From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
London: 16 August 2024
Net Zero Watch warns of years of rising electricity bills
Net Zero Watch has warned that Labour’s plans for the electricity system mean that consumers face years of rising bills. Analysis by the campaigning organisation indicates that consumers could be paying over £500 per year extra.
The staggering increase is due to the Government’s plans to vastly increase renewables capacity, the cost of which far outweighs any possible savings from reductions in fuel usage in gas-fired power stations.
And Net Zero Watch is warning that government plans for a major deployment of floating offshore wind will make the situation even worse.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
Floating offshore wind is probably the most expensive form of electricity ever deployed on a commercial basis in the UK, and all the signs are that it will remain so.
Mr Montford said:
“Mr Miliband’s plans are not sustainable and will never be realised in practice. The only question is how much damage the Secretary of State will do to the country before Mr Starmer is forced to replace him.”
Notes to editors
- The analysis is set out in a recent posting at the Net Zero Watch website.
- Floating offshore wind has levelised costs of well over £200/MWh. Developers of new capacity are being offered £240 in the current renewables auction.
- The impact on consumers would be felt partly through electricity bill increases, and partly through cost of living increases.
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Get the government out of the power generation and transmission business. They have already caused far too many problems for absolutely no gain. Wind and solar are not green, they are not less expensive, they are not recyclable, they endanger the grid, they do not generate power when needed, they can not replace fossil fuel and nuclear.
We are not in a climate crisis, CO2 is not the control knob for our climate, we are not going to reach a tipping point and suffer irreversible global warming.
The problem is that the power generation and transmission business has been privatised.
When the government was in charge, the civil service looked at infrastructure over a thirty year time period.
Now the government is out and private industry is in… the returns need to be over 5 years (or the managers and owners don’t get their dividends).
The only way to get quick returns in infrastructure is to gear the system to exploit non-infrastructure aims. They need to do something else.
What else is there for infrastructure companies, which isn’t resolved instantly relative to their real purpose? Why, even longer term outcomes – that can only be climate change (100 year outcome).
This is what is called a market failure.
Follow the money and nationalise vital infrastructure.
‘This is what is called a market failure.’
You cannot be serious.
When government owns business, that’s communism. When government controls business, that’s fascism The government controls the energy business in the UK. MCourtney wants them to own it. It’s very hard to see how that would improve things.
OTOH, if government dropped the regulations that force renewables onto the grid, and instead allowed free competition in the industry to drive the energy mix, it is easy to see how that could improve things.
“”The problem is that the power generation and transmission business has been privatised.””
So, your answer must be state ownership, right?
The UK government controls energy even if it is in private hands.
And in response to the government’s increased “windfall taxation”
“”Chevron (CVX.N), said it is set to launch the sale of its remaining UK North Sea oil and gas assets, in a move that would mark the U.S. energy giant’s exit from the ageing basin after more than 55 years.””
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chevron-prepares-north-sea-exit-after-more-than-55-years-2024-05-16/
“”Apache announces end to North Sea drilling hours after UK scales back windfall tax””
https://www.ft.com/content/7a8e73e2-de4c-4f11-985b-80a6c56d8ee5
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Government energy policy dictates what happens.
Government is the problem, not the solution.
As the electricity prices climb in the UK, the UK GDP will be declining, and more businesses will be leaving the country.. Incompetent, delusional Government is the cause.
I think we have a real Idiocracy going in the Western nations. Morons are in charge, and it shows.
note to Mac and the others replying:
the root of the problem is not any of the proposals stated, it is, as a USA founding father noted, ‘men are not angels’.
no matter what system is put into place, it will be imperfect, as one or more of us humans will corrupt it.
MCourtney, I reckon you have your rose-coloured glasses on when you’re looking back for the halcyon days of competent civil servants.
“Yes, Minister” was a documentary, not a light comedy production.
Self-interest pervades and dominates all bureaucracies, to the everlasting cost to the taxpaying public of bungled projects and opportunities.
