The Business Secretary is not keen to bail out companies that cannot trade profitably at current gas price levels. The last few days we hear have been taken up by meetings with CF Fertiliser who have closed two of their plants and left us short of carbon dioxide as a result. There have also doubtless been plenty of talks with the gas industry itself, where smaller competitor companies seek relief from price controls so they can recharge the true costs of the gas supply, or seek government financial support to stay in business.
One well intentioned intervention often leads to another. Price controls designed to help customers can become too severe leading to the bankruptcy of the supplier facing them. Delays in getting price rises agreed to reflect the surge in the cost of the underlying gas comes with a price. If the cost of gas outstrips the price they are allowed to charge the customer they either need a state subsidy to underpin the price control, or need a relaxation of the price control. With neither the company goes bust and the Regulator has to find another company willing to take over the contracts and customers shed by the bankrupt business. There are doubts about how many loss making contracts another gas supplier is willing to pick up. If the eventual s0lution is to let the new supplier charge more, shouldn’t the original supplier have been given that freedom to stave off bankruptcy?
This is but one small example of what increasing regulation of the energy sector is doing. Time was when UK energy policy balanced on a three legged approach. The policy needed to deliver sufficient capacity for all future needs. It needed to keep the costs down for business and consumers. It needed to contribute to a greener policy. This century policy makers have tended to take national capacity for granted, or have revelled in the idea that we can import any amount of gas, oil and electricity we may need. The wish to push us more in the direction of zero carbon has led to a raft of green levies and advantages given to renewable generators. This has greatly boosted installed wind capacity, just in time to find out that if you experience a period of little or no wind the rated capacity is meaningless and you have a shortage. It has also meant substantial surcharges on bills to pay for the energy transition.
Such a policy leads on to further government interventions. Government finds itself forced to project a plan for everything, to launch a raft of subsidies and rules to pursue the plan, and maybe to use government contracts or investments to force the pace of change. This can lead to substantial misallocations of capital and to supply failures. The system needs reforming in a pro market direction, so price signals can come to play a more important role in allocating investment and in choosing between competing methods of supply.
September 22, 2021
Good morning.
But choice, by your own parties policies, none of which I seem to recall we voted for, is slowly being taken away. The government is creating a monopoly of supply through the pursuit of so called Green policies.
Government actions can be explained through a children’s nursery rhyme.
“There was an old lady who swallowed a fly;
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll die!
Etc . .
September 22, 2021
+1
Nursery RhymeâŠfunny I was just thinking what a bad time this is for Johnson to start spouting about everyone ( else?) needing to grow up.
Plus how old time millers used to try to control the local market ( swallowing up one function after another) in order to spread the risk personal lossesâŠ..and all because you canât order the wind!
September 22, 2021
I’m more reminded of “There’s A Hole In The Bucket”
September 22, 2021
Dear Lisa .. dear Lisa
September 23, 2021
It’s a perfect metaphor for what happens if you bring in the private sector to fix problems with the private sector.
September 23, 2021
Yet you not only support Green policies you call for more Green policies MiC
September 22, 2021
excellent!
September 22, 2021
MarkB – – “seem to recall we voted for, ” – – – We didn’t vote for thousands and thousands of foreigners having houses built for them because they have massive families either – – but its happening – while the BBC radio is appealing for 2nd hand sports eqpt to be passed on.
Forget England – Boris doesn’t give a **** about us. WE are here to be taxed – – and ignored.
September 22, 2021
+1 Why England keeps voting for the Tories is the biggest mystery.
September 25, 2021
Fear of something worse. A bit like a four year old frightened by things in the dark / shadows. Things that every parent knows that are not there.
September 22, 2021
Mark, so true. Belly aching about problems that were inevitable as a consequence of bad Fake Tory Govt. decision making!!
How is the planet saved by getting coal from Russia? Germany building new coal fired power stations along with China, India etc. Johnson has lost the plot. We are going to be cold because of Johnson, May and Cameron and impoverished through their nutty economics. Strivers, savers and prudent punished by Fake Tory economics.
Adult social care worse than communism. People who work, scrimp and save to buy their home forced to sell it to pay for care, forced to pay more in community charge as well, their neighbours given a free social house without a job given a care home spot for free paid for by those who worked and bought their own home. Now Johnson wants all workers to pay more!! Come ye from around the world everything is free paid for by the British taxpayer. He is an effing idiot.
Coal fired power stations 43% of energy in 2012 now only 3% this was JRâs govt. decision making! Closing gas storage facility up north was JRâs govt. decision making. What on earth did those ministers and PM think when they made these decisions, where was the strategic planning. Rely on Russia for coal and France for electric through inter connectors! Rely on China for Hinkley! Govt in other claims say Russia and China are our enemies! Germany clearly does not think so as it is reliant on Russian gas and sign a new trade pact with China despite COVID!!
September 22, 2021
Yet another hike in council tax coming down the line next Spring on what are already punitive and exorbitant council tax charges, all to pay for social care for others that when our turn comes, we have to hand over our house.
September 22, 2021
By January, the old lady will be ‘dead, of course’.
September 22, 2021
âa period of little or no windâ
They should have read their history before childishly rushing into relying on windmills and doing a Violet Elizabeth on anyone who questioned the wisdom of such blind faith.
No Miller EVER relied entirely on milling for his incomeâŠ.because, being a grown up, he knew that the wind doesnât always blow.
September 22, 2021
but when the wind doth blow Miller makes a fortune…
September 22, 2021
He still had to be careful about the type of wind.
Too much wind = powdery flour.
Too much wind now = overloaded grid and damaged turbines.
September 22, 2021
More the San Marino of wind than the Saudi Arabia!
September 22, 2021
+1
September 22, 2021
One solution to the renewable energy storage problem is pumped storage, which has been repeatedly criticised by the fossil fuel lobbby that posts here as “impossible because it breaks the laws of physics”
This is demonstrably untrue. Any “A” level physics student could prove it:-
On the gasometer principle, assume we are using an area of two football pitches, dimensions 220m X 140m i.e 30,800m2 and we build a water-filled steel structure 75m high to be raised by hydraulic pumping to a modest height of 75m. So the volume to be raised inside an excavated cavity say, 100m deep is 30,800 X 75 = 2,310,000 cubic metres (m3). As 1m3 of water weighs one tonne, we are pumping up a mass of 2,310,000 tonnes. 1 tonne = 1000kg
The amount of potential energy (PE) in mega joules (MJ) stored by raising such a mass is given by the equation PE=mgh where mass m is in kilograms, gravity g is 9.81 m/s2 and height h is in metres
Substituting, PE = 2,310,000,000 X 9.81 X 75 = 1,699,582 MJ. Converting this into units of electricity = 0.472 GWh. Pumping to a more challenging height of 150m could store a tremendous 0.944 GWh.
