Gas & Electricity

[Alan Harper's Tash]

Lol. You know what’s this place is like, takes them chuffing years just to go from proposal to production. No body wants one on their doorstep for obvious reasons. Hinckley replacement was supposed to be completed by 2023… now 2027 (if you’re lucky).

If you look at the French pretty much all their reactors are on their last legs - no way they are replacing that in time.

It’s a real shame government’s inability the U.K. (of all colours) are so reactive and not proactive.

You‘d hope that the issues were facing this winter would kick start them into action now to stop it ever happening again, but they won’t.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

That’s the story of the whole energy system. Shareholders are interested in maximising profit, but not investing for the future. For years they have sweated assets for as long as possible. The whole shit show stems from the sell offs in the late 80s and insufficient regulation.
I noticed a few people have been saying where can we get the money from. Maybe it’s about time we got the bank bailout money back from 2008, that was around £50bn plus an additional undisclosed amount.

It’s the story of 99% of private businesses in the U.K. No one seems to invest in the future.

 

[xgorton]

To be fair I just think the govt want to kill off a lot of the elderly to reduce the pension bill

Spot on,they also did a job on the elderly in the care homes covid time.

 

[lust overlord]

It’s the story of 99% of private businesses in the U.K. No one seems to invest in the future.

Take the profit today and worry about tomorrow,tomorrow.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

Take the profit today and worry about tomorrow,tomorrow.

Or hope someone buys you out before you need to reinvest.

 

[metalblue]

Spot on,they also did a job on the elderly in the care homes covid time.

It’s simply brilliant the way they got the rest of the world to go along with this dastardly plan though isn’t it?

 

[Kompany Car]

Spot on,they also did a job on the elderly in the care homes covid time.

Well you can understand the heartless Nazi style logic. An aging population, a higher percentage of GDP now been spent on the health sector (believe it or not). Kill off the elderly and recover 7-8% more of GDP.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

 

[metalblue]

It’s a real shame government’s inability the U.K. (of all colours) are so reactive and not proactive.

You‘d hope that the issues were facing this winter would kick start them into action now to stop it ever happening again, but they won’t.

I think we will see a doubling down on renewables rather than nuclear but if anything it should focus our minds.

We’ve gotten so used to cheap everything including power. Back in the 80s electricity was equivalent of £1.70 KWh at today’s prices, we are forecast to be paying £0.50 KWh by the end of this year with these rapid rises. We’ve not had to take care of our energy use - maybe this will be good for the planet as we all start to think about our consumption.

 

[inbetween]

Around 50% of our gas is produced domestically and another 45% is imported from non-Russian sources so our exposure to Russian gas is very limited. Whilst the government can't do much about the price of imported gas which will be at the market rate, they could certainly do something about the gas produced domestically by one of several means. For example they could use the extra tax raked in from the producers, apply a windfall tax or if the companies don't play ball threaten to nationalise them. There will be pros and cons for each possible solution but the government seems to be of the mind that they can get away with just throwing a few scraps at the consumers and largely leave the producers alone. We would be in a much worse position if we imported nearly all our gas like quite a few other countries, however from a consumer perspective we might as well be in that position because the positives of having our own source for 50% of our gas appears to benefit the producers and government only.

Our exposure to Russian gas is limited indeed but the wholesale gas market is not aligned to Russia alone, it's a global market and the ripples from reductions in Russian supply are felt everywhere. Countries that do rely on Russia can't rely on that supply anymore and so they'll soon be competing with us for gas... This drives up prices and the second risk coming over the winter is there might not be enough gas. It's a supply crisis and not a profit making crisis, the energy companies have always made a profit, it's nothing new.

A windfall tax is pointless. It might make us feel better that we're hitting these companies but it won't change expensive energy bills as it'll either get passed on or the money will be wasted. You could nationalise but how will you subsidise energy bills against the fact that wholesale gas costs 400% more than before? Is the taxpayer going to front the entirety of that risk forever?

Let's not forget to keep in touch with reality too, we are recovering from the biggest economic shock in history where a huge chunk of the country was being paid taxpayers money to not work. Just 18 months later we are now in the middle of a proxy war with one of the worlds largest economies and the second largest gas producer. It really is the perfect storm and I just don't understand the ignorance to the bigger picture.

As I keep banging on about on this thread, my biggest problem at least politically in all of this is why are these two tory fools not proposing building 5-10 nuclear powerplants to secure our energy supply?