Morning,
Not notable at all.
This guy irritates me quite a lot, mainly because he’s 56 and he dresses like a 19 year old trying to reinvent them self at university. You’ll find him wheeled out consistently on the news in the UK to talk about promoting green energy, despite being the owner of an eco energy company, a wind turbine manufacturing company and a solar power installation company. Now he’d like to stop school kids being served meat. No doubt his products would replace it and are likely full seed oils and soy - which reduces testosterone. He’s entitled to do all of this of course and you’re entitled to support him, but in my view this is a savvy man riding the gravy train of moronic, unrealistic and ultimately damaging government policy that is beginning to run into reality with the public, if not the politicians. If you’d like to understand that gravy train a bit more, let’s talk about contracts for difference. Contracts for Difference (CfD) is a UK government mechanism that supports renewable energy projects, like Dale’s wind turbines. Companies like his bid for CfDs by proposing energy production and desired price (strike price). The government chooses projects with the lowest strike price up to a budget, then offers a CfD. Developers receive the market price, but if it's lower than their strike price, the government, with your taxes, covers the difference up to a cap, ensuring a stable income for Dale. This incentivizes energy companies to invest in green energy, benefiting them financially. However, the costs of the CfD scheme are typically passed on to us as customers through our energy bills. For the past ten years since this scheme was put in place, the government have spent around £29 billion on CfD’s and other renewable projects, hence why Dale has a big smile on his face and wants to continue encouraging the government to bullshit the populace. Just to rub in the stupidity of this, remember that the government has to ensure there is a predictable (doesn’t depend on the wind or sun) supply of energy available to meet the grids needs at all times. So for every new wind farm you build, you’re actually increasing the amount of back up energy you must supply also, whether you buy from other countries’ surplus or build fossil power sources. It’s a scam. To twist the knife, this has all happened over the past ten years, it’s takes 10-15 years to build full size nuclear power stations (we’ll ignore SMR’s), £29 billion could have built about 5 of them, the UK would need 9-12 to cover it’s total supply with nuclear and has 9 older reactors already due to retire in a few years. What do you think would have been a more effective use of time and taxes?