makes it a national cost not a national asset. In the real world the difference between success/survival and failure depends on customers who wish to purchase your goods. It never depends on customers being told they must buy them.
July 3, 2025
+1 or worse still told they must in vest in them and not invest in their competitors plus their competitors must provide the costly back up they need at below cost!
July 3, 2025
An industry largely driven by state subsidies taken from taxpayers who would on balance have invested or used it better had it not been stolen off them.
I have no objection to this new tech. if and when it works and can compete in a fair unrigged market.
Also why they claim it is “renewable” and “zero emission”. Renewables come either from nuclear fusions on the sun (wind, wave, solar, bio) or from the earth rotation (tidal) or from nuclear created heat in the earth’s core. Non are renewable. Burning wood (young coal from Forests) at Drax is clearly worse than burning old coal from mines!
July 3, 2025
Based on massive subsidies, which are destroying the finances of most households in the country.
July 3, 2025
SG
Net Zero, too fast, too expensive, too many subsidies, too unreliable, too many penal taxes on the alternatives.
July 3, 2025
What sustainable, productive net zero jobs are those?
I just did a simple google search for “uk net zero jobs”
GreenJobs “the job board for green experts” lists jobs 5 .. count them 5 and they are all consultants. No engineers or manufacturing.
Net Zero Careers lists 47 but these include a Plumber, Groundsperson/Gardener and other roles.
So how many real net-zero jobs that generate real value and produce income for the country are there that aren’t otherwise “standard” jobs that carry a net-zero sticky label to appear otehrwise.
July 3, 2025
Are binmen and sewage workers green jobs? Probably yes for statistics.
July 3, 2025
ukeiti.org ‘Oil and gas in the UK’: in 2023 a total of about 235,000 people were working in the oil and gas extracting industry (30k directly involved, 120k supported by upstream O&GI, 85k supported in the wider economy).
ons.gov.uk 14/03/2024 ‘Experimental estimates of green jobs, UK 2024’. 639,400 full time equivalent jobs.
July 3, 2025
One industry provides billions in tax revenues and the other one doesn’t hefner.
July 4, 2025
The other industry sucks up billions of wealth in different way, by killing whole wealth creating industries for instance.
July 3, 2025
As a former SME owner myself SG, I’ve never had much time for the CBI.
They reperesent the interests of 1,500 very large companies (many of them multinationals) rather than the real bulk of smaller UK businesses who employ very many more people and pay much more tax in the UK. The Federation of Small Businesses is more representative of “real” business activity in this country. Smaller buinesses are nearer to the economic lifeblood of the UK and the FSB have over 200K members. My company wasn’t a member of either but on the rare occassions representatives of both the FSB & CBI were interviewed on the News, it was obvious who was more clearly representing my views and it certainly wasn’t the CBI !
July 3, 2025
Occasionally there may be a vehicle in front of me with a “zero emissions” badge on the rear. Every time a driver puts their foot on the brake there are emissions of brake dust. Every time a driver steers around a corner there are emissions of tyre degradation. The heavier the vehicle the more of these emissions there are. EVs are heavier than ICE’s. Go figure!
July 3, 2025
If you believe that clap-trap you live on forced -feed sound bites.
July 4, 2025
What are they doing? Wind installations gave stalled, like the wind itself.
July 3, 2025
Those are global figures, I wonder what the UK figures are because there are owners of wind farms like Dale Vince who are making a fortune because they not only get paid by the taxpayer for producing electricity at the gas marginal price but also get paid exactly the same to switch off their turbines when the grid doesn’t need the power. I suppose the point is that such profits are not available to general investors via public companies.
July 3, 2025
@Roy Grainger
As usual, your post does not reflect the actual facts about “curtailment”. Last week I was reading yet another direct attack in the right-wing press against wind farm electricity. This time it was claimed that £250m has been spent on windfarm output curtailment in H1 this year.
This figure is a gross exaggeration. Unfortunately, this is frequently the case with pro-fossil fuel propaganda. Looking at the facts is informative. The total cost of the electricity produced in this country in 2023 – from all sources – was nearly £172bn. It fluctuates according to the market price of gas.
£250m is 0.14% of the total electricity output of the UK. During the winter 2022/2023 the government gave the fossil fuel majors operating in the UK a direct subsidy of £47bn (the £66/month winter fuel payment) Who is ripping off who here?
