Sam Taylor
@staylorish
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Runs @These_Islands. “cannot stand the awesome reality of Scotland’s energy wealth” - Alex Salmond. Tweeting in a personal capacity.
Edinburgh, Scotland
Joined October 2016
If we needed any further confirmation that it’s utter bollocks, Lesley Riddoch has declared that “John Swinney’s indy energy promise is fine”.
John Swinney's indy energy promise is fine. But can he do nothing now as Scotland's green energy heads south? Is Trump driving Ukraine towards civil war? Any clear winner from Sandy Peggie case? Will Baron Malkie Offord boost Reform in Scotland? Listen https://t.co/pqT4PMbnVr
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Small correction to below. I accidentally divided 2025 revenue by 2024 generation. The correct calculation is: 417 / 2.13 = £196/MWh The basic point is unchanged: this is more than double the wholesale price in the current Ofgem price cap, which is £83/MWh.
2/ Beatrice Offshore wind farm was paid £417 million in its latest financial year for delivering 2,044.2 GWh (2.04 million MWh) of electricity. So the cost was: 417 / 2.04 = £204/MWh That’s more than double the wholesale price in the current Ofgem price cap, which is £83/MWh.
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Small correction to below. I accidentally divided 2025 revenue by 2024 generation. The correct calculation is: 417 / 2.13 = £196/MWh The basic point is unchanged: this is more than double the wholesale price in the current Ofgem price cap, which is £83/MWh.
2/ Beatrice Offshore wind farm was paid £417 million in its latest financial year for delivering 2,044.2 GWh (2.04 million MWh) of electricity. So the cost was: 417 / 2.04 = £204/MWh That’s more than double the wholesale price in the current Ofgem price cap, which is £83/MWh.
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Small correction to above. I accidentally divided 2025 revenue by 2024 generation. The correct calculation is: 417 / 2.13 = £196/MWh The basic point is unchanged: this is more than double the wholesale price in the current Ofgem price cap, which is £83/MWh.
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1/ Yesterday, the SNP published a fact-free paper on energy which simply assumed that wind farms produce cheap electricity. Coincidentally, the Beatrice Offshore wind farm (one of Scotland’s largest) published its annual accounts yesterday, which tell us the truth about costs…
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He actually listened back to this and thought: “that’s excellent - I’ll put it on Twitter” Virtually everything Dave Doogan says here is wrong.
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Reminder: the Scottish Government has no idea who would pay for the grid in an independent Scotland. Today’s SNP energy paper leaves us none the wiser.
Who would pay for the electricity grid in an independent Scotland? An incredibly important question, which was completely ducked by the latest independence paper. So I asked what Scot Gov’s position is. The answer (more or less): “we have no idea” This is just pathetic.
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3/ Since the SNP says that Scottish households would no longer pay towards nuclear plants in England after independence, we must assume that English & Welsh bill payers would no longer underwrite the costs of Scottish wind farms. Net result: massively higher bills in Scotland.
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2/ Beatrice Offshore wind farm was paid £417 million in its latest financial year for delivering 2,044.2 GWh (2.04 million MWh) of electricity. So the cost was: 417 / 2.04 = £204/MWh That’s more than double the wholesale price in the current Ofgem price cap, which is £83/MWh.
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1/ Yesterday, the SNP published a fact-free paper on energy which simply assumed that wind farms produce cheap electricity. Coincidentally, the Beatrice Offshore wind farm (one of Scotland’s largest) published its annual accounts yesterday, which tell us the truth about costs…
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Reminder: when asked to identify “low cost” wind farms in Scotland, the Scottish Government is unable to do so. For the very good reason that none exist.
1/ Farcical. Scot Gov publishes an independence paper which says: “offshore and onshore wind farms can currently provide electricity at a lower cost than gas power plants” So… I asked Scot Gov to identify those wind farms. Obviously it can’t, because the claim is not true.
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Swinney did not “spell out” anything. He plucked the figure out of thin air.
Tomorrow's front page 📰 Swinney spells out steps that would slash energy bills by a third after independence
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Low-cost loans so that low-income households can use leverage to buy equity stakes in wind farms. Absolutely nuts. Almost as if the people who wrote this nonsense have no idea how renewables equities have performed recently.
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Very bizarre line in today’s energy paper. English & Welsh bill payers already pay super-premium prices for Scottish electricity (because no matter how often John Swinney says so, it simply isn’t true that Scottish renewables are low cost). And the SNP wants to add an extra levy?
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As predicted. Swinney’s energy argument is based on thoroughly dishonest figures. Nobody would build wind farms at these prices today.
Another question for John Swinney this morning. Somewhere in the footnotes he will probably cite a 2023 DESNZ report on generation costs, which is *very* outdated. Ask Swinney if he believes these figures are realistic, and why nobody in the renewables industry agrees with him.
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There are no calculations explaining the third off energy bills claim. It’s just plucked from the air. A whole raft of measures are mentioned which seemingly possess the magical quality of saving loads of money while costing no money at all. Execrable stuff.
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1/ This sums up today’s energy nonsense from the SNP. A conspiracy theory which depends on the belief that the UK Government covered up the economic and fiscal impact of North Sea oil.
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Significant that we never got an energy paper in Scot Gov’s independence series. Today’s document is presumably what they wanted to publish, but couldn’t (it’s an SNP publication). Civil service willingness to produce absolute horseshit not without its limits, it would seem.
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