Bishop Hill A treat in store- Big Energy Week
Oct 15, 2012 Energy: costs Politicians By Today's Moderator.
In advance of Big Energy Saving Week (w/c 22 October), Energy and Climate Change Secretary Edward Davey is writing to all Members of Parliament with advice for their constituents to help them keep energy bills down and their homes warm this winter.
Dear Colleague,
As winter approaches, I am writing to let you know how the Government is helping your constituents reduce their energy bills and keep their homes warm.
The Government cannot control volatile world energy prices, which account for around half the current domestic energy bill, but there are a number of ways it can help consumers to cut their energy bills, including additional support for those on low incomes and the vulnerable....[read on]
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/beswletter/beswletter.aspx
Reader Comments (52)
Perhaps he should invent the Davey Lamp?
More subsidies to enable the companies to ramp up the profits on the rest of us.
Two helpful things he could do would be to cancel stupid ecofascist rentier projects, and encourage shale gas instead.
It's really not that hard.
Since we have never run out of any fossil resource, but have run out (or nearly so) of plenty of "renewable" ones - whale blubber, peat, hardwood, and North Sea cod spring to mind - it should be obvoous to anyone but the greatest buffoon that the only sustainable resources are fossil.
J4R
You obviously have not understood the post-normal meaning of 'sustainable'.
Do keep up.
Just how ignorant and/or disingenuous is Davey?
Anyone seen Davey's letter to the Times today?
Here are a couple of snippets:
"The power sector needs to be decarbonised"
And, this old load of hogwash:
"Nor have I said I want a dash for gas, to reduce gas bills, particularly since an excessive reliance on gas would only serve to perpetuate the vulnerability of householders to volatile gas prices".
Finally the killer blow.......sorry pun not intended.
"At the same time our market reforms will incentivise a diversification of the energy mix, increasing the share of energy produced at home and keeping us on track to meet our binding carbon targets"
Meaning the - Taxpayer will pay for
trashingincentivising the 'energy market' - whatever [carbon floor price].Holy Moses, Davey is insane and we are doomed.
As an aside, have a look at this and realise - how Hollande's green idiocy is undermining one of the most realistic [in the EU] nation's energy resourcing focus.
It's not only in Britain where the EU/UN green agenda - with its green lunacy and advocacy with the corporate backers and bankers are winning the day.
Bizarre.
I got my letter from British Gas today telling me that my gas price is going up 7%.
I was asked to read on for an explanation as to why they impose this unwelcome rise on me. I decided to read on rather than tear the letter into er um a lot of small pieces.
My bill was going up because gas on the international markets is going up in price. The letter did not explain why BG helped persuade the government to continue to sit on Shale Gas.
The letter explained that my bill was going up because our energy grid requires upgrading. The letter did not explain that this was because our government had lost its marbles and could not stop building wind farms.
I did not tear up my letter but later I will burn it to keep warm.
A fun thread some time would be for us to list all the "renewable" resources we have run out of and all the fossil ones we haven't. Every ecofascist I've met has gone absolutely puce when you bring this up.
I forgot to mention elephant ivory above by the way. Not a lot of that around.
Meanwhile, we didn't run out of flint and I don't think we're short of uranium either, are we?
Edward Davey is writing to all Members of Parliament with advice for their constituents to help them keep energy bills down.
Constituents are writing to their Members of Parliament to advise that they can't swallow energy bills anymore without involuntary vomiting because green energy policies make them so sick.
As I understand things car tires are 'carbon neutral' (being sourced from tree sap) therefore I am starting to collect them for incineration and heat generation for my house. Anyone want rid of any?
re: "volatile gas prices"
Sure, why take any chance on lower but "volatile gas prices" when he can simply push energy prices much higher on a permanent basis???
Dear Sheeple,
We don't want to risk any variation ("volatility") in your energy prices so we will simply ensure that you pay far far more, forever and ever.....
Sincerely,
Ed Davey
My understanding is that here in the USA we are paying approximately 60% less (or 40% of your retail price) compared to what UK consumers pay now for natural gas.
I like this kind of "volatility" just fine, thank you. I am aware that our markets may continue to undergo quite a shake-out as current production is not profitable for a lot of companies, but we'll still likely be far below UK/EU natural gas prices for a long long time.
