This post goes some way to explaining the dire financial straits the UK is in... "Britain has almost run out of taxpayers, or at the very least, it’s slowly running out of people who pay enough taxes to plausibly finance the state." "...in 1998, about 43 per cent of British earners paid sufficient tax to cover the Government’s average per-capita spending. During Covid, that figure fell to an absolute low of circa 20 per cent, then by 2025 recovered modestly to 26.6 per cent." No wonder if fewer than 27% of people are net contributors to the state It's stats like this that make me want to leave. Big new project in the US in the next few months might be just the springboard I need @griffitha @LiamHalligan open.substack.com/pub/ieains…

I've been to several events in the past few weeks where people (often working for network operators) talk up the idea that CP2030 will save people money but only if there's a massive increase in grid infrastructure Under the regulated asset base (RAB) model, network operators earn an allowed return on the value of their regulated assets The larger the asset base, the greater the absolute return they can earn Capital investment increases the RAB, allowing operators to recover depreciation and financing costs through consumer bills over many years This creates a strong incentive to favour capital expenditure and asset growth, even where cheaper alternatives might exist, because a larger RAB means higher potential profits for network companies So next time you hear this nonsense about how if only we spend a few more £billions we'll all be better off, think about who is saying it... Renewables operators earn their income from subsidies... The more renewables we plan the more subsidies are up for grabs Network operators earn their income through a regulated return on the asset base... The more new infrastructure that is built the more money that make All of this gets recovered through bills CP2030 cui bono? Not consumers, that's for sure @Dieter_Helm explains that we actually do need to spend on infrastructure but a lot of that is to upgrade existing infrastructure that is old and either not performing well now or at risk of retirement This I agree with. Also that to do it effectively we must cut regulation. It cannot be the case that we put lives at risk due to decrepit infrastructure because we're trying to protect a few newts, bats or fish dieterhelm.co.uk/publication…

Not surprising after a whole bunch of warnings of insufficient turndown in the BM in Scotland today After record balancing costs in September, October looks like it might be a even higher

Reissued this morning....

I raised this directly with Fintan Slye and he said they didn't want to double count risks I pointed out its not double counting if you set likely wind output in cold weather (ie cold and still weather are correlated) rather than using average wind output across the year He didn't agree. Despite the fact that this alone could wipe out the spare margin