Sunday
Dec012013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The new friends of the people
Dec 1, 2013 Energy: grid 
David Rose has the must-read article this morning, trying to work out just how much the greens - the new friends of the people - are going to cost us at the end of the day.
Yes, £50 may be being cut from bills. But astonishingly, there’s still another £300 billion of projected increases from green commitments to go.
They make Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze bills meaningless. For this, we must thank primarily his own biggest legislative achievement – the passage, when he was Energy Secretary, of the 2008 Climate Change Act.
Reader Comments (75)
To repeat a comment some time ago by, I think, our host:
The double whammy of increased energy bills by business will be passed on to consumers in increased prices.
Radical Rodent
This is what carbon trading is - a multi trillion dollar banking scam.
http://www.scrapthetrade.com/intro
I have no interest in left / right politics. I was an anti socialist anarchist. I admit I was over 30 when I met my first right wing person !
Presumably Downton Abbey was filmed under candle light using hand cranked cine cameras:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2516449/Downton-Abbeys-Jim-Carter-dresses-Father-Christmas-global-warming-advert.html
I am reliably informed that there are a goodly number of hand crankers involved in Downton Abbey, although they are more fondly referred to as luv-vies.
eSmiffy
No Radical Rodent has it wrong there, which is quite unusual - of course it is a Sunday.
No you are not totally left-wing, just a class warrior I seem to remember?
On topic - most carbon trading is dead or dying anyway isn't it?
@mike Jackson wrote that post re subsidies in a rush, I totally agree with you was the same point I was attempting to make :)
retireddave, eSmiff: apologies. Having read the original post, I now know that I misunderstood by not bothering with the link. It is Sunday, and I was in a hurry for a family outing (though only Obstreperous, Vociferous, Bellicose, Irascible and Belligerent turned up; the rest of the siblings from the litter had other engagements. Mother, Mother and Petri Dish kept the peace, as usual).
Silly me.
I like the implication that I might have been right at some time past!
Lord Lawson's meeting with the Royal Society of "Muppets" was interesting...it appears they could not face up to empirical data...all they wanted to talk about was climate model predictions.
Sums it all up...wonder where the tipping point will be when politicians realise what they have done?
All Cameron has to do is recant...highlight the real data and let Ed and Nick stew...wonder what the BBC will do then?
That of course will depend on Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5....plus the Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Times et al.
If the dominos start to collapse it could be highly entertaining...if Cameron has any savvy he will start the process sooner rather than later.
Maggie would be having a field day by now...she was a believer...watched...waited...and changed her mind.
Milliband would have to be replaced before the next election.
Having disposed of Ed it would then be the Greens...who would be portrayed as "Commies".
@james griffin
Your post presupposes that the UK has any say over its substantive climate and energy policies.
It doesn't: hence the Coalition fiddling around the edges with green taxes and failing to spell out the reason they can't do anything else.
"If PE were to come out against AGW that would be a major blow."
Hislop would never come out against AGW. He's been suckling on the BBC teat for 23 years, that alone is proof that he's only interested in exposing what BBC approves of.
..Hislop would never come out against AGW. He's been suckling on the BBC teat for 23 years, that alone is proof that he's only interested in exposing what BBC approves of...
Then he (and PE) are going to have an unfortunate time over the next few years. A satirical magazine which cannot say anything about the greatest scandal of modern times is a sorry sight...
In his 2009 book 'The Real Global Warming Disaster', Christopher Booker, who was the first editor of Private Eye and who still has an association with the magazine, in describing the background to his writing the book, says: "In conversation one day with my Private Eye colleague Ian Hislop, I remarked casually how flimsy it seemed was much of the evidence behind the global warming scare, only to receive an almighty put-down to the effect that George Monbiot of the Guardian knew a great deal more about the subject than I did and that I should think twice before daring to challenge such expert authority. When Ian said dismissively that Monbiot had read many more books on global warming that I had, I rather feebly responded that possibly Professor Lindzen, of whom he had never heard, had read even more about it that the great Monbiot."
Hislop is a lost cause, as even his predecessor Richard Ingrams acknowledges.
