Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t observa; Green failure in the midst of plenty: Britain has vast frackable gas reserves which could provide affordable energy for decades to come. But a bipartisan commitment to failed green policies has left Britain with nightmare energy shortages, a string of energy sector bankruptcies, and skyrocketing prices.
Energy bosses call for price cap to be scrapped and more aid to prevent ‘horrific’ winter ahead
James Sillars, business reporter
Bosses of the UK’s largest energy firms have called on the government to intervene with “unprecedented” measures to prevent a fuel poverty crisis next winter.
The chief executives told MPs investigating energy prices that while pre-payment customers were already reeling from the effects of rising bills, they expected the numbers in financial distress to only increase as time goes on ahead of another expected leap in the energy price cap from October.
The cap rose by a record £693 per year on average in April – with pre-payment customers, who tend to be among the most vulnerable, facing an even larger increase.
The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committee heard ScottishPower chief executive Keith Anderson call for the cap system – blamed for the failure of dozens of competitors as they were unable to pass on huge rises in raw energy costs – to be scrapped in favour of a social tariff that would see the better off pay more.
He also suggested that, in the interim, a deficit fund should be established to allow people deemed struggling to be given 10 years to pay off £1,000 on their bills.
…
Research from industry specialist Cornwall Insight has predicted another hike of almost £500 to the average annual bill at that time reflecting, for the first time, heightened wholesale energy costs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Such an increase would leave the average annual bill beyond £2,450.
…
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/energy-bosses-call-for-price-cap-to-be-scrapped-and-more-aid-to-prevent-horrific-winter-ahead/ar-AAWmysw
According to Money Saving Expert, UK consumers pay around £0.28 / KWh (US $0.36 / KWh), almost double California’s $0.19 / KWh – and that is with the price capping scheme.
Domestic gas is cheaper – but the green obsessed UK government has banned gas boilers in new homes from 2025, and is pushing hard to phase out all domestic gas usage, on the grounds that gas produces greenhouse emissions.
Cornwall Insight (quoted above) predicts a substantial increase of £500 / annum (US $750 / annum) for consumers this year, on top of the price rises they have already experienced.
In my opinion the coming price rises could be far worse than predicted. A pipe which runs through a war zone is not my idea of energy security. Even though the UK is not as heavily dependent on Russian gas as say Germany, if the Ukraine conflict deteriorates, everyone will be knocking on the door of European suppliers. Prices could go completely nuts.
This unaffordable energy nightmare could be abolished at a stroke of a pen. The UK fracking revolution is on the launchpad, waiting for regulatory approval – but the owners of an experimental shale gas well in Lancashire are too busy fighting to prevent the British government from permanently sealing their wells with concrete to focus on new gas field development.
I don’t know what else to say. The pain will continue until voters wake up, and demand their politicians allow shale gas fracking.
But British voters seem doggedly determined to see this insanity through to the end, to test to destruction their fantasy that government investment in renewables can deliver, when we have ample evidence that it cannot.
Shared responsibility for problems they created or sustain. Deja vu.
Those that created the problems should pay 100% of the compensation for those who have been harmed by them.
It’s time to name names of those whose decisions created the problems…and yes, make them pay.
When both the Republicans and Democrats in the USA support Green policies and an anti-hydrocarbon mentality then you too will feel the same pain as we have in the UK. There is no-one to vote for to end this Green madness; our only hope is that the wheels come off completely.
Here in the US we have the party of evil and the party of stupid. Every once in a while they get together and do something that is both evil and stupid. We call that bipartisanship.
We should be grateful that the UK and EU (especially Germany) are our crash test dummies. Now, if we could only learn from others’ experience.
Hasn’t worked yet for Communism…
One must read history before one benefits from its lessons.
I might add they need to understand what they read. It doesn’t seem to me that if any of them have read any history they didn’t comprehend any of it cause they keep trying the same stupid shit that hasn’t worked many times previously. Kinda like flogging a dead horse, as it were
Intermittent power sources are unsustainable. An equation can answer the question.
Can a power generation source, working over its lifetime produce enough energy to reproduce itself, as well as provide power for its intended purpose, that of powering humanity?
Yep, this is the next step.
First you ram in some unsustainable subsidized technology that doubles and triples energy prices, then you give money to the poor to help pay for it. Next, you raise taxes and rates on the middle class to pay for the poor until the middle class are also so poor, they can’t survive, and they have to rely on the government to survive.
