Moreover, while renewables' marginal costs are low, wind and solar farms require a lot of upfront investment to build. New projects in Britain tend to secure a contract with the government guaranteeing them a fixed price regardless of the wholesale price, to make sure they can earn back their upfront costs. This guarantee is funded by a levy on consumer bills, meaning that the wholesale price is not what consumers end up paying for those generators' output. In the most recent auction round of these contracts, offshore wind farms secured guaranteed prices of about £91 per megawatt-hour, higher than current power prices, and which will rise with inflation for 20 years.

If you don’t like what I’ve written about the costs of renewables, because of my unforgivable politics, here is the FT making the same points. These are not political points. They are points about economic realities. And an independent Scotland cannot abolish economic realities.

Because people are getting mixed up between short-run marginal costs, which are very low, and long-run marginal costs, which are not. The key thing to understand is that consumers ultimately have to pay the long-run costs.

How to interrogate SNP energy bills claim How to demonstrate that the SNP is not telling the truth about energy bills and Scotland’s “low-cost” renewables. A step-by-step guide.

Yes, I know that. But the price of renewables is higher than the gas-linked electricity price we pay today.

How to interrogate SNP energy bills claim How to demonstrate that the SNP is not telling the truth about energy bills and Scotland’s “low-cost” renewables. A step-by-step guide.

Details here:

Decent effort by @severincarrell.bsky.social. But Swinney’s answer is his standard bullshit. To ask this question effectively he *must* be pressed on the fact (and it is a fact) that costs of the latest generation of Scottish renewables are *higher* than the price of electricity set by gas.

Here is what the SNP manifesto promises on energy bills. No details on how this would be achieved, of course. This is not a policy. It’s a fantasy.

John Swinney says one of the things he’s most proud of the SNP government for having delivered is something it had almost no role in delivering. (Energy is reserved. Scot Gov’s minor role is limited to planning applications.)

“But you are allowed an opinion.” (Part 2/2)

John Swinney’s inability to give a straight answer on the SNP’s position on new drilling for oil & gas, painfully exposed this morning by Nick Robinson on the Today Programme. (Part 1/2)

Nick Robinson skewers John Swinney’s fatuous argument that national security concerns are a smoke screen for an “anti-Scottish” conspiracy by the UK government to block a Chinese wind turbine factory in Scotland.

And again. He loves this line. And it’s wholly false.

1/ This line, that because a Chinese company has a minority stake in Hinkley Point C, the UK Labour government must be “anti-Scottish” to have blocked the Ming Yang wind turbine factory, on national security grounds, is very easily debunked.

Scotland’s energy wealth is being “siphoned off” by Westminster, says John Swinney. Populist bullshit of the highest order. #bbcdn

5/… which has not reversed the previous government’s u-turn on Chinese involvement in new nuclear.

“If that’s not an anti-Scottish move by a Labour government, I don’t know what is.”

Well, John Swinney, it turns out that you really *don’t* know what is.

4/ The minority stake in Hinkley Point C still held by a Chinese company is a passive, non-controlling interest, and the legacy of a decision made more than a decade ago by a previous government. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the current Labour government at Westminster…

3/ And in 2022, the Rishi Sunak government reversed that position by moving to exclude any further Chinese involvement in new nuclear, on national security grounds. hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2022...

2/ The Chinese involvement in new nuclear was a decision made in 2015 by the David Cameron government. www.gov.uk/government/n...

1/ This line, that because a Chinese company has a minority stake in Hinkley Point C, the UK Labour government must be “anti-Scottish” to have blocked the Ming Yang wind turbine factory, on national security grounds, is very easily debunked.

And again. He loves this line. And it’s wholly false.

Scotland’s energy wealth is being “siphoned off” by Westminster, says John Swinney. Populist bullshit of the highest order. #bbcdn

How to demonstrate that the SNP is not telling the truth about energy bills and Scotland’s “low-cost” renewables. A step-by-step guide.

How to interrogate SNP energy bills claim How to demonstrate that the SNP is not telling the truth about energy bills and Scotland’s “low-cost” renewables. A step-by-step guide.

This is really important. The SNP, and many supporters of independence, keep making the argument that Scotland's renewables would bring down the price of electricity in an independent Scotland, and imply that the current system is unfair to Scots. This analysis blows that argument out of the water.

How to demonstrate that the SNP is not telling the truth about energy bills and Scotland’s “low-cost” renewables. A step-by-step guide.

The gas price moves around, so I wouldn’t necessarily put it like that. In the long run, we cannot expect gas or wind to deliver cheap electricity.

13/ John Swinney should be challenged on this forensically and relentlessly. He is not telling the truth and it is maddening that he is not being properly questioned on something so central to his election pitch.

12/ The direct wholesale cost of electricity in the Ofgem price cap *is* the gas-linked price. And the latest generation of Scottish wind farms cost *the same* or *more*.

11/ So… when John Swinney recites the mantra that “we must break the link between the electricity price and the price of gas”, remember this:

10/ And without those guaranteed prices, nothing gets built. Berwick Bank will be the largest offshore wind farm in Scotland when it is complete. But it would not be happening at all without the guarantee that consumers will pay £95/MWh (and rising) for its output.

9/ Some lower priced CfDs do exist, but they achieved those prices when inflation was benign and interest rates were at historic lows. That world no longer exists. The Allocation Round 7 prices are the true reflection of the world we live in today.

8/ And CfD prices for emerging technologies remain very high. Floating offshore wind (the majority of ScotWind is floating) priced at £230/MWh in Allocation Round 7.