Smart meters will assist with the problem of fuel poverty in the following way. There is a psychological problem when you receive a monthly or quarterly electricity bill, that it seems huge. It is daunting, impossible to pay.
What is needed is a little fiscal discipline.
Smart meters will be able to text you when your credit drops below say ten pounds(13 hours 12 minutes at current rate of use). To avoid inconvenience please transfer minimum 25 pounds to your account.
I am sure the apps are already written.
Technology taketh away, and technology giveth back.
Way to go?
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/meatworker_diplomacy/
I have a very nice app on my ´phone, from British gas, that just about does that now......but the really big part of smart meters will be the immediate variability of the price/pricing-period.....you will find the price you pay varying dramatically, driven by demand.
Demand Side Planning.
Coming to a meter near you: Soon.
ghf
I hope that that was a humorous comment.
SandyS
Humorous in expression, possibly, but you know it will happen. For your convenience. JohnM's picture of real-time price variations shivers my spine, too. The world is run for the rich folk. Governments look after those who reward them best. At least the threat of revolution is necessary to remind them of their duty, anything less is ignored.
JaceF
Then I owe you an apology but the point is always worth repeating. The extent to which the warm-mongers will twist the facts and "re-interpret" them to suit the narrative needs undermining at every opportunity.
It's nice to see Hislop fessing up to being rabidly pro-Establishment, though unexpected - and not a little disappointing - from the editor of Private Eye.
I suppose this is what a left-wing Establishment looks like; satirical magazines fearlessly mock radical thought.
There is a diffuse illusion in Britain that some quite well-known people are somewhat anti-Establishment. This is completely false...Hislop can survive with PE only insofar as he remains part of the Establishment, with a few crumbles being given to prop up sales.
Likewise when Blair tried to change everything he was quickly absorbed in and by the same Establishment. Just as in every public or private Company, the Boardroom is the only place that counts and you can't enter the Boardroom unless invited. Then you become the Boardroom yourself.
Seeing as how here in East Anglia as I write, there is not even a breath of wind (just been sweeping the leaves in the garden - because the conditions were ideal) I thought it might be useful to see what the current output of the Greater Gabbard wind farm (off the coast of Suffolk) is...
Try as I might - I can see no information whatsoever. Oh - lots of 'lovely' pictures of wind turbines, and support vessels, and Michael Fallon unveiling a plaque back in August - and of course the theoretical capacity figure - but NOTHING about the actual running output.
You woud think, wouldn't you, that if the developers were so proud of their baby, they'd be crowing about how 'efficient' it was...
Incidentally - in amongst the massive table of facts and figures is one entitled: 'Expected life'.... which is the only one which is blank...
Judging from the picture - and the script on the bailiff's 'speech balloon' - the Bedroom Tax is nothing new..!
Dodgy Geezer; thanks for the link - I will have a look at that paper.
As well as the loss of efficiency that comes with load-following - both in fuel cost terms and CO2 - there is also the financial impact on the owners' balance sheets. Clearly they will be under-recovering on their investment which is another significant cost which, ironically, the privatised suppliers may not be able to recover until the new capacity payments kick in - hence the mothballing of gas plants.
There is also the situation of the CCGT plant at Peterhead (and possibly others) where access to the grid has become prohibitively expensive to give priority to wind output. So an almost-new, 1800 MW plant is being run at 400 MW which must be a huge loss to the generating company.
Carbon Trading.....what they actually mean is Carbon Dioxide trading....which makes it sound even funnier. They are trying to stop Climate Change...as if.
Just an observation but what are they trying to create?
They claim it is to stop Global Warming....but we have been cooling for at least 8,000 years since the Holocene Climatic Optimum and no recent warming for at least 15 years.
Whatever the plan is, as and when it gets colder again we will need all the CO2 we can muster as its main job is that of a plant food...and why do they feel that a warm planet is planet in trouble...try global cooling.
In the meantime play to the middle class "trendy left" and tax and kill the poor...and destroy their jobs in the process until none are left for those that follow.
Yes holbrook and trendy left is exactly what I am not.