Is it time to Nationalise the energy industry?

[salfordbluetrue]

The answer is no when it comes to power, you have to look at it back to front, who uses it and why? the Government with a flick of a pen can change it, ban house building that is not 100% future power efficient, ban house sales or rentals that do not improve power efficiency, it costs around £ 10,000 to do this with solar panels, and the last time i looked house prices average was £ 230,000, it is a lot of money but it does put money back into poor peoples pocket without them paying tax or inflated prices.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

Surely we should be using the profits as a nation to cut household bills rather than line pockets of shareholders.

The promise of privatisation was to create competition and lower bills, the reality is a cartel and price fixing. That holds true for any privatised industry.

 

[BlueRockape]

Looking at fuel prices today and the Russians haven't kicked off yet....Yes

 

[jaseirai]

The promise of privatisation was to create competition and lower bills, the reality is a cartel and price fixing. That holds true for any privatised industry.

Food production and distribution should be nationalised too.
Being on a waiting list to eat will solve the obesity crisis and cut NHS delays.

 

[roypaulknewmyfather]

The French government limit the amount of profit that is made by the energy supplier (predominantly EDF) to a certain level, over that figure the money is used to maintain/improve the network and keep the bills down. In the current energy crisis yes, energy costs to the consumer are going up, but by 4% only. But then again, why should this country look at what happens over the channel? To turn our backs was what leaving those nasty Europeans was all about. Wasn't it?
As for re nationalisation of utilities, the socialist Labour manifesto for the last election contained plans to do that, but people didn't want that horrible Mr Corbyn and his "Marxist" ideas anywhere near power. Thats why the Blairite Labour opposition don't want anything to do with it, have to get away from socialist ideology. Better with Boris, he'll look after the country!

 

[inbetween]

I'm not sure if nationalisation is the answer as it would cost an eye-watering amount to nationalise. Some of these companies on their own are worth tens of billions of £. Profit is also not a big side of the equation and I think most profit margins are around 2-3% so if we eliminated profit entirely then your bills would go down by 2-3%. You'd still pay the wholesale gas price increase though (because that's what it costs) and that's still nearly 300% up on last year.

The only way you can solve this is to produce the gas yourself but there is currently zero infrastructure to do it. Nationalising British Gas will not change the simple fact that British Gas needs to buy gas from somewhere to get it to your house. If that gas is expensive then it doesn't matter if British Gas make a profit or not.

Another major reason for the failure is the race to green energy in our energy mix. We have stopped burning cheap coal and now renewables or imported energy fills the gap. The problem is it's not always windy, solar is a total waste of time at this time of year and imported energy is very expensive. We also don't have many nuclear powerplants and so the only way to keep the electric on is to burn what is now very expensive gas....

For me we should forget gas and focus on electric generation because we soon won't need gas as most gas boilers will eventually be phased out. Renewables like wind don't scale well enough so that means we have to start building new nuclear powerplants right this second now.

Have a look at the below, 30% of our electricity is today coming from burning gas, gas that's 300% more expensive than last year. If it wasn't for the fact that petrol is going up too then I definitely wouldn't bother buying an electric car anytime soon!

National Grid: Live

Shows the live status of Great Britain’s electric power transmission network

grid.iamkate.com