Paying for energy

All the time we need to import energy we are at the mercy of world prices for oil and of regional prices for gas and electricity. As we mainly import  from Europe we are pushed into high prices by the chronic shortfall of energy provision on the continent. That is why I have been urging more domestic supply and trying  to get us to pursue self sufficiency.

Policy has now changed to seek to produce more gas and oil at home, to keep open coal power stations pending new replacements, to revive nuclear and to examine commercial exploitation of technologies that would allow storage and time shifting of wind energy.

The solution to dear energy is to produce more cheaper energy. The immediate crisis prices come from a deliberate gas shortage in Europe caused by Putin’s economic warfare. The policy of encouraging electrification of transport and heating will require far more electrical generation than we currently manage, so we need to think through the pace of introduction. When assessing the true costs of different means of generating power we need to take into account costs of stand by and back up power.

The immediate need is a further package of measures to cut the cost of energy by reducing energy taxes, and to provide some offset to the loss of spending power from the increase in gas and electricity prices. It needs to ensure those on low incomes are looked after. What would you like to see in that announcement?

229 Comments

  1. Lifelogic
    August 27, 2022

    “Policy has now changed to seek to produce more gas and oil at home, to keep open coal power stations pending new replacements, to revive nuclear and to examine commercial exploitation of technologies that would allow storage and time shifting of wind energy.” Alas not yet changed enough. Storage of electrical energy is absurdly expensive and very energy wasteful in general. Best stored as gas, coal, nuclear, or oil before it is generated and only generated as needed.

    “The policy of encouraging electrification of transport and heating will require far more electrical generation than we currently manage, so we need to think through the pace of introduction.” So why do this at all heatpumps, train electrification, electric buses and electric cars make little or often no sense in cost, convenience, safety or even CO2 terms. Buying a new EV car rather than keeping you old one almost always increases CO2 for example in the construction and mining of the new car and rather short lived and very expensive battery. Plus we do not even have any spare low CO2 electricity to power them.

    Also CO2 is not a serious problem and even if the UK was net zero tomorrow it would make almost zero difference to the total world output and certainly zero difference to the climate.

    1. PeteB
      August 27, 2022

      LL,
      As you note Sir J’s claim that “policy has changed” is of little value until it translates to action. I see one firm suggested they could have gas on the market in January if fracking was immediately allowed and they could start drilling.
      So Sir J, when will fracking be permitted, how many more extraction licences will be issued for the North Sea, when can RR start to deploy small modular reactors?
      As the adage goes “Actions speak louder than words”.

      1. No Longer Anonymous
        August 27, 2022

        Along with the misery of being cold and damp and broke.. Priti Patel is now instructing councils to take their share of boat blokes. So, by 2024, add the sight of idle gangs of blokes hanging around our towns together.

        Useless Government. Utterly useless. In fact dangerous and soon everyone will start seeing it.

        We need more productivity and modernisation from Government. They need to start giving us value for money and start appealing to the voters/’customers’ (market share) they have just lost – we need fewer of them and they need to work smarter, more efficiently and harder and their pay and conditions are outdated and stuck in the past and cause inflation.*

        *They have the sheer bloody cheek to talk to their voters like this.

        1. No Longer Anonymous
          August 27, 2022

          PS Fracking or any sort of British energy extraction will not necessarily begat a lowering of energy prices if privateers take control of the resource – we will still be paying global prices.

          I am no socialist but clearly there is merit in key infrastructure and resources being under the aegis of government.

          1. Hope
            August 27, 2022

            EU level playing field stops UK govt having a buy British policy. However, nothing stops us, the UK consumer, from having a buy British policy. Stuff the EU!

            Do not buy RoI agri products buy British!

          2. Mark
            August 27, 2022

            We only pay import parity prices in months where we are not self sufficient. The more we produce, the fewer the months when that applies. Over the summer UK gas has been trading at a large discount to prices on the Continent. The less we need to import the more we can avoid having to pay very expensive import prices for gas shipped half way round the world and the more competition there is for our reduced need, lowering import prices.

        2. Hope
          August 27, 2022

          JR, your govt has forced difficult choices on people through its incompetence. Therefore would it be better not to pay council tax than not paying energy bill?

          There is an argument the council fails to provide a service that is worth the bill and I object to my council tax paying for economic migrants at Priti Useless’s last dictum because she is incapable of doing her job or implementing a manifesto commitment she was elected on.

          1. graham1946
            August 28, 2022

            Once people see the boat people getting houses they have been on the waiting list for, or going into private rented accommodation they can’t afford, there will be trouble. Secondly, this is a typical ‘Policy a Day’ Patel idea which won’t work but will alienate people. Her ideas never have worked yet. We’ve had wave machines, jet skis, Royal Navy Patrols, paying the French, Rwanda, ad infinitum. Also, even if you distribute them around the country, they will soon start to form communities of their own and won’t stay put. It’s natural, they will congregate where their own kinsman go.

        3. margaret
          August 28, 2022

          Failure to see the implications of too many immigrants is surely gross incompetence. The emotive issues, due to allowing too many on to a small island are many fold. Consider the new settlers here ,without a home , heat ,food and rising prices , literally begging for help.
          Consider the man who worked for 20 years in the UK or more and came upon bad luck ( there are many) is infected with many pustular diseases , has to pay for pain control off the street, lives by sleeping near shopping stores, is getting on in years ,needs a house , needs someone not to treat him like he just walked out of a sewer, can speak English ,suffers physical , mental financial, emotional abuse and looks upon the new settlers being housed whilst he is suffering in agony.
          Consider the people who have worked for 50 years or more and are still working into their 70’s struggling to keep a roof over their head, keep warm and have enough to eat , whilst the new rough do everything in their power to bring down the Brits who are not allowed to fight back against injustices .
          Who lets all this happen? Try and analyse this and look at the root causes of each individual case . I have many answers ,, but ultimately it is lack of any government at all and a failure to Do , Doing is getting the job done , speaking out is important , but carrying tasks which prevent the downward spiralling seems to confuse people ,as though they are not a part of society .

      2. X-Tory
        August 27, 2022

        This useless government is all talk and no action – and this applies in every area. Sir John does not seem to be publishing my comments any more, so I’m not sure if this will appear, but here goes – The solution to the energy problem is two-fold: (i) cut the cost, and (ii) increase the supply.

        To cut the COST the folowing needs to be done:
        (i) scrap VAT;
        (ii) Scrap the ‘green levies’ (the Environmental & Social Obligations);
        (iii) Scrap the Carbon Taxes (completely different and separate to the green levies that Truss goes on about), meaning the Emissions Trading Scheme, the Carbon Price Support and the Climate Change Levy;
        (iv) Scrap the linkage between the the price of one form of energy (such as wind power) and another, completely different one (such as the spot price of gas). Change the contracts – using the law, NOT negotiations – so that suppliers are only paid the actual cost of production + 7% profit margin.

        To increase SUPPLY the following needs to be done:
        (i) Oblige (by law, NOT negotiations) all producers of gas, oil, etc, in the UK to sell to the UK, not to export their production;
        (ii) Start fracking NOW – and I’m sorry, Sir John, but your proposal that this should require local support is absurd. You cannot allow the national good to be subject to a veto by local NIMBYs. During the war, were locals allowed to object to the building of a Spitfire factory on the grounds that it was noisy and might make their area a target for Nazi bombings? Of course not. One reason why I despise this government is because there is no URGENCY in anything they do. We are in a WAR-LIKE CRISIS, and this requires WARTIME SOLUTIONS. I want action NOW – not just on energy, but on water, stopping the invasion of Britain, increasing manufacturing, etc.
        (iii) Order the RR SMRs right away and start building them NOW, concurrently with the approval provcess, so they are fully built and ready to switch on as soon as approval is confirmed. Which, of course, it will be, as this is a RR design, not one by the EDF cretins.
        (iv) Invest in gas storage – not just the Rough facility (which can only hold a maximum of 10 days’ supply), but other new ones too. These have previously been proposed but the government was too penny-pinching to invest in them. While this doesn’t reduce the price of energy it does maintain supply.
        (v) Finally, start ordering and building other forms of RELIABLE energy – NOT wind! Of course this will take time to come on stream, but this is not an excuse not to do this, but brather a reason to do so as quickly as possible, shortcutting all the normal delays (planning, consultations, etc). I’m talking about waste incinerators, deep geothermal, etc.

        And finally, as to government SUBSIDIES, these should NOT just go to those on benefits, or be means-tested, as this will penalise those who are working and don’t normally need benefits – such as the vast majority of Tory voters!! You really do have to wonder at the STUPIDITY of Conservative politicians who target support to their political enemies! And it also penalises BUSINESSES, whose needs and problems are being completely overlooked. Government subsidies, if needed, must go to cutting to cost of energy for EVERYONE.

        1. Hope
          August 27, 2022

          Perhaps JR could clarify the position the UK has with its level playing field on environment with EU. Does this not include net zero, energy, water, waste. Please explain what the UK has to comply with EU.

          France threatens to cut electric to Jersey, UK gives EU gas in first quarter, why? What did the UK get in exchange or is there an agreement that forces UK to be interconnected stil with EU?

          1. Mark
            August 27, 2022

            As France has been a major electricity importer from the UK this year, and will likely wish to increase imports still further when IFA1 returns to full service in the winter I think we hold the whip hand. For a start, no power export unless cross channel boats are stopped.

      3. Dave Andrews
        August 27, 2022

        Can you tell me why fracking would be anything other than another means for the energy companies to make big profits? Why would they sell the gas to you at last year’s prices when they can sell it to Germany say for 5 times as much?

        1. PeteB
          August 27, 2022

          Basic economics. Increase supply with same demand and price falls. Agree we wouldn’t get all the benefit as it’s an international market. We have gas though, why not recover it. Jobs & taxes for the UK as well as ultimately cheaper gas.

          1. graham1946
            August 28, 2022

            The amount we could produce, (like our CO2 levels) is relatively small and would have zero effect on world markets and as an answer to my earlier question it seems it will be sold on world markets at high prices. This country is being ripped off, stripped of it’s assets and the government support it all.

        2. Mark
          August 27, 2022

          Because they can’t sell it to Germany as there is no export route to do so.

          1. graham1946
            August 28, 2022

            Doesn’t need to be transported anywhere. From what I now think I know, it is the spivs who decide how much our own gas and oil is sold for and we just have to put up with it.

    2. rose
      August 27, 2022

      LL, in the days when we used to worry about real pollution, not carbon dioxide, I was told we needed the pollution from aircraft as a shield between us and the sun. Without it we would frazzle. Now that we have had a couple of years with hardly any flights, we are being told there is more heat, more drought, more floods. Do you think there is indeed a connection? The sky did seem very blue during the shutdown.

      1. Lifelogic
        August 27, 2022

        Indeed when I lived in North London with a good view over the city you would have a clear blue sky at 6am but the aeroplane trails would rapidly haze over the sky in an hour or two reducing the suns strength significantly. When we had grounded flights for 9/11 and Covid it made a very large difference. CO2 is indeed essential plant, tree, seaweed and crop food & not pollution.

      2. turboterrier
        August 27, 2022

        Rose
        What an interesting post.

      3. margaret
        August 27, 2022

        And the lungs of the world, the Amazon forests continue to be cleared reducing the globes ability to absorb Co2.

        1. DennisA
          August 27, 2022

          The Amazon forest is not the lungs of the world, this a long standing myth, widely believed. Professor Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of BioGeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, wrote this in 2003:

          “At the end of the last ice age, only some 12-18000 years ago, the tropics were covered by seasonal savannah grasslands, cooler and much drier than now. There were no rain forests in the Malay Peninsula and much of Amazonia, and, despite the increasing human development of forested space, there are still more rain forests persisting than existed then. As in Europe and North America, the forests came and went as climate changed; there is no Clementsian “long period of control” under one climate. Beneath many rain forests, there are sheets of ash, a testimony in the soil to past fires and non-forested landscapes.”