4Rinka
The human race has never run out of any resource.
All our resources are either grown on the surface or mined from within the Earth's crust. The Earth's crust is less than 1% of the Earth's volume and we have explored less than 1% of the Earth's crust which in some places is 70 km thick.
We have no idea what really exists in the mantle or the outer and inner core or whether or not some day we will be able to exploit it. talking about running out of resources is a joke.
The above is factual but the following is speculative.
For those like me, who would like to see the human race survive in the long term and not die out here on Earth; we need to view Earth's resources slightly differently.
As many will be aware, about 99% of all the species that ever lived on this planet are now extinct, they are extinct because of uncontrollable and unpredictable natural events.
At some point all the "natural flora and fauna plus humans" will be wiped out and it could be tomorrow for all we know. Trying to preserve anything is a true fool's errand.
We must develop our economies, improve our technologies and find a way to spread the human race to other planets as a matter of urgency.
The DECC link HTML is dangerously close to cataloguing Ed Davey's announcement under the hierarchy news/bedwetter/bedwetter
One can't help thinking of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. The UK's electricity supply is falling apart and Ed Davey is micro-managing our fuel bills.
As an aside, have a look at this and realise - how Hollande's green idiocy is undermining one of the most realistic [in the EU] nation's energy resourcing focus.
It's not only in Britain where the EU/UN green agenda - with its green lunacy and advocacy with the corporate backers and bankers are winning the day.
Oct 15, 2012 at 6:36 PM | Athelstan
It wasn't Hollande who closed the fracking fields in France.
However, he is doing far greater damage than that. He is closing Nuclear power stations for his greenie beenie friends, raising taxes on revenue to 75%, capital gains 60% and dividends and by doing so is forcing investment in jobs and industry elsewhere.
Someone, and I am prepared to volunteer, needs to explain to Mr Davey, speaking very, very slowly if necessary, that he understands precisely nothing about the energy needs of a modern economy and that, distressing though he may find it, mouthing bien-pensant platitudes about 'binding carbon targets' with like-minded, over-excited know-nothings is a certain way to economic catastrophe.
It beggars belief that anyone so blandly, complacently, vacantly ignorant should have got anywhere near the centre of government.
Give me strength.
Oct 15, 2012 at 6:32 PM | Don Keiller
Dangerously so.
"It beggars belief that anyone so blandly, complacently, vacantly ignorant should have got anywhere near the centre of government."
Quite so agouts.
Davey, in a room full of engineers, able scientists and similarly intelligent people would feel outclassed and a spare part. However, in Westminster he'll be considered a, '
bigbird brain' who fits in quite nicely with his peers.Unfortunately we're being ruled by people in the grip of greenpeaceitis and its related affliction friendsoftheearthism combine these are known colloquially as ecomentalism.
This means that unless the world remain unchanged next year compared to this humans have committed a crime against nature. People suffering from these afflictions will not countenance use of any resources which cannot be replaced in 12 months, so bio-fuels are good shale gas is a hienous crime. Of course people suffering from these conditions also have a symptom known as blinkered vision, so manufacturing solar panels and magnets and producing pollution a long way away is fine, burning coal at home is very bad. There is also the problem of singlemindedness, revealing itself in the inability to consider anything but the year on year unchanging local environment. Sometimes they also suffer from re-introductionitis which involves re-introducing wolves to Scotland or bears to the Pyrenees; not matter what the local opinion thinks. Other symptoms include passing opinions and lobbying using computer models and the only field trips being junkets in exotic locations paid for by someone else.
grossepierre
The policy he is announcing is of course yet another layer of social benefits for the streetwise benefit claimants, in addition to those provided by central government from general, NI, and local council taxation, loaded onto the post- tax residual income of working people, to be incrementally added to energy bills already inflated by the penal 'obligations' inherent in environmental ideology.
The real scam of global warming is that the US government did control world energy prices to protect suburban America. Saudi Arabia is just Texas with slightly different nutters in charge and they had enormous power in OPEC on behalf of their American masters.
The oil companies now have carte blanche.
If I understand this correctly.
