News Reporter/Editor @Coindesk. Breaking news, Bitcoin tech and protocols, crypto VC.

London
Posted without irony, you’re just proving his point.
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Replying to @alphamike20 @afneil
Disaster doesn't loom.
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You’ve done no such thing.
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Replying to @alphamike20 @afneil
It doesn't. Sea level rising at 30-odd centimetres per century isn't a disaster.
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Replying to @Miatsf
The gov thinks its better to have permanently expensive energy from RE rather than risk having temporarily expensive energy from gas. Like thinking its better to be permanently homeless than risk being evicted. Gas is not expensive. Can someone tell her its not 2022 anymore?
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So you'd buy a mix of crap cars on the basis that hopefully one of them works when you need to go somewhere? Or presumably, like most normal people, you buy one car that you know will work all the time?
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Renewable energy is expensive and unreliable. The answer to expensive, unreliable technology is not to try and use another expensive technology to make it slightly less unreliable. The answer is don’t use it in the first place.
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Replying to @BellaWallerstei
You’ve changed your tune.
Yes I am a Conservative. I believe in low tax, a small state, individualism & free enterprise. Net zero will help us build a more prosperous and resilient economy in the long term. It is a Conservative mission.
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The point is that national wealth funds are generally funded by budget surpluses (which we don’t have). If it’s funded by borrowing or taxation, it’s not a national wealth fund. It’s just government expenditure.
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Replying to @BellaWallerstei
This makes net zero sense. Net zero relies on the government deciding what consumers use and what they do by banning the alternatives. That could not be further from small state, individualism or free enterprise.
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We're not suffering. Signed, the 87%.
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Replying to @bbcquestiontime
There is no economic opportunity in making energy more expensive. Repeat: There is NO economic opportunity in making energy MORE expensive.
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Replying to @PaulMaxin @IainDale
If you understood how that analysis worked, you wouldn’t be citing it to prove your point It creates an imaginary UK that never left the EU, decides how much the economy of that would’ve grown, then determines that the real life UK is £100B pa worse off TL/DR: it’s bullshit
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Is this the same BMA that called ending all restrictions in July a “dangerous and unethical experiment”? Suggests their track record isn’t that great.
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Why does this “progress” require the existing tech to be banned?
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Replying to @BellaWallerstei
Far be it from the defend the BBC, but would be weird to hold him accountable for something that hasn’t happened.
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Replying to @James_BG
Thanks for confirming they worked 24.5% of the time last quarter.
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"Let's frack for gas!" "No point, we're too small to make a difference to the price." "Let's not bother with Net Zero then." "Noooo, we have to lead my example!" 🤪🤪🤪
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And yet the population of the world is 8 times higher than it was before we starting inhaling this poison. Suggests the advantages outstrip the hypothetical drawbacks.
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Replying to @BellaWallerstei
From an economic point of view, Brexit’s been a non-event. Imagine If someone had been in a coma for 10 years and was shown the data from the UK, Germany, France and Italy and told one of these countries had left the EU. There’s no way they’d be able to tell it was the UK.
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Its consensus among folk who want us to get almost all energy from RE so they justify it by claiming its cheaper Which it isnt. You could argue it will be cheaper in the future, but those same folk have been saying that wrongly for 20 years. Why would they suddenly be right now?
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Replying to @myteslaM3 @g__j
Given that all renewables are more expensive than gas, what would removing the price of renewables electricity from gas actually achieve?
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I'd be more concerned about losing jurisdiction over your brain if I were you. The FF industry appears to be living there rent free.
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New ICE cars are being banned from 2030. If it was supply and demand, the government wouldn't need to enact said ban.
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There were 10.4 million over 65s in 2011 and 11 million in 2021. That’s an increase of <6% in a decade.
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Other countries don’t have a centralised national health service. If your point is that you want more privatised health care as those countries do, then say so.
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Replying to @Fantasypaedia
Chilwell or Gabriel to start?
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And yet that’s the one you chose to best illustrate your point. So one can assume all the other “subsidies” are equally fallacious.
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Batteries are a cost of the unreliability of renewables, making them even more expensive.
