Will the energy regulator’s plan make a difference?

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I can see your point, John, and it is valid in most cases I expect. But there are some electricity consumers for whom a daily standing charge and a relatively low unit price is a better deal. I think people should have the choice, and, as I said in a previous comment, there should be much more openness about the unit prices and standing charges available from different companies for a pre-payment tariff. I doubt if standing charges are ever a good idea on a gas supply account because of the long period each year when very little gas is consumed.

Just change to Utilita – they don’ t have standing charges on their prepayment tariff.

They DO have TWO tariff rates, so the cost per unit decreases after a certain threshold, but that’s still a lot nice than having a standing charge.

What is LNG?

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Most of the shareholders of the big energy companies are pension funds, life assurance companies, and investment funds. If you have an occupational or private pension you will be hoping for the best yields.

You’re right about the poor subsidising the well-off (see below). But nationalisation as the solution? Implausible.

Rant alert! (I hope a respectful rant is not contrary to ‘Which’ policy).

The problem is ‘renewable’ energy. It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged that we must change over to renewable energy, See for example Stephen Hawking’s outburst recently on the BBC , that we are (or may be?) reaching a tipping point which would result in the Earth becoming as hot as Venus (hundreds of degrees C.) Incredible (to some) is that the BBC should broadcast such tosh. Suppose (bear with me a moment!) he’d said the opposite – that he didn’t regard the current rate of warming as particularly dangerous. Immediately critics would have said – what do you know about it, you’re not a ‘climate scientist’ so you’re not qualified to judge! A few other scientists – certainly not as distinguished as Hawking, but not so far off – Nobel prize winners – some more qualified as ‘climate scientists’ than Hawking – have criticised the disaster scenario, and been told pretty well exactly this.

I do not challenge the agreed science (though I reserve the right to point out what it is – the consensus is less extensive than you may assume). Challenging any claim about the ‘agreed science’ just gets me called a denier (poor me!). I do however say that even if you accept that the science (as I do) , and believe (as I don’t) that it shows that we are in real danger, and must do something (or as an absolute minimum be in a position to claim that we are doing something that might possibly stop catastrophe), it is still possible to question the policy we adopt in response. It should also be possible to query the economic analysis – a consensus (if there is one) among economists is hardly as impressive as one among physical scientists.

So, what about the policy? Take UK policy as an example. This is based on two propositions, which are not clearly compatible. First, that ‘renewable energy’ has become, is becoming or already has become cheaper than that from fossil fuels. Secondly, that in spite of this, we must continue to subsidise it (indefinitely?). This is done – in the UK – by loading this ‘essential’ subsidy onto the cost of electricity. The result (you might suppose) would be to discourage industry from investing in UK, so sending jobs to less scrupulous locations abroad, perhaps increasing emissions rather than reducing them. Whether that is true or not (it is claimed there is little or no evidence to support this plausible idea) it is certainly true that loading this subsidy onto domestic electricity prices is a regressive tax on the poorest. Every winter more of the poorest turn off their heating because they can’t afford it. And in consequence more die.

So, suppose that you are right in thinking that we must continue to subsidise renewable energy (although it is cheaper than fossil fuel) – shouldn’t this be done out of general taxation, rather than a regressive tax that hits the poorest hardest? State the alternative preferred, with reasons for your choice! (Rant ends).

It is easily forgotten that the privatisation of the UK utilities etc was hugely popular at the time and it precipitated the demutualisation of building societies and other mutual organisations. We rue the day now and it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.

Energy costs actually fell in real terms following privatisation. It is anybody’s guess where they would have been now if they had remained under state control.

And before British Telecom was privatised you had to beg for a landline, have the socket in the hallway, and couldn’t buy your own telephone instrument.

Nationalisation wasn’t all good.

If I’m not mistaken, phone sockets arrived before privatisation.

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A trip down memory lane. 🙂 You can edit this if the authors have it wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_telephone_socket

I wonder if those of us who supported privatisation would have done so if we had realised that part of it would fall in to the hands of other countries so quickly. It’s not a bad idea for countries to try to be self-sufficient in food and energy production. An advantage of coming out of Europe should be the opportunity to recover control of our energy industry but I don’t have any great confidence that this will happen.

I know that plug-in phone sockets replaced hard-wired junction boxes for new installations before the privatisation of British Telecom but my point was that the public corporation would only put them in the hallway. At least it soon became possible to buy doublers and extension sets so you could have your phone wherever you wanted it. I went mad and had three phones in a one-bedroom flat! – one blue trim phone, plus green, and cream, standard phones to suit the decor.

I assumed Duncan had written that Wikipedia piece, Wavechange. It has his hallmark on it.

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Of coarse. Wikipedia comes in for a lot of criticism but factual errors but anyone can correct and update articles. I wonder how many users of Which? Convo do this.

There are one or two Wikipedia pages that I keep an eye on and update from time to time. They cover specialist topics closely related to my professional engineering knowledge and interests. It is nice to be able to share that knowledge in a public space.

Because anyone can change anything on a Wikipedia page, it is important to watch out for “opinions” that are presented as “facts”.

Good checks are to see whether or not references have been provided to cite suitable supporting evidence and, if so, whether or not the references are from reputable sources.