The government gives money to startup companies to construct wind farm. It then subsideses the power generated by these wind farms. The price of energy goes up, so the consumer also pays more for the power they buy. And then the government subsides the consumer by giving away more money taxed from who? the consumer? And to top it off, "In Great Britain the Green Deal will let householders pay for a wide range of energy saving home improvements...".
Did I miss anything?
Greg
Only the politicians relations making pots of money out of it all.
grossepierre
My post may not be clear. The consumer already pays four times for the Start-up, Subsidy, Power Bill, and Self Subsidised government handout back to them. So now the government thinks up a fifth way the consumer can pay for what they had:- for "advice and home improvemenets". Wonderful.
e smiff
Isn't it curious that UK would attempt to set the moral tone for the world by self-inflicting wind farms, rather than go prospecting for oil or gas?
Greg
You forgot that we also pay ecofantasist 'decarbonising' outfits like The Carbon Trust to gush out bullshit energy saving "advice" to the plebs, ecomafiosi finance groups like the Green Deal to bankroll their ridiculous "renewable" scams and ecoloon lobby groups like Greenpiss, Fiends of the Earth and the World WildLies Fund to lobby them to do even more of the same but even faster.
And of course the wild ecoagitprop Beeb to tell us how dreadful all this ("Phew wotta scortcha")warming is and pity-the-poor-poleybears-and-coral-reefs. Which we also pay for.
The net result is that money is shaken out of our pockets and arrives in theirs. Meanwhile the economy is in freefall. And industry looks round to identify somewhere that the lunatic ecozombies haven't yet taken over so they can relocate there.
True Martin; and we pay for the research, which fuels the BBC, so the government can give our money to Green pressure groups to force the government to create more .....
Oh God help us.
If the governments would stop interfering with the world energy prices (though guaranteed minimum prices) then maybe it would be less volatile ... if the governments would stop paying ridiculous subsidies to 'unsustainable' new age energy saps the "volatile" energy prices would also be a lot lower.
agout: 'It beggars belief that anyone so blandly, complacently, vacantly ignorant should have got anywhere near the centre of government.'
In the 42 years since I got my PhD I have seen the British Public and Institutions being dumbed down in its knowledge of science and engineering.This is the result of the bowdlerisation of teaching, particularly for Boys, with incorrect science being taught by mostly women.
The CO2-AGW fraud has been part of the post-Imperial self-destruction of society and the vacuous Davey is just incapable of understanding the steps between him putting on the light switch and delivery of that power. To technological ignorami like he and Cameron [who has just completely cocked up negotiations with Salmond], the windmills really do save CO2 when they cannot do so in our grid.
But try telling these people about the maximum possible slew rate of a steam turbine commensurate with a minimum thermodynamic efficiency, or that CO2-AGW is impossible because its IR band is suppressed at the Earth's surface, standard radiation physics.
The only thing Davey will understand is when the lights go out, the sewage stops pumping and he can't catch a static train. I do hope that this winter a friendly central generator will pull a major power station in the depths of winter so his home loses power at a busy time.
AlecM
you can bet your house on one area that won't suffer a power cut (at least in the first wave) will be Westminster.
We mustn't forget that LibDem MPs never thought they'd have anything more important to do than sit on the back-benches and prop up one of the many Westminster bars. The ego trip from being put in charge of something for which they are completely untrained and completely incompetent to perform must be enormous. Mind you, most MPs of the 3 main parties also fit that bill. How many of them have actually done anything in the real world beyond Westminster?
You're right grosspierre. It is those of us out in the sticks who will see the first power cuts. If it happens in London, then all those international companies will abandon the UK with great haste.
Philip: This summer, Merkel sacked her Environment Minister for making the same mistakes Huhne and Davey have made. This followed 900 near fatal grid failures when after Poland put in phase switches at the border to stop German wind surges being dumped to the Polish coal fired grid, the parasitic windmills stopped synchronisation. The minister had compounded the error by closing 8 nuclear plants post Fukushima, assuming the N. Sea windmills would make up the loss.