UK windfarms can currently produce roughly 15 GWh on a good night. 15 of the higher gasometer systems could potentialy store ~100% of our nightside windfarm output. 30 of them could give us four days juice (assuming they are topped up each night). Nicely smoothing the grid supply.
Instead of water the excavated spoil could be used to load the structure. Hydraulic pumping is old school technology and the UK construction industry could design and build one of these systems in less than 3 years. Smaller systems could be built more quickly. FG Wilson plc in Craigavon, Ulster manufacture large off-the-shelf generators that can convert the stored PE into 50Hz 3 phase AC as the mass is released in a controlled manner, on demand. They can work in reverse to power the pump-up.
September 22, 2021
+1
You must immediately email Johnson.
He always listens to the science!
I wonder if he really wants sensible solutions though?
September 22, 2021
Sakara Gold : Pumped Storage :
Without going into the engineering problems I believe that your PE calculations are incorrect because they assume that all the water is at the maximum height of your proposed steel structure.
September 22, 2021
Actually I think he is thinking in terms of simply a very large weight to be raised and lowered. But obviously it makes much more sense for such a scheme to use much denser weights than water and without the absurdity of trying to build a very large swimming pool to be raised and lowered without collapsing under the stress. It’s just another version of Gravitricity’s proposals, which have got as far as a 15 metre high test rig capable of generating up to 250kW using 2 25 tone weights. They plan to use mine shafts in future to give a much greater drop height. It’s not for storing large amounts of energy, but rather for competing with 20MW grid batteries in grid stabilisation markets.
September 22, 2021
Are these the same wind turbines that have a product life cycle of between 10-20 years (blades 10 years max) and a energy return on investment (EROI) of between 15-25 yearsâŠ..which means they are fully subsidised throughout their life time
Not to mention that theyâre made in Europe, havenât made any reduction in domestic energy bills and work in windy conditions
September 22, 2021
I’m trying to envisage a structure, the size of two football pitches, 250 feet high, filled with water weighing 2.3 million tonnes, that can be raised 250 feet. Do you have a design for such a structure? If, gasometer style, the whole thing moved up and down on columns around the edge, how would the floor be constructed? I find it difficult to imagine any combination of beams that would span 220 metres one way and 170 metres the other and be loaded to the tune of 2.3 million tons. As a former structural engineer, I would be interested to see your calculations and design of the floor construction.
Didn’t gasometers rise because the gas itself lifted each section as it entered the gasometer? Not quite the same thing as lifting 2.3 million tonnes of water.
September 22, 2021
Indeed Mike.
I spent 30 plus years in production engineering and thought the same as you.
September 22, 2021
@Mike W
The structure is not raised 250m – but 75m. It’s built at the bottom of a 100m deep concrete lined rectangular cavity and would be 75m high. The “spare” 25m is for the hydrauic jacks, fluid reservoirs, cabling, maybe the generators and inspection channels and would have a 10m thick reinforced high-yield concrete base to support the jacks themselves.
You wouldnt use steel beams. Consider a flat base of 30,800m2 built of rebar reinforced concrete on a modest thickness steel base. The sides could be built the same way and would contain large rollers to keep the structure stable as it operated up and down against the walls of the excavated cavity. The base would be supported by say, 2500 hydraulic jacks at intervals of 12.3m2, each jack taking a load of 924 tonnes. Once pumped up it would rise from ground level 75m – hence the analogy with a gasometer.
This simple idea is quite feasible from an engineering point of view and far less complex than building a nucear power station. The calcs used water to simplify the caculation rather than filling the structure with excavated spoil of unknown density. You would not be pumping the water through turbines. The 2.31 million tonnes does not include the weight of the structure without the water and would need to be taken into account when specifying the hydraulic jacks etc
September 23, 2021
@Mike W
You wouldnt use steel beams. Consider a flat base of 30,800m2 built of rebar reinforced concrete on a modest thickness steel base. The sides could be built the same way and would contain large rollers to keep the structure stable as it operated up and down against the walls of the excavated cavity. The base would be supported by say, 2500 hydraulic jacks at intervals of 12.3m2, each jack taking a load of 924 tonnes. Once pumped up it would rise from ground level 75m and not 250m – hence the analogy with a gasometer.
Thanks for your interest
September 23, 2021
My 250 metres was a mistake. I meant 250 feet. So, 2500 hydraulic jacks that can extend 250 feet? I find that difficult to envisage. What would one of the jacks look like?
September 22, 2021
Google “Institution of Civil Engineers – tidal energy from the Severn Estuary”, a seminar held in 2018, which could produce 7% of UK energy needs – for some alternative energy source ideas.
September 22, 2021
Here’s what I wrote yesterday on the Severn barrage.
Tidal power is reliably costly and intermittent. The last thing we need is more intermittent sources of power that need 100% backup when they arenât producing anything. We have too much of that already with wind and solar. Please consult this chart that shows the range of outputs from a theoretical Severn Barrage scheme;
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/D0N7k/1/
You will see that in a spring tide, generation occurs for just 6 hours and 27 minutes of the 12 hour 25 minute tide cycle, and that it drops off to low levels towards the end of the generation period. That leaves 6 hours to be covered by other sources entirely. In a neap tide, the picture is even worse, with very limited generation lasting 2 hours 38 minutes, leaving the 100% backup required for almost 10 hours of the tide cycle. The grid has to accommodate a sudden surge in generation when it is time to open the sluices at the start of generation, which means it has to arrange to switch off a similar amount elsewhere in the system, preferably located nearby so as not to create some dangerous rerouting of power flows.
Reply Good points. My main recommendation is to build some more combined cycle gas whilst they develop more reliable renewable technology.
September 22, 2021
The Severn estuary has the 2nd largest tidal fall in the world after Bay of Fundy yet the government ignores it like fracking and other feasible projects in favour of HS2 and other white elephants/ money pits.
September 22, 2021
No one I know has ever suggested you cannot pump water or any other weights up a hill to store (and later recover some of the energy energy). It is clearly not at all against the laws of physics, but is does need large areas that can hold water at two different heights close together to do it. It is also very, very expensive to do in most situations and wastes circa 20-40% of the energy in the process.
Water storage behind damns is also very dangerous breaches have killed millions of people. We very nearly saw at Whaley Bridge recently.
It is far more sensible in general just to generate the electricity as and when when needed using gas, coal nuclear.
September 22, 2021
LL, there are numerous pumped storage schemes around the world and an excellent one at Dinorwig near LLanberis that the UK relies on to provide electricity at surge periods and the process is reversed at night when electricity usage is low.
September 23, 2021
Indeed and where the topography suits they can make economic sense. Though about 25%+ of the energy is wasted in the pumping and generating. You can only store energy when the upper reservoir has space and the lower one has water to pump up.
September 22, 2021
@Lifelogic
Wrong again. This system is NOT pumping water uphill. Can’t you read? You have repeatedly posted that ANY pumped storage system is against the laws of physics.
