Another Unfortunate Net Zero Update

By Andrew Stuttaford

Saturday, November 01, 2025

 

Well, this is an extraordinary development that no one, absolutely no one, could have forecast.

 

Via the Daily Telegraph (October 28):

 

The Government has slashed forecasts for the amount of electricity it expects wind farms to generate in a blow to Ed Miliband’s net zero plans.

 

In documents published before an auction of green energy subsidies this week, officials said they were revising down the predicted efficiency of wind turbines by more than a quarter as a result of “updated modelling”.

 

Experts said the change would mean that the Energy Secretary would have to pay higher subsidies to wind farms to secure the same amount of energy, making it harder to hit Labour’s clean power targets.

 

Updated Modeling.

 

The government had (reportedly) stuck with their estimates until now despite being told by developers, the people who actually know how wind turbines work, that its numbers were “statistically absurd.” Central planners always know best.

 

Related:

 

Separately on Tuesday, Spanish utilities giant Iberdrola, which owns Scottish Power, also reported a 5pc drop in UK wind farm generation because of “lower wind resource”.

 

But surely the “updated modeling” won’t make that much difference.

 

The Daily Telegraph:

 

The Government’s new estimates slashed the predicted “load factor” — the proportion of the year turbines are expected to generate power — from 61pc to 43.6pc for offshore wind. The estimated load factor for onshore turbines was also revised down, from 48.7pc to 33.4pc. . . .

 

Oh.

 

Less efficient wind turbines still face the same construction costs, pushing up the amount of subsidy needed to make projects viable. Industry experts said the latest round of subsidies was not generous enough to deliver the level of wind power needed to hit the Energy Secretary’s goals.

 

Wind power was cheap energy, Brits were told.

 

But surely the green “transition” is generating all those jobs that climate policy makers promised?

 

The Daily Telegraph:

 

Now we learn that the supposed “clean energy jobs boom” promised by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is to be achieved in large part by rebranding plumbers, electricians and welders as “clean energy workers”. Jürgen Maier, the boss of GB Energy, meanwhile, believes it could take 20 years to create the 1,000 jobs at its Scottish headquarters promised by Sir Keir Starmer.

 

Simply renaming jobs is a nonsense. Calling something by a different name does not change its fundamental nature, and if the Government is going this far it may as well redefine gas, coal and oil as “aged biomass” and announce its net zero targets met. It would, after all, be far cheaper than the alternative.