However he failed to take into account that the Nukes were in Southern Germany and the windmills are in the. er, North, and the grid N-S couldn't take the power. Furthermore, there hadn't been planning permission for power terminals on-shore and the Lander along the Rhine are objecting to the supergrid.
The Germans are now building 16 new coal fired power stations and 13 CCGTs. It was that or lose most industry offshore and 5 million unemployed. As it is, just like Lynemouth here, their aluminium smelters are being closed because of the fake IPCC CO2-AGW claim.
AlecM on Oct 16, 2012 at 7:32 AM
"agout: 'It beggars belief that anyone so blandly, complacently, vacantly ignorant should have got anywhere near the centre of government.' " etc
And why would any science or engineering graduate want to start a career in the energy sector, let alone within the government machine ?
On what basis could decisions be made? Current policies appear to be based on fantasy.
I did really hear the story that a Minister, when told that the 'renewable energy facility' he was inspecting was limited by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, suggested that an Act of Parliament could be introduced into The House to remedy the situation?
Stop stalling on shale gas and start development of liquid fluoride thorium power stations. Stop squandering billions on worse than useless windmills and drop the subsidies. Then start cutting energy costs as a result.
Great, so we can look forward to even more telephone calls about loft insulation next week.
Robert: during the mad Green takeover at the height of the CO2-AGW fraud, about 2004-2005, experienced NGC engineers were replaced by those for whom computer images are more real than reality. The NGC believes its job is to integrate 20% average wind energy, set by the RAE as the practical limit, when that will increase overall CO2 emissions unless we install pump storage.
This must be sufficient to sink a ~5 GW surge of a few minutes. The alternative is to switch out arrays to save the grid. With no pump storage, the NGC plans 11% disconnection by 2020, losing ~30% wind energy, a real CF of ~18%. This totally messes up the economics and you must also have nuclear reactors to pump the water otherwise the 30% pumping loss will dump CO2 to the atmosphere.
Those capable of doing joined up thinking, I'll call them professional engineers, were dumped by the commissars because they would have stopped the master plan. Germany’s experience has apparently sunk into various skulls in DECC and Mackay is doing a professional job despite his political leanings.
Even Davey knows he cannot deliver on the EU demands. An EU Commissioner has realised they have made a mistake. Hedegaard whose part in the Danish Energy Agency windmill fraud is now becoming apparent, appears to be losing out to reality and the political backlash from the failed EU airline tax..
This will only matter when we get a 100-1 winter and the power fails killing 100,000's from cold. Then the sheeple and their 'I-wont-everything-done-for-me' attitudes and the polititions and their 'saving-the-world' egos will have to face up to the real world (You know the real world where your listening to your iPod walking down the street and a police car responding to a t-shirt slogan mounts the pavement and changes your life forever).
15 Oct: Bloomberg: Stefan Nicola: German Renewables Fee Rises 47%, Opening Government Rift
Germany’s power grid operators boosted the surcharge consumers pay for funding renewable energy to a record, triggering a rift between two ministers in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet.
The four grid companies set the fee paid through power bills at 5.28 euro cents (6.8 cents) a kilowatt-hour in 2013, up 47 percent from 3.59 cents now. Economy Minister Philipp Roesler wants to lower a federal electricity tax to help counter the increase, he told reporters today in Berlin. Environment Minister Peter Altmaier wants to offer consumers free advice on saving energy instead...
Merkel’s government is seeking to prevent a voter backlash against raising energy costs before the next general election in the autumn of 2013. Last week, Altmaier set out plans to cap subsidies for wind, biomass and solar power that have surged since 2004 when the government guaranteed above-market prices for electricity generated from clean sources...
The total subsidy next year will amount to about 20.36 billion euros, which is paid for by consumers through their power bills. The fee increase will raise the bill of the average German household with 3,500 kilowatt-hours of consumption by 59 euros a year. That impact was inflated by exemptions for big industrial users and leftover costs from the previous year, the operators said...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/german-renewables-surcharge-rises-47-opening-government-rift.html
Shevva: the recent OFGEM report predicted power cuts on a 1 in 12 risk from 2015. Edinburgh is already having regular outages because of the interaction between the windmills and Longannet power station.