This is called equality.
And in California’s case, you give money to foreign nationals who are here illegally and poor too.
Letting millions of foreigners to settle inside Western borders is a deliberate policy to destroy local cultures, import more dependable voters and favor internationalism. WEF policies.
Equity, not equality. Equity is everybody (except for the elites) getting what the government allocates; aka Socialism. Orwell’s 1984 is the Leftist playbook.
Except when you reach that last point, who are they going to tax to make the subsidy payments? I don’t know about the UK, but in the US the rich are all democrats: Soros, Gates, Buffet. And once the government bankrupts them, where do they turn?
Seems to be an illustration of that quote on sooner or later running out of OPM.
This was the goal all along. Increase the dependency of the serfs on their feudal lords. This time in the form of absurd “loans” that only ensure permanent servitude.
While we pointed out the inevitable doubling, tripling, more, much, much more, of energy costs, thinking even a vaguely sentient being would see that as inevitable, they denied it to the public, all the while knowing it was just part of the overall plan.
It was never about energy. It was about securing votes. It was about “economic justice” and all manners of tripe that only a royal family, cynically knowing that it would soon be relegated to the third division of relevant society without a big bang, embraced in full.
Now, going back to fracking, etc, will be seen as “wealthy people” wanting to lower their own costs because the masses will be able to secure these loans for decades, the real bill never coming due.
Economic Justice means Equally Poor
This was the goal all along.
_________________________
That is really hard to believe.
But if you apply the “Duck Test”
That’s what it looks like!
In the USA, there is not one wealthy person alive today who did not first pay income tax on their earnings. The problem is that US politicians spent all that tax money and an ADDITIONAL 30 TRILLION THAT DOES NOT EXIST, giving the US a debt to GDP ratio of 98%.
This guarantees rampant inflation which is a tax on poor people who keep voting for free money from the government.
And the can continues to be kicked down the road while government intends to tax the air to pay for it.
Let’s not forget this inflation is an excuse to raise the minimum wage which is really a SS tax increase without having to actually vote on it. And of course, all the money comes out of the pocket of the businesses who have to absorb the pay increase without any productivity increase and cover their part of the SS increase.
You Brits should ask your masters when the borrowing for the ongoing energy expenses of the poor will end? When energy runs out? Surely the powers-that-be have an end-game planned out. Or at least some reasonable contingency plans in case their manipulative schemes don’t work out. Oops … sorry; I forgot that you are ruled by Leftists.
I like the Darkened Flag image
Does this indicate the
Dark Future of their Energy Policies
Or
The Dimness of their governors
The illustrations that accompany posts
here at WUWT are of stellar quality.
As my grandpa used to say, ‘The chickens are coming home to roost’.
Reality catching up with virtue signaling.
Just give them a cause and fundraising vehicle….
WSJ
After the New York Post reported in April 2021 that a BLM co-founder had purchased four homes for a total of $3.2 million, the head of a local BLM chapter in New York City called for an independent investigation into how money was being spent. In July, BLM leaders in Canada, with help from its U.S. affiliate, purchased another multimillion dollar mansion in Toronto, which prompted several activists in the local chapter to resign. And earlier this month, New York magazine reported that BLM leaders purchased a $6 million California home in cash with money that had been donated to the organization.
“The transaction has not been previously reported, and Black Lives Matter leadership had hoped to keep the house’s existence a secret,” the article said. “Internal emails dating to 2016 show activists voicing concern about how donations were being spent and how the organization was being run. . . . The families of some Black victims of police violence have complained that they have seen little of the funds that have flowed to the movements most visible facet.” Floyd’s death produced a windfall for the group. In October 2020, it took in $66.5 million in contributions. Weeks later, it purchased the California property. BLM told the magazine that it had “always planned” to disclose the purchase, but didn’t explain why it hadn’t.
Isn’t the Black Lives Matter organized by trained Marxists?
The claim of Marxism is part of the con; people are dumb enough to believe Marxist wouldn’t steal millions of dollars in donations.
A Marxist doesn’t expect to live by Marxism, that’s for the unwashed ignorant masses. The leaders are too important to live that way.
BLM now stands for Building Lovely Mansions.
I heard the woman who runs BLM complain about the complexities of running a non profit. She is a tool and I hope she gets jail time.
How much salary can you get paid by a non-profit? I believe we don’t have any laws or tax regulations that put a cap on salary or compensation for employees of non-profits.
