Excellent analysis, David. The abiding mystery in all of this for me is why the ordinary citizen continues to tolerate it. We are long past the stage (surely) when this can all be pinned on the last government, Ukraine, and a dog eating the Energy Minister's homework. To everyone but the most bovine party faithful, this is now patently some blend of incompetence and mendacity. When - and how - do we say: "enough"?
the average citizen has either been brainwashed about the climate change or isn't interested in this or pretty much anything else as long as it doesn't impact them and if it does just give them a bung to keep them onside. Its taken David and few others to continuously take NZ apart to get some traction but we aren't yet at a critical mass where the populous see as a core issue and lambast their representatives enough that the dial shifts. It was starting to come to us but this debacle in the M.East threatens to set us back and leave Milibrain grinning like a Cheshire Cat over his strategy is right. Thing is its seems to have escaped him that his first duty is Energy Security yet he has no interest in that and now we are left wide open after the loss of more refining capacity to getting it elsewhere in the world. That could now come back to bite the UK up the backside if the M.East now smoulders.
What bothers me about the whole unreliables scam is that everything is paid for by the bill payer. The company ramming concrete and steel into the sea bed, damaging ecology pays almost no price and receives a generous return. Where is the liability? Where is the risk?
Yet that's the point, isn't it? If the builder faced the risk and an income wasn't guaranteed then they wouldn't be built as they are the absolute definition of uneconomic.
Bills will only ever rise, and rise horrifically. What's comical is that people are falling back to far less efficient fuel methods - wood burners, coal to stay warm and the state is desperate to ban those. The whole scam is just about control and damned the cost.
As Professor Sowell said : "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
The reality is of course without this ruse there was no way Milibrain was going to get anywhere near the £300 with the policies hes adopted. Reeves probably wasn't happy having to bung DESNZ a sub but she and her advisers were either naive or stupid to never question where the £300 was coming from. Given increasing costs are already baked in for the Capacity, T/D/BUoS charges the only way costs are coming down is if wholesale gas prices fall further which seems unlikely near term given events over weekend. However, the global supply of LNG is building up and renewables are displacing fossil fuels so downward pressure seems reasonable assured over the long term.
'Responding to the latest energy price cap announcement from OFGEM, Andy Mayer, Energy Analyst at the Institute of Economic Affairs said:
“While any reduction in bills is welcome, OFGEM’s political statements around the changes are both negligent of their duty to protect consumers and a disgrace for an independent regulator.
“The bulk of the £200 (10%) saving from a year ago is not real. It’s a transfer of bad climate policy costs from bills to taxes. Hiding the problem, not solving it.
“This means future taxpayers, your children, are now subsidising old wind farms and failed heat pump promotion campaigns, rather than stopping the waste.
“The rest relates to lower wholesale prices which in turn have benefited from a fall in the regional price of natural gas.
“Which OFGEM do not celebrate, rather they claim absurdly that ongoing exposure to gas (which almost always provides cheaper power than the alternatives before carbon taxes), is the greater risk.
“They further bury in the notes the fact that the fall would have been greater were it not for £66 being added to bills by raising network (or grid) costs, which almost entirely relates to the clean power plan.
“This is propaganda not regulation.'
“While the government is may wish to push whatever net zero nonsense helps them sleep at night, OFGEM exists to serve the public, which requires a drier analysis and transparency on the vast and growing bill for this ideological crusade.”
Last time I looked in detail, the losses factor applied in the OFGEM workbooks had increased from 108.5% to over 112% since the start. Not sure if that is due to better metering or a reflection of more energy losses through the system (longer transmission distances, BESS in/out losses etc). A system that now consumes 50% more power in operation than it used to doesn’t seem very efficient. It’s adding cost as power is paid on input and consumers pay on output - the losses inflate the consumer costs. Potential another cost of the changing energy system and the mass addition of renewables.
Interesting and whilst I never considered the consequences of shifting over long distances its obvious. Presumably this will only worsen when the Eastern Green Links are commissioned. Also windfarms are migrating further and further away from the coast so losses across those links before they even inject power into the grid.
£300....£150...£117...across a year these numbers amount to pennies by day. Any figure quoted by Milliband, Reeves et al is suspect because the number is based on a tissue of lies as is clear from the breakdown of costs in this latest Article. £300, as trumpeted by Milliband in the (not so) heady days of 2024, might have sounded 'solid' and 'progress' for the plebs in the great 'cost of living' crisis, but why wasn't he asked what that would mean by the day? What is the big difference to the family budget? Has it/does it, the current alleged reduction, leave us with a warm fuzzy feeling that this government isn't really turning the screws ever tighter?
Very well done David. Of course we all knew that miliband et al were being very economical with the truth or even going as far as omitting important information to make their statements viable. True snake oil salesman tactics if ever there were. Thank goodness we have you to expose the intricate art for us, I for one wouldn't be able to find out or work out the deception, and lay it bare for all to see in plain simple language. Unfortunately every newspaper or TV station news desk only print or tell what they've been told. Real journalism is dead, just like Net Zero. High time miliband admits it!