July 3, 2025
The Renewable Energy Foundation, who I guess would be one of your flag wavers, reported in January 2025 [1] that 8.3 TWh of wind energy was discarded in 2024 at a direct cost to the consumer of £393m plus indirect costs. This was an increase from the £310m in 2023. Energy costs aren’t reducing so a higher figure in 2025 would be quite feasible and we’ll have to wait and see the actuals but £250m is not an extreme reach at all depending on growth of wind farms.
No matter how you try to minimise things that is around £400m taken from people’s disposable income – around 14,000 jobs on average income after tax. £400m that could be spent on better, more productive things than simply funnelling the money to Spanish, French and German companies to not provide any service at all.
Who is ripping off who here … and who is the head banger now sunshine .. have a nice day
[1] ref.org.uk – “Discarded wind energy increases by 91% in 2024”, Thursday, 02 January 2025
July 3, 2025
The windfarm output curtailment direct costs subsidy in 2024 was c.£393 million, an increase of some £80 million over the previous year. Further increases were expected in 2025 so perhaps the claim of £250 million in H1 2025 is a very reasonable estimate?
Further, Grok tells me “The subsidy cost per unit of renewable electricity was approximately £200/MWh in 2024. Applying this to renewable generation:144.7 TWh × £200/MWh ≈ £28.9 billion (subsidy cost alone)”.
So indeed, who is ripping off who here? The sure fact is UK users pay c. 4 times what users of electricity pay in the USA so someone is on a sumptuous gravy train somewhere.
July 3, 2025
@ Sakara Gold “The total cost of the electricity produced in this country in 2023 – from all sources – was nearly £172bn.” – this contrasts to Grok’s answer for 2024 that is c.£50 billion: –
“Wholesale cost: £17.094 billion (@ a conservative £60/MWh (based on 2024 market trends and the Intermittent Market Reference Price of ~£51/MWh in August 2024)
Renewable subsidies (including CfD, RO, etc.): £25.8 billion
Curtailment costs: £0.393 billion”
which totals £43.287 billion and it then adds a mid-range estimate of c.£7 billion for “Other policy costs (e.g., grid upgrades, capacity market) and distribution costs could add £5–10 billion”.
Could you show please what costs Grok has missed that you include to reach your c.£122 billion extra figure?
July 3, 2025
The winter fuel payment is not a direct subsidy and would not be needed if we had no net zero and net zero market rigging. With energy costs at about 1/3 of current like the US.
July 3, 2025
Do you mean (The total cost of the electricity produced in this country in 2023 – from all sources – was nearly £172bn. ) being the cost the consumers paid for it, whether any was Interconnect or other sources?
If it was the Infrastructure ‘running cost’ or even ‘production cost’ I’d love to know how that was arrived at.
For instance was the cost of providing sub-stations, cabling, metering, smart metering for all those new estates, and having so many competitive electricity supply businesses trading ahead not using current cost as the true cost.?
July 4, 2025
According to REF the actual spend upon wind curtailment in the first half of the year was £146.6m, on a volume of 4.6TWh, up from 3.1TWh in the first half of 2024. The lower cost is the result of increased competition to secure curtailment payments mainly from wind farms with low CFD strike prices, most of whom are yet to commence their CFD as they make more money by not doing so, and have the option to delay commencement.
However it isn’t really good news. In 2024 we were starting to see times when total wind and solar generation before curtailment exceeded demand. Although there was also voluntary curtailment at times for some CFDs that don’t pay subsidies when prices are negative as well as those avoiding their CFDs all the rest of the renewables generation was busy harvesting subsidies worth around £100/MWh for those on ROCs on average, and an average CFD price of about £150/MWh- substantially above the cost of gas generation. Even worse, a portion of these subsidies were being paid to subsidise exports at low or even negative prices. Estimates of these costs are not currently provided publicly, but I am working up calculations based on the publicly available information.
The importance of the rising volumes of curtailment is that if a significant portion of output is essentially worthless then wind and solar farms need a higher price for their salable remainder of output. This will force up prices for the AR7 and later CFD rounds. If the maximum prices aren’t high enough then there will be few if any bids, just as we saw in AR5. High prices would on the other hand expose more of the lie that renewables are cheap. Add in the uncertainties from the threat of zonal pricing and more market tinkering via REMA and the prospect is that Miliband’s push for CP30 will suffer serious delays.