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Except LCOE is a bullshit metric, as is evident when you test it against reality.
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So d’you want the government to spend a lot of money or not? You can have high spending financed either by high tax or borrowing (which is what we’ve had the last few years) Or you can have lower taxes and lower spending.
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Yeah that's not a thing though is it. Unless you have been taking frequent trips to every river and sea for 30 years. I'm very sure if you was making a data based argument with someone and they said "Trust my eyes bro" you would call BS. What you really mean is "I see a lot on Twitter".
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That’s true of any government. It goes with the territory.
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There’s nothing wrong with changing opinions on things over time as circumstances change. But I sure don’t understand what’s changed since 2023 to cause this particular U-turn.
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Those prices are in 2012 money, so the cheapest renewables in AR6 are £70-71.
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LCOE again. Even if that was a broadly valid metric, it's global so doesn't make any difference to the UK, where renewable prices are increasing not decreasing.
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It's the GBp/therm price / 30, then x by 1000 to get the MW price. Then double that to account for CCGT efficiency. So. taking the therm price from tradingeconomics.com/commodi…: 0.848/30 = 0.0282 0.0282x1000=£28.20 So 56.40MWh. The rest is carbon tax which takes it to £~65MWh.
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It does include the carbon tax. Without it, gas would be ~£56 MWh. As it is, there’s the carbon tax on top of it but it’s still cheaper.
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If fossils fuels were responsible for one in five deaths, you wouldn’t need “new research” or “advanced methods”. You’d just count the death certificates with “fossil fuels” written on them. If there’s 8 million of them each year, they should be pretty easy to find.
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What a strange position to take. “I don’t wanna know about data or evidence - I’ve already arbitrarily made my mind up.”
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LCOE asserts that RE is cheaper than gas. But gas is ~£65 MWh. There are no current renewables that are cheaper. register.lowcarboncontracts.… You can see all the projects that are way more expensive. So even the cheaper ones coming online wont make much difference to the average.
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Why don't you try answering the question? If the warming is bad for food production, why hasn't it been during the last 200 years of the world getting warmer?
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"I'd rather the government scrap the £13.6 billion in subsidies to the oil industry each year." That'd be more than difficult, it's impossible. Our government does not give subsidies to the FF industry, as our then-sole Green MP was twice reminded.
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Prices aren't "broadly similar." Two years ago was a one in 50-year event, which can be averted by having more gas not less. It makes no sense having permanently expensive energy from renewables because you're worried about gas becoming temporarily expensive.
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Except that study’s bullshit. It just makes up costs it think fossil fuels should be charged, then concludes that because they’re not charged them, they’ve been “subsidised” by that amount.
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Under 4 weeks until the London Marathon and my @NSPCC fundraising has reached £1000! I am £98 away from being halfway to my £2200 target which would feel great as my training enters the final phase so please do give generously if you can! Thanks so much! 2023tcslondonmarathon.enthus…
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Hence nuclear. In the meantime, there's hundreds of years of gas reserves.
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Replying to @FPL_Harry
One for dad’s army @DavidMunday815, @FPLGeneral 🤣🤣
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Because you're looking at sources that use LCOE. The carbon tax is neither here nor there to comparing which is cheaper. It's not exactly a win for renewables to say "Gas is actually cheaper but we tax it to make it more expensive," is it?
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Bully for you. This thread’s about the UK.
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You’re over 18 months out of date. There was 10 months or so in 2022 when the wholesale price was above the average strike price. That hasn’t been the case since early 2023.
The CfD results for July 2024 are now in. Second highest July on record, with total subsidies of £152m. Total subsidies high despite low load factors on offshore wind, due to high biomass generation.
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The table I’ve posted (twice)
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Well I agree everything related to the pandemic was a disgrace. I dunno why you think that was unique to this government though.
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Why are you clinging to this summary as if it contradicts the OP? The original IPCC screenshot contains conclusions about what’s actually happened. What you’re sharing appears to be an explainer about what could possibly happen. Completely different.
