@Aaron, spareme the victory lap on one freakishly windy, sunny March 28 day.
Your post crows about 71% renewables (mostly wind at 55%, solar 15%) plus nuclear pushing “low-carbon” to 85%, with exports. Nice weather-driven spike. But that’s not the full picture, it’s propaganda dressed as data, and UK households are the ones footing the bill while the real energy picture stays grim.
Here are the facts, not the cherry-picked snapshot:
This was a perfect-storm day, not the norm. National Grid ESO data and recent analyses show renewables hit highs only under ideal conditions. Days like February 28, 2026, saw gas at 30.5% while wind lagged. Annual renewables share for UK electricity in 2025 hovered around 47% (Ember/Carbon Brief records), up from prior years but nowhere near your 71% daily peak. Rolling 12-month zero-carbon (including nuclear) stagnates around 50-63% depending on the month. Evening demand? Renewables routinely crash to 35-45%. Intermittency isn’t a bug, it’s the feature you’re ignoring.
The subsidies are massive and hidden in your bills. Contracts for Difference (CfD) payouts hit a January 2026 record of £269.7 million, mostly to offshore wind. Current CfD levies already add ~£30/year to average household bills, projections show £70+ by decade’s end as new AR7 contracts (£91/MWh offshore wind strike prices) kick in. Full system costs (backup, balancing, transmission, curtailment) push effective costs far higher, DESNZ reports and independent analyses add £71/MWh extras for offshore wind alone. Consumers pay the difference when wholesale prices fall below strike prices. That’s why UK electricity prices stay among Europe’s highest despite “cheap renewables” claims. Environmental levies are 6.5% of bills now, but the pain compounds.
Electricity is only ~20% of total UK energy use. Heat, transport, industry, the other 80% still run overwhelmingly on gas, oil, and fossils. Renewables penetration in the full energy mix sits around 44-45% (12 months to Jan 2026). Celebrating one sector’s weather-dependent output while the economy decarbonizes on paper but offshores emissions is classic net-zero sleight-of-hand.
Nuclear is the stable hero here, not the variable renewables. Your 13-14% nuclear on that day is reliable baseload. Yet Labour policy (and similar green ideology everywhere) delays new nuclear while throwing billions at intermittent sources that need gas peakers as backup. Result: higher system costs, grid upgrades costing billions, and deindustrialization risks for chemicals, manufacturing, and jobs.
Globally, this is economic self-sabotage. While the UK chases weather-dependent targets, China commissioned a record 78 GW of new coal in 2025 alone, with 161 GW more proposed, locking in fossil capacity faster than it’s used. China’s CO2 emissions flatlined or dipped slightly in 2025 thanks to its own renewables surge, but coal expansion continues. Western net-zero virtue-signaling just shifts emissions and jobs eastward. Emissions aren’t “saved”, they’re exported, along with energy security and industrial base.
I’ve tracked this for years through paleoclimate data, thermodynamics, and hard economics: there is no meaningful single “global temperature” metric that overrides local physics or recent records showing CO2 greening the planet while not driving the claimed catastrophe. Net-zero ideology isn’t evidence-based, it’s regulatory capture that stalls abundant, affordable energy.
Canada’s the same mess: $670B+ in stalled projects, carbon taxes, delays on LNG/nuclear/oilsands, all while citizens pay more. Precision over propaganda. Citizens first. Canada First, and the same logic applies here.
The “good things possible” narrative ignores the bills, the backups, the blackouts risk, and the offshored reality. Ignore the boomer press if you want, but don’t ignore the data or the cost to working people. This isn’t progress. It’s expensive intermittency sold as salvation.