July 3, 2025
Correct. Money for delivery. Money for no-delivery. Win/win for Mr Vince.
Perhaps we should apply the same principle to every other business in the country. I’m sure Waitrose (other supermarkets are available) would do wonderfully well if it was paid a significant sum of money for No Delivery.
July 3, 2025
Some people – very wealthy Globalists, their puppets/hangers-on in the Global Quangocracy and western governments (inc the UK) and the Green “charity and lobbying sector” – are making a great deal of money out of the SCAM.
The rest of us are paying for it.
It’s the biggest transfer of wealth from “the little people” to the “Elite” in history.
And it will have absolutely no effect on the climate.
July 3, 2025
@Donna, good morning.
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 (including Renewable Energy Zones) from renewables, waste and nuclear. This single stupid tax has severely curtailed further investment in UK renewables, to the absolute delight of Big Oil and their cartel. And of course, it is artificially making energy consumers bills much higher.
July 3, 2025
If “renewables” … better described as intermittent, unreliable and seasonal energy … was a good investment we wouldn’t need a back-up system which is able to provide consistent, reliable 24/7 energy.
And then we could save the money we are paying for the intermittent, unreliable and seasonal energy when it doesn’t deliver.
July 3, 2025
Mr Gold, we were promised ‘free energy’ – the prices should have fallen as the switchover progressed. We have not seen reduced prices. Indeed the reverse to the point where our livelihoods are unsustainable.
Why is this? Where is the promised ‘free energy’?
I for one would happily surrender my ‘winter fuel payment’ if there was no payment demanded – as we were promised.
July 3, 2025
Nuclear was to be our salvation, it hardly made a murmur to anything and the powers that be began planning to phase it all out alongside oil peaks and troughs due to war blockades and manipulation, and not forgetting, how could we, the race to close those dirty spent coal fields.
July 4, 2025
In 2024 the averages values for wind and solar generation using hourly day ahead prices were all around £65/MWh, or £10/MWh below the threshold for the tax. Of course, that excludes their subsidies and curtailment payments which are tax exempt. Individual farms may improve on the average, mainly by curtailing when wholesale prices are low or negative. The tax is not raising much revenue. Competition from cheap gas and imports is too strong.
July 3, 2025
Three FTSE100 energy firms recently announced plans to invest £70bn in the upgrade and extension of the UK’s power grid. National Grid, SSE and Scottish Power (who buy the surplus electricity from my 3.5KW solar panel installation) plans include £11bn to maintain and upgrade the existing grid, building three new grid distribution projects, building 12 new major transmission substations, £15bn to increase network capacity and an £18bn contingency fund to cope with anything else Miliband and his team decide is necessary.
These investments will make the grid more resilient and will dramatically reduce the curtailment payments made to wind farm operators when their output threatens to overload it. The investment will almost double the amount of energy that can be transported around the UK and additional links to the interconnectors will allow a dramatic increase in exports of our renewable electricity to customers in the EU
These investments will generate over 15,000 well paid technical jobs and about 85,000 supporting roles during the build-out. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel majors have recently decided not to invest in more renewables or the grid upgrade, preferring to concentrate on drilling and extracting even more oil and gas. What a missed opportunity.
Reply If this is such a good investment others will put up the cash and benefit. For full net zero it will take a much bigger commitment than the one you describe. Electricity only 20% of our energy at present.
July 3, 2025
To reply: Indeed worldwide the total human energy used that is from Wind and Solar is well under 3% and renewable can only really work in a cost effective way if they have fossil fuel back up.
So the mad prosecution authorities and policy are considering even more charges against Lucy Letby and others. Surely 14 clearly totally unsafe life sentences is quite enough for one person? People on the radio keep saying she has had her appeal. No three judges, quite appallingly refused her any appeal lest it show up the UK dire justice system, the NHS, the police and the Office of Public Prosecutions.