September 23, 2021
Nothing I have said above is wrong and I have certainly never said “ANY pumped storage system is against the laws of physics” and would not do so. So please withdraw that.
Also I say above “pumped water or any other weights”. You are proposing a vertical hill but actually a existing sloped hill would be far more practical engineering and rather safer. I read and understood fully what you wrote and it was broadly correct but would be impractical, hugely expensive and totally uneconomic in engineering terms.
September 22, 2021
The value of the electricity that such a structure (battery) could store might be about ÂŁ100,000 it would also waste 20-30% of this this energy on each cycle. What do you think such a structure would cost to build and how much energy would it take to build it? It would be very unlikely to make economic sense. Far cheaper and better to generate electricity as needed from gas, coal, nuclear or to adjust electricity demand by suitable price mechanisms it is the ârenewablesâ that cause the problem. Intermittent energy is worth far less that on demand energy.
September 22, 2021
Absolute crap, you don’t know what you are talking about
September 23, 2021
Why not say in what way is is “absolute crap”?
September 22, 2021
Nice one Sakara, a rare bit of intelligent thinking on this site. Your calcs’ are “energy” based (GWh), you need to include the “power” (GW) side. How long it takes to fill your upper reservoir; and, how fast you can drain that reservoir, in cubic meters per second through the generator.
For instance, Dinorwig Power Station (NW Wales) has a upper working reservoir capacity of 8.4 million M3. it takes seven hours to fill it from empty with 1,800 Megawatts (MW) of pumping power from the generators working as pumps. Flat out it generates 1,728 MW. The six turbines swallow 390 M3 of water per second and can keep that up for circa six hours.
Have a read of https://www.renewablesfirst.co.uk/hydropower/hydropower-learning-centre/how-much-power-could-i-generate-from-a-hydro-turbine/
September 22, 2021
@Acorn
Its not a pumped water system. I just used water to fill the structure because its heavy. You pump the STRUCTURE up 75m and recover the energy as its released through geared generators
September 22, 2021
Those of us who can do some school arithmetic understand that pumped storage can only contribute a very small amount to providing backup supply. Dinorwig can store 9.1GWh which it can release at up to 1.7GW, but some of the storage is reserved for black start operations should the grid collapse, so it can only operate a few hours a day. SSE have finally decided to go ahead with the Coire Glas project, which should store up to 30GWh: they did not find this economic when they were only allowed 0.6GW of generation and a 50 hour duration, but now they have permission to churn up Loch Lochy at 1.5GW they will have storage that could last 20 hours. Now for some arithmetic. Winter demand at say 50GW uses 1200GWh per day. These storage projects (including Ffestiniog, Cruachan etc.) hold just 5% of one day’s demand, and they can perhaps contribute a peak of about 8% of it if we include Coire Glas, but to fill you must find enough to allow for the losses in pumping and from friction and turbulence in the penstocks. They are not going to make up for a wind shortfall lasting many days at 15GW or more missing.
To be economic, it is important not to have to build very large containing structures for pumped storage reservoirs, but rather to make use of the natural contours of the landscape as much as possible: it’s actually quite easy to explore for potential sites using Google Earth contour maps. It is also highly desirable to have a substantial head – the difference in height between the upper and lower reservoirs. Dinorwig simply has a tunnel drilled from the upper reservoir to the lower one, with no extra dam required, and a 535metre height difference. Even so the quantities of rock drilled out and concrete lining installed are substantial.
If you want to go large, you could consider the Strathdearn proposal which would flood 40 sq km of the Highlands near Inverness (probably drowning a few wind farms) with sea water (the sea is the free lower reservoir).
Storage capacity = 6800 GWh, or 6.8TWh
Surface area of reservoir = 40 km^2, volume = 4.4 billion m^3 of water.
Flow rate through pipes and canal = 51,000 m^3 per second (equivalent to the discharge of the Congo River)
Generating capacity between 132 GW and 264 GW (2 to 5 times UK peak demand – lots spare for export)
Canal 30 km long, 170 m wide (minimum), depth at centre 85 m, flow velocity 10 to 11 ms^-1 (water flowing at this rate can move 10 tonne boulders).
Dam crest length = 1860 m, top height 300 m, dam volume 80+ million m^3 (of concrete?)
Cost: unknown
That’s just over 5 days’ storage at UK demand levels with . For comparison, mountainous Norway’s hydro reservoirs can hold 82TWh. They rely on snowmelt to refill, and generate somewhere between 100 and 150TWh a year, depending on the snowfall/melt.
September 25, 2021
@ Mark
Look, how many times do I have to explain to you that i DO NOT propose to flood hundreds of square miles of the Highands to build another pumped water reservoir system. I only used water because its a heavy fill for the storage tank and as 1 m3 weighs 1 tonne. It sits in an excavated cavity 100m deep and 220m X 140m square. You read “water” and immediately came to the wrong concusion. Repeatedly
As is usual with your greencrap assertions you are also mistaken on the costing of the large mass storage system. A contruction industry quantity surveyor contacted me last night with an estimate of ÂŁ88 million to build a fullscale demonstration plant. And if you have worked the calcs out differently, you need to go back to school and do an “O” level in maths.
September 22, 2021
Exactly right. As you say “This is but one small example of what increasing regulation of the energy sector is doing.”
Alas is it not just “the energy sector” the government have over regulated and mis-regulated all sorts of activities and industries with profoundly damaging effects. The FCA have given use one size fits all 40% personal overdraft rates (in effect banning overdrafts completely for sensible people) but overdrafts are flexible and useful for many people if charge sensibly at base +2% as they used to be.
People with more than a few properties are now put though pointless extra regulations to borrow for the next one (so often the banks just say no as too much hassle. Landlord licencing is another money making racket that benefits no one but the LEA regulators. Thousands of other examples in planning, building regulations, insurance, child protection, gender pay reporting, property letting laws… it is hugely damaging and creates endless parasitic and pointless jobs in the state sector and the private one too. Look at the mess the government have created with cladding regulations.
I once even had to pay for an energy performance certificate on a part build house with no boiler and no windows before the agent could legally market it for me! The EP inspector came about 40 miles in his large petrol car to do this pointless activity. On another occasion I had to demolish a perfectly decent house before I could build a new one (when I could easily have kept both) to comply with an idiotic planning requirement.
At least the appallingly and idiotic HIP pack rules went other than the pointless EPCs.
Thousands if not millions of more examples (especially in employment laws, health and safely, green lunacy, waste (many rules even make things less safe no more). A huge number of jobs are entirely pointless in compliance and regulation. The absurdly over complex tax laws must create millions of parasitic jobs in tax advisors and compliance. Do we really need MOTs every year? Some countries have none with no ill effects on safely. The new ethanol rich petrol is a back door tax increase (as rather lower MPG means more fuel taxes), pointless in green terms and will damage many cars.