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Feel free to present data for why they’re not true. The IPCC says there’s no evidence of climate change causing an increase in floods, droughts, storms, hurricanes or fire weather. Nor do they predict there to be for the most part. So what disasters are you referring to?
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The money isn’t flowing from the government to company with a tax break. If you put money in an ISA, is the government giving you money?
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What is it actually designed to do then?
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Nobody's claiming that warming causes increased food production necessarily. But it damn sure hasn't hurt it either.
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It’s not though. We know how serious cancer is cos of the 10 million deaths per year 20K deaths from climate-related disasters per year - while sad for their loved ones - isn’t a crisis or emergency. Particularly when that figure has been decreasing for decades, not increasing
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Estimates don't reflect what we're paying now. Worse still, they're LCOE estimates.
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Gas has averaged ~£65MWh this year Onshore wind and solar on CfDs average ~£110MWh. Offshore wind ~£140MWh ROCs (which account for more of our supply) are structured to pay a subsidy on top of the wholesale price. So their structure guarantees they’re more expensive than gas
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The NHS’ budget has increased by more like £600 million a week since 2016…
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Now less than 7 WEEKS until the London Marathon 🤯Training's going very well and I can't wait for race day on April 23!🏃🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️ I'm running to raise money for @NSPCC and I'd be unbelievably grateful for whatever you can donate to this amazing cause 🙏🙏🙏 2023tcslondonmarathon.enthus…
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No, science is not unfounded. The idea that the world getting slightly warmer is a serious problem however is 100% ascientific, because it’s at complete odds with the last 200 years of evidence.
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So what damaging consequences are you concerned about? In other words, can you actually name a single metric in which life on earth is being negatively affected by the world getting slightly warmer?
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Gas is cheaper than all renewables currently on our grid. Explain how the cheapest part of our electricity mix is to blame for prices going up?
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If you put money in an ISA to get the interest/dividends tax free, have you been subsidised? Even if we did extend the subsidy definition to tax breaks, those that FFs receive are external to prices. The subsidies renewables receive however are included in the price we pay.
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And besides the vast majority of renewables aren’t even on CfD. They’re on ROC, where the provider is guaranteed a subsidy on top of the market price. So none of them can ever be cheaper than gas.
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I'm real. Can you answer me? tradingeconomics.com/commodi… the wholesale price of gas which equates to ~£65 MWh register.lowcarboncontracts.… the prices of renewables on the grid Based on these sources how is gas a) more expensive than renewables b) setting the price of renewables?
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We had centuries of the world getting colder. Does it not make sense that we'd now have centuries of it getting warmer? I'm perfectly comfortable with AGW. Obviously humans have had an impact on the world warming. But how much? 50%, 25%, 10%? Does anybody even know?
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Replying to @deeleyc6 @KateAndrs
Do you mean to say the European model which is equal parts privatised and nationalised leads to more money being spent on healthcare? You might just be on to something there.
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You seem confused by what you actually want from a government. On the one hand, you’re incensed by a tightening of public spending. On the other, you (correctly) see high taxes and a lack of fiscal prudence to be a disaster. These two positions are irreconcilable .
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Creating jobs is immaterial. Obviously building any infrastructure involves employing people but that’s not *why* you’re doing it.
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Something not being available when you need it is the definition of unreliable. So wherever pros they have are insignificant compared to their cons.
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Thats because what wind farms bid is irrelevant. If a wind farm has a CfD to provide power for £95 MWh, it can bid whatever it wants because it’ll get paid the difference via a subsidy One way or another that wind farm costs £95 MWh, which is comfortably more expensive than gas
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So why not just use gas and nuclear?
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A subsidy is when the government gives you money. A tax break is when the government decides not to take money from you. You seriously don't see the difference?
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Climate related costs the world roughly 0.2% of GDP. Trivial. Useful experiment for you. Take your annual salary and divide it by 500 to give you 0.2%. If you had to spend that much each year on repairs, maintenance etc to your property, would you really be that bothered?
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Yes, as I’ve already said, we’re talking about the UK.
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Ollie Watkins is a seriously special player. To be second choice to the England captain and come on and do that is incredible. Spellbinding. #EURO2024 #ENGENE
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