July 3, 2025
SG :
According to the Renewable Energy Foundation net zeroing our electricity alone has cost us £220bn or £8000 per household since 2002 with 5 direct and 5 indirect subsidies for renewables. The annual subsidy now amounts to £25.8bn/year and comprises 40% of the cost of electricity. Not only do renewables get subsidised prices higher than the market prices they also get get grid priority and constraint payments when their energy is not needed. DESNZ’s Clean Power by 2030 plan has been costed by NESO at “over £40bn/year”. Figure 9 (Net interconnector import against export in 2030) on P23 of NESO’s ‘Clean Power 2030 Annex 4 : Cost and Benefit Analysis’ quite clearly shows that all imports are at positive prices and exports are all at negative prices. The more people employed producing energy using rnewables the poorer we all become. If we banned mechanisation for agriculture and went back to manual labour we would also need to employ far more people. But would this makes us richer or poorer?
July 3, 2025
Just had a look at Scottish Power, they are a Spanish company and hardly a beacon of net zero .. They report their total fuel mix versus the total UK fuel mix in 2023-24 as
Coal 13% vs 6%
Gas 60% vs 35%
Nuclear 9% vs 13%
Renewable 11% vs 43%
Other 7% vs 3%
CO2 emissions of 415g per kWh vs 171g per kWh
£70b sounds a lot but where is the investment in additional generation?
July 3, 2025
The value of every home lost because of contamination by massive electric cabling (which is car energetic) should be deducted from the ‘profits’ of this new miracle electric grid.
Where will the new homes be built to replace those lost and how will any home remain uncontaminated when it has to be connected to this enormous killing machine?
July 3, 2025
and did they indicate exactly how they intended to recover the £70bn – or was it a wonderful gift to its users out of future profits not price increases?
July 4, 2025
Spending £70bn sounds like a very costly way to reduce curtailment with an annual cost of £0.4bn. In fact the grid expansion programme is a major reason why further pursuit of a wind and solar programme for net zero will be so costly, and push up prices. Always conveniently forgotten by Miliband.
July 3, 2025
If ‘Global Clean Energy Index’ was a fund manager it would have been sacked years ago. The underperformance is terrible. What is worse for those investors though is that these losses were all avoidable. They should never have listened to the NZ 2050 eco-loons. They should have done their research and seen how unreliable and distorted the NZ 2050 claim is.
The UNFCCC climate models (CMIP) keep getting revised. There are now 6 phases as they can’t ever get them right in the first place. They also use ‘simplifications’ to plug holes in the models too. 3rd party assessment shows they have ‘internal variability’ which can compromise climate forecasts for 20 years and less. No hope of projecting as far as 2050 then with any reliability.
I have now chased UNFCCC for the fourth time for the model which evidences if energy related CO2 emissions are netted to zero by the year 2050 it will prevent the global temperature from exceeding 1.5 degrees celsius. I want the out of sample forecasting, the multiple regression testing results including R squared, AIC and BIC.
This is all bread and butter for a modeller and the UNFCCC should have this to hand. However they have not even replied to me let alone provided it.
It is scandalous they are peddling such a consequential claim as NZ 2050 when they can’t prove it. The Global Clean Energy investors should have known better.
July 3, 2025
I suspect that Reeves is providing bond-traders with ample opportnities to secure bigger bonuses.
July 3, 2025
Reaching for malicious punishment tools and calling them investments is rule by decree not government by consent.
The contradiction is the reality of saying you want a free competitive market place and the first thing you do is try to manipulate the market. All subsidies or what ever the catch phrase of the day is, is market manipulation, the weaponising of trade.
A windfall tax, what sort of incentive is that? Setting out to punish those that achieve. Why does the Government not apply windfall taxes of football stars who earn more than the average wage. They may claim residence abroad but the like the oil companies earn from the UK consumer.
Marxism is its own worst enemy, and those that have stolen power in the UK this century have been the countries main enemy
July 4, 2025
Some might regard high income and insurance taxes on high earners as a windfall tax. Many now prefer to work elsewhere, although football spectators seem to be a captive audience ready to pay the prices necessary to leave stars with a competitive take home package. The tax is really levied on the paying public.
July 3, 2025
Destroy the environment to save the environment is a ridiculous policy.
Where I live, they are destroying a 25-mile stretch, as wide as a motorway, of beautiful greenbelt and productive farmland to install a cable corridor and several massive substations to connect an offshore wind farm with an inland city. Wildlife habitat will be destroyed and will never recover. All in the name of Net Zero.
July 3, 2025
Miliband’s latest nonsense proposal is to cover lakes with solar panels.