And who actually owns the mansions? The BLM leaders, the non-profit or another legal entity altogether?
They “build” nothing; they only buy with other people’s money.
It wasn’t buying the $6 million home that sparked all the interest. It was the observation the home gained a couple of mill in value in just a couple of days. Can you say “money laundering”?
Was bought for $3mil and resold 2 days later for 6.
Apparently IRS interest and laws are triggering to BLM top dogs
Patrisse (sic) Khan -Cullors of BLM (Buy Large Mansions) has accused the IRS of racism. Isn’t that a surprise?
When you are subsidising both sides of supply and demand ie renewable generators and consumers then the penny should drop that your policies are absurd and unsustainable.
Unfortunately UK MPs are, for the most part, PPE graduates, pig ignorant of physics and engineering and thick as two short planks.
Its only when the lights go out and the electorate are rioting that they will suddenly wake up and comprehend how much they have f*cked up the country over the last 30 years. And even then, like all true politicians, they will use the excuse that they were “following the science” and therefore its not their fault.
You really couldn’t make up this level of stupidity.
we wailed from the same minaret – but in vain
Hi Alastair, I suspect we have actually crossed paths professionally in the UK oil and gas industry. As I am not yet retired I use a pseudonym….
The penny will indeed drop, but when it does it’ll have moss (and probably blood) on it.
Its not stupidity when one is raking in the profits and political donations.
The Sierra Club has an annual budget in excess of $100 Million. And they are just one of the myriad “environmental” NGOs.
Our decline into scientific certainty is no less destructive than the decline into religious fanaticism in eons past.
Humanity has been consumed by science, and scientists have wallowed in it. The scientific method is the route to all truth, so scientists assure us.
Yet somehow, science has been hijacked by politics. How can that happen when the scientific method is enshrined in observational fact?
The fact is, the scientific method is fundamentally flawed if two sides of a scientific debate descend to political and social confrontation.
We know our universities have been swamped by a culture of ‘conform or leave in disgrace’. We know great scientific minds have been cancelled or marginalised. If the scientific method is sacrosanct, how can that happen?
Time to work out a new scientific method folks. This one is failing badly.
Nothing new here: just think Galileo; or worse Giordano Bruno !
And it’s still happening. People getting locked up (metaphorically) for their faith.
You would imagine scientists would have learned by now, but nope.
When you are subsidising both sides of supply and demand ie renewable generators and consumers then the penny should drop that your policies are absurd and unsustainable.
Essentially because they’re trying to disprove a fundamental axiom of engineering that you can’t build a reliable system from unreliable componentry. Blind Freddy can see they need massive storage for their unreliables and the level of penetration they’ve mandated and subsidized but they’ve struck an insurmountable mountain with their fallacy of composition problem-
High Voltage: Rivian’s CEO reckons we’re only seeing the beginning of the battery metals shortage (msn.com)
They’ve bet their future on electrochemical storage for both the electrical grid and transport and they’re too bog ignorant to comprehend that’s impossible.
QED-
‘Do You Like Minting Money?’: Musk Advises Entrepreneurs to Step Into Lithium Industry (ntd.com)
This sounds a lot like Obama’s carbon tax legislation with subsidies and wealth transfers, minus the legislative effort and exposure.
It’s worse. Plenty of legislative effort and exposure as Net Zero by 2050 is now enshrined in law thanks to the incomparably incompetent Theresa May, Boris’ predecessor. She failed in her attempt to stab Democracy in the back by scuppering Brexit so went full revenge mode and passed Net Zero with no scrutiny whatsoever.
The whole NetZero thing will be gradually consigned to the long grass. It’s painful right now, and worrying for innumerable people, but no government can continue with an insane policy that will kill lots more people than already die every year in the UK from fuel poverty.
All governments are now thinking nuclear. But they can justify it to the green blob now, and accuse them of wholesale murder if they continue to push their green lunacy. The evidence is now in.
Boris has survived Partygate, so far, but the report currently being written by Sue Gray will have to demonstrate he’s a principled knight in shining armour on his white charger before the public and his party will allow him to continue. That’s just not going to happen.
The knives are out amongst backbenchers over NetZero, they are waiting for a cast iron alibi before plunging them into Boris’ back. The Sue Gray report is likely to be just what they need.
His successor will make lots of noise about continuing Boris’ green legacy, whilst quietly doing nothing except doing everything to drive down energy prices, which means fracking. There is only one enemy on that front, the bedraggled, smelly bunch of anarchists Extinction Rebellion who have made everyones lives a misery.