I agree, Derek. Specialist subjects are often well covered in Wikipedia because only those who understand the subject are likely to contribute. In biochemistry and microbiology there are many Wikipedia articles that are very good and cite papers and reviews in peer reviewed articles.

Hmmm. I think we are supposed to be discussing energy regulators. As a sat nav says – turn around when possible. 🙂

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Tim,

Thanks for your long, detailed and well laid out post.

My opinion is that we should not burden energy prices with elements that will act as regressive taxes on the poor.

As regards climate change, I am content that it is happening, but I remain more sceptical as to whether or not human activity is accelerating its rate of change.

Nonetheless, I think it is better to be safe than sorry. So, if a “low carbon economy” may help to limit the extent and rate of climate change, I think we should pursue that.

In the early 1980s, I worked on renewable energy research, under the UK Government programme started in response to the 1976 oil crisis. Global warming was effectively unheard of then, but we were concerned about energy security, environment pollution (“acid rain”) and other shortcomings of using coal, oil and gas for electricity production.

At that time, our nationalised generating company, CEGB, was still building new nuclear power stations and advocated their usage as the lowest cost option for “always on” (baseload) power.

Subject to the provision of appropriate means to deal with such things as striking miners and unreliable/unpredictable foreign suppliers, coal, oil and gas were regarded as appropriate for load following, so renewables were set the tough target of competing with the marginal costs of coal generation.

It never has been, and it probably never will be, possible to balance demand and supply of electricity totally and correctly, so there is always an inbuilt inefficiency. However, it is possible to make intelligent forecasts of requirements and the resources available so it need not be entirely haphazard. Managing the balance is actually helped by the diverse types of generation available. Judgments need to be made about which resources to deploy for optimum economy and reliability of supply. It is inescapable that there has to be sufficient conventional generating capacity to handle 100% demand assuming there is no contribution from renewables, but this is not necessarily a major problem. If generating capacity is idle it is not wearing out so that prolongs its life. Wind turbines can be disengaged if their potential output is not required whereas the sun is either shining or it is not – but even the hours of darkness between dusk and dawn are totally predictable. For my liking, solar power is not efficient or reliable enough in this country to justify the huge investment that has been made in it but the economics have been so badly distorted that it is not surprising. It makes a useful contribution from time to time. The good thing about the wind is that there is usually plenty of it when the heating is on and people are indoors cooking and washing and using equipment. There should be a control mechanism so that air-conditioning plant can only run when the grid is receiving a certain proportion of solar power. Not practical, I know, but possibly worth thinking about. I think harnessing wave power should have taken priority over solar power except for water heating where raising the temperature of the water intake to a heating system even by a few degrees saves a considerable amount of energy, especially where an electric immersion heater is the sole heat source.

@Lauren, thanks.

For those that want them, zero standing charge tariffs are already available, e.g. from Ebico (“Ebico Zero”) and Utilita.

People who have second homes or holiday lets which are for short seasons don’t need standing charges so Ebico and Utilita are a good choice, especially since less electricity is used in the summer months so the higher unit price is less of an issue.

We know that a lot of householders are paying too much for their energy because cheaper tariffs are available and not being taken up. Some drivers pay too much for their petrol, and many of us pay too much for our house insurance, and other services or products. Are there many people being overcharged for their energy, though? Outside of those who pay in advance on a pre-pay tariff I doubt it.

I answered YES because even though we are not on an SVT we are regularly informed by our supplier of the advantages of a fixed-price tariff. These polls are pointless and their data is open to misuse.

digit.fyi/scottish-wind-power-turbines/

Why would they scrap it? They are still erecting hundreds of turbines off the east coast of England with hundreds more on the way. We need them in various locations to catch whatever wind is available.

ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb

Thanks, Derek. It’s good to see the full picture. From that data it would appear that wind and solar are increasing their share of energy supply but still represent less than 10% of Great Britain’s electricity requirement. Their growth, together with bioenergy and imports, is virtually matching coal’s decline, other sources remaining broadly constant. There’s a long way to go yet and we have barely started ramping up electricity demand for personal transport.

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Thank you, Duncan. I should be surprised if the Planning Inspector does not uphold the appeal, especially since the authority went against the recommendation of its own Panning Officer.

National Planning Policy Guidance has moved on a lot since 1993 and the application will be judged against the new Guidance. It would be unusual and possibly unreasonable not to allow an extension of a planning use that was not giving rise to serious practical objections.

Wind turbines can be intrusive in landscape terms and can be noisy in some situations but the Cumbria authorities must have considered those factors initially when first approving the development. Presumably the site is not in or adjacent to an area of outstanding natural beauty or within the Lake District National Park.

Unless there have been any changes in impact, the turbines are a fairly benign use of the countryside and don’t give rise to much in the way of other environmental concerns such as traffic or pollution.

There are twelve turbines at Kirkby Moor and I think they look quite good. They are not particularly tall and are well separated in the landscape. I certainly think the wind farm looks better than the nearby slate and mineral workings which have completely ruined the landscape.

I can understand the objectors’ case because Cunbria has always had to host a number of industrial, nuclear and extractive activities that historically have spoiled the countryside but this site does not seem to be in a particularly sensitive location and it looks like a good place to site a wind farm.