Wader birds already mistake fields of solar panels for water, land on them and get frazzled to death. Put solar panels all over lakes and even more will be destroyed in order to enrich the Eco Globalists and the Net Zero cultists.
July 4, 2025
I do hope he has studied the risks of dissolved cadmium telluride from the panels in drinking water. There is already a small area on the QE II reservoir near Molesey. Kidney problems and cancers are among the risks.
July 3, 2025
+1. How are they going to establish a 25 mile corridor into London? What is the cost? Or will the lights of London, which have gone out, never be lit again in our lifetime.
July 3, 2025
All football ( and other sports) stadiums are to have compulsory closed roofs made of solar panels. Games will be scheduled to take advantage of the midday sun and only take place in the 6 sunniest months. This is probably going to appear in the Greens manifesto soon, supported by Ed Miliband?. A direct saving on feeding the Grid from locations where you can’t erect a traditional solar-farm. (sarc).
July 3, 2025
Net Zero will kill off our industries and bankrupt the UK. It is the biggest scam ever, enforced by dishonest Governments and media, especially the BBC. It will destroy more jobs than it creates by a long way. It is not a new opportunity but a dead-end street, going nowhere!
No sane government would build two systems of power, because one is not reliable. A sane government would put all its effort into building one reliable system, and that is Nuclear. My preference is for SNR by Rolls-Royce, but if bigger sites are in the pipeline, that’s OK.
If wind and solar were so efficient and cheap, why do they need huge government subsidies?
July 3, 2025
Suppose for one moment that the need for Net Zero is a genuine situation and not just manipulation of peoples because you can. The so-called science has never been peer reviewed so in scientific terms it is un-proven. A personal opinion by those paid to produce an opinion or want to be part of the me-to culture doesn’t make it science.
Back to the point, renewable energy might have place and just on being renewable has some justification. The bit where it falls down is those that engage in market manipulation to distort reality seemingly for no other reason that personal ego and appeasement of sponsors. As with all supplies and end produce it should arrive at the market place through competition.
If Governments want to get involved, provide an infrastructure it should be on a commercial therefore competitive basis, if they don’t do that, they are declaring war. The money needed for these big projects should be earned, that of course requires the whole economy to be vibrant and growing. Just removing money (taxes, levies etc.) from the economy is not managing the economy.
July 3, 2025
Investment in so called ‘clean energy’ is hardly a real investment since it has to be renewed frequently, so the expense continues, without end. Giant windmills have a life of about 10 years we are told, while solar panels on home roofs need replacing every generation with the added insult that the electricity companies usually benefit more than householders.
Before giving up the energy sources that powered our society we should have mastered what energy the universe gives away for free. Solar panels and windmills are futile, and very expensive, attempts at securing so called free energy.
When are we going to truly innovate – black holes are but one potential energy source too little is known about, but the trouble is our scientific brains have been so focused on the wrong things, they have been deliberately misdirected with the pandemic and net-0 so that they didn’t recognize the true value and source of real free energy.
Net-0 demands that we do not advance further – it will trap us in the past and reduce our survival potential, significantly. Those taking us down the so-called clean energy route are true traitors of mankind.
July 3, 2025
The black hole closest to Earth is at 1560 light-years from the Earth, ie, about 1.5×10^16 km, ie only 3.8×10^10 times the Earth-Moon average distance. What process do you think has more chance to capture the energy of this black hole, the Penrose or the Blandford-Znakek process?
And how will it compare with the cost of solar panels or wind turbines?
Reply Most of us have no idea but do not think black holes will deliver us cheap energy anytime soon. Why do you not engage with the realities of our current disastrous energy policy dependent on dear unreliable renewables and imports?
July 4, 2025
Black holes was an example of what our scientists should be investigating rather than being distracted by MMCC nonsense.
By the latest research there are literally thousands of tiny primeval black holes in our solar system alone – all we have to do is catch one.
July 4, 2025
obr.uk July 2023 ‘A history of natural gas in the UK’.
publications.parliament.uk 31/07/2023 ‘Delivering nuclear power – Report summary’.
Looking at the two reports above, one can wonder why someone who had been Director of No.10 Policy Unit, then was an MP between 1987 and 2024 with a number of ministerial then shadow SoS positions now asked a member of the public ‘to engage with the realities of our current disastrous energy policy’?
