When you have a fat friend, there are no see-saws, only catapults*

The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (OREC) is "the UK’s flagship technology innovation and research centre for advancing wind, wave and tidal energy". It is one of several "Catapult centres" established by Innovate UK, "an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy".

Gone are the days when bureaucrats would give their creations dull, bureaucratic names to obfuscate their purpose and avoid attracting attention. Now, the excitement of throwing taxpayers' money at policy-makers' favourites is represented by names like "Catapult centres" and "Innovate UK". Winner-picking shouts its purpose proudly in the brave new world of Mayist industrial policy.

Sock puppets

Sock puppets are organisations that receive government funding and use the funds to lobby government to promote policies that the government has implemented or wants to implement. This activity was supposedly prohibited by the last government, but the British Establishment was never going to allow itself to be stymied so easily.

OREC's latest report is a good example of sock puppetry.⌘

Offshore wind will be worth it one day, guv, honest...

OREC's report noted that the level of subsidy is not justified by the benefit to the British economy, but argued that cost-reductions would change this equation in future. We looked at a number of the assumptions underlying that claim, and what truly constitutes a benefit in economic terms, and concluded that OREC were thinking as wishfully as one would expect from an organisation in their position.