Funny how people forget that power generation and distribution in the UK was a nationalisialed industry and as such the notion of profit and loss and being able to balance the books was not of concern for many decades and all the captial costs were on the backs of taxes paid at the time (only fractionally repaid when that industry was sold off on the cheap); yet expect an industry in its infancy to compete against an industry privatised in its maturity from the start; seems a bit unbalanced really!  Why should newer technologies not recieve the same level of historic support those mature industries had when they began?  If you want to send the privatised power generation industry a bill for their historic unpaid debts then I can see how that alligns with no subsidy for renewables, otherwise renewables deserve a subsidy just to keep it fair do they not? 


As for discussions about the reality or not of anthropogenic climate change, please move that onto another thread, I work in the oil and gas industry and fully support the concept of humans causing the disastarous situation we will face via our inability to work together towards saving ourselves, the planets ability to support us all is at stake. Sometimes when faced with a challenge so daunting it can seem impossible, but I think we can rise up to face it and overcome it and stimulate the economy at the same time, we gave several £billions in support of failed banks (engaged in criminality and wreckless behaviour) and have nothing to show for it now, whats a £billion to the wind / solar power industry; at least we would have some wind farms roodtop generation in return!

Funny how people forget that power generation and distribution in the UK was a nationalisialed industry and as such the notion of profit and loss and being able to balance the books was not of concern for many decades and all the captial costs were on the backs of taxes paid at the time (only fractionally repaid when that industry was sold off on the cheap); yet expect an industry in its infancy to compete against an industry privatised in its maturity from the start; seems a bit unbalanced really!  Why should newer technologies not recieve the same level of historic support those mature industries had when they began?  If you want to send the privatised power generation industry a bill for their historic unpaid debts then I can see how that alligns with no subsidy for renewables, otherwise renewables deserve a subsidy just to keep it fair do they not? 


As for discussions about the reality or not of anthropogenic climate change, please move that onto another thread, I work in the oil and gas industry and fully support the concept of humans causing the disastarous situation we will face via our inability to work together towards saving ourselves, the planets ability to support us all is at stake. Sometimes when faced with a challenge so daunting it can seem impossible, but I think we can rise up to face it and overcome it and stimulate the economy at the same time, we gave several £billions in support of failed banks (engaged in criminality and wreckless behaviour) and have nothing to show for it now, whats a £billion to the wind / solar power industry; at least we would have some wind farms roodtop generation in return!