But putting it as a "minimum" price is a bit tendentious when it's a fixed price - it's also a maximum price, and the embedded option in that cap may end up being hugely valuable to the public at large in a few years time - we know how much offshore wind power from an existing plant will cost to produce in 20 years' tim, but we have no idea whatsoever what power from a gas-fired power plant will cost then. That certainty has value.

Fundamentally, feed-in tariffs match the revenue profile to the (also largely fixed) cost profile of capital-intensive technologies. As such, feed-in tariffs are also the most appropriate regime for nuclear plants - and indeed, that's where the UK government is heading towards (disguised as "contracts for differences" which just add some needless complexity which the utilities can make easy money from, and provide a fig leaf that this is not a "socialist" regulatory regime...).

As to Thomas' complaint on differentiation, I wrote about it above, and would also add that politics is about choice and there's no reason why we shouldn't favor some technologies over others for non-energy reasons (gas emissions is one reason, jobs can be another, regional development policies can be another, etc...

Wind power