No competition.
The good news is that the lying oaf’s days are numbered. We have only heard the first of many parties held at No. 10 and that was the least serious one. The fines will keep coming and the final nail will be the Gray Report, assuming the oaf is still there. Those who whine that it is not important don’t understand that having an ignorant oaf making the rules is one thing, but when he and his gang completely ignore them and he lies to Parliament about it then his position is untenable. Still, with just a few weeks to go to the local elections which should see the Tories get hammered, the party will get rid of him as he is a liability not an asset.
The problem comes with Keir Starmer who will try to capitalise on this; if he gets elected expect much more of the same and probably far worse. Given that both Labour and Conservatives are viewed as equally incompetent, I’d expect the Lib Dems to make headway in the local elections but not be able to translate that into many more MP’s.
They’re all bonkers and I’m totally sick of them
Progressive War on the Middle Class: They deliberately make energy unnecessarily expensive, and then subsidize the “poor”. The middle class is made to endure higher bills and a lower standard of living while slowly transitioning from “middle” to subsidized “lower” class.
Step 1: Make people poor.
Step 2: “Help” the poor.
Step 3: Wait for the thank yous to roll in.
I’ve been poor.
I am rich (judged by some less fortunate than me, although by any standards I’m financially very modest – my wealth is invested in my family and it has nothing to do with money).
I was almost disgustingly financially wealthy, which was scuppered overnight by 9/11. My ‘financial woe’s’ were quickly rationalised when I saw people on TV jumping from the towers.
Best of all, and unbeknown to me when I was young, my life has been a complete adventure.
I have immense sympathy with the poor, but not if they wallow in it and do nothing to alleviate their plight. Sadly the culture of the entitled poor has infected the middle class who are now just entitled.
Just how the hell did we manage to get to this situation within living memory of a world war that forced everyones shoulder to the wheel?
Step 4: Count the votes from the takers.
I have been pointing out all of the contradictions and impossibility of the Green Net Zero scam for over 10 years now to anyone who will listen and I am afraid that most of my countryman consider me to be a delusional ignoramus, and urge me to “follow the Science”. They really did swallow all of the Kool Ade and are still under the influence. All Political parties are mired in the myths and nothing short of the revolution caused by freezing and starving in the dark will turn them round
We are about to freeze and starve in the dark.
Your belief was not in vain.
After 10 years the lights are still on, is what you should take from this
Despite what’s happened in the last 10 years not because of it.
If you can find the interview that Reiner Fuelmich and Viviane Fischer did with Harley Schlanger as part of the Corona Investigation i n preparation for the Grand Jury, you’ll hear how the criminal syndicate behind the deceptions of both covid restrictions and climate change alarmism have been exposed. Crimes Against Humanity.
Scroll down to find the Reiner Fuelmich, Viviane Fischer interview with Harley Schlanger,
https://beforeitsnews.com/prophecy/2022/03/vladimir-putin-suddenly-disappears-from-television-broadcast-during-russia-speech-2528927.html
The government response to COVID was worse than COVID.
The government response to “climate change” is worse than “climate change.”
The government response to the Ukraine invasion is worse than the Ukraine invasion.
Government currently exists to make everything worse than it otherwise would be.
Fear is a political weapon.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” — H.L. Mencken
Nothing says “Green Energy” quite like poor people freezing in their homes during the Winter months.
The entire world, well not China and Russia and maybe India,
but the rest of the world seems to be following a pied piper on
the way to a Jonestown Kool-Aid orgy.
It was Flavor Aid, not Kool-Aid. Still on the market.
Down she goes and where she stops nobody knows.
Britain to suffer weakest growth in G7 as Sunak’s tax raid bites (telegraph.co.uk)
This is what happens when liars and cheats are not held to account. There is nothing surprising about this. I have no respect for the administrators, bureaucrats and pseudo scientists responsible for this mess. I am most disappointed however with the mindless sheep who keep putting these scoundrels in power and allow them to lie and cheat us.
Meanwhile the UK green-lights the next step in Rolls Royce roll-out of modular nuclear reactors:
Rolls-Royce expecting UK approval for mini nuclear reactor by mid-2024 | Tallbloke’s Talkshop (wordpress.com)
Some new jobs on the way…
Expect it to be delayed by at least 10 years. That’s if Labour don’t get elected and cancel the whole thing.