          “To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees” NYT Sept. 19, 2014
          By Nadine Unger
          The Amazon rain forest is often perceived as the lungs of the planet. In fact, almost all the oxygen the Amazon produces during the day remains there and is reabsorbed by the forest at night. In other words, the Amazon rain forest is a closed system that uses all its own oxygen and carbon dioxide.”

          07 February 2017 Frontiers in Marine Science: Evaluation of Primary Production in the Lower Amazon River Based on a Dissolved Oxygen Stable Isotopic Mass Balance” – Amazon River CO2 outgassing equals Rainforest sequestration”
          “The Amazon River outgasses nearly an equivalent amount of CO2 as the rainforest sequesters on an annual basis due to microbial decomposition of terrigenous and aquatic organic matter. The Amazon River is a major source of CO2 to the atmosphere, but understanding the interplay between photosynthesis and respiration is critical for understanding the fundamental mechanisms driving these fluxes and the overall productivity of the ecosystem.”

          1. margaret
            August 30, 2022

            Well I will take your updated view , however there were certainly a lot of trees there and they are rapidly getting less or do you want to display pedantry again and say negative rather than speak positive. It’s all about competition and showing how clever you all are rather than getting to grips with the real problem. This is why we never seem to progress , Lawyers use this tact to detract from the problems and argue on a side track , in the hope they will win on a side argument . I despair.

          2. margaret
            August 30, 2022

            I will not provide a counter argument. I will simply plant trees , keep the air as clean as possible , try and reduce airborne pathogens and hope that people everywhere will learn that the globe is whole and the various areas interact and as the desserts and savannah become more inhabitable , as the glaciers melt at an overwhelming speed and people wonder what is happening at home . I will say , the clever says its over there and not here!

    3. Peter Wood
      August 27, 2022

      Real World Calling..
      Fed Chairman has found the honesty pills and seems to be taking them. ‘There will be pain in the economy…’ He is going to keep raising interest rates, and that means the UK will have to raise them, or see ÂŁ fall off a cliff. WAKE-UP UK government/BoE, we’re going to have a VERY tough time over the next 12 months, you need a ‘wartime’ type economic plan.
      I just hope Chairman Powell sends a few of those honesty pills to the new Chancellor here, we could use at least one trustworthy member of cabinet, who knows what to do.
      I told you this was coming, I just hope you’ve got a plan.

      1. Mitchel
        August 27, 2022

        Andrew Neil by twitter:

        “As Europe desperately seeks alternative non-Russian sources of gas and oil US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tells American energy companies to export less.”

        Sirius Report by twitter:

        “So,after promising Europe that if they ditched Russian energy,the US would help plug the gap the Biden administration is now essentially asking refiners to prioritize American consumers.”

        Germany should do two things:1)turn on Nordstream II and 2)close down NATO bases on it’s territory and kick out all American(and any residual British) forces.

        1. Mark
          August 27, 2022

          What Andrew Neil has missed is that Biden is preventing investment in more production. This means that production will no longer be able to fill export capacity and meet domestic demand. While exports have a higher value it makes commercial sense to maximise exports. The corollary is that domestic prices must rise to export parity if domestic supply is to be maintained. Constraining exports will only serve to drive up the export parity price.

          US consumers could face a really unpleasant set of shocks over the winter, having been insulated from global markets by sufficient production to meet domestic demand and export capacity so far. Granholm getting this wrong will make BLM riots seem like small beer.

        2. Sea_Warrior
          August 28, 2022

          Your closing sentence strikes me as coming straight out of the Kremlin.

    4. Javelin
      August 27, 2022

      I hadn’t thought of this. The true environmentally friendly agenda is to keep existing cars on the road as long as possible. But auto manufacturers don’t want this agenda.

    5. Hope
      August 27, 2022

      Gas shortage is Not down to Putin! What on earth are you talking about. You contradict yourself in the process. It is about being self sufficient as possible. Who buys 80% of coal from Putin when there are hundreds of reserves under our feet! It is your party’s policy over 12: years that has caused this mess and you might have better credibility if you read your past blogs for the advice you gave to your govt!

      One of May’s last treacherous acts before she left office was net zero! Nothing to do with Putin.

      We will not forget when the bills drop through the door that it was your party and govt who created this mess. It would have been better if you told us what your govt was doing to broker a deal to stop the war ie west promise to keep its word not to March east.

      1. Lifelogic
        August 27, 2022

        May’s moronic Net Zero bill was even waved through without even a vote by out scientifically illiterate & idiotic MPs of all parties. No sensible cost benefit analysis was done either. Cost ÂŁTrillions benefit is zero – in fact it is actually negative! Negative even before the lost opportunity costs of what the ÂŁTrillions could have done. And the vast economic damage caused by expensive and unreliable electricity.

        1. margaret
          August 27, 2022

          LL isn’t it time you stopped lecturing everyone, calling them idiots, morons, scientifically illiterate, daft. We know your views , but you quote what others have said and nothing is ever constructive about your argument. You don’t believe in man’s ability to cause an imbalance of nature , when it is outstandingly scientifically obvious in all aspects of civilisation , you quite rightly state that co2 is required for plant respiration and the oxygen produced , but strangely you cannot see that too much of any gas causes changes in exchange .You need to decoke and shut your gob.

          1. Lifelogic
            August 27, 2022

            Well we are actually in a relative dearth of atmospheric CO2 currently. As Prof William Happer and Dr Patrick Moore and others correctly explain in their videos.

            Either the people I call daft are daft or worse sill they are just lying.

      2. Mitchel
        August 27, 2022

        I see Japan has resumed oil imports from Russia in July and Mitsui and Mitsubishi have refused to withdraw from the Sakhalin-2 LNG development,both signing up for the new Moscow-domiciled structure.All buyers (Japan,S Korea and Taiwan are the largest) will have to use the Gazprombank payment mechanism.I also note that Yokohama Rubber has re-started tyre production in Russia.

        Sanctions going well!

    6. wes
      August 27, 2022

      well said why aren’t they listening?

      1. Hope
        August 27, 2022

        I am still aghast why we taxpayers pay for deluxe cars under mobility allowance? What happened to the cheap blue cars? Why do people on benefits get an Audi, BMW and the likes at our expense? Why does it still paying to be on welfare? Why does it pay to only work limited hours on welfare? Now Tories want to give welfare claimants a mortgage at our expense, FFS!

        Why are criminals crossing the channel not put in detention centres with austerity, as long as they are safe and well they should be grateful (Better than a tent at Calais). Get the detention centres back open. Save fuel by stopping border force boats leaving port same for RNLI. All refugees, asylum seeker expenses paid out of foreign aid budget not council tax. Half foreign aid budget for humanitarian causes only.

        1. Diane
          August 27, 2022

          Will the now enforceable allocations on councils again bring up the likes of the Linton-on-Ouse issue which was ditched under pressure from the MP and local residents. What attention is being paid to the Irish migration situation in terms of how it might be affecting the UK / Ireland common travel area. With official stats out this week, recorded only to April 2022, largest yearly population growth since 2008. (Breitbart) A wave of more than 120.000 plus. Infrastructure pushed to breaking point. Reported 28.000 from Ukraine. 63000 neither from the EU nor the UK. Population of around 5.1m & with around 700.000 recorded as non-Irish nationals & an impending near blanket illegal migrant amnesty, by any other name.

  2. Lifelogic
    August 27, 2022

    Reported in the Telegraph today:- “Eco-conscious Duke flies to polo match on private jet
    THE Duke of Sussex flew by private jet for a one-day polo tournament 1,000 miles from his Californian home after starting the trip in a different car to that carrying his kit. The Duke, who played to raise money for his HIV charity Sentebale, was photographed arriving by electric car to board a Bombardier Challenger 600, near his home in Santa Barbara. His polo kit is reported to have arrived about half an hour later by Range Rover, carried into the hold by what appeared to be members of staff before being flown to Aspen, Colorado.”

    Just the polo match, the horses, stabling & horse transportation must use vast amounts fossil fuels. Still do as I say not as I do you stupid poor plebs!

    1. formula57
      August 27, 2022

      Reportedly the jet kept its engines running during the half hour wait for the forgotten polo kit to be delivered. Weep for the planet.

      1. Lifelogic
        August 27, 2022

        The hypocrisy is just amazing. A word of advice either stop doing it or at least keep your gob shut and stop lecturing others with carbon footprints of perhaps 1/1000 of yours dear Prince H.

    2. Hope
      August 27, 2022

      Another solution would be to cut council tax bills in half and sack half the useless staff. Also half the pay of ceo and director of services in councils, they are useless self serving fools.

      1. Fedupsoutherner
        August 27, 2022

        And 50 – 90% still working from home.

    3. turboterrier
      August 27, 2022

      Lifelogic
      He is not alone Steven Spielburg has paid out $116k + on fuel for his private jet making over 16 flights over the last two months.
      Another who talks a good act. From the man who said “global warming terrified him”

  3. Lifelogic
    August 27, 2022

    The solution for many people will be heat one room, bathe less, move more and wear more clothes and an electric blanket perhaps. Give the money to the people in tax reductions and better pensions etc. and let then choose how to spend it be it on energy, food or as they choose. Also no point in insulating the whole house if you can only heat up one room. Plus insulating old houses well is often not practical, very expensive and uses loads of energy to do it.

    Cleary the government should abandon the mad net “net zero” religion and take most sales taxes off energy, foods, transport fuels and basic good to get inflation down rapidly. Also reverse Sunak’s currency debasement policies and Carrie/Boris/Suank/Truss(?), Ed Milliband’s/May’s moronic net zero lunacy that caused the inflation.

    1. Lifelogic
      August 27, 2022

      A policy of limiting standing charges as many have increases hugely especially for business users. Poor people can easily reduce energy usage but can do nothing about the electric and gas standing charge poll taxes other than to disconnect fully.

    2. Sharon
      August 27, 2022

      I can’t remember where I read it, but it might have been Ben Habib. According to this article we cannot unilaterally drop net zero, because we signed up to it with the EU.

      Is this correct, can anyone confirm?

      1. Lifelogic
        August 27, 2022

        Not sure? But we need to drop it anyway or just ignore it at the very least.

        1. Hope
          August 27, 2022

          Sharon/LL,

          It is correct. Ben Habib wrote in the express paper. It is part of EU environment level playing field. JR and his deceitful party would rather blame Putin than tell the truth net zero is part of the Brexit sell out. Time to scrap the N.Ireland protocol. UK will need all levers at its disposal following the economic disaster the Tory party has enforced on us. Time the wretched party and govt came clean about covid.

          As it has now become clear from Sunak’s interview in the Spectator a criminal investigation needs to take place. If Sunak is telling the truth time for SAGE members to be investigated for misconduct in public office. Johnson, Gove and the quad need to come clean what they knew and what they might have been covering up.

          State aide is another EU restriction which will become relevant when more and more businesses go the wall.

      2. Lifelogic
        August 27, 2022

        The solutions pushed wind, solar, EV, heat-pumps, burning wood at Drax do not save any or any sig. CO2 anyway.

      3. Mark
        August 27, 2022

        it is clear that at the multilateral international level there has to be agreement to suspend net zero objectives until we have solved the energy crisis. Cancel COP27. Put the CCC into suspended animation at the end of Deben’s term in the chair – it is due to end in a few days. Secure G7/G20 agreement to a programme of development of energy resources, particularly gas, around the world to replace lost volumes. Guarantee expedited finance for projects in any friendly country and permits in home countries. Tell Kerry to cool his heels and his jets.

        Horrible thought: is Skidmore’s sudden switch to support Truss because he has been promised to take over from Deben? As the arch zero who proposed net zero in the Commons he needs to spend more time with the constituents he has helped impoverish.

