Recently, David Turver posted a piece about 2025’s bumper year of Contracts for Difference (CfDs) in the UK. CfDs are top-ups offered to unreliable generators when the wholesale electricity is below their “strike price”, the usually generous rate that some dimbulb in the UK government offered them. Just occasionally, when the wholesale price is above the strike price, the unreliable generator is obliged to pay back the difference. Says Turver:
A record total of £2.64bn was paid out in subsidies across a range of technologies, but the largest recipient was offshore wind, taking over £2bn of the total.
Turver then presents the top ten recipients of these subsidies for 2025, of which 7 were offshore wind farms. I was interested to know where the money was going, so I spent this morning trying to find out. Here are the 7 wind farms in the top ten, in descending order of CfD subsidies received last year. (After an hour of searching, I discovered that the Crown Estate provides a list of owners on its website, here, which I then cut’n’pasted):
| Wind farm | Date commissioned | Cfd 2025 | Operator | Owner |
| Hornsea 1 | 2020 | £610M | Ørsted | 37.55% Ørsted; 25% Equitix and TRIG (The Renewables Infrastructure Group); 12.5% GLIL Infrastructure and Octopus (on behalf of NEST); 12.5% Greencoat UK Wind; 12.45% Brookfield |
| Walney Extension | 2018 | £341M | Ørsted | 37.55% Ørsted; 18.75% PFA Holding ApS; 18.75% PKA Holding ApS; 12.5% Octopus Renewables Funds; 12.45% Brookfield |
| East Anglia 1 | 2020 | £279M | ScottishPower Renewables | 60% Iberdrola (ScottishPower); 14.3% TRIG (The Renewables Infrastructure Group); 10% GIG (Green Investment Group); 10% Legal & General NTR Fund and Dev Bank of Japan; 5.7% InfraRed Capital Partners |
| Beatrice | 2018 | £231M | SSE Renewables | 40% SSE; 25% SDIC Power Holdings; 17.5% Equitix; 17.5% TRIG (The Renewables Infrastructure Group) |
| Dudgeon | 2017 | £225M | Equinor | 35% Equinor; 35% Masdar; 30% China Resources |
| Burbo Bank Extension | 2017 | £118M | Ørsted | 37.55% Ørsted; 25% KIRKBI Invest A/S; 15.7% Greencoat UK Wind; 12.45% Brookfield; 9.3% Greencoat Renewable Income LP |
| Neart Na Gaoithe | 2025 | £115M | Neart na Gaoithe Offshore Wind Limited | 50% EDF Renewables; 50% ESB |
Well, owners have owners of course, so I then searched the interwebs to find that out. The list below is in the same order as the wind farms above. There is a finite chance that the interwebs deceived me.
| Owner | Who owns the owner |
| Ørsted | Kingdom of Denmark 50.1%; Equinor 9.8% (Publicly traded) |
| Equitix | Tetragon (Guernsey); Hunter Point Capital (Private equity) |
| TRIG | Various, mutual funds etc |
| GLIL and Octopus | GLIL = Greater Manchester & London Infrastructure Limited = Pension Fund; Octopus privately owned |
| Greencoat UK Wind | UK, listed on LSE |
| Brookfield | Canada, listed on NYSE |
| PFA Holding ApS | Danish public pension fund |
| PKA Holding ApS | Danish public pension fund |
| Octopus Renewables Funds | Octopus privately owned |
| Iberdrola | Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund; BlackRock; Norges Bank |
| GIG | Macquarie Group, Australia, public |
| L&G and Dev Bank of Japan | L&G listed on LSE; DBJ, Gov’t of Japan. |
| SSE | Publicly listed. AI says top shareholders: BlackRock 8.55%; JPMorgan 5.89% |
| SDIC Power Holdings | Chinese Gov’t |
| Equinor | Gov’t of Norway 67% |
| Masdar | Abu Dhabi Gov’t |
| China Resources | Chinese Gov’t |
| KIRKBI Invest A/S | Denmark, Family of Kirk Kristiansen, LEGO |
| Greencoat Renewable Income LP | Various pension funds, including the Environment Agency |
| EDF Renewables | French Gov’t |
| ESB | Irish Gov’t |
It seems to me as if most of these millions are exiting the UK. Now, it might be the case that wind farms can’t afford to operate at wholesale price, and need the top-up that CfD provides to break even. If so, that is no good reason to “rely” on wind for a large chunk of generation. The snark quotes around “rely” are there because it cannot be relied upon when really needed.
Macquarie has been called a “vampire kangaroo” and drained Thames Water of cash, before selling up and buying Southern Water. (Wiki link.)
The wholesale price is likely to become more volatile as more unreliable generation is added, collapsing completely during gluts, and then skyrocketing when neither wind nor solar can deliver. On the whole, the former will predominate, as the unreliables proliferate. But the wind farms will still receive the CfD price they struck, index-linked of course.
Note also that there are other forms of subsidy, direct and indirect. This post only covers the 7 wind farms in the top ten recipients of CfDs in 2025.
Featured image: “More Pigs Than Teats” by James Gillray, via the Met, where you can read the names of his victims in this etching, most of whom are now long forgotten.
Climate Scepticism 