Funny the Davey letter should be published now, I have one from my MP received a few days before Centrica raised the price, saying almost identical things. He added that if we do as we are told, ie ration our energy usage, we would have lower bills.....just another lie. I do not think we are in a state of war at present, it could change, so what right has this hodge podge government to ration one of the vital needs of our society? Incidently my MP is of the same stamp as Davey, brain dead as are all the limp-dims. They all think the laws of physics do not apply anymore.
The first part of this plan is probably to send a select few thousand one-way to the moon almost immediately?
16 Oct: WaPo: Charles Lane: Liberals’ green-energy contradictions
Al Gore is about 50 times richer than he was when he left the vice presidency in 2001. According to an Oct. 11 report by The Post’s Carol D. Leonnig, Gore accumulated a Romneyesque $100 million partly through investing in alternative-energy firms subsidized by the Obama administration.
Two days after that story ran, Mitt Romney proclaimed at a rally in Ohio’s Appalachian coal country: “We have a lot of coal; we are going to use it. We are going to keep those jobs.” Thousands cheered…
As the Democrats become more committed to, and defined by, a green agenda, and as they become dependent on money from high-tech venture capitalists and their lobbyists, it becomes harder to describe them as a party for the little guy — or liberalism as a philosophy of distributive justice.
Gore’s sanctimony doesn’t help. The erstwhile Tennessee populist bristles at any suggestion that his climate crusade is about money. And, no doubt, he cared about the planet before he got rich. Still, his investments, including in such flops as Fisker, the maker of $100,000 plug-in hybrid cars, create a patent conflict of interest. This hurts his credibility — if not about climate change per se, then certainly about the particular solutions he advocates…
Green energy is not cost-competitive with traditional energy and won’t be for years. So it can’t work without either taxpayer subsidies, much of which accrue to “entrepreneurs” such as Gore, or higher prices for fossil energy — the brunt of which is borne by people of modest means…
For a sense of where this may lead, look at Germany, whose crash program to replace nuclear power with wind and solar is boosting electricity rates. Der Spiegel reports that 200,000 long-term unemployed lost power in 2011 because they couldn’t pay their electric bills…
Small wonder that the United Mine Workers of America — a core Democratic constituency if there ever were one — has refused to endorse Obama in 2012 as it did in 2008. The union hasn’t backed Romney, but he is campaigning hard for rank-and-file votes. That a private-equity baron is getting a hearing in the coal fields should give liberals pause…
Meanwhile, Gore and his partners carry on rent-seeking…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-lane-liberals-green-energy-contradictions/2012/10/15/8c251ba2-16e6-11e2-8792-cf5305eddf60_story.html?hpid=z3
AlecM
you wouldn't be the first person regarded as an eccentric with a bee in your bonnet to be proved correct in the end. Experts aren't all they're cracked up to be.
"It beggars belief that anyone so blandly, complacently, vacantly ignorant should have got anywhere near the centre of government." - agouts, above
Agouts, being blandly, complacently, vacantly ignorant is a prerequisite for getting into government these days. The more b., c.,and v. ignorant you are, the better you do in it. Had you not noticed?
grossepiere: the problem experts have with me is that I ams so innovative, and self-confident from that proven success, I take great pleasure in being an iconoclast.
It's taken 2 1/2 years to destroy the climate science grant machine. It started in April 2010 when I saw Sagans's aerosol optical physics used by Hansen to claim 'global dimming' was hide CO2-AGW was wrong.
I have just finalised my argument proving GHG atmospheric thermal emission turns off that band emission from the earth's surface so here can be no GHG-AGW. All along the Trenberth-Hansen scam was the claim of black body emission so they didn't have to answer the emission questions. And the argument is ridiculously simple too, a very short paper describing the real GHG effect!
grossepierre Oct 16, 2012 at 1:27 PM
The thing about CAGW is that there are no experts because the subject is so big. Should you be arguing with a so-called expert then he/she will have an area of expertise but outside of that you are his/her equal :)
How to half the cost of heating .Kill your wife and kids.
grossepierre Oct 16, 2012 at 1:27 PM
The thing about CAGW is that there are no experts because the subject is so big. Should you be arguing with a so-called expert then he/she will have an area of expertise but outside of that you are his/her equal :)