Cheap off-shore wind? It’s a wind-up

Another Budget, and another chunky subsidy for wind turbines. Buried in the near-impenetrable small print of this week’s effort is another billion-pound bung for the windmill industry – those whirring monsters that were supposedly getting cheaper all the time.

They weren’t, of course. The lie was exposed last year when the latest round of applications to operate them received no bids. The Budget moves should ensure such embarrassment does not recur: the rejected price of £44 per megawatt-hour is replaced to a guaranteed £73, a 66 percent increase. 

Even that dramatically understates the price the consumer will pay. Perhaps to disguise the horrible costs of the offshore triffids, pricing in this industry is in 2011/12 pounds. In today’s debauched currency, that translates to a fraction over £100 per megawatt-hour, using the converter kindly provided by Sarah Redwood, Director Renewable Energy at the department. 

Translated into your electricity bill, that is 10p per unit, which does not sound too bad until you add in the cost of connecting it and you to either end of the National Grid, which doubles the cost. It makes the £96 per KWh (in funny money) guaranteed cost of the output from Hinkley Point seem almost reasonable – except that it is clear that the cost there will be a lot higher after the budget overruns.

The windmill subsidy is not strictly a subsidy, but a budget allocation, although it is effectively the same thing. The overall budget for offshore wind farms is around £1.4bn in today’s pounds, or about £50 for every household, reckons David Turver, a retired project management professional.

Given such a baleful outlook, it comes as no surprise to find that the cost of energy did not warrant a mention this week, even though it is helping to destroy what’s left of Britain’s motor industry, along with much of the rest of the manufacturing sector. It is the green monster that dare not speak its name. We would rather cling to the delusion that we can prosper with a combination of windmills and sunbeams.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life