UK secures record supply of offshore wind projects (opens in new tab)

> We're already at 70%+ of our energy

Just to be picky… electricity…

We've still got a lot to do to decarbonise the rest of our energy usage EVs, heat pumps, improving housing stock, electric trains etc

> We're already at 70%+ of our energy coming from non-fossil-fuel sources

Is it actually the case on an annualised basis? Or was it just the case when you looked at the live grid data? (There is also the issue with "biomass", which is wood imported from abroad to be burnt)

Hi, these projects already have grid connection dates so no new grid upgrades are required to deliver. The developers of the wind farm have to factor in transmission charges (tnuos) into their bids that pay for these.

It's a contract for difference, so that 9p is paying for both the infrastructure and the cost of the electricity it produces I believe.

All of the winners in the current auction have grid connection slots it's part of the prerequisites for the process

We were always going to have to build out infrastructure as we decarbonise just as we'd have to build infrastructure if we remain on fossil fuel

Plus we get cleaner air and less health issues caused by pollution

This is such a nonsense comment.

> Producers are far from consumers

Distance from London to the biggest windfarms are 350 km [1]

This is the same distance as from Miami to Orlando (in Florida). Do you really think it is a problem transmitting electricity this distance.

You should try look at the international connections in Europe. Some are longer than this.

The Viking link between UK and Denmark is 765 km.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...

While a bill reduction is definitely useful and important for the people of the UK, energy independence is also important for the nation.

Exposure to international fossil fuel markets has been a problem for many nations in recent years, as turmoil upsets supply. And greater energy independence also means handing less money over to countries and governments with conflicting defence goals.

The issue is that quite often the wind doesn’t blow - often for several weeks like last january - and the sun barely shines for much of the year. So renewables mean the country just has to pay for (and subsidise) a whole ton of extra infra but can’t actually retire non-renewable infra because you can’t rely on renewables. This strategy is why UK electricity is so absurdly expensive.

And when presented with this politicians and “green” sorts will handwave about pumped storage or whatever despite that basic back of the envelope calculations will show we can’t build enough of that to store 4 weeks worth of electricity for a whole country.

Assuming you're talking about Agile Octopus / Time of use tariffs, if you look at the price distribution for December: https://agileprices.co.uk/?fromdate=20251231 , negative prices are very rare compared to expensive prices.

Climate targets - including the Conservative ones, which have had the majority impact on UK emissions reductions - have definitely increased energy prices. Wind projects being cheaper than gas power stations is a capex comparison, not a consumer price one.

The cost is that you need storage or alternatives. Solar is more predictable - you can have very long periods of low wind.

The cult members will say whatever but you can measure cost. Wind is expensive, this project is expensive, and it won't lead to lower bills.

I am also not sure what you mean by "the Conservatives"...they started this about ten years ago. The issue was, something that was pointed out at the time, that they went into as a primarily political decision without any regard for the costs or trade-offs. The result has been much higher electricity prices. The position that Labour are taking is almost identical: anyone who disagrees with us a loon, pressers that are simultaneously obviously misleading and bombastic in the claims made (the presser for this has the head of a quango saying what a "stonking" job he is doing), and massive lobbyist intervention because of the need for subsidies (subsidies are now 4x the size of industry profits, almost all of the people quoted in the presser for this are lobbyists). Unfortunately, the reality of cult members is that they believe their cult is unique and special, and every other cult is wrong. This happened with the Tories ten years ago, it is happening with Labour now, in ten years it will be another party doing the same thing...it is how cults work.

> All I know is that when the wind blows and the sun shines my electricity costs £0.00 (or less)

£0.00 and complete submission to china which produces 75% of solar panels, windmills and batteries to store their production

I'm 'lucky' to live near a couple of offshore wind turbine 'fields'. From the shore these are barely visible many days of the winter, and when they are they cause me no concern or upset seeing them on the horizon. I actually find them pretty pleasing to see.

They are also building a heap of new energy transmission infrastructure here, which for now is bringing a fair few new jobs to the area - and going forwards there will continue be jobs in ongoing maintenance.

Coupled with the cheaper energy they provide, it all feels like wins for me - I hope we see much more generation planned, and I agree - if this means we need less (or none) nuclear power in the future, that feels like another win.

Think you may have that back to front. UK is building a large nuclear reactor currently and working by on SMRs after that

There's reasonable arguments for not building new nuclear (expensive, slow), but not for closing existing nuclear unless you have some specific reasons to believe it's unsafe! That is, specific to that plant in question.

Would have been more inspirational if they kept nuclear and didn't sabotage the French initiatives. I'm in germany and paying close to 40ct a kwh, that's 2+ times what you'd pay in nuclear first countries like france or slovakia. And no matter how fast germany switches to renewable, it'll never make up for the past 50 years of fuck ups in term of CO2 emissions