    3. Lifelogic
      August 27, 2022

      Replacing some sash windows in conservation areas for example can cost £6000 per window perhaps £72k for the house. So they will never pay back in energy saved not even over a million years. Plus you have the loss of investment return on the £72k. Perhaps £3500 PA. Energy saved by the new windows perhaps £200 PA tops (not even that if you cannot afford to heat the whole house! Yet the government is trying to force people and landlords to do economically insane things like this. In the name of saving the world. Are window companies and green crap companies funding the party or MPs as “consultants”?

      1. a-tracy
        August 27, 2022

        Secondary glazing would perhaps be cheaper inside its what they do near train stations.

    4. Wanderer
      August 27, 2022

      Very true LL. What’s so frustrating is that many of those changes in your last para could be done in the blink of an eye, if we had a government that cared about ordinary people and was prepared to say “no” to the globalists.

      1. Mitchel
        August 27, 2022

        British governments sold out to the globalists a very long time ago.They do as they are told because the globalists control the system that allows us to pretend we are not insolvent.

    5. Original Richard
      August 27, 2022

      LL :

      Agree completely with both paragraphs.

    6. Atlas
      August 27, 2022

      Yes, get rid of the Net Zero Lunacy. In the end we will run out of gas and oil – but not just yet. We will have time to see whether these alternative:
      1 energy sources;
      2 transport;
      3 house heating;
      actually are as good overall as is claimed of them.

    7. Iago
      August 27, 2022

      Bought an electric blanket eighteen months ago just for this. It was made in China and did not work. Oh for the inexpensive and simple electric blankets my parents were able to buy fifty years ago, made up north! I gave one to an elderly neighbour. To prevent fires you had to ensure the blanket did not get folded or rucked up and left on; this would be beyond a significant fraction of today’s population, as it was after a few years beyond my frail and forgetful neighbour.

    8. No Longer Anonymous
      August 27, 2022

      +1 on all of that. Inflation means that the Government is raking it in in extra tax. Cut tax. Get fracking !

      Alas the Tories are on the side of:

      – blokes in boats

      – Green lunes

      – Wokies

      – Welfare cheats…

      Because their plan seems to be to close the gap even further between those who work and those who don’t – to the point that wages are actually chasing benefits.

      A ÂŁ45k a year doctor is piss poor. He will be returning from shift to a cold room in a shared house whilst paying for some layabout to keep warm, as well as his ÂŁ100k student debt and six years loss in earnings.

    9. Hope
      August 27, 2022

      Presumably MPs will now change pension to CPI from RPI to be in align with other public sector workers. Also second home allowances of MPs stopped unless they house a refugee or asylum seeker claimant.

    10. John Waugh
      August 27, 2022

      Have one snug room .Thinking back to motorcyle days i thought of the heated gloves you could buy .Looking online now i see details about – best rechargeable battery heated jackets in uk – for someone unable to warm up by moving they might be a lifesaver .have no experience of them but worth looking at .

  4. Lifelogic
    August 27, 2022

    In short our ~ 95% scientifically and economically illiterate MP have been following an insane energy policy ever since that idiot Ed Milliband got nearly all of them (not JR, Peter Lilly or Ann Widecombe & one or two others) to vote for the insanity of his idiotic Climate Change Act – without even having any proper cost benefit analysis. Scrap this act and Lord Debden’s deluded Climate Change Committee now Mrs Truss please.

    1. Cuibono
      August 27, 2022

      It seems that MSM is waking up to the insanity of (do you call them PPE grads?) making “scientific” decisions.
      As you often say.

    2. Ian Wragg
      August 27, 2022

      The situation we are in was predictable as well as engineered.
      The massively pro EU governments of the last 50 years have allowed us to be dependent on foreign largesse to power our country.
      Together with the ruinous net zero started by Millipede and enthusiastically followed by 12 years of socialist conservative government has put us in this position.
      Some conspiracy theorists might think this is deliberate.
      Action in the coming months will verify this.
      You will own nothing………….

      1. Ian Wragg
        August 27, 2022

        Yesterday’s telegraph had an article by Ben Marlow I believe aayithe way out of this energy crisis is to double down on installing renewables. Are these people indoctrinated by some superior authority, didn’t he know that yesterday and today wind produced from 9.52 ro 0.77gw. How is that going to solve anything.

        1. anon
          August 27, 2022

          Doubling down would not be enough.

          Wind on average (lowest average estimate 33% capacity factor). Current total = 24GW. That is 8GW on average output. So to meet average demand say 40GW. That would need 5 times the capacity ie 120GW of wind capacity.

          Obviously , other issues to do with demand and supply not time matching would need to be overcome.Hydro-closed loop etc

          Which is why we need alternatives which were our older coal, oil, nuclear. Legally preventing functioning plant fulfilling that role and decreeing it should be net zero is and was insane. These people need removing from all positions of power.

          Of course if we cut the connectors, we would be forced to be independent, which in a war scenario is not unlikely.

        2. Mark
          August 27, 2022

          There was a much more to the point article from Juliet Samuel. She really has grasped the underlying truth that this crisis is inflicted by the net zero crew who have undermined production capacity.

      2. Timaction
        August 27, 2022

        Of course it’s on purpose. Getting rid of our generating capacity and storage, relying on foreign powers was traitorous behaviour by the Tory Government.

    3. Shirley M
      August 27, 2022

      Agreed, LL.Total mismanagement of energy and we are paying dearly for the governments idiocy and/or religious zeal. There must be some people with brains and foresight in our useless government. Where are they, and why are they failing to speak up … or are they being ignored? Do ANY of them care about the UK????

    4. Cynic
      August 27, 2022

      Net Zero chickens have come home to roost inconveniently early!!

      1. No Longer Anonymous
        August 27, 2022

        +1

      2. Ian Wragg
        August 27, 2022

        Oh, the irony, when the energy price cap increases next time the old ice becomes cheaper to run than an equivalent EV. Watch the preening minority do a screeching U turn when it comes to replacing their cars.

    5. Donna
      August 27, 2022

      +1

      It isn’t the Big Bad Putin who caused this crisis. He’s just exacerbated it.

      1. Lifelogic
        August 27, 2022

        +1

      2. No Longer Anonymous
        August 27, 2022

        Yup. He spotted we were weak on energy and the after effects of lockdown. His invasion was timed to stall our Covid bounce. Our sanctions are boomeranging on us.

      3. Timaction
        August 27, 2022

        The Torys net zero caused this energy and cost of living crisis.

        1. Mark
          August 27, 2022

          The whole of Parliament cheered net zero through – or at least almost all the members of every party with seats in the Commons. There were a handful of voices against it. But it is every bit as much owned by Labour, the SNP and Lib Dems, as well as the Green and the DUP and SDLP.

    6. Lifelogic
      August 27, 2022

      Plus of course scrap the foolish May’s net zero lunacy and her foolishly thought out and moronically worded Modern Slavery Act that does so much harm in relation to controlling illegal immigration properly. A gift to lawyers & criminals and indeed to those who are both.

      The real modern slavery in the UK is surely paying ~ 50% in taxes yet getting almost nothing of any real value back for it by way of public services of any quality or even competence.

      1. Mitchel
        August 27, 2022

        It’s not slavery it’s modern day feudalism.You have to keep the oligarchy/robber barons and all their many dependents and favourites in the style to which they have become accustomed.

        Because they are worth it.

    7. miami.mode
      August 27, 2022

      David Cameron and Theresa May were both in favour of fracking. Boris Johnson was made PM in July 2019 and by early November the same year with the able assistance of Andrea Leadsom had placed a “moratorium” on fracking but they were always clear that they would “follow the science”.

      As we have seen with the climate change activists and Covid19 the science can be whatever you want it to be and thankfully the process of concreting the existing drilling sites has been postponed.

      1. Mark
        August 27, 2022

        Cameron allowed Ed Davey to implement a de facto ban that Cavey still brags about. I hope he can look shivering constituents in the eye this winter, and goes to their funerals.

    8. formula57
      August 27, 2022

      + 1

    9. Atlas
      August 27, 2022

      Agreed Lifelogic. We really need an in depth analysis of the whole Man-Made Climate Change claim by people who are both proper scientists and who do not have ‘skin in the game’ benefitting from climate alarmism with research grants etc.

      1. Sharon
        August 27, 2022

        There is a group of 1200 scientists etc who have formed a group/declaration called, “There is No Climate Emergency “.

        https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/

    10. XY
      August 27, 2022

      +1

      Real scientists are finding it difficult to get their work published / publicised and they are also finding it difficult to peer review the work of pro-climate scientists. Scientific journals are supposed to conduct proper peer review of articles, but increasingly the pro-climate change people are being published after a “draft review” conducted by a single like-thinking person.

      Infiltration of all our structures seems to be the way the woke/socialists are gaining control of society – if you can’t get elected, get appointed.

      1. Lifelogic
        August 27, 2022

        +1

      2. hefner
        August 27, 2022

        Nonsense XY. There is now a multitude of on-line journals, with some like academia.edu not too regarding of the quality of the ‘scientific’ arguments put together. The reviews are done by ‘citizens scientists’, some having hardly the equivalent of GCSE physics given the quality of their comments, some at times not even equivalent to the Daily Express or Daily Mail comments. That’s where you’ll find all about the internal furnace argument about the Earth’s warming or why the Stefan-Boltzmann constant is wrong.
        That’s where one can find the masterpieces of some in that vanguard (eg, Teri Ciccone). On this particular site it is possible to find in independent.academia.edu la ‘crùme de la crùme’ of ‘the real scientists’. So don’t tell me they are prevented from publishing.

        1. Peter2
          August 28, 2022

          Yours is a rubbish argument heffy.
          You know as XY does that to proceed and succeed in this area of academia you have to follow the groupthink.
          Getting contrary views published a nd peer reviewed in proper journals is very difficult as is hearing them on TV or radio.
          XY is correct.

    11. Hope
      August 27, 2022

      LL,
      The biggest idiots were Cameron, May, Johnson and Tories for implementing what they called a Marxist policy and May stating she would build on it!

  5. Mark B
    August 27, 2022

    Good morning.

    . . . from a deliberate gas shortage in Europe caused by Putin’s economic warfare.

    I take issue on this. President Putin did not start this, we did when we imposed sanctions on him. We also printed a lot of money causing Sterling to fall against the Dollar making the importing of energy more expensive. We also closed down a large part of our gas storage, some to make way for new housing, which has meant we are reliant on constant imports and market fluctuations. All this is a consequence of Conservative government actions, little to nothing to do with anyone else.

    You own this mess.

  6. Geoffrey Berg
    August 27, 2022

    As I have stated before I want a fuel price subsidy to hold general inflation down. I agree with Nadhim Zahawi that in political terms (and in economic terms to maintain discretionary spending and the jobs that depend on discretionary spending), it is a necessity to bring relief even to relatively high earners – and I don’t want welfare benefits raised because that would be politically hard and very painful to reverse when fuel prices fall.
    To pay for this I would stress in an economic emergency public expenditure must be radically cut. However the cuts should be rationally justifiable. Here are a few suggestions:
    Local Government:Councils to reduce their spending in each sphere to that of lower or lowest spending Councils
    NHS: Cut spending to pre-Covid levels and make most spending subject to international private competition
    Justice: Make judges responsible for fairness of trials and end legal aid
    Welfare:Personal Independence Payments should be phased out as they makes ‘disability’ profitable and extensive
    Foreign Office: Embassies should be downsized as nobody takes notice of Britain’s political views
    Foreign Aid: End aid to hostile or corrupt regimes and those persecuting Christians or atheists for blasphemy
    Defence: Reduce navy as surface ships are huge floating targets
    Education: Make all post 16 (or better post 15 or 14) education dependent on examination success

    Best of all when this crisis passes we would then be left with a smaller state with lower taxes!