July 4, 2025
The only thing man-made about our lack of energy is the screw-up made by successive governments.
July 3, 2025
‘Over the last two decades advanced country governments have’ from then on it should say declared war on everyone.
They talk free markets, free trade open for business and competition – and the first thing they do is distort, manipulate. It is not a market that is consumer led but a market is ego led. So-called World leaders have declared War and taken the fight to everyone. However, the UK that fight is first and foremost a fight against its people, not the World. It started with Blair and got ramped up by successive numpties until we got to Theresa May who imposed Laws and Punishments on a whole Nation that didn’t apply to those we had to compete with, or those we have been forced to buy from. Each incumbent since had a choice, cancel, change, stick with it, but no we what as we have seen is ramping things up further with more ruler imposed malicious punishment. There is no rational as to why one nation should be punished, impoverished in this way other than personal ego, personal gratification.
These people may have some grandiose certificate of education, but what they are not is ‘bright’ able to think, think of consequence. You get to a conclusion this is part of the manipulation of the new world order as preached by Klaus Schwab (WEF) of which the current PM and Opposition Leader are so enthralled with and diligently turn up each year as disciples for new orders. Nothing else makes sense.
There is no Investment let alone ‘green investment’ when all actions, laws and controls are focused on sending the ‘seed corn'(UK earned money) of industry, commerce and enterprise out of the country with a one way ticket.
July 3, 2025
SG :
Using renewables to generate electricity is highly inefficient in both man-power and materials and hence expensive unless the eventual goal is to persuade the population to accept intermittency to save the planet. If electrical power is to be both sufficient and available on demand then either renewables need to be backed up by hydrocarbon fuels or grid-scale storage is needed. There is no plan for grid-scale storage because it is so expensive. The Royal Society’s Large-Scale Electricity Report proposing mainly wind generation (80/20 wind/solar) and hydrogen for storage predicts a cost that is double the price of renewable generated electricity even when assuming that the wind capacity factor and electrolyser efficiency are both doubled from current values. To obtain sufficient renewable electricity averaged over a year requires an overbuild of 3 or 4 times or more for wind and 10 times for solar which means that a lot of the time the resulting excess renewable power must be paid for curtailment. The hydrocarbon fuelled generators, whilst needing to provide 100% backup, if only used for 5% of the time (the NESO Clean Power 2030 plan) will need to be paid to run without generating power to provide grid inertia, instant backup as renewable power can disappear “at the drop of a hat” and for all the maintenance necessary to keep them in full working order which is more expensive than if they were running full time. In addition there are associated massive costs for national and local grid upgrades which are estimated to cost over £200bn each (probably HS2 estimates). This makes for a very expensive system especially when nuclear, the only low carbon source of electricity which is both reliable and affordable (when not built in the UK) has been effectively ditched.
July 3, 2025
Are yesterday’s painful scenes going to prompt a reconsideration of DEI? I can think of an Irish Scotsman and a Welshman in the governing party, both of whom would surely have made better holders of the high offices of state than the present incumbents. But despite both having the advantage of being Celts, they have been passed over.
This is happening all over the country and even in the services.
July 3, 2025
178 criminals were smuggled, in plain sight, into the UK yesterday on the 2nd July from France…
July 3, 2025
What do you do about the invasion of tens of thousands of unidentified young men of fighting age arriving with a devotion for religions, laws, customs, attitudes and practices completely alien to our own, particularly with regard to women? C’mon it’s easy! You give them free 4 star hotel accomodation, free healthcare, free entertainment with £40/week pocket money, the complete freedom to roam our streets, even outside schools, and the freedom to take black market jobs – even running a unlicenced and unregulated fast food kitchen in one of their hotels and delivering to local clientele. What could possibly go wrong?
July 4, 2025
All true
July 3, 2025
Subsidise baby Subsidise
July 3, 2025
How wonderful to listen today to the MPs ( from all parties ) talking
knowledgeably about 50’s women.
None of the usual childish jibes and insults.
Given that the public have zero ZERO faith in the system
It might be a good idea to do the right thing.
July 3, 2025
If all those who spoke in the waspi debate formed a party I’d vote for them ( minus Tortured Bell )
People as diverse as Rebecca Long Bailey and Julian from the New Forest. All had integrity not just
party puppets.
July 4, 2025
Green investments are for greenhorns.