Have you ever heard of bureau or department heads advising a minister that they’ve concluded that their group has passed the point of their useful life, and should be wound up?
The problem is that the power generation and transmission business has been privatised.
This isn’t the problem, the problem is that its been idiotically regulated. The right way to do it is the US method: you have a local monopoly but with rate of return regulation administered by a Public Utilities Commission. Worked perfectly for decades in the US. Get the government out of ownership and management, and get regulation done close to the customers.
When the government was in charge, the civil service looked at infrastructure over a thirty year time period.
Ask anyone who worked at a senior level in the former nationalized industries and they’ll tell you very different. The priority was to avoid awkward questions in the House next week. And investment was governed by the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement – so it made no distinction between capital and current. Impossible to rationally plan investment on that basis. In addition, any investment resulting in productivity improvements meant endless struggles and opposition from the unions.
Procurement decisions were made on the basis of politics, not returns or customer benefit. You want two examples, consider the Monarch PBX. It had no remote maintenance. It had to be positively excluded during procurement. Why not have it? Placating the Communications Union, who wanted jobs, which meant trips to site. Another example was System X, fantasies about exports and with a hopeless organizational mess in product management, development and manufacture.
And after you consider the case of communications, turn your attention to British Rail, the great tilting train saga, or to the British Leyland -> Rover saga. Ford bought some samples of the Mini when it first came out, and couldn’t figure out how on earth they were making money on it. They weren’t but their accounting wasn’t up to doing proper costing on it. And even if it had been, the government was always going to put placating the union ahead of running a cost effective operation. Long term thinking at British Leyland in state ownership was saving money by not galvanizing body panels. Because the PSBR, of course….
I’m glad someone remembers the disaster that was nationalisation, it did have one benefit it made us move to Canada.
What an idiotic comment, and a drive by, no less. Typical leftist climatard.
STORY TIP
“Thanks to Hal Shurtleff and Camp Constitution for getting permission to publish Lord Monckton’s remarks on The Grok!”
https://granitegrok.com/world/2024/08/lord-monckton-the-blob-is-to-blame-for-street-rioting-in-a-nation-of-habitual-peace
It’s a long read, and does not concentrate on “climate change”, in fact it’s rather heavy on immigration. It does give an insight into what’s happening in Great Britain today, and provides some of the history leading up the current situation. I trust Lord Monckton’s comments a lot more than any MSM reports.
Two-tier. Or as I call it: Critical Theory Policing and justice.
For a favourable result get a good suntan
Meanwhile…
Miliband warned ‘absurd’ net zero electricity pricing will force factories to close
Carve-up of UK energy market risks disastrous consequences for jobs and investment, say trade bodies
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/17/ed-miliband-zero-electricity-pricing-force-factories-close/
Exactly what he wants.
Closing factories are what they are going to get if they keep going down this “renewables” deadend road.
This is what you get when people in charge who don’t know what they are doing, think they know what they are doing.
Everybody – where possible – on Universal Social Credit.
Milliband’s approach is entirely the result of following the anti-fossil fuel rhetoric expounded by climate catastrophe groupthinkers.
As a result he is about to throw the economy baby out with the emissions bathwater.
Gives the game away somewhat-
‘Sun tax’ Australia: Sneaky solar tariff slugged on Aussie households branded ‘rip-off’, ‘madness’ | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site
No folks it’s not a sun tax but a dumping tax bearing in mind the big solar factories often have to pay to dump their unwanted electrons via negative pricing.
“”Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman
If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet””
etc.
I saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium in ’65.
You did good.
I took video of it too- with my dad’s 8 mm camera. Poor quality and with no sound- but still memorable. I’ll have to upload it some day. I did capture the teen girls screaming – but we were way up in the upper deck- far from the band out in the middle of the field.
I saw many other great bands too- but as they say, “if you remember the ’60s, you weren’t there”. I was only 15 seeing the Beatles, so it was before the times I forgot. 🙂
You were right there at the beginning!
