Lord labels wind power drive as ‘huge waste of effort’

The push to roll out wind power “risks being a huge waste of effort and resources”, arch-net zero sceptic Lord Frost has warned.

During a debate in the House of Lords, the government’s former chief Brexit deal negotiator urged ministers to conduct a “Red Team review” of the wind power programme.

The peer, who is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) set up by late climate change sceptic Lord Lawson, said that the assumption that wind power is cheap and enhances energy security is “fundamentally mistaken”.

He also said relying on storage to back up intermittent wind turbines is “implausible”.

He added that using batteries would be “fabulously expensive” and said that while hydrogen might be a little cheaper it is “still well beyond what can plausibly be paid for”.

Frost said the “rickety generation system”, which would result from a shift to wind power, “cannot be relied on by a modern economy”.

He added that using gas plants as back-up power will mean they are running at partial efficiency bringing extra costs and deterring investment.

Pointing to the failure of last month’s Contracts for Difference auction to attract any offshore wind bids due to rising costs, he said: “The whole wind power project risks being a huge waste of effort and resources.

“It is going to deliver us, at fabulous cost, an electricity grid that is more unreliable, less secure and more expensive than the one we have now.

“The course to net zero is likely to prove impossibly costly and politically and economically unworkable.”

The peer added that recent government decisions to delay bans on the sale of electric vehicles and fossil fuel boilers are “very welcome, though still minimalist.”

However, he said that his former fellow ministers should conduct a “Red Team review,” an exercise borrowed from the military, to test the wind power programme.

He said the government should replace the “market distortions and the massive subsidies and consumer costs that come with the current wind power programme” with a roll out of modern gas CCGT power stations at existing sites and a revived nuclear programme.

Former chief civil servant Lord Turnbull, who is also a trustee of the GWPF, used the debate to criticise the absence of bodies to champion issues of energy security and affordability that could counterbalance the Climate Change Committee’s focus on curbing emissions.

Responding to Lord Frost’s criticisms of renewable power, energy minister Lord Callanan said wind and solar are “clean, cheap and homegrown”, adding that a portfolio of technologies would be needed to replace unabated gas generation, including hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.