Admit it: Net Zero is fantasy
Director's column
15 May 2025
Written By Andrew Montford
The announcement that the Hornsea 4 offshore wind project has been put on ice strikes another blow at the credibility of the Net Zero project. In 2017, Whitehall told us that the cost of windfarms was falling dramatically, and that by 2025 it would have reached something like £50 per megawatt hour (in current prices). Achieving this would mean that capital and operating costs would both have to fall by about 50% and output would have to increase by a similar amount.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/admit-it-net-zero-is-fantasyEight years on, the sorry facts are starting to emerge. As I have pointed out previously, only one windfarm – Moray West – will be commissioned in 2025 and its most recent financial accounts suggest there will be only a marginal reduction in capital costs over what has been seen in recent years. The output data so far are not indicating any great improvement over previous windfarms either.
The events at Hornsea 4 have now shown that the gulf between official cost figures and reality will stretch far out into the future too. The huge windfarm – at 2.4 gigawatts, the largest in the world – was expected to start operations in 2030. It had agreed to sell power at an index-linked £85 per megawatt hour, £10 more than current market prices, and at least £40 per megawatt hour dearer than the figures put forward by DESNZ and the Climate Change Committee (CCC) for offshore windfarms commissioning in 2030. If, as the windfarm’s developers Orsted explained in their announcement, £85 is now inadequate to ensure profitability, the official cost figures are clearly fantasy far into the future too.
