Isnt this just a clever way for the elite that run the energy companies to steal from the treasury while still making huge profits? Wouldnt it make more sense for the Government to tax them harder and bring back the price cap while investing more in renewable energy like sticking solar panels on all buildings with batteries to store the energy? Moving to new electrical heating that uses less energy to cut the need for gas might be a good idea also.
Loads of independent companies out there making solar panels, underfloor heating etc. Maybe we could cancel the repair or replacement of our nuclear stations and move that money over onto something a bit more eco friendly. Shocked this thread hasnt gained more views and replies to be honest, the ****s are lying to us everyday and the lies run to the very top.
Oh don't worry it will do - the scale of what is coming between now and the next GE, still hasn't fully registered with many........
Doesnt matter who wins the election, democracy ends as soon as the polls shut. The lobbying by big business and the elite will continue and party whips tell MPs which way to vote.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62801913 Stealing from the treasury. **** the lot of them. Eat the rich.
But until we have enough renewable energy to stop using gas to generate any - every extra kWh of electricity jeans we burn more has, which could have just been burnt directly heating a home.
Plus the added strain on the generating and distribution systems (designed in the 60's) of all those growing numbers of 'eco-friendly' electric cars - to the untrained eye that looks like a perfect shitstorm.
It has been proven over an over that electric cars are eco friendly compared to the equivilaent combustion car - and it will only get better throughout the cars lifecycle as the grids goes greener. THe amoutn of electricity needed to just refine petrol and get it to the pumps is insane. There is still though the obvious catch that a big 3 tonne 300 mile electric SUV is not greeener than a economical city car - and no cars are better than public treansport or a bike. Also the arguemtn that for the battery in on long range EV , you could make 10 hybrids which would be better to reduce CO2 than 1 EV and 9 non hybrids.
Has anyone suggested encouraging people to use less gas and electricity? The only way out of this is cutting energy consumption.
Not eating will do that, but Johnson had a radical plan for less energy use that involved a new kettle. Right wing ‘opinion formers’ have been queuing up since to boast of how they grew up without central heating. Edwina Currie for example. https://twitter.com/jimmfelton/status/1566696330256437248?s=21&t=d0DiDnL7y9qy0jTdN9hTbQ
There is too much demand and too little supply. Deferring payment or handing out wads of cash to help pay the bill will only help keep prices high. Get the candles out and tax the energy companies including those who are making a fortune selling electricity produced sustainably ie, without expensive gas
Trouble is the only real way of making substantial cuts is to shut down what little manufacturing and factory capacity we have left. Which in turn tightens the screw on supply issues across many sectors and contributes to inflation, as well as potentially unemployment.
Uk housing is woefully energy inefficient compared to what is achieved in Germany, Netherlands and Scandinavia. You can blame the coalition for scrapping in 2010 many of the good schemes they inherited. But the point that higher energy costs should drive individuals and government to prioritise better buildings to reduce energy costs is a valid one. But it should not take a crisisyo make the point. my joint energy monthly payments are currently 260% more than August 2021. Without intervention that would be 500%. bpBasically it looks like the government are going to introduce a “student loan” scheme by capping bills - the money going to energy companies to pay the higher wholesale prices from government bonds, and the consumer paying it back through their bills over 20 years. Looks a bit ov a blunt instrument, but probably quick to implement. Businesses will need help. From Railwayswith their expected £1 billion increase in electricity prices to run the trains, to your suburban barbers. i wonder if Watfords cautious transfer policy has been driven partly by Gino checking the meters every month.
It’s a terrible scheme really. Businesses, in a virtual monopoly, making extraordinary profits out of a crisis, allowed to keep them? While the public goes into huge debt for decades (with the obvious knock ons to public services), just to keep warm. Classic in it for themselves politics.
It’s a good idea. What 5 ways are you going to reduce your own energy consumption and how much usage will it cut?
I'm a plumber's son: Turn your heating thermostat down by 1 oC and buy jumper. If you have rad stats turn them down - especially in bedrooms which you normally occupy under a duvet and/or blankets. Look at your CH/HW programmer. For CH you can switch it off earlier - maybe an hour before your normal bedtime and keep internal doors closed to keep heat 'in' and cold 'out'. For HW can you turn it down a notch on the boiler. If you've got a 'tank' system: is the cylinder well-lagged? The big energy costs are getting the water hot not keeping it hot - my Dad always used to maintain (and it, sort of makes sense) to keep your cylinder element on as it's much easier to heat warm water than cold (I've never been brave enough to do this). Minimise tumble drier use (clothes horses are cheap and work best on the upstairs landing) and turn 'washers' (clothes, modern detergents still work well at 30 oC, and dish) to eco settings. I really can't answer your second question but I think that point no. 1 will have the biggest effect in usage.
If only some brave citizens had done more to publicise the need and protest to the government for more insulation in Britain
I haven't really thought about it but off the top of my head I might turn off radiators in the rooms that don't get much use, get the chimney swept and light a fire, add some draught excluders around doors, turn lights off when not in a room, use my diesel guzzling, air polluting old banger less. No idea what that'll save but these are steps that everyone can take and collectively I'm sure it would make a difference
Surely you’d use it more? If we could just kick global warming up a couple more notches, nobody will need to heat their homes. Science innit.
