There are many plans to deal with the energy crisis doing the rounds. Most of them seem to have more to do with guaranteeing the profits of renewables operators than with helping consumers and businesses out. And even those who do want to try to get prices down are somewhat hamstrung by the fact that the benefits of any steps taken in the U.K. would be shared with neighbouring countries.
That’s why Liz Truss has seen no option but to target symptoms rather than causes. However, her plan to cap bills will lead to an astonishing increase in the public debt, at a time when we can least afford it. That cost will be a terrible burden on future generations, and it is therefore incumbent on the Prime Minister to minimise the bill. In other words, her plan can only be the first step. Work to bring prices down needs to continue with great urgency.
Forget all the nonsense about renewables and emergency insulation programmes or splitting the electricity market in two. These ideas are likely to fail, and even if they didn’t wouldn’t be of any help before disastrous levels of debt had been clocked up.
Cutting to the chase, energy prices are so high because an obsession with decarbonisation has led our neighbours to make a disastrous hash of their energy systems. The Germans, fixated on the idea of eliminating coal from their grid, dashed for renewables and Russian gas. The French, again driven by green dogma, let their nuclear fleet age to the extent that its output has started to decline alarmingly. Neither has given a moment’s thought to energy security; climate change has been the only concern.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has now brought the chickens home to roost rather sooner than most people expected. Some commentators have expressed the hope that Putin will shortly be toppled as a result of Russia’s recent military setbacks in Ukraine and the flow of Russian gas will resume, but we cannot count on that. With the flow of Russian gas cut off, Europe has been plunged into an energy crisis, with sky-high prices now the norm. And there is no escape for us here in the U.K.; the interconnectors are now almost constantly on export, as markets here respond to the high prices available on the continent. Energy bills in London are therefore just as bad as they are in Berlin.
Not everyone is in this disastrous state though. Spain, like us, is very reliant on gas, but its electricity prices are much lower than the rest of Europe, because it has very little interconnection across the Pyrenees. The lesson, if Liz Truss dares to take it, is therefore to stop the cross-channel trade in electricity, or at least to restrict it to system balancing and emergencies. As we set out in a plan published by Net Zero Watch, the savings are likely to be very significant. That single step could save each household £800 per year.
A word of explanation is necessary to justify what might seem to some an impossibly large figure. It’s important to understand that generators who can supply at low prices don’t do so – they are capitalists, after all. Instead, they work out what they think the highest price paid in the market will be, and then bid to supply at the same price. Since, in their desperation, the French and Germans are currently paying sky-high ‘scarcity’ prices, every generator in the U.K. market can in principle earn the same king’s ransom for their output. Eliminating the cross-border trade therefore simply reduces the highest price available to the much more sensible level required by our older gas-fired power stations.
Having taken this momentous first step, our grid becomes an island, which means that the benefits of any further cost-reduction steps we take will no longer be shared with our neighbours. And to the extent that these affect those older gas-fired power stations, market prices will fall across the board. So, for example, suspending the Emissions Trading Scheme could save another £400 per household; reducing the Renewables Obligation to zero would save another £200.
In fact, in an island grid, there are lots of things you could do. Repealing the Large Combustion Plant Directive would allow gasoil to be burned instead of natural gas. So if gas prices soar, an alternative fuel is available. The chief beneficiaries are likely to be those older gas-fired power stations, which should be able to burn oil anyway. Newer plant might need relatively minor changes to combustors.
In the slightly longer term, further savings, nearly as big again, could be made. Islanding our gas grid by preventing the cross-border trade would keep prices dramatically lower, although we would have to ensure adequate alternative supplies were in place first. The Government could also pay for equipment upgrades in those older gas-fired power stations, so that plant is as efficient, and therefore as cheap, as possible. And it goes without saying that an increase in the supply of natural gas, from a domestic shale gas industry, would help things no end.
Is it callous to propose to disconnect ourselves from our neighbours in this way? They have made catastrophic mistakes in the way they run their energy systems, and they are now paying the price for their global-warming virtue-signalling. We have made many of the same errors too, of course, and are just lucky that disaster has struck elsewhere first. But the choice we face is a stark one. Their economies face disaster, and the disaster is being transmitted to us down the interconnectors. The Conservative Party, divided as it is on the subject of climate and energy, must choose between letting the economy and the country collapse alongside them, or to save the nation.
Andrew Montford is Deputy Director of Net Zero Watch. Gordon Hughes was Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh.
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Well, what we can say with certainty is that if the government fail to act on wholly sensible suggestions such as these then we can say with equal certainty that they are NOT acting in the best interests of the people of these islands. It’s that simple.
I am sure members here will not be surprised if Truss and Co do bugger all. And stupidity and incompetence are no longer valid excuses, well actually they never were.
I am confident that, not only will these suggestions be ignored, but that when power cuts come they will be focused on those parts of England that still have large white majority populations.
An energy crisis all based on lies.
“We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sX31KEyucI
“I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.
I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
Dr. David Deming – University of Oklahoma’s College of Geosciences
Tony Heller
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Couldn’t we just plug our power stations into the power socket on the nearest wall? Isn’t that where electricity comes from?
The point is well made, about how the interconnections can be (and are) used. If you look at the image below, you’ll see that just now coal is being burnt at a rate which more or less balances the feed to France. The image came from https://grid.iamkate.com/ which is useful.
Incidentally, the modern use of the term “climate change” is another example of tactics that nick old, standard terms to quietly manipulate their meaning. Real “climate change” is the normal situation; the climate has never been stable, otherwise we would not be here. No shortage of that methodology in the medical field, either – but I won’t wast time drafting a list of those.
The Government will never cut the interconnectors or reduce energy trade to “stabilisation only” because the consequence would be the EU (led by Germany) restricting (or possibly scrapping the sanctions) against Putin.
