The public doesn't hate Net Zero as much as RW politicians insist they do

[Echobelly]

Politicians like Kemi Badenoch and right wing newspaper front pages love to talk as though everyone hates Net Zero and sustainability as concepts and wants us to get on with burning coal and drilling for oil. They seem to stake an awful lot on people not like sustainability mostly because they see it as 'woke' as far as I can tell.

I think most people don't think about it enough to hate it really and most people broadly want the outcomes of improved sustainability but would like it to happen without it needing any investment. I reckon some people don't like feeling 'nagged' about saving the environment and in many ways I don't blame them as, while we should all do our bit, really it's up to governments and big businesses to actually do the damn work to truly make a difference.

Maybe Net Zero has a bit of a PR problem as it sounds unachievable, and also maybe it sounds like you get nothing, or something will be taken away from you/society. It might do better to have a name that sounds more 'positive'. But it's a shame because ultimately, even if for some reason you don't believe in climate change it seems to me that the benefits of renewable energy (such as ending energy dependence on some not always friendly countries and less pollution) are pretty clear and I'm not sure people realise it's not just powering a few kettles, it's often around 50% of UK energy production

Almost as if we need fossil fuels and renewable energy in the mix..and if renewable energy is so cheap and effective it can compete on the free market right?

I know for example solar works and is amazing. Works well on homes and it's good for car parks as well. Absolutely great. It was subsidised as part of the RHI but this ended as the market matured

He's mixed up his ROC subsidies with CfDs leading to some double counting and his average costs of renewables are not weighted average which over inflates the cost.

But generally speaking he is correct. If anything he has under estimated the cost of renewables by not taking into account the significant cost to everyone's bills of the massive expansion of both the distribution and transmission needed to connect all
the new wind and solar farms, plus this new grid infrastructure is underutilised- for example a solar farm in the UK has a load factor of about 11% which means that the km and km of new cables connecting it to the grid are not used for 89% of the time but still need to be paid for.

He also misses out the Capacity Market subsidy which is paid to nuclear and gas fired plants for just being available to produce power in events of no wind or sun - even if most of the time they don't.

The reason it sounds like madness is because it is.

When it works of course.

Which is where load factor comes in. If you had perfect levels of sunshine, no cloud and no night time for every hour of the year (24 x 365 =8,760 hours) then the load factor would be 100%.

However UK solar load factor is only 11%. By comparison Australian or Spanish solar is around 35%.

Thank you

Actually that's not the worst bit.

Because of the taxes on electricity bills and additional costs for grid expansion caused by the growth of renewables, UK electricity bills are amongst the highest in the world.

This then causes demand to drop (it's been decreasing since 2010 despite the growth in EV, heat pumps, aircon etc.

The Government reaction to complaints about high electricity costs is to expand the number of renewable generation plants. This in turn pushes up prices higher, reduces demand and so on.

It really is insane.