The conservatives should make it an election issue.
100,000 jobs, yes or no?
If the U.K. keeps to even a token semblance of their electrification commitments, then without nuclear the UK’s energy grid risks collapse followed by permanent third world style dysfunction and intermittency – few hours each day of electricity if you’re lucky.
Labour announced 8 new nuclear plants in 2008… The tories re-announced them in 2010 and 2022
In 2008 a white paper was put to parliament by a government department outlining proposals for nuclear energy. The fact that it was a Labour government doesn’t mean that Labour proposed anything. I don’t think those proposals ever came to anything but maybe they will now.
Yes… one by 2030and five by 2035 for a total of 2.5 GW…. if it works…
I won’t break out the champagne just yet
First, they make energy unaffordable. then they subsidize it. The high costs don’t affect the well-to-do, they can afford to pay more. The poor? Just raise their entitlements or create a new entitlement to make the cost of energy seem to be affordable. The middle class? Just bend over, buddy.
This is straight out of the progressive playbook, repeated everywhere. Does it occur to them to not make something unaffordable in the first place? Probably not. If it does, they don’t mind as making the poor more dependent is the real desired result.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. 🙁
Hmm. Does big business _really_ think more government intervention is the answer? Maybe it’s just the easy answer to _their_ financial woes, not ours.
When large numbers of people start dying of hypothermia in their homes over winter as a result of insane Green Policies, they may finally begin to realise the titanic disaster that they have created.
As a result of natural gas prices, I think you’ll find…
And what caused those prices to rise initially (before the Russian invasion) – the increased use of natural gas as a result of cancelling oil and coal and the need to fully support intermittent energy sources.
and to think Maggie Thatcher invented climate change as a justification to make you go nuclear power because of the power reliance on Russia… We have almost gone full circle, bankrupting our economies on the way and employing heaps of public servants to feed at the trough. How can supposedly smart people be so stupid?
No, she was tierd og the coalminers strikes.
Many many years ago Maggie Thatcher asked the scientists to investigate the effect of going nuclear on climate change. They ran off and created an industry to rip us off, now you are at the same point. Ripped off without anything to get you out of killing voters during winter. Tax the shit out of the industry that created the problem.
To be fair to the British voters, we don’t have much choice. However, you could argue that the majority of voters are ignorant idiots anyway who somehow think we are a democracy and sheep-like turn out to vote and so legitimise the charade.
The other side are busy telling us this is a hydrocarbon energy crisis, and the sooner we are not dependent on hydrocarbons the better. Wind power is acting to reduce energy costs at the moment, not increase them.
Any gas from fracking will be sold off to the highest bidder, in other words market prices. It’s not British gas for British people, it’s a rapacious global business.
Gas suppliers are currently making massive profits from selling “our” gas, but the people see no benefit from it. There should be a windfall tax but they refuse, preferring to increase UK employee tax rates to the highest in living memory.
yes. Entirely a fossil fuel crisis
Britain has vast frackable gas reserves which could provide affordable energy for decades to come.
That’s not what the British Geological survey or the former head of the Centrica energy company Iain Conn say… he said “I don’t think it is possible to drill enough wells to be able to make a material difference to the UK supplies.”
Both of which you’d hope were unbiased sources – unfortunately you’d be extremely disappointed. Even a conservative estimate of the gas reserves indicate that we can easily meet all our gas energy needs for well over the next 50 years.
Resource and reserve estimates in most countries are heavily dependent on private sector investment and drilling to inform the process. Government agencies adjust in a moving update process to changing facts as they are shared or submitted.
TLDR Summary: An old fool has silly ideas about hidden sales taxes. He sees them everywhere.
The government doesn’t have any money except through taxes — taxes mainly on the middle class. The extremely rich contribute their fair share, but their numbers are so few it is the working men and women who pay almost all taxes. “Government assistance for poor” = transfer of wealth from the middle class to the poor. A portion of the poor are poor because they can’t save money. Others because they won’t. A few are trapped — getting a job or earning more would actually be a net loss of income due to welfare. Stop government welfare, period. Real people helping people “welfare” would arise. As long as we’re cutting taxes, taxing business income is a hidden sales tax — the tax rate shared by all from the abjectly poor to the elite. Call a spade a spade and replace business tax with a federal sales tax. And, funny thing, a tax on income paid by a corporation to its employees is factored into the price of the product or service. Yet another sales tax. The constitution calls them excises.