  7. Cuibono
    August 27, 2022

    Its OK though ‘cos Boris says our hypothermia is a price worth paying for Ukraine’s “freedom”
    News to me
and what, pray, does he know of a liberated people?
    He is also paying ( oh sorry
WE are)
to rebuild Ukraine’s railways!.

    1. Mitchel
      August 27, 2022

      Ukraine is the greatest money laundering scam since Afghanistan.As one door closes,another must be forced open!

  8. Nottingham Lad Himself
    August 27, 2022

    It’s a pity that the Tories let the only-for-profit lads make bigger ones by closing down storage and exposing the UK people to spike prices, isn’t it?

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      August 27, 2022

      +1

      Allowed because of greenist indoctrination.

    2. Peter2
      August 27, 2022

      NHL
      Explain how the UK having a few days storage of gas would stop prices on world markets rising and impacting us when prices have been rising over a period of many months.

    3. Peter2
      August 27, 2022

      These “Just for profit lads” NHL, does that include energy suppliers like Bulb and many others that went bust?

    4. Sea_Warrior
      August 28, 2022

      I suggest you read Tom Bower’s ‘Broken Vows’. It explains how New Labour messed-up our energy supply.

  9. dixie
    August 27, 2022

    “When assessing the true costs of different means of generating power we need to take into account costs of stand by and back up power.”
    And the rest – including costs of military adventures and lives spent to obtain and “protect” access to oil, costs of clean-up after accidents and negligence, associated subsidies to energy extractors, pollution.
    Be sure to assess the full true costs of all forms of energy provision.

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      August 27, 2022

      Those are priced in already. Green is still way more expensive and relies on remote resources too.

      1. dixie
        August 28, 2022

        They are not costed in – why the extent of our involvement in the middle east and loss of our people’s lives there?
        You say Green is still “way more” expensive, I would like to see a complete cost benefit analysis across the range of energy provision – including the subsidies, bribes, opportunity costs etc for the fossil fuels and I haven’t yet. But it depends on context and where you draw the line – I receive no subsidies for my PV panels nor my EV and I run the latter almost entirely (90-95%) from energy generated by the latter which will recoup the original investment after 5 years – rather than the planned 12 years. A different approach is needed for higher energy concerns eg in industry but smarter approaches are possible such as adopting a circular economy strategy to reduce the energy requirement in the first place.
        The issue with renewables is that they are predominantly intermittent requiring storage to be viable but why no recognition that supplies of gas and oil (so petrol and diesel) can be intermittent also? Where is the storage for oil and gas to cover the winter months?
        The problem is the lack of transparency and communication, not to mention strategy and planning, about energy provision or anything really, the UK doesn’t even have a strategic reseources plan. In short our government is crap and has always been crap but the short-sightedness and willful ignorance of the general public is as much to blame.
        Apologies for the rant.

    2. Mark
      August 27, 2022

      Yes: include the costs of China dependency and consequent military adventures in pursuing renewables and EVs etc.

  10. ChrisS
    August 27, 2022

    The immediate problem :
    I don’t know the figures, but it is clear that there is not enough potential to tax the better-off to cover the energy costs of the many millions of households and smaller businesses that will not be able to afford their bills. Small subsidies make good political headlines but are no more than merely tinkering with the problem.

    There therefore appear to be only two alternatives :

    1. The government borrows the money necessary to subidise the energy bills of the vast majority of households and businesses for as long as it takes – possibly three years, or even more?
    ON top of the debt caused by the pandemic, this would be an amount too large to contemplate, Starmer, Labour, and the Lib Dims, please note.

    2. Because the costs to extract coal, gas and oil have not actually risen, governments should get together and take from the producers all of the excess money they are charging, over and above the the prices that were prevalant before the rates started to rise exponentially. I know that Margaret famously said that ” You can’t buck the markets” and it would be very difficult, but in these circumstances it surely must be possible. The money raised should then be used, not to subsidise retail bills, but to reduce wholesale prices back to pre-shortage levels as that will reduce inflation at a stroke.

    Also, decouple the price of renewable electricity from the wholesale price of gas. There is no reason for this link as wind and solar power are much cheaper, but only when they are available.

    1. Mark
      August 27, 2022

      How are you going to grab the excess from Norway and Qatar and the US and Peru and Nigeria, etc. from whom we import over half our gas?

  11. Wanderer
    August 27, 2022

    “The immediate crisis prices come from a deliberate gas shortage in Europe caused by Putin’s economic warfare.”

    “Immediate”…that’s being careful with words. The crisis goes back to Net Zero messing up our home market and western regime change in Ukraine followed by NATO expansion followed by our “sanctions” messing up our trade with Russia.

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      August 27, 2022

      Nail on head.

    2. anon
      August 27, 2022

      Or is it a direct result of money printing globally?

      Russia will still supply if you pay in roubles.
      Compare that with our actions and sanctions, which are causing the shortage of “politically acceptable” gas in the European area. This is causing these countries to pay extra for alternative supplies on the world market. Overall tightening prices worldwide, for flexible deliverable output. Probably causing hardship and death elsewhere.

      Meanwhile Russia is flaring off the “cheap gas” producing oil, which would have supplied the Europeans.

      So much for CO2 and saving the world loons.

      Our new Overlords and masters HMG wont allow competition to supply essentials, it wont curtail wasteful spending & waste, illegal immigration, EU/WEF/UN etc giveaways. Its hugely top heavy salary wise with heavyweight incompetence. Whilst pretending inflation is transi-TORY.

      Whats left to be afraid of . Death?

      Get some momentum behind some peace negotiations.The reasons for the war need to fully comprehended and understood. You don’t have to agree. Buy Russian gas and fill up the EU tanks. Russia will always be a neighbour. It is acting a cold and calculated way however it is rational so act rationally. Wars always end one way or another.

      1. Mark
        August 27, 2022

        Russia is not supplying normal contract volumes to many even though they are paying in roubles. Their strategy seems to be to try to divide the EU by choosing who to supply reasonably and who to squeeze. You have to look closely at the pipeline flows and LNG shipments.

        1. anon
          August 28, 2022

          Germany just has to approve the new pipeline and do the deal. I am pretty sure the gas will flow. Money talks, in all languages, despite death and suffering by the little people.
          example look at Hungary.

          As always things are temporary and event driven. I am sure Germany and Hungary are taking strategies to independence.

          Sanctions are not working on Russia, a vast continental commodity superpower who really do not require imports from friendly or non-friendly countries. The sanctions are working on the west and are transferring large gains to exporters of same. So economic wealth is being transferred by these policy actions via inflation and money printing.

          You will own nothing and be happy.

  12. rose
    August 27, 2022

    I would like VAT and the green levies removed from gas and electricity bills, not just reduced. I would also like the standing charge reformed as that is in effect yet another tax, imposed in part to subsidise the energy companies’ social policy, and does not reflect usage. I am not sure what to do about the taxes imposed higher up the chain on the companies themselves. There should certainly not be any more windfall taxes, and remorse should be expressed over the recent one, to restore confidence in the country’s administration. I don’t like the idea of some companies being charged twice as much corporation tax as others. Bankruptcy inducing regulation should obviously be removed. Regulation should be confined to ensuring safety and honesty, and not include futile attempts at price rigging. Someone once said “You can’t buck the market” and this still holds in this situation. Supply must be increased as a matter of extreme urgency after so many decades of development have been lost. Self sufficiency is what we must return to, and then we should become a net exporter, as Trump’s America was.

    I am absolutely fed up with the BBC et al flooding the airwaves with demands for finished detail now. This is confected hysteria considering we are still in August. And at the same time they are furious their favourite quangos might not be determing the policy. How would that be done on the back of an envelope in a studio?

    1. rose
      August 27, 2022

      On the subject of insulation, I am with Lifelogic. There is an additional factor in that houses in certain regions, for example the South West, are affected by radon gas leaking upwards from the rock below. The only way for this to be ameliorated is to have plentiful venitilation, all year round. Subsidised insulation isn’t going to take account of this but will of course tick the box.

      1. Lifelogic
        August 28, 2022

        Good ventilation is very important.

  13. Pat
    August 27, 2022

    Good morning

    In the current “anti expert” hangover from the Covid pandemic, we need to guard against taking our eye off the ball regarding anthropogenic global warming. I don’t know whether the impact of AGW as laid out by our specialist climate modellers is correct or not and I suspect that my fellow non-specialists don’t know either. However we must surely agree that the risks are enormous and I therefore favour urgent action to limit greenhouse gas pollution.

    What we need to address this issue is honesty.

    Honesty to give us all unbiased information on the relative costs of solutions to AGW, free of the myriad of taxes and subsidies and carbon credits which appear designed to confuse the issue in favour of one particular solution rather than provide clarity. I suspect that an unbiased review may well favour natural gas as the least polluting fuel available to us until zero carbon technologies are realised.

    We also need honesty to stop pretending that the UK can unilaterally solve the climate crisis by unilateral decarbonisation and we should not destroy our economy in implementing measures unadopted internationally, by our competitors.

    I might add that the spectacle of of ultra-privileged climate zealots clambering into private jets between lectures to the peasantry advising us to abandon our cars, home heating and energy dependent jobs is the height of hypocrisy and the favourable fuel duties encouraging this most polluting form of elite transport should be addressed immediately.

    1. Mark
      August 27, 2022

      May I recommend you read Bjorn Lomborg, who shows that the costs of adapting to climate change are far lower than largely vain attempts to prevent it? He readily acknowledges that we should expect a warmer world.

      1. dixie
        August 28, 2022

        +1

  14. Cuibono
    August 27, 2022

    We will only know that the madness has truly passed when the first new or reopened coal mine brings up its first ton (NOT tonne) of coal.
    Will that happen?
    Nah
they’ll see us all in our willow coffins (or lime pit) before then.

    1. a-tracy
      August 27, 2022

      Cuibono, the latest is not to have a coffin, its called pure cremation, you don‘t have the funeral service in the crematorium (covid got people ready for that), the body gets collected and taken to a crematorium with spare slots and you can pay to get the ashes back or just leave them, then have a memorial, celebration of life service/wake all for around £2000 (£1000 if you don‘t bother with the wake).

      Next we‘ll be frozen and crushed more economically friendly.

  15. turboterrier
    August 27, 2022

    What a shock when opening onto site today. Thought I had stumbled on the lifelogic appreciation society page.
    What a player, the man appears never to switch off. I feel quite daunted by his output. Oh hum back to the opening page.

    1. dixie
      August 28, 2022

      I hardly bother to read those comments these days as it’s always the same whine ad nausiem.
      I lapse sometimes though.
      Don’t be daunted as copy & paste takes no effort.

  16. The Prangwizard
    August 27, 2022

    We read about plans but we never hear about action.

    Tell us us what physical action has been taken which has increased domestic production and storage. Or is it a continuation of nothing in case Boris and your friends in government have the insane green policy upset.

  17. Lifelogic
    August 27, 2022

    A good interview by Simon Heffer of Patrick Minford in the Telegraph too:- ‘We can’t have people retiring early on the basis of benefits’ Patrick Minford.

    Also yesterday a good leader “The catastrophic legacy of lockdown”.

    So how long before we have a leader saying “The catastrophic legacy of coercing young people into taking Covid “vaccines”. People and children who were never at significant Covid risk & with clearly fairly ineffective and often it seems very dangerous vaccines. Gross failures by the vaccine companies and the surely appallingly negligent regulators All cause deaths still running at about 13% above normal (& mainly not Covid deaths). Plus one would really expect this to be lower than normal due to the many deaths brought forwards by Covid etc. over the last two years.

    So what are the causes? A negligent NHS with slow/delayed ambulances and rationed treatments, adverse effect of vaccines or something else?

    So is Kwasi (Saudi Arabia of Wind) Kwatang to be our next Chancellor? In Sept 2021 he also said – The UK’s relative lack of gas storage capacity is “not relevant” to the current spike in gas prices.

