According to the BBC News Website, today’s Kuenssberg programme featured our Energy Secretary promising to create another 400,000 jobs in clean energy.

Elsewhere in the article, it is noted that jobs in “clean” (those are my snark quotes) energy are better paid than the norm, at an average of £50,000 per role.

Not daunted by the self-evident ludicrousness of his plan, which was probably hanging sulphurously in the air at that point, he apparently re-iterated his promise to cut £300 off energy bills.

My maths is not what it once was, and it was never stellar. But I think I can still multiply £50,000 by 400,000. What I can’t then do is divide the result by the 28,000,000 households in the UK and get -£300.

I think the cost is going to be £20,000,000,000, although we mustn’t forget to add the jobs tax and other sundries, probably making a £50,000 role cost £70,000. That way, we get a rather round sum of £28,000,000,000, which I make a cool +£1,000 per household, rather than the -£300 hoped for.

Of course, not all the cost is going to be appended to householders’ leccy bills. Probably 2/3 of it will add to the costs faced by businesses, who will up their fees accordingly.

In next week’s interview, the Farming Minister is going to promise to bring down the cost of food by £300, by the simple expedient of employing another 400,000 farmers to grow it.

/rant over

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10 Comments

  3. The phrase “evil genius” was coined to explain a human foible, but “evil idiot” needs no explanation…

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Your maths is spot on, give or take! The point is that all these jobs are a pointless overhead because Miliband’s so-called clean, non-dispatchable electricity is redundant for keeping the lights on as it all has to be duplicated by conventional power sources for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine and the supply from international interconnectors dries up.

    Sadly, and as predicted long ago, it now looks as if the necessary duplication will not be there now that all our coal plants have been decommissioned and much of our neglected gas fleet may soon go the same way, with an eight-year lead time on new gas plant according to Kathryn Porter. Ditto our neglected nuclear fleet.

    Professor Fritz Vahrenholt gives a stark warning on the dire energy security situation in eco-mad Germany which I suspect is equally applicable to the UK, if not more so: https://notrickszone.com/2025/10/11/german-energy-expert-warns-germanys-energy-supply-madness-energy-security-on-the-line/.

    See also this warning from Andrew Montford on the same theme: https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/y5khbmtrdjm52riwwjfg26m145v95k.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Are you sure you’re thinking about this with the right “energy out for energy in” metric? If each of those 400,000 really put their backs into it they could generate about 0.2 kW energy (for example raising a bucket in a well and allowing it to turn a turbine on the downstroke). So all pulling together they would generate about 0.8 GW. Of course those 400,000 would have to pledge to staycation and go vegan not to undo all the good they are doing.

    I note that this would be for an annual wage total of about £20 billion and, for that money, you could put in an order every year to buy a couple of SNRs from South Korea and achieve the same sort of output.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. Pingback: News Round-Up – The Daily Sceptic

  7. During the farcical Kunesberg interview on Sunday 19th, it was noted that Kunesberg replacement was totally unprepared but did at least ask one probing question, when Mad Ed was getting excited about the new, Green jobs, high paid jobs, at Sizewell, plumbers, bricklayers, electricians, Devilish Derbyshire asked “are you classing these jobs as Green?, to be told Yes!. However, a more aggressive interviewer would have followed up with “but once Sizewell is built, those plumbers, bricklayers and electricians will be either unemployed or would move onto housing, so they cannot be classed as Green, you may as well declare that anyone who works in refuse collection and has done for the last 100years is in a Green job”.

    This would set Mad Ed spinning and the lies will just spill forth.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Pingback: We've Heard Ed Miliband's 'Green Jobs' Promise Before – The Daily Sceptic

  9. Ben’s article at the DS (linked above) says this:

    This week, Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero announced a plank in its ‘clean power’ by 2030 agenda. “Clean energy will bring 400,000 extra jobs by 2030, with high demand for roles including plumbers, electricians and welders,” proclaimed the DESNZ press release. The fanfare, however, was soon drowned out by the sound of a great deal of well-deserved derision.

    I would argue that Mad Ed is the plank in DESNZ’s Clean Power Plan.

    Ben reproduces the article on his Substack under the title: Net Zero make-work schemes won’t work. I would argue that a punchier title might be: Net Zero make-work scarce again schemes are working!

    Liked by 1 person

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