I was reading Dysons excellent new book recently. He too was almost bankrupted by Major’s idiotic ERM fiasco and 17%+ mortgage interest rates. Why did he not build his new factory in the UK? Mainly it seem UK planning would have taken too long to get approved. If you need a factory you need it now while you have the demand not in 5 years time!
September 22, 2021
Let me guess:
DOM will tell us it’s a cleverly constructed and evil Global Marxist plot, Andy will say it’s all because of Brexit-voting racist pensioners, and MiC will say it can all be cured by a sharp turn to the Left.
September 23, 2021
and Johnson will ruffle his hair every time he sees a camera.
September 22, 2021
In the US where they got fracking sensibly natural gas is a quarter of the UK’s cost. No wonder they do not want to make fertiliser in the UK at these prices. Yet the UK has some of the best shale sites and resources for fracking (per cap) in the world. But virtue-signalling ministers & idiotic governments have (effectively) banned this.
September 22, 2021
Laws of unintended consequences. Who’d have thought it.
Trashing the power grid and standing with a finger up your rectum whilst downstream is chaos.
11 years in power.
Destroyed the motor industry
Destroyed the once best power system.
Offshore aluminium production.
Closed shipyards in favour of foreign companies.
Split Northern Ireland from the UK.
I could go on.
A pretty impressive list from a so called tory government.
Now we’re short of the demon CO2.
Splendid.
September 22, 2021
âThe system needs reforming in a pro market direction, so price signals can come to play a more important role in allocating investment and in choosing between competing methods of supply.â
Even with my limited knowledge and understanding of how this all works, this seems eminently sensible.
Which direction will be taken? Hmmm? I wonder.
September 24, 2021
+1
September 22, 2021
Sir John
You are correct of course it is the UK Government that is stifling UK growth with all the bureaucracy, red tape and distorted regulations. The Government is hung up on Control and lack oof trust and respect for the people that put them were they are.
Then you get each and every handout/subsidy is layered on top of another to try to compensate one sector against another. When in reality it is the whole tax system that is self defeating, unbalanced and discriminatory in the way it is applied. Not proportionally or equitably applied
Yesterdays CF/CO2 fiasco was a two pronged attack on the UK. The UK Government permitted the sale to a foreign entity, but not only that it denied the market place competition. Replay that in terms of UK Energy, without it there is no economy, then the same with UK defense, without UK Government control there is no defense
September 22, 2021
Sir John,
Re the second paragraph of your post, is there not a third option to state subsidy or price relaxation: the supplier hedges the forward price, effectively paying an insurance premium to protect themselves.
September 22, 2021
Someone has to provide the insurance, and will aim to make a profit over time from doing so even if they pay out on an occasional catastrophe. If they misjudge, there is no payout because they are bankrupt. If they are a producer hedging sales forward suddenly unable to produce they are also likely bankrupt because they cannot afford to buy back their commitment. If they are an intermediary and their counterparty fails, then so may they, or the losses may be mutualised in some other way.
In the case of a company having bought gas forward to make into something else to be sold to customers, the resale of the gas back to the market both improves market supply and can generate much more profit than making their normal goods given what their customers will pay for them. I have noticed a very sharp reduction in gas offtake by industry according to National Grid Gas Prevailing view since gas prices went sky high. It’s not just CO2 production that has been hit. The ONS has some data on which industries use gas here
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/datasets/ukenvironmentalaccountsenergyusebyindustrysourceandfuel
I’d expect iron & steel, chemicals, pottery and glass, oil refining, and paper to be among industries considering cutting back.
September 22, 2021
All interventons are a bad thing. Only free markets unrestricted by artificial regulation will cope with the issues. Regulation, taxation and ridiculous policies are going to create exactly what they do in every command economy and sadly almost nobody realises where we are heading.
September 22, 2021
So while Boris is grandstanding in USA trying to persuade other countries to cut CO2 production back in the UK he’s handing millions to USA fertilizer businesses to increase CO2 production. You couldn’t make it up.
September 22, 2021
@Nota# A good illustration of how the UK Government works against the UK and its economy. How much of the taxpayers money is being pumped into the coffers of foreign Governments, just to supply our very basic energy requirements.
The UK industry has the technology, it has the resources and the ability to provide all the UK’s energy requirements, yet the Government has a preference to ignore its own economy and the cycle of money in money out.
Were is the Competition authority when it is needed. A free market is about freedoms, not Government interference and certainly not about monopoly manipulation.
September 22, 2021
As the rip-off fossil fuel gas producers dramatically increase the price, the more valuable our investment in renewables becomes. The renewables obligation on energy bills is actually modest and has indeed enabled us to build ginormous windfarms that can produce truly tremendous amounts of electricity.
The current, unseasonal, shortage of wind is apparently a once in 60 years event. It just reinforces the need for utility scale energy storage systems and most urgently, new nucear.
September 22, 2021
If you had spelt nuclear correctly we would have agreement on one point. The reality is that no system reliant on renewables can be made reliable at acceptable cost. Another reality is that planners have completely ignored the risks of abnormal weather years, or worse still a run of abnormal weather years that lead to massive underperformance by renewables. Perhaps they will finally wake up now.
September 22, 2021
“can produce truly tremendous amounts of electricity.”
It’s not how much they can produce, it’s how much they can’t when the weather is not co-operating. The availability of wind in the UK has varied from around 0.3% of total demand to around 61% on one occasion, which produced massive headlines. Such a variation makes the whole grid extremely vulnerable and can take place over a matter of hours. The more wind farms there are, the more vulnerable the grid becomes and traditional power stations become vulnerable also, because of the intermittent demands made upon them. The problems we face are caused by an over reliance on and failure of wind energy, as has been dramatically experienced in recent times by South Australia, Texas and Germany. The government solution? Build more wind farms.
“The current, unseasonal, shortage of wind is apparently a once in 60 years event.”
I don’t know where you found that claim, but it is patently false. Low wind is a not infrequent event.
Both cold wintry periods and periods of summer heat are caused by stable high-pressure weather systems, (blocking high). Low wind levels are a result of such high-pressure weather systems. When that happens, we get the current situation, although I see wind contribution is back up to about 38% this evening, because of a change in the weather. There are around 11000 turbines on and offshore in the UK. If the wind isn’t blowing, it wouldn’t be blowing if there were 40,000.
If the 1 in 60 years were even true, this is the same false perception that applies to flooding, eg 1 in 100 year event, 1 in 500 year event. It does not mean that it will be 100 years before another flood happens, you can have 2 or three 1 in 100 year floods in successive years, it is a statistical representation., the Laws of Chance.
Utility scale storage is pie in the sky. Instead of blowing up our remaining coal stations, the government should ensure they continue, as the Germans are doing. Large amounts of power can be stored as coal stocks.
Nuclear is fine for base load but even that is under threat by intermittency of wind turbines, they cannot be switched in and out quickly. We won’t see new nuclear online for several years.
