Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova; Coming soon to the USA? Nuclear, coal, gas, hydroelectricity – every significant form of electricity generation except renewables allows people to have electricity when they want it, in the quantity they want.
How much could YOU earn for turning off your oven and TV? How families could be PAID up to £6 to ‘ration’ electricity at peak times (including nearly £3 for shutting off electric car chargers)
The measures come amid spiraling energy costs made worse by war in Ukraine
Households with smart meters could be paid £6 per kilowatt-hour not used
The National Grid is looking at expanding the measure which is now under trial
By TOM PYMAN FOR MAILONLINE and ARCHIE MITCHELL FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 21:44 AEST, 28 June 2022 | UPDATED: 21:51 AEST, 28 June 2022
Hard-pressed British families can save as much as £6 by turning off key appliances for two hours in the evening – and could be paid to do so under plans being considered by the National Grid.
Consumers with smart meters will be offered the payment to slash their usage during peak times in the winter and try and cut the risk of nationwide blackouts.
National Grid sees the plans as a cheaper and more environmentally friendly way to keep the lights on than paying fossil fuel power plants to increase production.
The firm responsible for transmitting and distributing electricity and gas is scrambling to mitigate the effects of the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has led to Russia restricting energy supplies to Europe.
The proposals could see households paid up to £6 for each kilowatt-hour they avoid using at peak times. That compares with the 28.34p homes pay per kilowatt-hour, enough to power a 100 watt lightbulb for ten hours.
National Grid ESO trialled the proposals with Octopus Energy customers this year and is now looking to offer the scheme to millions of households.
MailOnline has analysed the cost of running some key household appliances for two hours during the periods that were trialled – 00:00-02:00, 09:00-11:00 and 16:30-18:30.
…
Energy rationing would not have happened if Britain maintained coal capacity and developed shale gas reserves. Rationing would not have been necessary if Britain had focussed on reliable zero carbon energy, nuclear power – nuclear power plants, which are completely insulated from fuel supply price shocks, because they only have to be refuelled every two years.
After this failure, does anyone in Britain still think Bojo’s push for more renewable energy is a good idea? Imagine what living in an energy rationed society will be like next February? Imagine the horror of finally caving in, switching on your heater – only to have the lights and heat go out, after the grid collapses under the weight of demand from other other families just like yours, who reached for the switch at the same time as you, because they could no longer stand the cold.
There might still be time to fix this before winter – but the British government has to act now, the British government has to stop wasting time and resources on useless green energy, and get out of the way of entrepreneurs who are trying to develop onshore British unconventional petroleum resources. The government must open the floodgates to made in Britain energy, or it will be the British people who will suffer, starting with the innocent, elderly and vulnerable, six months from now.
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There is no cure for stupid, and UK politicians have it in spades. We are all doomed!
California is giving “policy” relief checks, not inflation relief.
California plans ‘inflation relief’ stimulus checks. Will other states follow? (cnbc.com)
Universal Basic Income – thin end of the wedge. The end game of all Socialists, everywhere.
These green devils are monsters and will stop at nothing to control the rest of us. We need to stop passively sitting on our backside meekly complying with them.
New business opportunity: Replace frozen water piping every spring.
Hot and cold running water, will be a thing of the past…
The UK government is quietly turning back to coal, but not shouting about it. The appalling Ukraine war provides them with a good excuse for doing this in the name of ‘security’.
But unfortunately they left it too late. Had they jumped on it 18 months ago, when the problems of looming capacity shortage were evident there would have been several extra GW of capacity that could have been saved. Alok Sharma personally blew up one coal fired power station as a virtue signalling act ahead of COP last summer. Now it’s too late – also for Hinkley Point B, the old nuclear station which can’t be extended any more, despite the government belatedly asking if they could keep going.
Renewable/intermittent/unreliable Green deals, with progressive prices and availability, is a blight on the environment and economy.
“energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has led to Russia restricting energy supplies to Europe.”
Even sceptics cannot avoid buying
into propaganda from the Dark Side. The cutting of supply is another case of fallout from sanctions of the circular EU-US firing squad!
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-cuts-gas-supply-germany-siemens-equipment-stuck-canada-sanctions-2022-6?op=1
Please do the due diligence. Nearly everything readily available in the news these days is a lie! Yeah, it’s too easy to blame pariah Russia for everything, especially when EU/UK and US need a scapegoat to blame for their policy horrors that have shattered their own the O&G industries: blocking access to resources; nixing pipelines, punishing and costly regs, foreclosure of financing sources, …they have enriched and emboldened Putin all by themselves.
Western boffins apparently were unaware that natural gas is needed to make cheap nitrogen fertilizers (not cheap when at 10x prices of two years ago), diesel needed to fuel agriculture and transport for everything we eat wear or use. Fossil fuels are needed for mining, production, refining and manufacture of products each containing one or more of 89 of the 92 chemical elements of the periodic table.