    Blowing up all those coal power stations was not such a good plan either was it Kwasi? Hopefully he will use JR & P Minford as working compasses should he move to No 11. Peter Lilly and Matt Ridley for working compasses on energy and climate.

  18. Fedupsoutherner
    August 27, 2022

    I agree with everything you’ve posted oday L/L. Common sense abounds in your posts but is seriously lacking with the government’s policies. Another good thing would be to get really tough with the lunatics taking part in the Just Stop Oil nonsense. If we did what they want it would be national suicide. Give them the maximum sentences for sheer lawlessness and 100% vandalism. How many law abiding citizens would get away with the antics they do while seriously affecting people’s lives?

    1. Lifelogic
      August 27, 2022

      +1

    2. turboterrier
      August 27, 2022

      F U S
      You are expecting too much it will never happen in this woke world we now live in.
      Never the less a good comment on punishment to fit the crime.
      Do these numpties not realise their precious turbines use thousands of litres of oil as without the gearbox would seize? There is no crime in their ignorance. The crime is they are showing it

    3. Mark
      August 28, 2022

      We could also do with reporters showing a sense of balance, and including say a clip of Brendan O’Neil refuting their fatuous nonsense.

  19. Javelin
    August 27, 2022

    John.

    We shut down our own energy industry because politicians were too timid to stand up to the green agenda.

    Please do not blame the sea and the laws of physics when we have scuttled our own ship.

    These same politicians have not stood up to the other grifting, feelings-based and virtue based agendas, such as bankrupting covid lockdowns, untested vaccines, uncontrolled immigration and biased-diversity targets etc.

    My strong advice to the next PM is to get a grip on reality and roll back the woke agenda at every opportunity.

    1. Donna
      August 27, 2022

      If she doesn’t start by scrapping the BBC’s Poll Tax, we’ll know she is another empty suit who just spouts hot air.

  20. turboterrier
    August 27, 2022

    When is this country going to stop trying to be all things to all people?
    Lifelogic is correct even if we became a net zero country it would make FA difference in the world’s future.
    All these madcap ideas and committees, quangos have had more than their 15 minutes of fame. Scrap them all immediately and set a path to become a more realistic balanced society.
    The nutters wrecking petrol stations in London leave them glued to the pumps and when they are heavily soiled over 48 hours wash them down with fire hose albeit a waste of water and then get them to court to pay for the damage and call out of public services from their assets or face long prison terms.

    1. Lifelogic
      August 27, 2022

      +1

    2. Fedupsoutherner
      August 27, 2022

      Yes. I like it Turbo.

    3. dixie
      August 28, 2022

      Agree with the gist of your comment, adopting a UK Net Zero approach to achieve global “net zero” is indeed insane.
      However, taking advantage of the political insanity to implement energy and resource independence together with new industries that can boost our security, economy and trade capabilities would be quite rational.
      For example the rare earths recovery processing plant in the Humber freeport – establish a localised supply chain to re-use critical materials rather than depend on imports.

  21. Richard
    August 27, 2022

    Sir John, I do not think it wise to blame all of this on Russia’s innovation of Ukraine.

    Energy companies here were going bust and big price rises last year well before the invasion.

    I am hardly a conspiracy theories but it does seem most peculiar to me that there is such an energy crisis throughout Europe and I cannot put my finger on the exact cause of why this has happened. I do not think either it can be blamed on Covid, presumably the same resources and supply lines were available after as well as before the pandemic.

    1. Richard
      August 27, 2022

      Invasion not innovation!

      1. Hat man
        August 27, 2022

        No, ‘innovation’ of Ukraine may well turn out to be right, Richard. Once the zombie President in Kiev can be packed off to exile in Miami or wherever. New figures will emerge, perhaps from among the political parties he banned, and a new Ukraine may be able to emerge, living at peace with its neighbours. I hope so.

    2. Mark
      August 28, 2022

      Covid was an enabler, in that it resulted in a temporary sharp reduction in energy demand because of global lockdowns. It also meant that there was a rising backlog of maintenance and investment across the energy spectrum , from oil and gas through nuclear and even wind, partly because of lockdowns, and partly because of low energy prices in a temporarily oversupplied market. Add on top the bans on fossil fuel investment in various forms and the effects of capacity closure of coal and nuclear in particular, and we already had a supply crisis in full tilt last year.

      We were already getting notices of threats of electricity shortages the winter before last. Oil and gas and power prices started escalating alarmingly over a year ago, and we had the big failure of renewables production due to slight winds and a cloudy summer. That drove extra gas use across Europe, which was unable to restock adequately ahead of the winter. We have inadequate generation capacity across Europe for peak winter demand, and we have inadequate gas supply globally thanks to the other factors listed, to which reduced Russian exports this year can be added to make things worse than they were already. Blackouts are already in peak winter prices, and rationing threatens to spread outside of that.

  22. Richard1
    August 27, 2022

    I suggest a govt provided fund to shift the burden. The fund would provide a direct subsidy to consumers to keep prices at an acceptable level. When world market prices fall below this level, the fund would then re-coup the transfers through a re-charge to consumers – just as the green levies now work. The length of time taken to re-coup the subsidies will be one item to determine – probably at least 10 years.

    In the meantime let’s not waste a good crisis. People have now peered into the abyss of unaffordable energy. OK it’s partly caused by Putin and the folly of Merkel’s Putin-dependent energy policy. But if, eg, we in the U.K. had got going with shale gas in 2010, as was under discussion at that time, and if we had reversed the Blair-Brown govt’s moratorium on nuclear (yet another baleful result of that dreadful govt – does the list ever end?!), we would not now be in the position we are. The US, which has extensive domestic gas production through fracking, is not in nearly such a bad state. Things are now bad enough for voters to support the ignoring of the green hysterics and to support a massive increase in low(er) carbon gas and nuclear. What happens will be an early test of Liz truss.

    1. dixie
      August 28, 2022

      Shale gas would be a temporary stop gap and all you do is shift dependence on imported fuels to a later time.
      A rational strategy needs to look beyond gas to provide a adaptable energy provision that doesn’t depend entirely on burning stuff dug out of someone else’s ground and hoping for fusion.

  23. Dave Andrews
    August 27, 2022

    If there is a global shortage of energy, and all the resources of the UK are sold into the global market, as they are, then stepping up UK energy production a bit will make no difference to UK energy bills.
    UK government previously sold its resources to the energy companies for them to sell at whatever price they can fetch, which they do. The solution has to be to take back control of UK resources of gas. This can be done in effect by windfall taxes on gas extracted within the UK, and use the receipts to subsidise consumer bills.
    We’re suffering from high bills because of Tory policy to sell off our energy resources to energy companies on the cheap, and then having to buy it back at global prices.

    1. No Longer Anonymous
      August 27, 2022

      +1000

      Not the only privatisations to have backfired. Rail privatisation enriched and empowered the rail workers. Water privatisation led to leaks and not a single reservoir built since mass immigration started.

      Similarly sanctions against Russia are backfiring and destabilising our civilisations and they are doing Ukraine no favours whatsoever. Their nation will be reduced to rubble and their young men fed through a mincer, much like the Russians’.

    2. acorn
      August 27, 2022

      Agreed, drilling more wells will improve supply for a few years, but it won’t affect the domestic price. The UK government has no share in the volume or price of what comes out of the well; the licence holder gets it all and pays a little bit of tax, possibly ÂŁ7 billion this bonanza year.

      The experts reckon there is about 300 billion cubic meters of gas left in the UKCS. Gas being 10 to 30% of what comes out of UKCS wells nowadays. That’s four years worth of UK consumption; nine years worth at current maximum production. That’s if the price stays high enough for long enough to make any new plays worth attempting. Nobody wants “stranded assets” on the path to net zero.

      Lizzie’s simplistic economics of tax cuts ain’t going to do it for the voters; about ÂŁ100 to 140 billion short by my reckoning. As I doubt she will super tax or renationalise the UKCS oil and gas producers, her only option is the magic money tree at The National Loans Fund (NLF); and, shut down the Debt Management Office for the next three years at least.

      The following is a quote from the government’s BoE current account report, the Consolidated Fund 20/21 (CF).
      “The financing needs of the CF are expected to be met over the long term mainly through future tax revenue receipts and other government revenues. Whilst the level of receipts in any year is subject to policy changes and, relatedly the UK’s economic position, any shortfall can be met through the issuance of debt from the NLF, [the magic money tree] the demand for which remains robust. Therefore, in accordance with the Government Financial Reporting Manual, whilst the accounts are prepared on a cash basis it has been concluded that it is appropriate to consider the CF as a going concern.

      1. Peter2
        August 27, 2022

        You speak only of current known existing gas reserves acorn
        Exploration if allowed and even encouraged could find further supplies.
        And experts have said there is enough fracking gas to last 40 or 50 years if we were bothered enough to extract it.
        PS
        Your point about extra UK supply onto a gas market not affecting price is an odd one.
        Greater supply..usually reduces price

        1. acorn
          August 28, 2022

          Another subject you don’t understand. The UKCS increased its output by 17% last year. Because the market price went up. The increase went down the pipes to the EU at a tidy profit.

          1. Peter2
            August 28, 2022

            That increased supply therefore reduced the pressure for higher prices.
            You don’t understand supply and demand theory acorn.
            I note you carefully ignore my other points.

    3. Mark
      August 28, 2022

      That is not correct. See the reply I gave to NLA near the top if the comments.

      1. Peter2
        August 28, 2022

        I agree Mark
        acorn doesn’t understand how markets work.
        Probably because he wants state control of everything.

  24. turboterrier
    August 27, 2022

    It is not only having our own energy supplies that is important. It is the other critical areas that without control of supplies we can be crippled by others.
    It is alright wanting EVs but only if you can if necessary provide all the components to manufacture them here within the UK. If not, what is being knocked as too expensive or not efficient enough like hydrogen compulsion for motors and machinery is a better option when placed in the position we cannot get key supplies for the all electric proposals sitting on ministers tables at the moment

  25. Cuibono
    August 27, 2022

    So sad
we ( it seems to me) thought we’d got our parasitic leaders under control.
    Magna Carta, Civil War, Democracy ( hmmm), our lovely fuel and food-rich, holiday-smattered, housing estate lives.
    We thought everyone was suited.
    But no.
    It wasn’t enough for them and we were too unwary to believe they would do this!

  26. Nigl
    August 27, 2022

    Jim Radcliffe at Ineos and Matt Ridley have both regularly highlighted the uninformed thinking that has prevented the development of fracking with Ineos ready to meet local objections and is shovel ready.

    Obviously Putin has had a massive effect but your government is to blame both for not taking advantage of it and loading our bills with green subsidy costs. You also introduced the energy cap, which as far as I can see initially reduced competition, cost us 4 billion with the Bulb failure so part of my outrageous bill increase is directly your fault. So get fracking fracking, sort out electricity pricing re renewables and the subsidies.

    I believe we have coal we can exploit. Sort that out. Stop ‘lying’ to us about the cost of heat pumps and their benefits and be more honest about EVs, CO2 in their production etc, plus acknowledge the problems with wind. You have to be pragmatic and push back green targets. Old people dying through cold to save the planet, politically not a good message.

    And in other news, talking about ‘lying’ I note we have issued one million visas in a year, so much for taking back control. Maybe instead of the esoteric discussions on bond losses you would focus your massive thinking on the cost to the U.K. and why not start with what energy they use. So another suggestion finally meet your promise to reduce people coming in and/or send them away, thus reducing demand on a vast range of things costing us money.

    And finally it looks as if you may be in the frame for a job back in government. So back to collective responsibility. The omertĂ  that has informed so much of the mess we are in and allows poor performers and performance never to be rooted out,

  27. R.Grange
    August 27, 2022

    Dear Sir John
    I would like to see a complete removal announced of subsidies for ‘green’ energy.

