Mike Thompson

BREAKING: UK govt auction secures 4.9GW new solar at £65/MWh and 1.3GW new onshore wind at £72/MWh, 13% and 21% below the price cap respectively.

All due online by 2029.

Here's how Aurora Energy Research sees the UK offshore wind auction (AR7) cutting bills for consumers "£1bn by 2035"

* CfD payments go up
* Other costs go up (balancing, capacity mkt)
* Wholesale prices go down
* Overall costs go down

www.linkedin.com/posts/ivan-b...

I’ve got a 69 reg car, and frankly just kicking myself for not getting one of those free ones that were going before the net zero target came along

'Cherry picking data': Government and analysts hit back at latest Tufton Street attacks on net zero Right wing think tank accuses Climate Change Committee of overly optimistic clean tech cost estimates, but supporters of climate action counter that latest criticisms fail to recognise risks associate...

Here's the other side of the story you won't read in today's headlines about the cost of meeting net zero targets. The reality is the IEA report is deeply flawed and based on some pretty blatant cherry-picking of clean tech costs. www.businessgreen.com/news/4524063...

Truly wild that the Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express & Daily Telegraph all covered false claims that net-zero will "cost" £7.6bn – or even £9tn – which assumes we could have free gas, free petrol, free petrol cars & free gas power plants if we scrapped net-zero

More here: bsky.app/profile/drsi...

Thanks to @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org and @james-bg.bsky.social who got there before me
@adambell.bsky.social @pickardje.bsky.social @economicsinten.bsky.social

11/ We used the best info available and worked hard to make our report clear and hard to
misinterpret. We hope that can support better understanding and good decision-making.

Please read our analysis, not the odd numbers popping up this week!

www.neso.energy/document/374...

/ENDS

10/ Overall, there are important decisions ahead on how costs are recovered and investment is
paid for.

Costs should be as low as possible, the transition must work for consumers, and cheaper electricity makes the transition easier…

9/ Ofc it always depends what you assume - we don’t claim to have a crystal ball. We used the
best info available – all laid out online. We also explored sensitivities for if things turned out differently

8/ These numbers are based on robust analysis, but aren’t the whole picture. Net zero path also
brings:

👷Investment boost
⚠️ Less fossil fuel price risk
🌍 No trade hit (think CBAMs)
🏦 Cost of capital kept down
💰 Ongoing savings post-2050
Oh, and tackling climate change!

7/ We compare to other pathways too. That’s only illustrative as things vary besides net zero.

The Falling Behind scenario reduces emissions slower and doesn’t meet net zero. It does save costs by switching to electric vehicles + has other diffs like less data centre demand

6/ We compared future years to 2025 to see how spending might change. Short term there’s more investment; long term less spending on fuel and other operating costs.

On average, less spending in future years than in 2025 – and a big carbon saving into the bargain

5/ NESO’s recent work is based on the Future Energy Scenarios – those are illustrative paths for
the future energy system, so don’t give a direct estimate for the cost of meeting net zero or
other climate targets (CCC do that). But there are useful comparisons we look at.

4/ This is like saying the cost of getting metallic paint for my new car is £35,000. It counts the whole car, not just the paint!

If you want to know the cost of net zero – the ‘paint’ upgrade –
you’d need to compare to what the energy system (the ‘car’) costs without it.

3/ The huge numbers floated this week seem to have added all the green bars in Figure 8 together,
sometimes the orange bars too.

Oops – we’d still spend most of this without net zero…Unless
you think we’ll stop driving cars, stop heating homes and stop using energy – for anything!

2/ The figures seem to be constructed from Figure 8 in the recent NESO technical report. It
shows how much money goes on everything energy-related (buying and running cars, heating
our homes, providing our power), and how costs might fall in future on a path to UK carbon
targets

1/ Some wild numbers have been used in the media this week for “the cost of net zero”.

Reports have said that net zero will “cost” £4.5 trillion, £7.6 trillion – the list goes on.

None of these are the cost of net zero – a quick explainer 🧵 on why

Loved reading this (and poring over all the brilliant pictures ofc 📊📉). Congrats to all the team and committee on another fantastic and vital report

Hello #EnergySky, nice to be here.

If you'd like to hear about NESO's Clean Power 2030 advice, check out this convo I had with Rob. Covers challenges, definition, scenarios, costs and cutting the link with gas prices. Enjoy!