I think we need nuclear in the background, ready to take the strain if renewables fail/need topping up.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.
I think we need nuclear in the background, ready to take the strain if renewables fail/need topping up.
We should be looking at tidal power, given our weather and coastline, yet we are nowhere near.
As I said, there's not much we can do in the short term about the 50% of gas that we import, which is tied to the wholesale price on world markets. There is something the government can do about the domestically produced fuel, as the government should already be cashing in hugely on the what the gas producers already pay for the rights to extract the gas - and if they're not then they should be. I'm not saying what the most appropriate mechanism is for the government to get the cash but there are various ways it could be done for domestically produced gas.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?
So, EON is German, EDF is The French Government and Scottish Power is owned by the Spanish. There’s a reason these fellers want in on the UK energy market and it’s got nothing to do with altruism and yet our government refuses to get involved. Mind boggling.E.On is a German firm with Europe wide operations. The U.K. retail side will make up a small fraction of those profits. The bulk of the profits will be from their production side.
This would be great logic if only they’d realised when they got their calculator out that that profit didn’t come exclusively from its UK customer base.
Centrica made £1.34B, up from £252M in a year and they don’t do much else.E.On is a German firm with Europe wide operations. The U.K. retail side will make up a small fraction of those profits. The bulk of the profits will be from their production side.