The Alternative Green Energy Thread

JKenH

EDF’s chief executive, a company that operates 37 onshore wind farms and is building three more offshore, issued this warning. I can afford the electricity bills - mine are negative like many others on here - but our kids are going to be picking up the bill for curtailment for the next 20 years under the new CfD contracts being issued.

Stop building wind farms, EDF boss urges Miliband

Chief executive calls on Government to approve rollout of EVs and heat pumps to absorb surplus power

Britain should stop building wind farms because the country has too much electricity, the UK boss of EDF Energy has said.

Simone Rossi, the energy giant’s chief executive, said Ed Miliband’s expansion of wind and solar power was creating far more electricity generation capacity than needed.

Mr Rossi told The Telegraph: “We should stop building wind farms and focus instead on raising demand for electricity ... As a country we don’t need more electricity generation capacity. We need to use the generation capacity we have already got.

“As a country, we’ve always got it wrong. We’ve always thought electricity demand was going to increase, but it decreased ... So now we have this large [generating] infrastructure, twice as much as we need, which means we also need to build twice the [transmission] grid.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/11/stop-building-wind-farms-edf-boss-urges-miliband/

Edit: I’ve toned down my earlier comments

paul991

wants to sell nuclear power

michaels

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82031861#Comment_82031861

Not saying he is wrong, but we do currently buy an awful lot of electricity from France that is generated by....EDF. So it is not really in their interest that we generate more of our own power…..

Netexporter

The only reason the French can run such a huge proportion of nuclear is that they're surrounded by countries where they can dump the surplus in the off peak hours. You can't modulate nuclear without seriously damaging performance. It's either at full belt or off for refuelling.

QrizB

Mr EDF does have a point there; we've got fewer EVs and heat pumps, and are burning more petrol, diesel and gas, than the UK Gov expected at this point when it came up with its plans.

Ironically enough, it's Government action that has undermined these targets by reducing the incentives to switch and also reducing the penalties for sticking with the legacy technology. Road fuel duty is a prime example; it hasn't increased from 53p/litre since 2011! General inflation is up more than 50% since then, and if duty had kept pace (never mind the idea of an "escalator") it would be 27p higher right now.

QrizB

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82032067#Comment_82032067

I mean, you can design nuclear reactors to load-follow but then they end up more like nuclear submarine powerplants which are even more expensive to build and run than the regular electricity-generating reactors.