According to the the IEA, Global coal demand surpassed pre-Covid levels in late 2020. The UK government is wilfully destroying our economy in pursuit of “Green” ideology, on an ego trip of “leading the world in fighting climate change” based on the false premise that CO2 controls the climate. China, India and the rest of S.E. Asia are not on board, neither are the East European countries, including Turkey.
September 22, 2021
Well said. A basic lesson in economics proved yet again. The Tories hammered Milliband for price controls and then through the useless Theresa May implemented them.
It is of course far worse. My supplier has gone bust and British Gas will be offered. So reducing competition giving the big companies more market share equals bigger prices.
I see our money is being used to bail out the CO2 producers. How much profit will we be pouring down their necks and did we do a forensic analysis of their financials to see if they could have improved efficiency to keep producing. Of course not. It is absolutely appalling.
And on a waste money there we see the British Business Banks first failures. On line knitting products, electronic key boards for stars, on this one our naivety shown allowing a professional venture cap co in the US to grab the security and on line education providers. Business Angels wouldnât be seen anywhere near these businesses and we can see why.
And in other news it is obvious Biden is taking the Irish (EU) line that the NI Protocol problems are our fault. Nothing to do with the American Irish vote of course!
I hope Boris told him robustly that it is the other way round. Somehow I doubt it. Will Frost be forced to back off? Sir JR, I trust you and others are ensuring he doesnât.
September 22, 2021
What a mess! All made in No 10 and the HoC. All because of the misguided war on CO2 which, we are again reminded, is fundamental to the food chain from photosynthesis to food on the table. The current crew in charge, led by another zealot, will be unable to sort it out. That will require fundamental changes in thinking, leadership and action – probably over ten to twenty years. As this looks unlikely to happen, the UK faces terminal decline into irrelevance and poverty over this period.
September 22, 2021
Indeed the UK will struggle to recovers with this tax borrow and piss down the drain Government spending (largely wasting) 50% of GDP, hugely excessive regulation, poor state monopoly healthcare and education, slow and restrictive planninf, daft employment laws energy at up to 4 times the US price and then the insane net zero Carbon lunacy on top.
September 22, 2021
Interestingly the Tory Brexit pensioner CO2 shortage only affects England, Scotland and Wales.
Northern Ireland is fine. The bit of the UK the Brexitists sold out isnât harmed by this aspect of Brexit thanks to the protocol.
I have found a Brexiy benefit! Perhaps we should tell Northern Irelandâs professional Brexit whingers – the DUP.
I donât eat meat. I donât drink fizzy drinks. I donât drink much beer. None of the foodstuff shortages affected by your Brexit affect me. I find it very funny.
September 23, 2021
As a veg eater extraordinaire perhaps you could use a hose to connect yourself into a domestic gas storage system? Just thinking out loud…
September 22, 2021
And all they ever needed to do was to cut off our gas supply.
All the things they want to do away with. Fertilisers, gas boilers, beer, meat,manufacture,farming. An endless list!
And no need for the globalists to leap around with carbon capture nets like a herd of Victorian entomologists. All spirited away and so planned over decades.
OhâŠadd population to that list.
September 22, 2021
Australia descends into CV19 absolutism using a viral weapon to impose brutal control of human beings. What we are seeing is unprecedented, criminal and very dangerous that imperils our most sacred freedoms and liberties
No decent human being can watch what is unfolding and weep at what these bastards are trying to do
September 22, 2021
Dear Mr. Redwood,
Your missive today paints a picture of a government that does not know or understand what it is doing.
September 22, 2021
Ah the law of unintended consequences, most sensible businesses and indeed some householders are aware that sometimes, life is full of surprises, and that you should never, if it is possible, make any decision that can completely isolate you if it fails, as nothing or any system lasts for ever, so you calculate and build in possible options throughout your decision making.
Plan for the best of course, but be aware of possible problems and hedge your bets where possible.
Governments of all colours in many countries, and positions in particular seem to lack the above logic.
Putin turns off the gas tap, and everyone struggles.
The Oil producers turn off their tap and everyone struggles.
You can always try to negotiate with those who physically turn off the tap, but you cannot negotiate with Nature, if the wind does not blow, the sun does not shine, the rain does not come, you are stuffed, well and truly stuffed.
By all means go green as PART of a supply , but you cannot rely upon it without sensible back up !
Lessons should be learned, but they never are !
September 22, 2021
Goops “positions” should read “politicians”. Auto correct strikes again.
September 22, 2021
Ever since blair started to fill our countryside with his ridiculous and useless windmills, it was inevitable that we’d reach a point where blackouts were inevitable.
…and yes, over-regulation just doesn’t help — How often have we asked for ‘Small government’?
Successive governments have failed us miserably on the subject of energy – always there was some other project seemingly more important than keeping the lights on. How can we trust governments when they let us down so badly?
The irony is, that because of net-zero and too much Co2 allegedly in the atmosphere factories are closing because there is no energy to create Co2 — You just couldn’t make it up.
September 22, 2021
So you’ll have to nationalize the energy companies. Why not – your government believes in state control of just about everything else. It’s stuffed the media’s mouths with gold during Covid, kept public transport running with huge state subsidies, and laid the basis for universal basic income with the furlough scheme. I’m sorry, Sir John, but Johnson will never listen to your sensible arguments – he’s too deep in his delusion that he’s another Churchill heroically fighting a war of national survival, and as in WW2 the state has to take charge of everything. He will have to go sooner rather than later, if not thanks to the men in grey suits, then taken away by those in white coats.
September 22, 2021
This Tory Brexit pensioner government really enjoys spending other peopleâs money.
Not content with flinging wads of cash at its mates over Covid and giving money to the likes of Nissan not to leave, now they are giving tens of millions of pounds of our cash (well, my cash because I actually pay vast amounts of tax whilst most of you live on pension handouts) to the American multi-millionaires who produce most of our CO2.
The Brexitists are frit. They realise that the animal welfare crisis they have caused will spell the beginning of end of their failed project. They see their future. It is one of public inquiries, total humiliation, personal shame and imprisonment.
There was a sensible way to leave the EU. They didnât take it. They took a path they were repeatedly warned would cause immense harm to our country. They didnât listen. They were told they would could immense harm to livelihoods and lives. They didnât listen. They blustered and they lied. The Brexitistsâ behaviour has been criminal. And criminals belong behind bars.
September 22, 2021
Who would you arrest first? David Cameron for allowing people to have the vote?
September 23, 2021
andy wants freight trains trundling off to gulags packed with political opponents.
It has happened before Dave.
His mind is closed to reasonable debate.
September 24, 2021
possibly for abandoning his constituency and throwing his toys out of the pram.
September 22, 2021
Farcical. Boris Johnson in New York telling the world to get rid of carbon dioxide and George Eustice in London refusing to tell us how much we taxpayers are paying an American company to produce carbon dioxide.
This is more of a circus that either Billy Smart or Chipperfields ever were.
