By Paul Homewood
https://www.thegwpf.com/bbc-finds-lord-deben-guilty-of-misleading-public/
As I reported last week, the GWPF partially won its complaint against the BBC, for failing to challenge Lord Deben on the Today programme when he claimed:
“What on earth is the government doing, saying that even where a community wants to have an onshore wind farm, it can’t have it. This is sheer dogma.”
Deben, aka Gummer, also stated that onshore wind power is the “cheapest form of producing electricity today”.
The BBC rejected this part of the complaint, which has now been sent up to OFCOM.
So, what are the facts about the cost of onshore wind?
The vast bulk of onshore wind capacity is eligible under the Renewable Obligation scheme for subsidies. The earlier projects earnt one ROC (Renewable Obligation Certificate) per MWh generated. Schemes commissioned since 2013 are awarded 0.9 ROC per MWh.
One ROC is currently priced at £47.22, so these latter schemes receive a subsidy of £42.50/MWh, on top of the market price, which has been around £45/MWh for the last few years, but has spiked recently to around £60/MWh following increasing global prices for oil and gas.
According to govt data, the annual cost of ROC subsidies is now running at £1.3bn for onshore wind.
The RO scheme was closed to new entrants in 2016.
There are also a small number of onshore wind projects, which have been awarded contracts under CfD, the successor to RO. These are paid guaranteed and index linked prices for every unit of electricity generated. In all there are fifteen schemes with total capacity of 749 MW, with current prices of between £87.53 and £91.94/MWh.
Most of these schemes have yet to be completed, and won’t start generating till next year. They will all be paid guaranteed strike prices for 15 years.
In short the bulk of onshore wind output is subsidised at a rate of £47/MWh, and even the newest tranche of projects will receive subsidies of at least £30/MWh, at current wholesale prices.
On top of this is the cost of providing standby capacity, which has been estimated by Deben’s own Committee on Climate Change at £10/MWh for every unit produced by wind farms.
It is also highly relevant that new investment in onshore wind has virtually dried up since subsidies were withdrawn in 2016. This is proof that onshore wind cannot compete at market prices.
The BBC has attempted to justify Deben’s claim by referring to BEIS’ theoretical Levelised Cost Estimates for new projects built in 2020.
According to BEIS, the cost of onshore wind and CCGT are £63 and £66/MWh respectively.
However, the figure for CCGT includes Carbon Costs of £19/MWh. This of course is not a real cost, but simply an arbitrary tax imposed by government. Without it, the real cost would be £47/MWh.
Again, of course, the BBC is conveniently ignoring standby costs, not to mention extra network costs for connecting remote wind farms to the grid.
OFFSHORE WIND COSTS
While I’m at it, let’s look at offshore pricing.
On average, offshore wind farms are awarded 1.9 ROC per MWh, a subsidy worth £89.70/MWH.
Last year this subsidy cost bill payers £1.8bn.
The RO scheme was closed to new entrants in 2017, with new schemes joining the CfD scheme instead.
There are currently ten projects awarded contracts under CfD, with capacity of 7.5 GW. Some are already up and running, but most are still to be built, with planned dates up to 2024.
CfD prices range from £63.66 to £166.59/MWh, with a weighted average of £116.93/MWh.
Based on a 40% load factor, these CfD schemes will produce 26 TWh a year, at a subsidy of £1.9bn, assuming a market price of £45/MWh.
Even at current market prices of £60/MWh, the annual subsidy will still amount to £1.5bn.
In total then, RO and CfD offshore schemes will be costing bill payers between £3.3bn and £3.7bn a year by 2024, when all of the contracted projects are due to be launched.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
October 16, 2018 at 01:31PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 