The UK Government has reduced Winter Fuel Payment to the elderly which has conveniently provided the £1.5 billion needed to fund Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband’s offshore wind projects.

“[Miliband] has a master plan … do away with the money to help [pensioners] and increase the costs [of energy]. That’s the new socialist Britain,” Paul Burgess says.  “What has to be understood from the outset is that in new Labour Britain, ideology rules, not common sense.”

The Lifespan of Wind Turbines

Paul Burgess has been doing a series of videos which he calls ‘PB Basics’ or ‘Paul Burgess Basics’.  In PB Basics 2, Burgess discussed the lifespan of wind turbines.

Relying on the work of Professor Gordon Hughes – a renowned economist at the University of Edinburgh who has extensively researched the economics of wind power – and in particular, a text titled ‘Wind Power Economics – Rhetoric and Reality’ that accompanied a talk by Prof. Hughes gave in 2020, Burgess demonstrated how the load factor of a wind turbine decreases over time at a rate of approximately 3% per year due to wear and tear.   The load factor of a wind farm is the percentage of actual electricity output compared to the theoretical maximum output, assuming constant ideal wind conditions.

Burgess presented a graph relating to data from a large number of wind turbines in Denmark that illustrates the failure rate of wind turbines over time, specifically the percentage of energy lost due to failures.   Data from the graph indicates that 60% of modern offshore wind turbines fail within the first five years of operation, highlighting the need for frequent repairs and the associated escalating costs.

He also discussed the running costs using 2018 prices, which have since increased.  He did this by presenting a second graph of average operation costs per megawatt over time. Using the Isle of Man as an example, with 20 megawatts of modern turbines installed, the initial running cost of onshore wind farms would be £74,000 per megawatt per year, totalling £1.48 million annually.   After 12 years, the running cost per megawatt per year would rise to approximately £100,000, resulting in a total of £2 million annually for the Isle of Man.

For onshore wind turbines, “what we find is that after 15 years is that after about 15 years it’s no longer worth maintaining the wind farm,” he said.  Offshore wind is much more expensive, three to four times the cost of onshore wind turbines.

“Why is it that if it’s about 15 years … some [wind] farms [projects] carry on beyond?” Burgess asked. “The whole thing seems to me to be a Ponzi scheme.”

UK Pensioners are Left in the Cold to Fund Wind Projects

With offshore floating wind farms costing 4 or 5 times the price of gas. Who pays for them?  In his third ‘Basics’ video, Burgess explained who:  Our old age pensioners.  It’s an eat-or-heat policy with the UK’s Labour government.

Ed Miliband, the UK energy minister, had a problem with how to raise £1.5 billion for one of his favourite projects – floating wind farms.  But then, conveniently, the solution was provided. He reallocated the £1.5 billion needed to fund his floating wind farms from a winter energy package for pensioners.

The UK government has decided to use the £1.5 billion saved from not increasing the winter fuel allowance to fund floating wind farms at a time when Electricity prices in the UK are expected to rise by 10% in October 2024, Burgess explained.

“He has a master plan … do away with the money to help [pensioners] and increase the costs. That’s the new socialist Britain,” he said.  “What has to be understood from the outset is that in new Labour Britain, ideology rules, not common sense.”

Is Labour’s climate alarmist plans going to make a jot of difference? No.

Eliminating all global human carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 would only avert a temperature increase of 0.0084 degrees Celsius or 0.15 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a paper by Richard Lindzen, William Happer and William van Wijngaarden.

While there is almost a religious fervour chasing the 0.0084 degrees Celsius, the costs of “renewable” sources of energy are spiralling out of control. The cost of installing wind farms has increased fourfold since their initial implementation. And the wind farm projects don’t always go as well as the Government would like to make out.

For example, the first floating wind farm, Hywind Scotland, achieved a capacity factor of 54% over its first five years of operation but experienced significant issues requiring all turbines to be towed back to Norway for repairs in January 2024.

Note: After Burgess published his video, Starmer has bowed to demands for a vote on stripping millions of pensioners of winter fuel allowance, according to a report in the Daily Mail yesterday,   However, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has said that the Government won’t make a U-turn.