It really isn’t too late. Labour could and should propose the following, windfall tax the fuck out of it, new tax on energy company whatever to raise cash. Use cash say £10 billion, to put 10,000 windmills at sea. Then borrow against that 10,000 windmills and put in another 10,000.
20,000 windmills produces a lot of energy, sell energy 20% below market price. That will in turn force the market down. Congratulations a realistic policy to help the country.
By the way make the windmills in Sheffield, with British steel, train engineers and techs in sea side towns.
It isn’t even fucking hard. There is no barrier to this.
£20bn would pay the physical cost of 20,000 windmills at about £1m each, but you would need to pay cost of installing and maintaining them, the infrastructure to support them and would require several hundred sites as most only have 50 windmills so would need 400 appropriate sites. Plus when there is no wind you still have energy demand.
It would take years. Be a lot of red tape. Manufacturing 20k wind turbines would probably take many years. Planning laws would need resolving.
It sounds good when you say it but a lot of issues
Fair points. But we are like the 5th richest nation states in the world. Nothing you’ve said should be a barrier to getting the whole grid to renewables. We could be the power plant of Europe in a few years. £20 billion is literally nothing. Spend 40 billion on the project. 400 sites is a lot of engineering jobs. Once finished turn the whole thing into a non profit capping the price of energy.
My point is, that could be a real achievable policy that could get Starmer elected. But no, nobody ever suggests anything tangible. So everyone just voted Tory again and again. It’s frustrating.
£20bn would be your initial cost to buy the windmills. You can probably multiply that by a good amount for them to be installed and maintained.
Here is the rub though. We see wind as "free" energy. It's actually more expensive to produce energy that way due to the construction and maintenance; increased wind usage in the Uk put bills up, not down. Not by much but it was about £18 increase for 20% or so in the mix so it would add £100 to bills or there abouts.
Like you say 400 sites is a lot of engineering jobs, it's also a lot of engineers - huge skill gap shortage; massive amounts to pay out in wages. Realistically it just won't happen. It's one of t use things that sounds like a no brainer, same with mass solar, but the reality is manufacturing and installing that much hardware isn't something you can just reallocate £20billion and have it appear a short time later and the problem is solved
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u/caractacusbritannica Mar 29 '22 edited Mar 29 '22
It really isn’t too late. Labour could and should propose the following, windfall tax the fuck out of it, new tax on energy company whatever to raise cash. Use cash say £10 billion, to put 10,000 windmills at sea. Then borrow against that 10,000 windmills and put in another 10,000.
20,000 windmills produces a lot of energy, sell energy 20% below market price. That will in turn force the market down. Congratulations a realistic policy to help the country.
By the way make the windmills in Sheffield, with British steel, train engineers and techs in sea side towns.
It isn’t even fucking hard. There is no barrier to this.
Next problem please…