As for electricity, with apologies to Ashes to Ashes – fire up the diesel generators.
September 22, 2021
The current problem is with gas.
We already know that we are heading for massive increases in all energy bills thanks to the Government’s slavish allegiance to the Green Crap agenda. That has been well argued here but there is no resolution anywhere in sight, nor is there likely to be until voters come to understand the full reality of what all current political parties are determined to inflict on them. One party will blink first and we had better hope it is the Conservatives.
Clearly, the just-in-time system involving overseas gas suppliers leaves the country strategically and economically vulnerable and must be addressed quickly by rebuilding our ability to store gas. However, the inconvenient truth for Green Crap enthusiasts is that we are going to be reliant on gas for decades to come. Fortunately, we have our own gas resources in the North Sea and we therefore need to continue to develop existing and new fields to ensure continuity of supply at reasonable cost. Previously some oil and gas fields have been left as being too uneconomic to exploit. With the expected increase in all energy prices, these fields can be brought on stream.
As we are seeing only too clearly, price and continuity of supply are crucial. If the future really is going to have to be electric, we must rapidly increase our provision of Nuclear Power generation and, it must be homegrown and certainly not dependent on French technology and Chinese finance. That means greatly accelerating the development of Rolls Royce’s design of modular power plants.
September 22, 2021
The problem is more than just gas. Electricity supply is the area where prices have gone truly bananas, partly because we refuse to use coal, and partly because we have too little capacity to provide backup, and partly because we have failed to build replacement nuclear in a timely fashion
September 22, 2021
Well put. We have to ask why is it that successive Conservative administrations have concocted this Gordian knot of regulations, hidden subsidies, and boondoggles? The Tories are in real danger of seeing their claim to real-world competence shredded.
September 22, 2021
“One intervention leads to another”
Politicians are paid to intervene (=interfere).
That is what they do.
They serve no other purpose.
Interventions are sometimes for economic reasons …
…but are always for political reasons.
September 22, 2021
1- The problem with leaving energy to the market is fundamentally the problem of external costs
2- The problem, however , with leaving anything to politicians is they will be governed only by short term electoral popularity. This is why Central Banks must be independent and promises must be audited independently . You will note that Sir John regularly whinges about these disciplines . That is why.
Problem 1 requires Government involvement and is is therefore popular on the left and disliked by the Libertarian fringe
Problem 2 Has lead to electorally tempting Green promises leaving the cost to successors.
We are currently experiencing a structural failure of our constitution and its inability to Govern a modern State competently . I quite like Sir John`s view , he is always well informed on energy but w e need toi look a little deeper into what has caused yet another failure to plan
September 22, 2021
All wise words SirJ but this prefect storm of energy high prices an shortages has been made by this government, over the past decade in its pursuit of a green revolution
The new energy motto of this government, ââlights still on via massive subsidy & high taxââ
September 22, 2021
JR, has anyone discovered if those fertiliser factories were shut down because they were buying energy spot; or, did they sell their energy contracts back into a bubble energy market, making a lot more money than they did making fertiliser and a CO2 by-product?
September 22, 2021
Aha!
September 24, 2021
Well if they did then that why not is was the commercially rational thing for them to do make the fertiliser in the US where gas is 1/4 of the price due to fracking. Especially since the government are now throwing taxpayers money at them to subsidise their UK production so as not to run short of CO2 supplies.
September 22, 2021
Tory backbenchers gave full and wholesome support to CV19 politicisation, Build Back Barbarism, net-zero fascism, woke authoritarianism and all the other sinister political poisons we are now being deliberately exposed to. Well I hope they are happy as their ‘Boris’ rips apart our nation
Every Tory backbencher bar a handful should publicly apologise to their constituents and QE2 for saying one thing and doing precisely the opposite
September 22, 2021
+1
September 22, 2021
So we have a PM in the US lecturing the world on reducing the burning of fossil fuels because of the CO2 emissions while paying a US firm (with our taxpayers’ money) to burn fossil fuels to produce CO2 which will end up in the atmosphere.
As another contributor commented at least Mr Bean has a degree in STEM subject.
September 24, 2021
Indeed – The process takes natural gas, steam and air to produce ammonium nitrate (with co2 as a by product). Methane gas is thus the main import cost (water and air being rather cheap). So why do it in the UK if gas is 1/4 of the price in the US or Russia. Another problem created by the government’s idiotic back door banning of fracking and their misguided & pointless war on CO2. Co2 which is in fact another needed fertiliser (or food) for plants, crops and trees.
The slight extra concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is greening the planet very nicely indeed and doing much net good.
September 22, 2021
Off topic, last night Sky News transported me into a parallel universe in which the main purpose of Brexit was to get a lucrative trade deal with the US, which Biden is now denying because the UK is imperiling peace in Ireland.
This is despite the well recorded facts that David Cameron urged us to stay in the EU, not to leave the EU, to share in the supposedly huge benefits of its TTIP trade deal with the US, when the EU official figures quoted in support of that argument showed that the net economic benefits to the UK would be somewhere on the left hand side of a scale running from “negligible” through “trivial” to “marginal”, and that according to the UK official figures that would apply even more to a bilateral deal, and that if anybody is going to imperil peace in Ireland it will be the EU and the Irish government, which unlike the UK government would not be constrained by law from fortifying its side of the Irish land border, and that Biden has already shown that he cares far more about the US strategic alliance with the UK than his Irish ancestral roots.
September 22, 2021
Why can’t you spit it out – instead of all around the houses
September 22, 2021
Denis Cooper :
We could have negotiated a free trade deal with the US when Mr. Trump was the POTUS but our EU supporting PM, Civil Service and Parliament were still working on reversing the EU referendum result and didnât want to pursue it, especially since it would have been seen as good for the UK and a Brexit success.
September 22, 2021
On top of allowing virtually all front gardens to be concreted over for the parking of many gas guzzlers why is this moronic, ludicrous, hateful government allowing the proliferation of artificial grass??
I thought we had to be GREEN.
For GREENCR*P we must give up petrol, gas, meat etc.etc.etc.
So why?
Mind you..I supposeâŠthey are very cruel and love mincing up birds and bats.
September 22, 2021
Lettuce enjoy the new ‘food’.
September 22, 2021
Interested readers may wish to study some of the very enlightening publications of The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies – I beg to quote the abstract of one now highly topical:
“The Outlook for Floating Storage and Regasification Units (FSRUs)
“FSRUs are a game changer providing a lower cost, fast track and flexible alternative to traditional onshore LNG import terminals. The first unit entered service in 2005 and today there are 23 FSRU terminals in operation. FSRUs are normally leased and can be viewed as a flexible pipeline supplying gas quickly, cheaply, and on a short term gas contract basis to developing markets. This was recently demonstrated in Egypt with delivery of gas in just 5 months from issue of the tender documents â very different from an onshore terminal which is a sunk cost and typically takes 4-5 years to construct. Many of the current, and planned, FSRU terminals are for the rapidly increasing gas-to-power market where there is no access to existing gas infrastructure. Forecasts indicate that up to 50 floating LNG terminals could be in operation by 2025. This confidence is demonstrated by the owners ordering new vessels at a cost of $250m each on a speculative basis.”
