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Jaime Jessop's avatar

Am I correct in saying that although near term wholesale prices of electricity are dominated by gas markets, the underlying long term price of electricity has floated up and up due to the obsession with adding ever more renewables to the grid? We have the highest domestic and industrial electricity prices in Europe (maybe even the Western world) at the moment and most of this long term increase is due to the mad pursuit of 'clean' electricity from wind, solar and other so called 'renewable' sources of energy. So this short term volatility in prices consists of the ups and downs of the gas market superimposed upon the underlying and far more substantial long term increase in electricity prices due to Net Zero.

Producing our own gas in quantity would not necessarily affect the volatile gas market price (UK would have to buy gas at the international market price, even from domestic suppliers), but, crucially, it would make our energy supply a lot more secure and, if we were to store gas as any sensible developed nation should do, we could ensure a buffer against gas price spikes for weeks or months. Instead, our government is intent upon destroying our capacity to exploit our own natural gas reserves, forcing us to rely upon imports and thus making us vulnerable to spot gas prices. Then when this happens, and electricity prices shoot up because of world events, Milibean and the Weird Stalin government use this as the excuse to build more unreliables and thus increase the long term price of electricity whilst reducing further our energy security.

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Philip Beaumont's avatar

They really are pathetic, the lot of them. None of them seem to have a clue about energy, technically or commercially. I'll bet there's not one power systems engineer amongst them. Guido Fawkes listed the 'special advisors' to Milibrain this week, complete zealots, eco-warriors and ideologues, the lot of them. No backgrounds whatsoever in energy or industry.

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