    1. miami.mode
      August 27, 2022

      RG, Drax Power Station receives around ÂŁ800m per year in subsidies and produces approximately 6% of our electricity from biomass and (currently) some coal. Do you seriously think that Drax would survive as a company and producer if the subsidy was removed?

      As a country our governments have got us into a certain position on energy and it is how we get out of it that matters.

      1. Mark
        August 28, 2022

        At the moment Drax is doing extremely well on the three units that attract ROCs on top of market prices. Although I’m sure the price of woodchips has increased in sympathy with coal and fuel for bulk carriers that will still be much cheaper than gas, and they pay no carbon tax either. However the fourth unit that operates with a CFD is clearly only being pressed into action when short term market prices are high enough, as can be seen from the data on its CFD payments from the Low Carbon Contracts Company. Its CFD is benchmarked against a reference price set months in advance: the current effect is a tax of just over ÂŁ40/MWh to add to its production costs. That tax will escalate when the reference price is reset for winter. Another mess to be sorted out.

  28. turboterrier
    August 27, 2022

    Another life logic moment.
    My post regarding the high risk to the Western World that China has virtually full control of the raw earth elements necessary for the new all electric world and the cost to the consumer which did not get past moderation yesterday is I feel a relevant subject for today’s post
    http://www.iea.org/reports/global-supply-chains-of-ev-batteries as highlighted on the Not a Lot of People Know That Web site 15th August.

  29. Bloke
    August 27, 2022

    Water is heavy and plenty of it usually lands from above. Might roof rainwater be used to drive some power in buildings? Toilet flushing consumes a high volume of domestic usage, yet flushing with drinking quality water is purist in the extreme.

    1. Lifelogic
      August 27, 2022

      Not much energy to be had unless you live in a tall tower block with a huge roof & where it rains heavily all the time. Wales or the lake district perhaps?

    2. Dave Andrews
      August 27, 2022

      If you had a 50 tonne store that you were able to drop through 5 metres, it will have 2.5MJ of energy available, or about 0.7kWh. Might just about get you through the night keeping the fridge, freezer and standby lights on.
      Then you will have to hope it will rain enough every day to fill up the reservoir, and don’t think about turning on the oven.

  30. Donna
    August 27, 2022

    The immediate crisis comes from a combination of the Net Zero lunacy, the sanctions put on Russia and Putin’s “rationing” of gas being supplied to Europe.

    The Climate Change Act was passed in 2008 and that was the date when the current energy crisis started. Over 640 idiotic, easily controlled by the machine, virtue-signalling MPs in Parliament voted to create this situation, at the behest of the UN/WEF and a silly teenage girl with mental health issues. We have 300 years worth of energy under our feet and in the north sea: coal, oil, gas and shale ….. and they decided to steadily reduce our use of them, in favour of heavily subsidised, intermittent energy from windmills and solar panels.

    As I write they are providing: Wind – 1 GW. Solar – 1.1 GW.

    The UN, WEF, EU, Whitehall and Westminster deliberately created this crisis. Putin is just the catalyst.

    What would I like to see in “the announcement?” The Net Zero lunacy is being abandoned.

    1. Clough
      August 27, 2022

      Well put, Donna, except that there’s no ‘rationing’ of gas. Or if there is, it’s Europe rationing itself, if that’s what you meant. The EU decided soon after the war started that its countries would not sign new gas contracts with Russia. Russia has continued to honour existing gas contracts (though making them payable in roubles). As for oil, Shell and BP stopped buying Russian crude in February-early March, their choice. The EU decided to ban seaborne imports of Russian crude from December, just as winter is starting. So that part of the energy supply problem is also self-inflicted, just like the net zero lunacy.

  31. turboterrier
    August 27, 2022

    On the Not a Lot of People Know That Web site on the 25th of August is the Emergency Energy Plan offered by the Reform Party.
    Love them or hate them it is a plan for real consideration. It is easily readable, as it is in slide format.
    The heart of the plan is:-
    Declare Force Majeure Situation
    War like situation requires wartime responses.
    Energy market not fit for purpose.
    Well worth a read..

    1. Mark
      August 28, 2022

      They might have been wiser to consult a few people with industry knowledge in order to make their ideas more achievable and relevant before launching. They do get the scale of the problem. As I’ve pointed out we are in ÂŁ250bn plus territory for the UK and ten times that in the EU, whose problem could easily escalate by another €1 trillion or more, with an echo for the UK..

  32. Sea_Warrior
    August 27, 2022

    I would like to see support modulated so that it doesn’t cause people to think that the state will solve the whole problem for them.

  33. James1
    August 27, 2022

    The government could immediately stop borrowing money by the billions to give away in foreign aid, including giving billions of pounds to multilateral organisations such as The World Bank for them to give away. Better for private citizens to donate as they see fit, as the money would be infinitely better targeted.

    1. Mitchel
      August 27, 2022

      You can’t taper a ponzi scheme(the most apt description of anglo-saxon economies).It goes on till it collapses.

      Brace yourselves!

  34. Rhoddas
    August 27, 2022

    Wind is a pathetic 3.6% this morning, gas is 69% of our total needs.
    Frack, drill, store now. Get our indigenous gas extraction to match our demand ASAP, meaning our wholesale prices can reduce v quickly.

    Order Rolls Royce SMRs now, the Dutch already have, so now we are behind them in the queue. Medium term.

    By removing Vat the manifesto pledge is met. Removing the green levy will help too and means these technologies can now stand on their own 2 feet versus the rest. Improve the government help already announced for domestic energy customers and time to include businesses. SMEs could be included in the domestic price cap or example imvho.

    I actually quite like the Reform Party’s solution to the problem, its readily available online.

    1. KB
      August 27, 2022

      If you remove the Green Levy, the subsidies to wind and solar power will need to be paid from general taxation instead. So we can’t win. If it were up to me, the subsidies would be paid by the people who signed us up to such an idiotic contract.

  35. Mickey Taking
    August 27, 2022

    Whatever weak attempts to reduce the outrageous cost of domestic energy in the coming months, indeed for the whole winter, are Government led, people will resort to forgotten measures only the relative elderly will remember.
    Heating just enough water for a drink on a gas hob if owned rather than boil a kettle. Hand wash small items rather than use machines, turn thermostats down or off in rooms rarely used, family will have to congregate in one room using a single tv or sound system and minimum heating. No heating at all in upstairs bedrooms, near bedtime hot water bottles or electric blankets used to take the icy blast away. Duvets will be essential. Fresh but cold air will be restricted due to lower house temperature. Meals will be energy restricted, soups, microwave used much more, garden lpg BBQ much increased. Layers of clothing will be necessary for the young and elderly and draught excluders introduced at doors….increasing the risks of fumes leading to carbon monoxide deaths almost unheard of nowadays. A gloomy return to the worst times of post war Britain, without smog !

  36. Rhoddas
    August 27, 2022

    Off the cuff, raise personal income tax allowances and bring forward the planned cut to basic rate tax to offset the rise in energy costs. Needed for general huge inflation hit anyway..
    Ensure new drilling permits fees and energy company corporation tax levels recover what is needed by the Exchequer.

    1. anon
      August 27, 2022

      Agree. Increase persoanl allowances to ÂŁ24k. Abolish stupid laws, net zero, etc requiring functional assets to be removed from the supply chain. Remove VAT on energy use below the average ration.

      Increase supply.
      Review all prior marginal energy supply permissions with a bias to approving immediately.

      Acquire any capacity that is taken off-line or out of service to a national reserve energy body, with a view to being mothballed as emergency reserve.

      Any power provider will seek to maximise profits and reduce costs , particularly if costs of failure or low supply are met by captive customers.

      If you are a state owned energy supplier seeking to gain leverage over a UK government closing UK domestic supply and supplying via contract the new ones, which have a poor record elsewhere, puts you in strong position.

      Apart from changing policy. Many people changes at many layers are needed to drive this change. The remainers will resist.

      The Brexiteers empowered you to take control! not for your puppets to sit meekly in the corner accepting WEF/EU dicatats

      1. anon
        August 28, 2022

        Government admits failing to ask EDF to keep Hinkley Point B nuclear power plant open to ease energy crisis

    2. Mark
      August 28, 2022

      I read that it is estimated that even those on ÂŁ45,000 can expect to feel the pinch. Those on the very lowest incomes are already afforded some protection. I suspect we need a tapered income related support that takes account of monies already offered. It would not cover the full cost increase. There are already significant numbers on quite low incomes who fall through the cracks of the existing schemes. Renters who pay their energy bills to landlords get no support at all for instance.

      Equally, thought will be needed on support for businesses. Many will close down. I saw a quote for a pub at 97p/kWh today. Candles and hand pulled beer only, I think. Would they be allowed a log fire?

  37. Mike Stallard
    August 27, 2022

    1. I can remember my mother staggering into the dining room of our huge vicarage in the 1950s with two buckets of coal. It was cold. We wore clothes. But we did have coal fires in just one room. Baths were horrendous! I slept with my underclothes under the pillow to keep them warm for the morning. But – hey – it made a man of yer!
    Now we have to do that again.
    3. This crisis has been caused by Chicken Licken shouting that they sky is falling down when hit on the head by a falling acorn. Now all the gang, Turkey Lurkey, Goosey Woosey and Henny Penny follow her into the house of kindly Foxy Loxy (aka Mr Putin). Silly us!

  38. Narrow Shoulders
    August 27, 2022

    There is the usual clamour to help the low paid and unpaid pay their energy bills. This is wholly unfair and takes us towards a communist state of from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

    As I write often on this page, I would be paid ÂŁ36K take home if I did a full time job on minimum wage under Universal credit. On top of that I would get free school meals, free prescriptions and the ÂŁ1,650 energy payment already announced which is the equivalent of ÂŁ2.75K gross. So on Universal credit I would take home over ÂŁ40K per annum or over ÂŁ50K before tax. I would then get any further help with my gas and electricity bills coming to insure me against these rises all while keeping my full child benefit payments.

    This is not fair on middle managers earning ÂŁ40K – ÂŁÂŁ60K (and indeed more because differentials need maintaining to motivate people to do the more responsible jobs).

    Cap the prices for all or do nothing. Do not target at the so called poor who we are already paying through the nose for.

    I do favour the suggestion that minimum requirements of gas and electricity are provided at manageable costs and then usage over that level is charges for through the nose.

    Do not forget your voters when you are doling out help.

  39. Mike Stallard
    August 27, 2022

    When an acorn hit Chicken Licken on the head as she walked through the forest, she thought the sky was falling down. Goosey Lucy, Henny Penny and Turkey Lurkey followed her lamenting their fate. then along came Foxy Loxy (Mr Putin) who said he would lead them to a place of safety…

  40. Walt
    August 27, 2022

    Nuclear, British and funded by long bonds.
    Gas and oil, especially getting more from under-extracted North Sea fields.
    Electric: revisit the Severn barrage scheme; more hydro in Scotland.
    Meanwhile, remove ‘green’ tariffs on ‘non-green’ fuels (pinch a European idea and reclassify non-green as green).

  41. Shirley M
    August 27, 2022

    It is clear that many people, especially pensioners, will suffer fuel and food poverty this winter. Should they all rack up huge debts in order to keep warm and fed? The NHS cannot cope with a ‘normal’ winter, so how many more people will be neglected by the NHS when the effects of this poverty kick in. Can the law abiding pensioners give up their pensions and then move into an immigrant hotel and get the same benefits as the illegal migrants, please? I can guess the answer!

    1. a-tracy
      August 27, 2022

      Shirley – I think working families will be far more affected than the benefit claimants and most pensioners. Those with only a state pension but with savings over ÂŁ16,000 because they don‘t have a final salary pension top up and rent to pay will be equally broken by this. Soon the benefits bill will sky rocket because those good solid pensioners will have to cut into their savings and reduce their savings below the pension credit top up limit, all the people that didn‘t pay in for 39 years just got pension credit and are often better off than people who did pay in. It’s all back to front and I wouldn‘t want to be the next leader, its no wonder Boris is looking a lot happier this month.