I remember when the Beatles first started on the radio (about 1963?). They were revolutionary and so good!
I never got to see the Beatles in public, but I did go to one of their movies in a movie theater and as soon as the Beatles appeared on the screen, the females in the audience started screaming at the top of their lungs and you couldn’t hear a thing from the movie screen! The girls did this every time the Beatles came on the screen, which was most of the time, and which pretty much ruined the movie for me because all I could hear was screaming. I never went to another one as I expected the same behavior out of the girls.
I remember pulling guard duty over in Germany. It was a dark, lonely night and I was marching around a small military facility, and had a pocket radio and earpiece and was listening to a pirate radio station located in the English Channel, and I was feeling a little down and lonely out there in the middle of the night, in the cold, and the radio station played a new Beatles song, “I get by with a little help from my friends” and before that song was over I was feeling better, and was marching to the rhythm.
And then there was “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” while I was visiting Amsterdam on leave.
The Beatles were a new direction in music. There was a lot of good music before and after they came on the scene, but they made a unique mark.
Have you seen Get Back?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9735318/
Ah! They don’t write ’em like that any more! I nowadys think of it as “the Laffer-curve song” – “…and you’re working for nobody but me…”
Offshore wind is net energy negative. It is no different from elaborate perpetual motion machines which hide their thermodynamic impossibility through complexity. Prove me wrong, show me a single wind turbine manufacturer using solely wind power to make more wind turbines.
Good challenge for AI, to draw that.
Agenda 21/2030 needs to be significantly publicised since this is reason why the totally unscientific Net Zero policy not only achieves nothing to save the planet but is the main cause of the unnecessary cost of energy explosion.
Don’t just keep your eye on the unit cost of electricity. Even when the unit price drops temporarily, the standing charge still keeps going up. And the last couple of years minor decreases in unit cost have come after winter, and the increases just before, predictably.
Of course they would say that
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/global-warming-policy-foundation-net-zero-watch-koch-brothers/
Remember how renewable energy regulary lowers prices in many countries now? Looks like nzw doesn’t.
It has increased prices the UK
Explain that
NB
Renewable industry to bid for record breaking funding
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/record-breaking-funding-for-clean-energy-in-britain
Or as ordinary Englishmen would correctly call it: subsidies.
‘Industrial Seedcorn’.
‘World-leading Industrial Funding’
‘Fiscal Innovation Mechanism’
The synonyms of ‘SUBSIDY’ [from the poor tax-payer] are almost endless.
Auto
At the 30K ft level, the netzero stuff is not about energy, the environment, or helping ‘the people’. It is 99% pure grift, for the ruling class and this includes (((people))) hiding behind the scenes as puppeteers.
Spengler points out that when the change is made (as a matter of course) from Estate to Caste, we have left culture and entered civilization. That ‘phase’ started to happen in earnest some 200-300 years ago.
In this era’s ‘civilization’, the Caste of the ruling class looks down and sees the caste of peasants, poor and common folk as literally not to be brought up, saved or such, but only to be used, manipulated and kept in line to serve them in their quest to dominate within their own caste.
To put it more plainly, the ruling class is not there to help anyone outside their caste unless it helps them, but without rocking the ruling class boat too much.
So unless your opposition to netzero is accompanied with an alternative plan that proposes a different grift scheme suitable to some folks in the ruling class, it goes nowhere. Otherwise the system has to be decapitated or burnt to the ground for things to change. 1492? 1917? 1789?
Or when the Ice Age cometh? What’s the latest prediction on that?
The interglacial periods, like the present, last roughly about 10,000 years, it has been about 12,000 years since the last one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
Hey, totally off topic. Anyone else having login issues with other wordpress hosted blogs this morning, 8/19/24?
FWIW
“EV vs INTERNAL COMBUSTION – 10yr CO2 shootout! I ran the numbers… | AutoExpert John Cadogan”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vybnoHVHMdQ
Salty as usual