(Would that our ‘servants’ in Whitehall were able to read, mark, learn etc.).
September 22, 2021
Thank you boffin.
September 22, 2021
Interesting indeed. I wonder whether they will develop something perhaps with an integral power station that would be a suitable size for say the Channel Islands, where ports are too shallow draft to accept even small LNG carriers. Also an excellent resource for dealing with coastal areas subjected to hurricane and earthquake damage.
September 22, 2021
Boffin : “(Would that our âservantsâ in Whitehall were able to read, mark, learn etc.).”
I’m afraid you’re making the mistake that “our ‘servants'” are working for us.
September 22, 2021
A freer market can’t be achieved as long as the government pursues with such authoritarianism relish the ‘green’ revolution, as I believe you, Sir John, have described it. This requires intervention everywhere and urging it to be more realistic will make not much difference. They are in bed with the likes of XR and their various offshoots. The only matter which will bring about realism is some form of collapse where government individuals and leaders suffer some form of hurtful loss themselves. The CO2 supply issue is not enough.
It should be noted how quickly this foreign company can get blackmail money, and how George Eustice says that when a Norwegian company comes back into production matters will be ok again. Note the almost complete dependence on foreign companies.
A massive proportion of our economy is dependent on foreign government goodwill because they control swaths of our strategic industries and foreign companies being interested in us. Will our leaders ever realise that is a foolhardy policy? Only when it is too late and there is real trouble.
September 22, 2021
The PrangWizard of England :
Agreed.
September 22, 2021
The energy supply events and the Government’s actions have me throwing up my hands in not too un- surprised despair. This ‘green’ push is going to end in tears, as always happens when reality bursts the bubble of wishful thinking.
September 22, 2021
‘If the eventual s0lution is to let the new supplier charge more, shouldnât the original supplier have been given that freedom to stave off bankruptcy?’ – You would think so, wouldn’t you? However, this government continues to ‘build back better’ on a disturbing trait to seemingly stifle competition and restrict business to the big beasts. We are seeing it on too many occasions for it to be coincidental.
zorro
September 22, 2021
+1
September 22, 2021
The left wing disease: intervention warps markets and processes leading to more intervention.
Too many rules leads to ever more rules.
The road to poverty for all (except a few elite) and a dysfunctional police state.
We need a proper Conservative government and not the current socialists/marxists
September 22, 2021
+1
September 22, 2021
Kenneth :
Agreed.
September 22, 2021
A suggestion, remove all VAT from gas and electricity supply. It would be of immediate benefit to domestic users. It would also help business in that they would not have to administer it or pass on the fuel VAT element to end purchasers of whatever they produce.
When CO2 is a bi-product of our industrial processes, I believe it’s capture and disposal is encouraged within the green agenda. Why not sell it to the food packaging industry which suddenly finds itself short of it.
A question from someone whose worst subject was chemistry and who was never let loose on biology. If CO2 is essential plant food, presumably absorbed via the leaf structure, can it be turned into a solid form or derivative that can be absorbed via the roots. Maybe a naive question, can enlightenment be offered.
Current fuel supply is 50% under UK control and reliable. A frighteningly 30% to 2% is dependant on the gods of weather to drive our heavily subsidised windmills. I contend that this can only be considered as backup power, never front line power. What is the point of backup wind power that requires backup diesel generating power to back it when the wind fails to blow. Then about 20% comes from interconnectors that have proved vulnerable to breakdown and will always be strateagically subject to the politics of suppliers. As the first 50% is not as green as we would like, it and the other 50% need to be systematically replaced by modular atomic generation. The windmills can then become a bonus and obviate the need for interconnectors.
Were we to frack our own gas to replace all that is imported we would end our vulnerability to world prices. The bonus being that we could return much fuel hungry manufacture to our own shores. All we need is clear informed vision and quality leadership.
September 22, 2021
What if thereâs no wind, less electricity into the energy mix, shortages happen, manipulation of smart meters to restrict usage, power curtailed on EV outlets, EVs transport stopped, public canât get to work, economy stalled
Does this government do âwhat ifâ scenario planning
Apart from a rush to zero co2 I don’t see any energy planning
September 22, 2021
+1
September 22, 2021
Talking about interventions, there’s a interesting fact in Public sector finances, UK: August 2021 concerning QE. The DMO sells the Gilts, then the BoE APF buys them back offering the holders a sweetener. The sweetener appears to be circa 15%. That’s a nice little earner:-
The estimated impact of the APFâs gilt holdings on debt currently stands at ÂŁ114.3 billion, representing the difference between the value of the reserves created to purchase gilts (or market value of the gilts) and the ÂŁ723.4 billion face (or redemption) value of the gilts purchased.
The total corporate bond holdings of the APF at the end of August 2021 stood at ÂŁ19.7 billion, adding an equivalent amount to the level of debt.
The loan liability under the TFS umbrella at the end of August 2021 stood at ÂŁ109.9 billion, adding an equivalent amount to the level of debt.
September 22, 2021
I think you will find that when gilts are sold by the DMO to the market, it is on the basis of auctions which may well raise a substantial premium to par repayment value, depending on the level of coupon interest and teh gilt maturity. The margin for onsale to BEAPFF will be a few pips, not 15%. Gilts are mainly priced on the basis of redemption yields for given maturities. The implication incidentally is that BEAPFF suffers capital losses when gilts are redeemed, but these are guaranteed by the Treasury!
September 22, 2021
The government needs to protect individuals and industry from wild price fluctuations. Otherwise people will suffer and businesses will close, and the knock-on effects can be severe for everyone as the current crisis in food production has shown. The way to do this is to have a guaranteed energy supply at a fixed price. Not fixed artificially, through regulation, but fixed because the cost of production does not change.
There are two main forms of energy: electricity and gas. For electricity the solution is to order RR SMRs. These will give us constant, reliable, fixed-price electricity (and, as a side benefit, will kick-start a massive UK industry with global export opportunities). For gas, we need to expand North Sea production, so we are not reliant on imports. We can also explore fracking, and other innovative solutions (check out the British start-up Zero Petroleum, or look at the use of Hydrogen-Natural gas mixtures).
The point is that the answer to the problems we face are all based on self-sufficiency and reliance on guaranteed supplies at a known, fixed price. Unfortunately, the government is going in the completely opposite direction, relying more and more on unreliable wind power and imports. Why Sir John, who understands this issue, continues to support the government, I do not know. Whatever happened to that meeting that Kwarteng promised???