Did any of you know that gas is being exported from this country? Why is it being allowed to be exported when we are in the middle of this crisis? The crisis wouldnt exist for us if the Government did the right thing, if they are blaming Putins war then why arent they defending us from it?
Firstly, we don't have the storage capacity anymore after the Tory government decided it was no longer going to maintain the facilities. Michael Fallon boasted how it would save £750m per year. This prophetic article from September last year questioned that decision and asked what it would mean for the UK in the event of a fuel crisis: https://www.theguardian.com/busines...eft-britain-exposed-to-winter-gas-price-hikes Second, these resources are now owned by private companies. There is huge demand and very limited supply. Of course they are now going to sell to the highest bidders, wherever they are in the world. That is why the the idea that fracking will somehow miraculously save us doesn't make sense. It would boast the national coffers but only because the gas it produces would be sold on the world market by private companies who would pay tax. The environmental impact is a whole bigger issue on top of that.
Don’t have open fires please. Just makes the nearby area smell of acrid smoke. You may as well simply lob your poo out of the window and wee in the local swimming baths. Most wood burners are pretty bad too, whatever people like to claim.
As @sydney_horn said 'we' abandoned 'static' storage ("...why is that valuable asset just sitting there?") for the dynamic 'security' of the market place (done at a time when there was a plentiful world-wide supply of gas). Something that might have missed your notice is that we're not called 'oil producing nations' anymore but 'hydrocarbon trading nations'. All the producers trade (the majority is virtual) because the 'future' price is very different to the 'spot' price.
Yes – one reason is that we have very little storage capacity because it has all been sold off. Part of the anti-EU rhetoric is that GeRMaNy is totally reliant on Russian gas = bad, but what no one also points out as equally relevant is that Britain has almost no meaningful storage facilities when compared to Germany, France and even Italy. So, it's flogged to other countries rather than used by British consumers because there's nowhere to store stockpiles we need to get through the winter. Ah, apologies – just seen others have made a similar point.
Regarding machine-based exploitation of naturally available sources of energy (wind, wave and hydro) the machines have to be manufactured which involves significant amounts of energy. Wave and wind machines are maintenance intensive, have limited working life, and all require lubrication. I recently saw an assessment of the amount of oil required annually to lubricate the existing number of wind turbines. It amounts to many millions of litres. The writer concluded by asking "where is all this oil going to come from - the Oil Fairy?"
We do have the 'dry' offshore gas wells. 'Industry' maintained that they 'could be' utillised as 'storage sites' - it had nothing to do with the immense cost of removal of infrastructure and renovation of the sites
It's not an objection it's a statement of fact. Look again at the author's point about 'oil' (or more correctly lubricants). They are either obtained directly from the processing from the hydrocarbon feed-stocks (which requires vast amounts of energy) or synthesised from the products of the processing of hydrogen feed-stocks (which requires vast amounts of energy). One of the first things you are taught/study on any engineering or science degree is 'energy' (or more correctly thermodynamics) where the first principles students are taught are that to 'do' anything requires 'energy' and you can't create energy - you merely convert it from one form to another. You won't believe how many students don't get this. My natural community is 'chemists' and we have been screaming for decades that the one thing we shouldn't be doing with our 'hydrocarbon heritage' is burning it.
Lubricants are not burned though and they can be recycled. We can also make them from natural sources, like bio fuels or from other recyclables. Sure, that takes energy, but fortunately we have the potential to get what we need from the energy arriving from the Sun and arising from the wind and tides. Even if we had to make lubricants from fossil fuels for the next few hundred years, that’s no biggie if fossil fuels have been otherwise replaced in most else of what we do. At the moment we of course haven’t replaced fossil fuels and so any extraction or use is problematic. But it’s hardly beyond us to resolve it. It just sounds like yet another of those endless reasons why renewables are bad. But not a reason why they are not better.
Recycling is an extremely energy intensive process, uses vast amounts of water and results in a production of some very nasty waste products. The recycled products (glass, plastics, metal etc) are generally of inferior quality (lesser mechanical durability for instance) to the original source material. You're totally (or willfully I haven't decided) misinterpreting what I'm saying. I'm not saying renewable energy is bad nor that recycling is a waste of time but neither of them are a panacea (as the production processes stand at present) to the problems we are encountering now or will be encountering in the future.
I’m referring to the flippant words of the writer you quote about the ‘oil fairy’. You are right, there are ‘problems’ but this would seem one of the easier ones to get our collective noggins around even if the solutions are large scale and technically challenging. This strikes me of the writer enjoying simply sounding off. I also don’t assume that other approaches are not needed, like less energy use per se, less fetishising growth, the taming of capitalism etc. What we do need are triffids. Very high quality oils. I can imagine under Truss British triffid production would lead the World until we liberated ourselves from restrictive EU regs on triffid fences.
I'm not taking part in this any more as one of my posts got a 'like' from 88's (or the other ****'s - I forget which) 'mini-me'.