    2. Timaction
      August 27, 2022

      Spot on. Wheres my free 4* Hotel Sir John? I’ll have it for 6 months from October please. I pay taxes the illegal boat people dont.

  42. David Williams
    August 27, 2022

    I want to see tax cuts. If the government taxes too much and subsidises everything, it is not worth working.

  43. Gareth Hughes
    August 27, 2022

    Excellent comments as always John – have you forgotten the vast potential of fracking?

    1. Cuibono
      August 27, 2022

      They are frit of fracking because they think it is unpopular.
      Truth is the “Frack Off” movement is run by the usual suspects.
      Marxists and rabble rousers.
      Entryism.

  44. None of the Above
    August 27, 2022

    In no particular order of importance:-

    1. VAT; food is zero rated and energy is required to cook that food, so it should also be zero rated.
    2. Remove all green levies.
    3. Change the ludicrous pricing model from electricity which forces it all, regardless of how it is generated, to be charged at the most expensive rate.
    4. Target the low paid for assistance, reducing general taxation benefits the well off and does not help the low paid or people on benefits.
    5. We need more gas storage so that we do not have to export surplus imports. Why not charter a bulk Gas Carrier vessel to be moored at the Terminal as a temporary storage facility?
    6. Please look at the idea recently proposed by Richard Tice, it seems drastic but has merit. Even if Putin gave up or was pushed out of Ukraine tomorrow, does anyone seriously imagine that the energy crisis would be over? We have become far more sophisticated than we were between 1939 and 1945 and with more global cooperation we could bring in some stability while we increase supply.

  45. Sir Joe Soap
    August 27, 2022

    What would I like to see in that announcement?

    You’re in a difficult spot having been driven here by stupidity. Successive governments not retaining our own indigenous energy supply, May having removed storage and placing a misnamed cap which isn’t a cap but a profit-control device, Sunak printing silly money, and so on. May presumably didn’t even understand the difference between a true cap, which would somehow prevent price increases, and this profit-control mechanism she called a cap.

    We are where we are.
    1 Incentivise insulation. Attic insulation is cheap and quick. Give landlords a tax break of 5 x any loft insulation they buy and can prove they’ve installed in the next 3 months. Again tax breaks for cavity wall insulation done this winter. Owner occupiers same scale of tax break off council tax.
    2 Work with energy producers to smooth the price increases. No producer of a product wants to put off their customers long term by a massive sudden hike. Gas users could switch to coal and mess gas producers’ long term business and so forth. Some sort of a guarantee for keeping gas producers in the long term mix in the UK in return for short term help by pricing sub-market could work.
    3 Again, like Covid, explore the long-term loan options to people instead of a Sunak chuck-money strategy. You can then reduce taxes earlier afterwards to enable people to pay off any loans taken to cover fuel costs.

  46. formula57
    August 27, 2022

    “What would you like to see in that announcement?” – mostly some help for businesses for this energy cost crisis will be much worse than Covid lockdowns for many.

    Welcome too would be a reminder to the populace that they are not toddlers (despite the mentality of too many) and the government is not able to be like some munificent parent who can make everything right again instantly. There is much that individuals can do to ration their own energy use.

  47. Fedupsoutherner
    August 27, 2022

    Mike Wilson summed up the situation perfectly yesterday. His post was brilliant. As he pointed out we will be paying for illegal migrants to stay warm this winter while many hard working families won’t be able to afford the ‘luxury’ of heating and eating. Great idea Mike. Let’s all claim asylum – after all, we’re all living in one called the UK.

    1. turboterrier
      August 27, 2022

      F U S
      Brilliant

  48. Beecee
    August 27, 2022

    As I understand it, the UK wholesale energy prices are based on the highest cost provider, which today is gas powered generation. This means that the benefit of lower cost generation – nuclear, older windfarms, etc, is ignored in the system, thus making huge profits for them.

    Why cannot the price be averaged? Or is the problem that we run a free economic market, which does not work to the consumers advantage in times such as now??

  49. formula57
    August 27, 2022

    “That is why I have been urging more domestic supply and trying to get us to pursue self sufficiency.” – Thank you!

    Refreshing though it was to witness your efforts, let us not overlook BEIS Secretary Kwasi’s solution, being a commitment to nuclear power generation – energy for all, in thirty plus years time!

    1. Julian Flood
      August 27, 2022

      The decision to go ahead with Sizewell C is inexplicable unless ignorance of engineering principles has once again triumphed, not a good look in someone who presumably wants to make a good impression in his new job. The first stumbling block will come when EDF admits that it will have to redesign the containment vessel — the Taishan design is already leaking. That will delay the project by years before it has started, but will trigger an extra few billions of UK taxpayer’s subsidy for EDF and thus M. Macron. The French must wonder sometimes why our political class is so inept. I blame the worship of PPE, media studies for poshoes.

      JF

      1. anon
        August 28, 2022

        Judge them by their prior and future actions.

        Many may think its an under the table fiscal transfer to the EU, by a remainer establishment.
        Too expensive too slow, too late and poor operating reliability.

        Extending lives of all-ready built plant WHERE possible is surely better for the UK, not just let a market leading state controlled energy supplier actor close them. Lower output if needed. This allows time for other options to be deployed.

  50. graham1946
    August 27, 2022

    If we do as you say and produce more of our own oil and gas, would that come to the UK at cost plus profit, or go straight on the world markets for highest possible price? If it did go to world market price how would that help us? I cannot see that any amount we could produce would be much more than a drop in a bucket worldwide and would not move the needle one iota. Would the government need to legislate that? How exactly does it work?

    1. miami.mode
      August 27, 2022

      graham, any oil and gas extraction in the UK requires a licence and basically the government can put any conditions they like into such a licence, such as restricting the amount that could be exported although, of course, there are various grades of oil and it may well be that some are not suitable for processing and use in the UK.

      1. graham1946
        August 28, 2022

        Thanks for that. So that’s the end of that idea then. Either the government won’t do it or the producers won’t take up an offer like that.

    2. Julian Flood
      August 27, 2022

      Transporting gas by whatever means costs money. Using the gas near to the production site — think the red wall — is cheapest. That’s why the US has fuel prices much lower than ours.

      The ‘it will cost us lots so let’s not do it’ argument smacks of desperation.

      JF

    3. Dave Andrews
      August 27, 2022

      Exactly, It’s not “our own oil and gas”, it’s the energy companies’, for them to sell for the best price they can. Fracking won’t come to our rescue; it’s just more profits for the energy companies.

  51. glen cullen
    August 27, 2022

    Whats the point of increasing domestic supply if we have to purchase from the same markets…..its the markets that need to change
    And I’d suggest that the Russo-Ukraine War is a contributing factor but the lead to these western world increases is the government /UN policy of Net-Zero

    Reply You do not have to purchase from the same markets. You can have long term domestic contract gas. It is only tradable internationally by pipe or LNG conversion so a lot of gas as in the USA is domestic only.

    1. glen cullen
      August 27, 2022

      Right to Reply
      So lets follow the USA model

  52. Berkshire Alan.
    August 27, 2022

    The simple solution which will help everyone, and it is everyone who needs help, including industry and commerce, is to fix the price of a Unit of electricity at a sensible level, and certainly lower than it is now.
    Make government responsible for the generation and generation cost.
    Fully aware this will then be down to the taxpayer in the end, but for goodness sake, peoples incomes, savings and businesses will go down the drain if this is not done.
    As people disposable income and savings drop, and companies go out of business (increasing unemployment) then the Government will get less tax take from everyone if it does not act in this way.
    For goodness sake ÂŁ5,000 per year is half the standard state pension, then add on Council tax, Water charges, housing costs and house insurance, let alone food and clothing.
    The problem with more home production is that it is being sold at commercial World prices (because they can), and that simply has to stop.

  53. Leslie Singleton
    August 27, 2022

    Dear Sir John–What was so wrong with gas holders rather than undersea or indeed any other storage? At least we would be certain that it worked. I don’t know how much it would cost, but I don’t remember having to read each day back then about the seemingly infinite amounts of money involved now. And while we are at it what about coke and smokeless fuel?

    1. Berkshire Alan
      August 27, 2022

      Leslie
      “What is wrong with Gas Holders”.

      Absolutely nothing we had them in almost every town about 70 years ago when we were producing gas by coal coke, They even had a famously known one just outside the Oval Cricket Ground.
      The nimby’s would not like them now, but they could be built on open space and hidden by trees, but then we would have protests from the Greens !
      Time to get real, with real and cost effective solutions, and dump all these very expensive fantasy green crap idea’s, the cost of which is now just starting to come to light.

      1. Mickey Taking
        August 28, 2022

        Gas holders even had letters painted on them to indictate to pilots that they were near Heathrow or Northolt airports – mistakes can happen!

    2. Mark
      August 28, 2022

      Unfortunately gas holders held relatively little gas because they operated at very low pressure (otherwise they would have leaked and blown out the water seals in their skirts). They made sense in the days when every town had its own gasworks and distribution was at low pressure suitable for feeding homes, providing a topup when Sunday roasts were being cooked or the gas fire was run to warm the living room. But since we built the gas grid for North Sea gas, gas storage for that sort of purpose is done at high pressure in the pipelines, known as line pack. It amounts to a couple of days consumption in summer, and about a day in winter.

  54. Original Richard
    August 27, 2022

    Surely the title of this piece should be “Paying for Lack of Energy”?

    Our current lack of energy has been deliberately caused by the communist fifth column and their desire to ruin our economy by limiting our access to cheap and plentiful fossil fuels using the climate change scam and the insane plan, the Net Zero Strategy, to run our electricity on expensive low energy density, intermittent renewables (as I write wind is producing 0.8GW out of an installed capacity of 27GW) without the existence of any economical non-fossil fuel system for the long-term storage of electrical energy or even short term grid stability.

    To make the lack of electrical energy even worse they are forcing through evs and heat pumps even though their plans for total electrical capacity do not even cover either evs or heat pumps let alone both.

    Fossil fuel shortages and hence rising energy prices were already happening before Russia invaded Ukraine and furthermore Russia would not have invaded if Europe had not been made so dependent upon Russian gas and oil by the efforts of the East German Russiaphile, Mrs. Merkel, with her NordSteam pipelines from Russia, “Energiewende”, the closing down of nuclear plants and complete lack of any LNG terminals.

  55. Peter from Leeds
    August 27, 2022

    Sir John,

    Electrification is not the answer if 61% (just checked) of our electricity is produced using gas. It is more efficient to pump gas to homes for heating than burn the gas to produce electricity for heating (even if the electricity is used for heat pumps).

    The mistake was made years ago with the “dash for gas”. Followed by a lack of investment in alternative electric generation. Because we initially had an abundance of UK North Sea Gas we suffered from the “Dutch Disease” that we are now saying Russia has!

    You have been right for years about energy independence – but cheap European Natural Gas has lulled successive governments into putting the issue too low on their agendas. Any sensibly householder knows you fix the roof while the sun shines IMHO.

  56. Iain Gill
    August 27, 2022

    govt should abolish IR35 so that more critical staff are prepared to work on energy projects too, paying for your own work expenses from taxed income is not attractive

  57. Alison
    August 27, 2022

    Lower the tax threshold for the lower earners.
    Perhaps provide temporary energy subsidy for public buildings like libraries, community centres, so people have somewhere warm to go during the day. That might have a side benefit of increasing use of libraries.

    1. Mickey Taking
      August 27, 2022

      do you mean RAISE the threshold for income tax? I damn hope so….

      1. Berkshire Alan
        August 28, 2022

        MT

        Indeed, another Rishi decision to freeze the allowance, another hidden tax increase from him !.

        How about unfreezing capital gains tax and Inheritance tax as well.

