The total annual renewables subsidy impact on UK household cost of living is £9 billion — which comes to £340 per year per household. The low and much-publicised offshore wind bids for Feed-in Tariffs with Contracts for Difference (FiTs CfDs) continue to confuse many analysts, even those from whom one might expect clear-eyed caution. A […]

The ludicrous disparity between overly generous renewables subsidy and the barely adequate support for long term nuclear research shows that at some not very distant point we will have to stop pretending that seven billion people can live on sunbeams and the breath of heaven Starting with a grant of £20 million, the UK government […]

OPEC would have had to cut output anyway, given the dramatic increase in American shale oil production. The attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure last weekend took out about half of the kingdom’s production capacity. Yet the market reaction was muted, with global oil prices rising only to where they were in May. Markets seem […]

Solar energy can do a few useful things. It can power a radio in an off-grid location. But it can’t support our day-to-day life. The Modi government has been shovelling scarce taxpayer resources into solar energy, with a further $6.5 billion promised till 2022. This is over and above indirect subsidies that people pay through […]

There can be no doubt now that the UK’s electricity system is increasingly fragile. Will the consumer accept the extremely high costs of addressing renewable energy problems in order to secure this fragile electricity system? Or would they prefer a major policy rethink? In an earlier post, this blog has noted the evident concern of […]

Every year, 7 million people die from an airborne pollutant known as particulate matter. It’s not something that many of us think about, myself included. But on a recent trip to Tanzania I came face to face with this silent killer. A Masai family whom we visited used a small wood fire as their only […]

The collapse of new wind projects in Germany is showing the way forward on renewable energy; the US wind industry should be ready for headwinds. On Monday, the Seattle City Council passed a resolution that adds the city to the list of municipalities that have committed to a local version of the Green New Deal. More than […]

Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic. Democrats dream of powering society entirely with wind and solar farms combined with massive batteries. Realizing this dream would require the biggest expansion in mining the world has seen and would produce huge quantities of waste. “Renewable […]