David, laying the numbers out clearly like this explodes the myth of what lying politicians tell us clearly ie reducing direct wholesale variable energy costs for gas and electricity reducing and fixed extractive network or green costs increasing. Why don’t the media present it this way? Is it because it’s too complicated or they are “in hock” (phrase deliberately copyrighted from A Burnham) to ignoring the true costs of net zero and gaslighting us…
Excellent analysis, David. The abiding mystery in all of this for me is why the ordinary citizen continues to tolerate it. We are long past the stage (surely) when this can all be pinned on the last government, Ukraine, and a dog eating the Energy Minister's homework. To everyone but the most bovine party faithful, this is now patently some blend of incompetence and mendacity. When - and how - do we say: "enough"?
the average citizen has either been brainwashed about the climate change or isn't interested in this or pretty much anything else as long as it doesn't impact them and if it does just give them a bung to keep them onside. Its taken David and few others to continuously take NZ apart to get some traction but we aren't yet at a critical mass where the populous see as a core issue and lambast their representatives enough that the dial shifts. It was starting to come to us but this debacle in the M.East threatens to set us back and leave Milibrain grinning like a Cheshire Cat over his strategy is right. Thing is its seems to have escaped him that his first duty is Energy Security yet he has no interest in that and now we are left wide open after the loss of more refining capacity to getting it elsewhere in the world. That could now come back to bite the UK up the backside if the M.East now smoulders.
What bothers me about the whole unreliables scam is that everything is paid for by the bill payer. The company ramming concrete and steel into the sea bed, damaging ecology pays almost no price and receives a generous return. Where is the liability? Where is the risk?
Yet that's the point, isn't it? If the builder faced the risk and an income wasn't guaranteed then they wouldn't be built as they are the absolute definition of uneconomic.
Bills will only ever rise, and rise horrifically. What's comical is that people are falling back to far less efficient fuel methods - wood burners, coal to stay warm and the state is desperate to ban those. The whole scam is just about control and damned the cost.
As Professor Sowell said : "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
The reality is of course without this ruse there was no way Milibrain was going to get anywhere near the £300 with the policies hes adopted. Reeves probably wasn't happy having to bung DESNZ a sub but she and her advisers were either naive or stupid to never question where the £300 was coming from. Given increasing costs are already baked in for the Capacity, T/D/BUoS charges the only way costs are coming down is if wholesale gas prices fall further which seems unlikely near term given events over weekend. However, the global supply of LNG is building up and renewables are displacing fossil fuels so downward pressure seems reasonable assured over the long term.
'Responding to the latest energy price cap announcement from OFGEM, Andy Mayer, Energy Analyst at the Institute of Economic Affairs said:
“While any reduction in bills is welcome, OFGEM’s political statements around the changes are both negligent of their duty to protect consumers and a disgrace for an independent regulator.
“The bulk of the £200 (10%) saving from a year ago is not real. It’s a transfer of bad climate policy costs from bills to taxes. Hiding the problem, not solving it.
“This means future taxpayers, your children, are now subsidising old wind farms and failed heat pump promotion campaigns, rather than stopping the waste.
“The rest relates to lower wholesale prices which in turn have benefited from a fall in the regional price of natural gas.
“Which OFGEM do not celebrate, rather they claim absurdly that ongoing exposure to gas (which almost always provides cheaper power than the alternatives before carbon taxes), is the greater risk.
“They further bury in the notes the fact that the fall would have been greater were it not for £66 being added to bills by raising network (or grid) costs, which almost entirely relates to the clean power plan.
“This is propaganda not regulation.'
“While the government is may wish to push whatever net zero nonsense helps them sleep at night, OFGEM exists to serve the public, which requires a drier analysis and transparency on the vast and growing bill for this ideological crusade.”
Last time I looked in detail, the losses factor applied in the OFGEM workbooks had increased from 108.5% to over 112% since the start. Not sure if that is due to better metering or a reflection of more energy losses through the system (longer transmission distances, BESS in/out losses etc). A system that now consumes 50% more power in operation than it used to doesn’t seem very efficient. It’s adding cost as power is paid on input and consumers pay on output - the losses inflate the consumer costs. Potential another cost of the changing energy system and the mass addition of renewables.
Interesting and whilst I never considered the consequences of shifting over long distances its obvious. Presumably this will only worsen when the Eastern Green Links are commissioned. Also windfarms are migrating further and further away from the coast so losses across those links before they even inject power into the grid.
Thank you David.
'Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.' - Mark Twain
The latest from the National Emegency Briefings for your daily dose of hysteria and fear. Closing - Prof Mike Berners-Lee (Chair).
''Misinformation has thwarted the climate and nature COPs.''
''We want a RESET.. a WORLD WAR 2 level of leadership.''
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYvtO9tisXQ
£300....£150...£117...across a year these numbers amount to pennies by day. Any figure quoted by Milliband, Reeves et al is suspect because the number is based on a tissue of lies as is clear from the breakdown of costs in this latest Article. £300, as trumpeted by Milliband in the (not so) heady days of 2024, might have sounded 'solid' and 'progress' for the plebs in the great 'cost of living' crisis, but why wasn't he asked what that would mean by the day? What is the big difference to the family budget? Has it/does it, the current alleged reduction, leave us with a warm fuzzy feeling that this government isn't really turning the screws ever tighter?
Very well done David. Of course we all knew that miliband et al were being very economical with the truth or even going as far as omitting important information to make their statements viable. True snake oil salesman tactics if ever there were. Thank goodness we have you to expose the intricate art for us, I for one wouldn't be able to find out or work out the deception, and lay it bare for all to see in plain simple language. Unfortunately every newspaper or TV station news desk only print or tell what they've been told. Real journalism is dead, just like Net Zero. High time miliband admits it!
David, laying the numbers out clearly like this explodes the myth of what lying politicians tell us clearly ie reducing direct wholesale variable energy costs for gas and electricity reducing and fixed extractive network or green costs increasing. Why don’t the media present it this way? Is it because it’s too complicated or they are “in hock” (phrase deliberately copyrighted from A Burnham) to ignoring the true costs of net zero and gaslighting us…