        1. Mickey Taking
          August 28, 2022

          Not very well hidden – for most pensioners the annual State pension increase will be subject to 20% income tax every year.
          So he snatches back the ‘handout’.

  58. outsider
    August 27, 2022

    Dear Sir John, One relatively simple emergency measure would be to bring forward the annual Spring uprating of state benefits. As I understand it, this uses CPI inflation for September, a number normally available towards the end of October. If one makes the heroic assumption that payments are adjusted by computer rather than by hand, a well-prepared DWP should be able to change November payments. If necessary, a first ONS estimate or even an average of City forecasts could be used, with any adjustments made later.

  59. XY
    August 27, 2022

    Announcements need to include getting rid of green subsidies and reducing VAT to zero or 1%.

    They must also avoid targeting “the poor”. It’s not ok for those who have saved and built something to be expected to spend it, while the profligate/indolent get a free pass once again.

    The idea of paying renewable companies NOT to generate into the grid when the grid is at capacity also needs to go. If you produce something when it’s not needed, it doesn’t get bought/paid for – when you trun the world of commerce on its head, that is govt intervention / market distortion and that never ends well.

    The energy price cap has to go – that is another market distortion – but perhaps not yet. Alternative approaches need to be considered, preferably in advance of Truss taking over (it must be Truss, Sunak would be – and has been – a disaster).

    We must also get fracking while we get more modern modular nuclear technologies going and investigate the emerging technologies (thorium reactors, MSR and SMR). Thorium is an interesting fuel since it’s not radioactive in itself, it’s used to make a (non-fissile, non-weaponisable) fuel which does not produce long-term radioactive waste. That’s a big leap forward in nuclear tech. Although the engineering of some of these still needs (some) work, there are projects world-wide already in existence because they expect to solve them.

    We must also reassess the electric cars by 2030 dictat. Diesel and petrol cars can be very efficient on emissions, especially hybrids that recover their own energy. Some homes simply do not have access to an electric charging point and some never will.

    As an aside, the price of electricity is going through the roof and visitors often expect to charge their cars at my home, at my expense – I really don’t think this brave new world has been entirely thought through!

  60. Christine
    August 27, 2022

    1) Postpone Net Zero until technology can support it.
    2) Remove the Green Levy from bills. If renewables can’t compete in a high-price market then they aren’t fit for purpose.
    3) Stop targeting help to just those on low incomes. Most people are suffering and the help should be more widely distributed. You are creating a situation where those on middle incomes are worse off than those who don’t work.
    4) Stop importing more and more people. The infrastructure in this country can no longer cope. As I’ve said before your points system isn’t fit for purpose.
    5) Remove VAT from energy-saving products and fuel bills.
    6) Fast track licenses for new gas and oil fields and look to reopen viable coal mines rather than importing expensive energy.
    7) Produce broadcasts on how to save energy. i.e. don’t leave TVs, laptops, etc. on standby, consider reducing the number of light bulbs in fittings, use an air fryer rather than the oven, and boil only the water you need in a kettle. The Me, Me, Me generation has never needed to economise and probably doesn’t even know how to.

    The problem with this Government is they never look ahead. They wait for a crisis to happen and then try to solve it rather than mitigating the risk in the first place.

    My worry is the government is targeting its help on low-income households but leaving businesses to go under. Don’t they understand that without jobs we will head into a painful economic depression?

    We should be planning for both food and energy security. Get rid of the fantasies of Net Zero, rewilding, and getting rid of farm animals. All these policies are suicidal.

  61. KB
    August 27, 2022

    Meanwhile, “the plan” (such as there is one) depends on increasing interconnectors between the UK, Norway and the EU countries. More of these are being built because they are needed to smooth out supply and demand between wind power and the many different countries.
    What’s more this is being done by private business. We’ve handed over UK power supply to the private sector, much of which is owned by EU countries. So we cannot even tell them what to do or not to do.
    People can sound off on here but it will be ignored. The industry is going ahead with making us MORE dependent on foreign electricity, not less.

  62. dixie
    August 27, 2022

    What would I like to see?
    – Reduce VAT to zero for gas and electricity and 15% across the board for goods and services with the strategic goal of reducing it still further with published plans for for further reduction to 10% and 5%.
    – Stop tying electricity tariffs to international gas prices. I understand this is based on merit order and reliance on gas is a component of that, so ..
    – build more nuclear, ideally SMRs
    – Establish and publish a strategy with rational plans for sustainable energy independence based on hybrid production to meet domestic and industrial requirements with a key goal to enable significant increases in the latter.
    – get rid of carbon offsets

    Personally I would like to see requirements on energy providers to provide complete detailed breakdown in their charges so we can see what they and the wholesalers are charging and how much profit they are making. I would also like a requirement on retailers to provide a pay-as-you-go tariff so we can pay for what we use rather than what costs they project.

  63. turboterrier
    August 27, 2022

    This is why all the renewables at present will and never will meet the demands of the consumer. A brilliant article on the Stop These Things website. “Renewables Rejected: World’s Poorest Crave Reliable & Affordable Coal-Fired Power” regarding the difficulties for the poorer nations. Dated 11th August 2022. A lot of us could be joining them
    While the wealthy G7 countries admonish the world’s poor to use only renewables because of climate concerns, Europe and the US are going begging to Arab nations to expand oil production. Germany is reopening coal power plants while Spain and Italy are ramping up African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal that the country will have to triple its exports.

    A single person in the rich world uses more fossil fuel energy than all the energy available to 23 poor Africans. The rich world became wealthy by massively exploiting fossil fuels, which today provide more than three-quarters of its energy. Solar and wind deliver less than 3% of the rich world’s energy.

  64. turboterrier
    August 27, 2022

    The biggest problem with all this renewable equipment is its unreliabity, in that it can only perform within a narrow band of weather situations to achieve anything like their bench-tested figures imply. Another well-thought-out piece on STT website.
    Goldilocks Power: Why Solar Output Plummets During Heatwaves
    August 19, 2022 by stopthesethings.
    Weather ‘too hot’ for solar panels
    The Telegraph
    Helen Cahill

  65. LG1983
    August 27, 2022

    It is extremely foolish that wind farms are paid for power even when they switch off, so as to avoid too much power going in to the grid. If they were only paid for the usable power they generate, they would scramble to fund the creation of storage capacity through batteries, mineshafts, water schemes etc.

    1. Mark
      August 28, 2022

      Unfortunately storage is not really economic for anything other than the very short term. It is actually much cheaper to invest in more wind turbines than in storage, even with having to curtail more output. The problem is that the extra turbines only help on medium wind days: when winds are too slight to turn a turbine adding more is useless, and when there is already too much on windy days you just add to the surplus. Eventually you reach the point where even on medium wind days you are getting a surplus, but you still get nothing on still days. Adding more turbines generates almost no useful power. But you still have an intermittent supply requiring full backup, and the curtailment has escalated enormously.

      If you don’t pay for curtailed production then the wind farms must up their prices for the production that does get used if they are to cover their costs, so the effect is you pay for the curtailed production anyway. In reality, even though each wind farm is equally efficient and costs the same, the more you add the more expensive their output becomes because of the cost if curtailment.

  66. Ed
    August 27, 2022

    It’s ironic that people are going to freeze this winter, because of global warming (!!)
    Get rid of the climate change act.
    Get rid of lunatic net zero
    Get Fracking
    By the way, how stupid do you have to be to think that passing a law will affect climate.
    Why not pass a law to change the colour of the great red spot on Jupiter
    After all it would have the same impact.

  67. Ed
    August 27, 2022

    P.S
    Not helped by the succession of Muppets in charge of energy.
    In fact Muppets in Charge would be a good name for the Department of Energy

  68. Paternal Globalist
    August 27, 2022

    Install weirdo politicians
    Foment chaos and fear
    Populaces clamor for sanity
    World government steps in.

  69. Mike Wilson
    August 27, 2022

    All the time we need to import energy we are at the mercy of world prices for oil and of regional prices for gas and electricity

    When we were self sufficient in oil production from the North Sea, we still paid 4 times more for petrol than people in the USA. There is no real competition in this country. We are either shafted by the monopolistic public sector or by the giant corporates. When have we ever had cheap energy?

    1. Mark
      August 28, 2022

      That was entirely due to taxes. In fact we used to export quite large amounts of petrol to the US, so our ex tax price was actually lower than in New York.

  70. Mike Wilson
    August 27, 2022

    I wonder if it has occurred to the geniuses that ‘govern’ us that power cuts will be different from the 1960s and 1970s. The economy will simply stop. No payments on-line. No cards or phone payments accepted in shops. Tills that don’t work. Anyone got any old cash registers?

  71. Geoffrey Berg
    August 27, 2022

    As I have stated before fuel relief should be via a price subsidy which unlike other proposals would counteract inflation. Nadhim Zahawi is right that even the relatively well paid would otherwise be substantially hit and complain. Furthermore extra benefits payments once given would be politically very difficult to remove once the crisis ends.
    To pay for this one should stress in an economic emergency public expenditure should be radically cut. However the cuts should in themselves be rationally justifiable. Here are some suggestions:
    Local Government: Councils should reduce spending in each sphere to the level of the lower spending Councils.
    Welfare:Personal Independence Payments should be phased out to curb the profitable disability culture.
    Foreign Office:Embassies should be downsized as nobody takes real notice of British political views.
    Foreign Aid:End aid to corrupt or hostile regimes such as those who prosecute people for blasphemy.
    Defence: Reduce navy as surface ships are just big floating targets.
    Health: Reduce Covid swollen spending and subject most treatments to private and international price competition.
    Education:Make all post 16 (or better post 14 or 15) education dependent for entry on proper examination success.
    Transport: Curtail HS2 and stop subsidising the railways, a secondary transport system.

    Best of all when the fuel crisis abates we will then have a smaller state and lower taxes!

  72. Cuibono
    August 27, 2022

    Nursey Rhyme for 2030

    We once had electric, it kept people warm.
    We once had strong borders, they kept us from harm.
    We once mined our coal and made lots of gas.
    But all was destroyed by our mad ruling class!
    đŸ„¶

  73. Roy Grainger
    August 27, 2022

    Windfall taxes on wind and solar electricity producers who are being paid the same amount per kWh as those who produce electricity by gas but have none of the increased wholesale costs. Those whose energy supplier claims they are supplying renewable energy will not that their prices have massively increased too – why ?

  74. Original Richard
    August 27, 2022

    “Policy has now changed to seek to produce more gas and oil at home, to keep open coal power stations pending new replacements


..”

    Official SSE video of Cop 26 President, Alok Sharma, triggering the explosive demolition of Ferrybridge coal-fired power station last year :

    https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1429456184902393858/pu/vid/720×720/JwPnpycxEiyBmqVJ.mp4?tag=12

    As I write wind is providing 0.68 GW from an installed capacity of 27GW.

    When will this CAGW/Net Zero insanity end?

    1. Mark
      August 28, 2022

      I gather Russia blows up power stations as part of its war in the Ukraine. Who was Sharma fighting?

  75. Barbara
    August 27, 2022

    150 years of experience thrown away, just because successive governments have been in thrall to a pre-pubescent, uneducated Swedish girl.

  76. R4fan
    August 27, 2022

    Good, informative ENERGY prog on R4 late Saturday.
    International panel. I like Amol.
    I’m going to rush out on Monday and see if I can get a free survey and estimate from one of the the new insulation
    building shops that’s sprung up locally. Full internal wall insulation for my flat.
    I have a feeling that as an asset rich, cash poor pensioner somebody’s going to be throwing me a full grant
    for insulation soon.

  77. dixie
    August 28, 2022

    A question for our host – even if we didn’t need to import gas wouldn’t the domestic cost for gas and electricity increase anyway since European countries would pay the higher price.
    What is to stop the extractors and generator selling to the highest bidder?

    Reply Lack of pipeline and power cable capacity

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