Comment by bjourne
9 hours ago
Last I read the strike price for offshore wind was about half of that for nuclear power (Hinkley Point). In other words the "huge subsidies" aren't going to who you think they are.
9 hours ago
Last I read the strike price for offshore wind was about half of that for nuclear power (Hinkley Point). In other words the "huge subsidies" aren't going to who you think they are.
You don't understand what a subsidy is. Offshore wind subsidies are taken out of electricity bills, not the price. The price you are seeing does not include the subsidy.
The reason why Hinkley Point is expensive is completely solvable. The reason why it is expensive is because it is supposed to be expensive, that is the purpose. An A road near me has required two lanes, so far they have spent near £100m over twenty years and have not built anything. The basic premise of the UK political system is that people have no idea what the price of anything should be because it is all a political fiction.
When the costing was done for Hinkley 10 years ago the price was going to be, iirc, something like 50% above the price of gas which was at record lows. This was regarded as extremely expensive...electricity prices are up multiples and multiples since then. Since then, you have had armies of lawyers, consultants, lobbyists, planners working on the project full-time...and you are asking why it is expensive? Thinking this requires knowing so little about how much nuclear costs around the world and having literally zero idea about infra projects work in the UK (spoiler: there is massive corruption at almost every level, tens of billions in graft every year).
Hinckley Point C has a Contract for Difference that basically means they know what they will be paid in advance.
Any savings they make constructing or overruns don't affect that.
So if anyone is grifting they are grifting the French taxpayer via EDF.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/16/edf-hinkley-...
Yes, offshore wind has CFDs too. If you are building an offshore wind farm, you are spending lots of money to construct something that isn't a low-cost operator and will likely cause significant economic issues with customer's ability to pay you...therefore, CFD. This is how the government was able to intervene to cause non-economic outcomes.
And yes, as I explain above but which you seem to have not read...there was unbelievable levels of graft involved with Hinkley. EDF is not the victim, the reason why the CFD is there is to pay suppliers to EDF which are: lawyers, consultants, planners, etc. At some point, someone may get paid for building a nuclear power plant but that is a largely accidental outcome. If you compare to what other countries with functioning political systems, Korea for example, it is multiples. The costs and prices are so ludicrous, so out of control that no-one could think they make economic sense...and, of course, they don't. It is just corruption.
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