Once again, British taxpayers (current and future) are going to pay £billions to save the continent from its own folly. AND at the same time we’re paying to save ourselves from our own anti-British Establishment’s folly with the Net Zero lunacy.
Either way, WE pay. And Truss will do nothing to change that.
The UK taxpayer is also supporting the US to wage its proxy war against Russia whilst doing all of the above.
The Net Zero rubbish is the best way to funnel wealth from us upwards to the already too wealthy at the top who are leading the whole Great Reset.
With regard to the linked paper, on the topic of delivering LNG directly to electric stations, I was perplexed about that idea, as much of the gas in the gas network that feeds us IS LNG now? There are firms like Dragon LNG ( https://www.dragonlng.co.uk/ ) in Milford Haven that have the ability to feed it into the pipeline. Maybe it would be possible for commercial deals to cross balance their feed and the demand from the other end. However, I’m guessing that Dragon probably won’t offer a discount at present! Maybe one would have to guarantee to use a minimum amount to get the best price; the less you use, the more you pay, or something like that.
The European Food Industry is warning what high energy prices will mean down the line.
https://freewestmedia.com/2022/09/13/56835/
That excellent short article confirms what many have been forecasting for months ie starvation. The EU is going to starve its populations under cover of war with Russia, supply chain bottlenecks, climate change nonsense long covid or other bollox and then step in with totalitarian laws dictating half a loaf of bread per person per day, a pound of crickets or grasshoppers per week and acorn coffee, a la WWII. Those are the problem / solutions identified but what will be the Reaction? Civil strife?
Which leads to problem / solution: troops on the streets, mass arrests, digital ID – if you want food – and it’s all coming together nicely.
Civil disobedience not unrest is what is required. Use cash, grow what ever you can even if it’s just herbs, stock up what you can now of dried & tinned goods.
If enough of us resist, it can be thwarted but it will take time.
Yeah, I saw all the screaming headlines in the UK newspapers about how unelected officials in the EU are handing themselves emergency powers to force private companies to manufacture and distribute goods.. No wait, that must have been a dream.. In the nightmare of the real world, the corpse of communism seems to be being reanimated in the Western world and the press are barely responding with a whimper.
So those few who are paying any attention are left with one question to distract from the unfolding nightmare: is this by design or a result of incompetence? Whatever’s going on, in the context of the rumblings that have led up to it, certainly looks totalitarian, but is it communism, or something else?
I know my own thoughts on this, but would be interested to hear other people’s.
It’s all by design IMHO to usher in a one world government, with a one world health system, backed up by UN military.
“a one world health system…”
Not quite BB. A one world death system maybe.
I stand corrected! A death system dressed up as a health system.
Nothing happening currently is down to incompetence, it has all been planned.
“Long Term Sick” a.k.a. bone idle, work shy taking advantage of the covid hysteria.
Some food for thought on fuel security & a whole load of other things which all connect to the Great Reset fraud. A bit of history of which I was completely unaware. The lesson learned from this is always to ask “Cui bono?”
Copied: The year is 1914. The years of WWI and farmers growing “hemp” in exchange for US dollars…. Keep this in mind and keep reading.
Industrial hemp is not just another agricultural plant.
It is the antidote to oil and the dollar.
HOW IS HEMP BANNED?
1) One acre of hemp produces as much oxygen as 25 acres of forest.
2) Again, one acre of hemp can produce as much paper as 4 acres of trees.
3) While hemp can be turned into paper 8 times, wood can be made into paper 3 times.
4) Hemp grows in 4 months, wood in 20-50 years.
5) Cannabis is a real radiation trap.
6) Cannabis can be grown anywhere in the world and needs little water. Because it can keep insects away, it doesn’t need pesticides either.
7) If textiles made with hemp are generalized, the pesticide industry could disappear completely
8) The first jeans were made with hemp; even the word “KANVAS” is the name given to hemp products
Hemp is also an ideal plant for containing ropes, laces, bags, shoes and hats.
9) Reduces the effects of chemotherapy and radiation in the treatment of cannabis, AIDS and cancer; it is used in at least 250 diseases such as rheumatism, heart, epilepsy, asthma, stomach, insomnia, psychology and for spinal stiffness.
10) The protein value of hemp seeds is very high and the two fatty acids they contain are nowhere else in nature.
11) Hemp is even cheaper to produce than soy.
12) Animals fed by cannabis don’t need hormonal supplements.
13) All plastic products can be made with hemp, and hemp plastic is very easy to return to nature.
14) If the body of a car is made of hemp, it will be 10 times stronger than steel.
15) It can also be used to insulate buildings; it is durable, cheap and flexible.
16) Soaps and cosmetics made with hemp do not pollute the water, so they are totally environmentally friendly.
In 18th-century America, production was mandatory and farmers who didn’t produce them were jailed. But now the situation has been turned on its head. WHY?
W. R. Hearst owned newspapers, magazines and media in the United States in the 1900s. They had forests and made paper. If paper was made with hemp, he could have lost millions.
Rockefeller was the richest man in the world; had an oil company. Biofuel, hemp oil, was of course his biggest enemy.
Mellon was one of the leading shareholders in the Dupont company and had a patent to manufacture plastics from oil products. And the cannabis industry threatened its market.
Mellon later became President Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury. Those big names we were talking about decided in their meetings that cannabis was the enemy, and they removed it. Through the media, they engraved marijuana into people’s brains as a toxic drug, along with the word marijuana.
Cannabis drugs were taken off the market, replaced by the chemical drugs used today.
Forests are cut down to produce paper.
Plague poisoning and cancer are on the rise.
And then we fill our world with plastic waste, harmful waste….
Courtesy of Luc Luuc Vdf Christiaanse