Being the base of the commodity goods/services/logistics system, screwing up ff supply (before we have a comparable substitute) has a terrifying multiplier effect. 10x the cost of making fertilizer, 10x the cost to ship it, 10x the cost to apply it, to plant and harvest and ship a crop, grind it, bake it, ship it again….inflation, famine, disease… all directly attributable to hugely stupid policies. Joe Biden has a cognitive disability, but he is no worse than any of his fellow heads of state in the West. Managing a country and its economy is a no-brainer activity nowadays.
I blame British government policy for this shambles. It doesn’t matter that Russia helped deliver some of the shocks, Britain was only vulnerable because British politicians are clueless.
Some of them walked into this situation with their pockets wide open, or their family/chums pockets – it’s quite the racket.
Its all a bit Atlas Shrugged IMO, the parasites scrambling over the dying host, thinking only of themselves.
Yes, I understood your take on the problem, Eric. It’s just that the invasion has become an overall convenient way for inept politicos to keep torch and pitchfork wielding citizens off the streets when real horrors precipitate from their policies.
We can already see that another danger of this scapegoat affair is it serves these leaders to prolong and widen the conflict. They won’t step into the war to stop it as they did in Serbia, but will keep stoking it, possibly tipping it into something far worse.
They also did (along with the UN) stand by for 8 years while Ukraine (particularly the Asov n@zi regiment) was shelling with impunity it’s own citizens of Russian descent in the Dombass. US has invaded a number of Latin American countries to protect its ‘interests’ and even bombed Serbia where they had no interests. Even Australia invaded East Timor for an exact same reason Russia invaded eastern Ukraine.
I was born before WWII so my BullS meter is work-hardened.
UK needs to go on a “war footing” too… stiff upper lip, and The Blitz and 1940 and ’41 stuff. Hard to believe in today’s world…
I hate to sound cruel but we in the US need an electric grid disaster in Australia, Germany, UK, etc. as the canary in the coal mine for weather dependent energy. The sooner, the better. I’m not sure that will change many minds, but I hope so. So many Americans act like trained parrots of climate alarmism that I wonder if they will recognize canaries.
On the other hand, the US electric grid has been reliable and boring, so could use some excitement. Such as random brownouts and blackouts.
That would be exciting. Years ago, I wrote my congressman to propose, spending a bazillion dollars to make the US electric grid less reliable. And now that is becoming public policy in many nations. Amazing what one letter can accomplish. This should really help my flashlight business.
You know what? Everyone who has been voting for climate change politicians and climate change policies needs to suffer for a year or two. Then they’ll learn to vote differently next time.
Huddled up together in a dark room wearing their thermals while wrapped in a cozy wool blanket will do them some good.
I’ve been saying this for a while. Us Brits need to suffer until the penny drops that voting for idiots leads to suffering and that we need to stop voting for idiots if our situation is to improve. Nothing is going to change until we stop voting for idiots. Tribal or thoughtless voting comes with a horrendous price tag. We are now going to pay that price.
Tony S.
“we need to stop voting for idiots if our situation is to improve.”
Whilst I agree, a significant problem is that all three main-ish parties, and most of the regional ones, too, follow the Green mantra.
There may be individual MPs who are sceptical, possibly ‘against’, the Unicorn Fart Solution – but they are apparently almost as rare as those unicorns..
My concern is the selection of candidates to stand for election.
In over half the seats in the House of Commons, it is possible to say with 99.9% certainty which party will win. That party’s selection of a candidate is therefore of more importance than the actual election [which involves the population].
Unhappily, too many ‘electable’ candidates have little backbone, scientific knowledge, or desire to serve [rather than make money for themselves and their families].
So – who to vote for?
Auto
So much misery and so much expense just to address a problem that doesn’t exist.
Net Zero at any cost? NO THANKS!
Wealthy western nations have built an energy strategy out of wishful thinking, childish ignorance, emotional indulgence and pure fantasy, paying no heed to the rules of nature and economics. When this is all over, and after much pain and loss, we must ensure those who put us in this position can never lead us again.
“The avalanche has already begun, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.” – Kosh, Babylon 5
In other words, it’s already too late to avoid the future the OP foresees.
“Energy rationing would not have happened”
I don’t understand this. Is it a typo?
Energy rationing has not happened.
But it already has. Industry has been the first target. When they have shut down as much of that as they can, guess who’s next?
We had energy rationing back in 1973 under Heath, but AFAIK there has been no energy rationing recently, but I may be wrong. What is your source for this?
This is more important than money. Poverty kills. Lives are at stake. Greens are killing people and they are killing the very people that other left-wing people claim to protect. They are killing the poor and the old and the physically weak. Is there even one person with sound left-wing credentials willing to point this out to their comrades? They’ll never listen to us, but maybe they will listen to you.
Is there even one person with sound left-wing credentials willing to point this out to their comrades?
If it’s anything like any other topic, anyone pointing it out will be drummed out of their leftist circles (see Bill Maher recently)
I am confused. The reason we have high energy prices at the moment is because most of our energy is from fossil fuels, the price for which is set by international markets. The cost of our electricity would be higher if we didn’t have wind and solar.
But everyone here seems to be arguing that wind and solar are the reason our energy costs are currently very high. I don’t get it.