September 22, 2021
Straight from the horses mouth – no free trade deal possible with the US – now Boris is looking to join the North American Pact – then presumably we’ll have to abide by their rules instead of EU rules- we are fast becoming the laughing stock
September 22, 2021
I pray that Boris Johnson wakes up before too long and realises that the catastrophic path that heâs following will result in a massive shortage of energy, even my 10 year old granddaughter is able to understand this perfectly and sheâs volunteered to teach Boris Johnson the basics at no cost, thatâs an offer that he canât refuse⊠surely?
September 23, 2021
+99
Don’t we all
September 22, 2021
All good for the UK-GDP.
September 22, 2021
This is all down to the creation by a conservative government of virtual supply companies. Purely a financial construct. They are real utilities actually supplying your energy just the company billing you.
For example Sainsbury’s supplies energy in Wokingham but if a problem SSE or British Gas will be the ones to fix the problem even though in the a German Company is getting paid.
Not surprising the bubble has now burst after 30 years.
September 22, 2021
The Conservatives were quite right to be scornful of Ed Milibandâs stupid socialist idea of a price cap. And very foolish subsequently to adopt it. Another baleful legacy of Mrs Mayâs hopeless PMship.
September 22, 2021
+1
September 22, 2021
What a mess.
At 3.30pm I heard on the news that my energy supplier was rumoured to be about to go under. I fired up my laptop, did a comparison and found a new supplier. Checked their website, got a quote and signed up. The process had taken about 15 minutes. Phew.
3 minutes later I chanced to look at my new supplier’s website again: there was an announcement that they had “ceased to trade”.
I have to laugh, as this is totally outside my control. But more seriously it is in the control of the Conservative government, which has completely messed up with their energy policy. The reputational damage to the government over this fiasco will be enormous.
Thanks for speaking up, Sir John, but unfortunately they didn’t listen to you.
September 22, 2021
CF Industries (NYSE:CF) up 2.53% today, 9.25% in a week. Thank you Kwasi.
September 22, 2021
Two UK energy providers go bust amid gas crisis – more than 800,000 customers affected
How many more will be affected?
September 22, 2021
All part of the globalist plan. Just look at who is the PM.
September 22, 2021
Listening to Liam Fox on BBC- what a dope – we were horribly lied to – supposed to get the trade deal of the century with the US – we were promised – and now?
September 22, 2021
You didn’t listen the first time: he said the EU trade deal would be the easiest deal to do if the politics were right. That also applies to the American one.
September 22, 2021
Rose .. it applies to everything0 we do.. we have no special deals now with anyone .. we are on our own.. all as we voted for
September 22, 2021
“One solution to the renewable energy storage problem is pumped storage,”
Fine SG but our problem at the moment is a lack of energy to store!
September 22, 2021
The existing price controls form the basis of the decision consumers make when faced with a choice between standard variable rates and fixed rates. One- and two-year fixed deals are now with startling suddenness unaffordably expensive – ca. 60% more than in July – with the suppliers charging stonking extra amounts for ‘standing charges’ , a transparent attempt to guarantee the company a conveniently secure revenue by preventing low users (i.e. poorer consumers) from reducing their cost by reducing their usage. Standard flexible rates (based on the 1.October price cap) are at least currently affordable, and are based on the price cap. So confident are the energy companies that their eye-wateringly high 1- and 2-year fixed rates represent the true course of things to come, they now attach no exit fees to them.
It is adequacy of supply that needs fixing. The government could start by 1) reducing or abolishing its taxes on the energy companies 2) taking over state responsibility for the unbelievably generous plethora of energy discounts available for benefits recipients and other non-taxpayers, discounts utilities companies expressly admit are subsidised entirely by net-paying customers; and 3) revoking crassly idiotic Net Zero targets until the country has adequate and above all *secure* green fuel sources in place. Nobody thought the Tories would be daft enough to pursue such a policy, one that will impoverish people or kill them.
Mine, shale-explore, push hydrogen – take your heads out of the sand and introduce drill-bits there instead.
September 22, 2021
Too much competition and most will disappear up their own exhaust. One day many Will realise that cooperation pays and greed spoils.
September 22, 2021
I almost feel like saying ‘Renationalise our Energy Supplies’.
Perhaps more to the point – Stop the stupid Green Energy Subsidies.
Planet Earth is NOT warming disastrously. What warming there has been, is NOT due to CO2.
CO2 is not harmful, all life depends on it.
Successive governments have made a complete cock up of our energy policies.
And the present one appears to be completely mad in pursuing it’s carbon neutral policies.
Previous administrations have made us dependent on foreign sources of energy.
And those foreign sources are no more ‘Green’ than our own fossil fuel – coal.
Our own COAL is LESS likely to ‘Run out’ than GAS from Russia, via the EU. Or Electricity from the E.U.
MAD MAD MAD. And what Countries OWN these companies begging for subsidies? NOT the U.K. I’ll bet.
How about at least getting controlling ownership of those companies in return for any bailing out.
September 22, 2021
Don’t forget about the oil, petrol wil push up towards 150p to 160p a litre by the new year,already paying that much at the motorway services, maybe 170p for them or more. Nothing like a bit of inflation to push up GDP, so the gov can borrow and print more money.
September 23, 2021
If you pay anything like that at motorway service stations you need a basic lesson on ‘comparing the market’ – try a splash and dash to get you to a turnoff where you will fill at acceptable prices.
September 22, 2021
A nice bit of KEYNESIAN economics.
September 24, 2021
Well said and the conclusion is to get rid of the price cap.
Something like this has happened before. Following John Major’s privatisation of the raiilways, there was a private sector company called Railtrack, tasked with maintaining the railway tracks. To finance this, Railtrack relied on revenue raised from track access charges, paid by the operators whose trains used the track. Initially, Railtrack was allowed to charge what the market would bear and the system more or less worked. A fully loaded passenger train payed a high track access charge and a lightly loaded freight train payed much less. Then along came Prescott and Byers, Labour’s transport supremos, who wanted to renationalise the tracks. They achieved this by capping track access charges at a level too low to finance proper track maintenance. Instead of screaming blue murder, which it should have done, Railtrack cut back on track inspections (sometimes inspecting from a nearby bridge) and track maintenance. Inevitably, there was a major derailment and Railtrack was asked to catch up on its track maintenance obligations. Unable to do this, it agreed to be renationalised.
The resultant public sector company is Network Rail, which has an accumulated deficit of ÂŁ50 billion, now quite rightly included in total State debt.
This wasn’t a market failure; it was a failure of Government. The message to Government in both cases, railways and energy, is that if your meddling is doing harm, then STOP MEDDLING.
September 25, 2021
As I keep saying again and again and again – You can always tell where government has been by the mess it leaves behind.
September 25, 2021
You may be happy we have left the EU, but given the empty shelves in supermarkets and queues at the petrol pumps and lots of state intervention, we appear to restarted Comecon. I guess Global Britain will be inviting Venezuela and North Korea to join. The UK is becoming more and more like an offshore DDR.