As we have seen in the most recent auction round, which Mr Miliband bumped up, this approach is already driving up bills. Just last week the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that green levies, which people pay on top of their electricity bills, would rise by an extra £120 per household.
In a world where we are contracting vastly more wind power at breakneck speed, this will only go up. And even worse, the Neso report states that all of this upheaval would only cost the same as the current system if gas was priced at 100p per therm and if the carbon price rises to £147 per ton of carbon dioxide (tCO2) in 2030.
Replacing cheaper power generation with more expensive power generation always was an unlikely manner of bringing down power bills.
Blow up all the windmills? Frack the whole of the UK??
Luckily you don’t have me running your country.
As of next year we should have a glut of oil and gas coming from the US.
With luck this should bring the lng prices down. It’d be pretty ironic if Millibrain was saved by Trump.
High energy prices are de facto government policy. Why won’t they admit it?
As I type, wind is currently meeting 4% of demand and solar less than 1%.
So far this month our installed wind generating capacity of a little over 30GW has averaged under 3GW
It worries me that the government wants to pay so much to get so little.
At least Obama, while a true fanatic, has the foresight to install a huge propane tank in Martha’s Vineyard. How he got planning permission, I don’t know 😉 Then again, Call me Dave got a piddly little windmill installed in his Dad’s grounds which must be paying about £50k a year now for whoever lives there.
“It’s time for Keir and Rachel to rein in their fanatical Energy Secretary, build more nuclear, back our domestic gas production and prioritise cheap power for 2030.”
And it’s time for someone else to rein in the fanatical Keir and Rachel, stop throwing money at doomed state projects and the unions, maintain proper borders, relate to the concerns of indigenous Brits, etc, etc.
Perhaps they could all rein each other in, and collectively decide they are not up to the job.
I’m sure Ed Miliband can’t sleep, worrying about the plight of working class English people.
Mr Letwin said: “We don’t want more people from Sheffield flying away on cheap holidays.” (2011)
Something the press never asked: who’s “we”, and why do they hate the white working classes? Why does the idea of British people making a little money and having better lives offend and outrage the British identified government?
Yeah Steve
This is exactly why I love lots of energy intensive tech.
It means we can loll around and bludge at the beach instead of slaving away to make sure the upper 1% can loll around instead.
Did you see that a house burned down recently (two dead) because the drilling of a hole for a ground-based heat pump released natural gas.
If it weren’t for the two deaths you could make a pretty good joke out of this.
Its going to be fun watching lefty politicians trying to justify our, at best, sclerotic economies after Trump drops energy prices through fracking and the like and gets the US economy growing apace, despite increases in tariffs.
Net Zero could be a force multiplier on the usual economic chaos you get from labour governments.
The next few years aren’t going to be fun. Seeing Milliband savaged by a mob. That will be fun. Get your tickets in
Martin – Net Zero could be a force multiplier on the usual economic chaos you get from labour governments.
Yarp.
>Globalise the economy
>Make it impossible for UK firms to complete with much lower energy, tax and labour costs overseas
>Millions of immigrants every year to keep wages low as the cost of living soars
>Wonder why white people have started rioting and why the middle class is mostly on their side
There’s a lot of ruin in a nation, but not an infinity.
Bboy – energy usage is progress. Every improvement in human health, hygiene and living standards has come from harnessing more energy per person, not less.
People who want to ration your energy usage want to cap your standard of living. That’s a very unfriendly thing to do, which has historically resulted in politicians doing a funny dance while they join the circular economy.
NESO?
It’s been said that Milliband is actually the head honcho of this set-up, so it’s hardly “independent”.
Once Trump is in the Oval Office, he is almost certainly going to dump all the green sh*t. Then there is going to be an election in Germany, and green sh*t will be on the table. It’s hard to see how we can ‘lead the world’ when everyone else dumps the green sh*t. So I, for one, can’t see how the green sh*t will survive here. It’ll only take one huge blackout and people will be ordering piano wire.
People rabbit on about slavery and the moral imperative of stopping it.
Utter bollocks.
Slavery is inevitable in any society without cheap mass energy. It was the industrial revolution based upon fossil fuels which ended it. Coal initially, then petroleum.
Why pay to feed a dozen slaves and their guards all year round when you can just buy or rent a Massey-Fergusson?
Similarly, if you abolish fossil fuels (and nuclear fission) and price mass energy out of existence, then you will get slavery again, whatever the bleeding hearts say.
15 minute cities are the new feudal lands and their serfs.
Mr Letwin said: “We don’t want more people from Sheffield flying away on cheap holidays.” (2011)
I’ve just finished reading “Fly Me, I’m Freddie” – a fantastic book, the story of modest Kentish boy Sir Freddie Laker and Skytrain – and am now reading “The Rise & Fall Of British Eagle”, the story of how Harold Bamberg CBE – a German-Jewish immigrant – and his airline were constrained and eventually scuppered.
Both books are steeped in this attitude: under Labour as a result of dirigiste socialist statism; under the Tories as a simple consequence of class disdain and the desire to protect vested interest. The story of UK civil aviation from WW1 until (ironically) the EU deregulated it is fascinating.
Letwin’s attitude is absolutely nothing new, but I think Milliband would be surprised and somewhat displeased to learn that he has exactly the same attitude as a hated Tory.
Tim the Coder: 100% right.
” It’ll only take one huge blackout and people will be ordering piano wire”
What I don’t understand is how the current weather conditions are not causing one iota of doubt to enter the minds of those in charge of UK energy policy. We are being given a real time example of what can happen to the weather in winter, not only over the UK, but over the entirety of western Europe, and the effects it would have on energy grids that are planned to be predominantly wind and solar powered in the not too distant future. Its like the weather Gods are giving us a warning – look, this is what can happen, plan for it morons!
We are either being governed by deranged ideologues, or knuckle dragging idiots, or some combination of the two. What other possible explanation can there be for what we see unfolding in front of us?
@ Jim
There is another possibility. I have yet to see even one of the “Climate Change Activists” complain about China (in fact many of them make strange claims about how China is leading on “renewable power” despite China having a little less half as big a share of electricity produced by “renewables” as the UK) which is *continuing* to build new coal-fired power stations while the UK closes down the last of our coal-fired power stations.
The newspaper of stuck record, The Times. had a piece about how UK would become a more attractive destination for green technology than anywhere else after Trump’s election and the chaos in Germany.
As if we needed more carpet baggers, spivs, mountebanks, snake oil salesmen (*searches thesaurus*)…
I buy it for the crossword, honest! Not for the titsiots on page three.
Jim, the problem right now is that the temperature is average for the time of year. It’s cloudy and still but not freezing.
Another ’47 or ’63 would do the job nicely but would also either bankrupt me or see me off.
Jim: Millibrain is a deranged idealogue. 2TK is vindictive under all the smarm, and sticking it to us is a way to sate that. He won’t be sated for long so expect more of the same. Let’s hope for some of SuperMac’s ‘events, dear boy, events’. Perhaps from DC?
“There is another possibility. I have yet to see even one of the “Climate Change Activists” complain about China ”
So you think the eco-Blob is bought and paid for by China? That they are being paid to derail the West economically for China’s benefit? Is there any evidence of that? Most of the eco-Blob funding sources seem to come from US and Western billionaire types and private wealth foundations. Are they in turn being funded by China? I mean the likes of Dale Vince are just promoting their own interests – more renewables = more £££ for Dale.
I mean its entirely possible, but is there any evidence for it?