Beelbeebub

The US seems to be having ago at the "broligarchy"

Many years ago I worked on a major military ship project - the one where we built 2 and mothballed one immediately so the final cost per operational ship was astronomical. The project was going back and forth on basic things like how long the ship was, how many aircraft it would have and even what type. Every time a politician said "we are saving money by using aircraft X" it would kick of a few months of rejigging everything - at vast expense - before a new cost was generated and the politician would say "top much! We'll save money cutting aircraft/changing aircraft type/ditching feature X" and it would all start again. And each round added cost and delay and each delay would add more costs again. The point is the civil servants and private contractors that were doing the work were all very capable. The problem was the uncertainty at the higher levels

Let's not forget that tge initial bidvest are almost always low because the don't (and can't) account for delays and inflation. Even things like changes in taxes can't be accounted for. You may forecast £10bn but by the time it is dalyed by 5 years in various legal challanges that becomes £13bn even if everything goes exactly as planned. Then the spec gets changed - costs and the £1bn. Then somebody halts it all because it now cost £14bn not £10bn. Then when it restarts vat or NI or pension contributions have changed which adds another £1bn on top of the £1bn caused by more inflation. Before you know it, everything has gone exactly as planned on the ground but your £10bn forecast is now £16bn cost and you're 6 years late.

The government would be commissioning and operating various wind and solar farms in exactly the same way that any private company would. These projects are not normally built and operated by the same entity. Just like most people don't actually build their own house, they commission an architect, a builder etc to do that and then take ownership at the end. The prokciple difference is the final owner won't have the shareholder profit motive (and cut) to account for and the government can finance the project much cheaper than any commercial entity and so the interest payments make a smaller cut of the costs. Just addressing HS2, the majority of the issues are due to politicians canceling bits of it to either save money or curry votes in marginal constituencies. There are cost inflations due to environmental issues eg there is alot more tunnelling than would be ideal and there was alot more environmental remidiation that would strictly be required. The tracl gauge is the same as normal trains but the loading gauge is bigger. This makes perfect sense as the standard uk loading gauge is really too small, being set by victorian infrastructure. If you are building a new line it makes sense to make the loading gauge a more more modern size (bigger) as you are building the infrastructure. Of course this all comes a bit unstuck when some brightspark politician cancels a section and required the trains to run on old track "to save money" - and then spends more money modifying the old track to fit the wider gauge. We also then piss money away having bought up land that we aren't going to use anymore. If we had built (do build) HS2 as originally intended without various cancellations and back and forth it would have still been over the original budget (don't forget the orogonal budget doesn't account for inflation losses due to delays) but we would have had a major boost to the rail capacity up and down the country.

I did try to warn him not to meddle but there we go. One.tenamt did pay a flat rate, but they worked out it was still cheaper than being metered and left alone. This chap couldn't get his head around the idea that paying only the sanding charge was a brilliant deal. He fixated on "why should I pay a standing charge when I don't use any gas!" as we stood in his 20C flat boiler rumbling away.

OK a bit off topic but.... We have a tenant in a flat. The gas meter on the flat has been broken for about 10 years. It doesn't move. Every time a tenant leaves I have informed the energy Co, that the meter is broken and needs fixing. I tell the incoming tenant to inform the energy Co the same. Without fail the energy Co does nothing. An engineer came out once to replace, said he couldn't because of the location and left. So for 10 years the tenants in this flat have been getting free gas (it has a combi) And each month they give the meter readings and pay the standing charge and zero units. Anyway, the current tenant has got into an argument with Octopus because his electric bill has gone up from £50 a month to £60 and also becaue he has to pay the standing charge for the gas "even though I don't use any". I did gently mention to him that £70 a month for gas and electric was a bloody steal, but he properly had the bit between his teeth and has demanded they change the gas meter. God know why. But there you go. I suspect his bills will become the more usual £100+ a month and he'll be moaning again. <face palm>

Hopefully the 2nd point helps with that. Well it will if we move to hearing our homes in an efficient and low carbon manner. If we just cut the price of gas to "help the poor", it won't.

Exactly. Listed stuff is also in the same boat, despite often sporting additions and modifications from various time periods. It seems we must now do no more! At some point we.nees to decide what is more important - victorian sash windows with 3mm glass or being warm and draft proof? I would argue the former is of value to people who don't live or own the property whilst the latter is more important to the occupants.

We've got 5 or 6 flats on those type. The main issue is they leak heat too much. Quite alot comes out when the occupant is out. From a maintance perspective it's great as the tenant can't turn the heating off during the day and let the flat cool too much (big cause of damp issues). But then they do seem to run out of puff at the end of the day, especially at the moment with cold evenings. But nobody is happy with them. We tried some of the new "smart" ones but they were a nightmare from a user perspective. Not easily controllable. Am toying with swapping to a 3 way multiple split. Quote was around £5k although it will probably have gone up by now. Main stumbling block is the planning/paperwork involved as we re in a conservation area.

But domestic gas is also kept artificially cheap. First you have all the subsidies for fossil fuel companies. Then gas used for generation (which then sets all the electricity unit prices) is carbon taxed, but gas for homes is not. You are right that raising any energy prove will hit the poorest most and thwt should be avoided as much as possible. But that doesn't mean we should do nothing And yes, that might extend to paying for people to have their heating system upgraded so it costs them less to run. As I pointed out before, switching any direct electric house to an a2a system will cut the bills by 2/3. If the house is on e7 then your cost drop would be less but still a saving *and* you wouldn't have the crappy storage heaters going cold in the evening forcing them to use extra expensive portable heaters. Right now, new "HHR" heaters that wouod help. Are about £700-1000 each. So 4 (the likely minimum in a property) is £2-3k. Then you have labour to fit, and if the place is up stairs..... That's gonna cost as you hump the better part of half a ton up and down! Couple that with the wiring needing upgrading in some cases (dual supply) and you coukd easily be knocking on £4-6k to end uk back where you started. Or you could fit an a2a muktisplit for bit much more.

I would contest that. There has been, over the last few decades a deliberate (and to some extent self fulfilling) narrative that government is incompetent and only private enterprise can get things done. Governments can and have carried out big complex projects. Quite often the foundations of private success stories are from government beginnings - the whole bloody Internet and world wide Web upon which many of today's billionaires built their fortunes was a series of public projects. Where thing often come unstuck is when government mixes with private. There are some things that should be private. Shoes, clothes, TVs, your kitchen etc. Things where the market is the best mechanism and governments role is as regulator (eg food standards, consumer rights, employment law etc) There are other things where the public model is better. Generally large natural monoploies with high infrastructure costs. Water supply, transport infrastructure, aire traffic control etc. I would say energy supply and distribution is one of those areas. When you try and mix those areas and shoe horn some sort of market system into something that it doesn't fit you get a bloody mess. Is anyone here going to argue that the privatisation of water and rail has been a success? How about the post office? So what else was privatised in that rush?.... Oh look, energy.... Is that the one shining example of success?

Why would they be non functional? The people "on the ground" would be the same as now. The only difference would be the profit generated would be fed back. If you wanted it could operate exactly the same as the other generators and the profits generated used to reduce the price to the consumer instead of ending up as dividends and bonuses. As for money. - where does the money to build them come from now? Investors, who expect interest in return. Except the rates of interest charged to commercial companies are higher than that charged to governments thus the prices charged have to be higher to include the payback. And the UK would be building long term infrastructure. Dinorwig was government built (the old cegb) and it's still trundling along 40y on providing vital load balancing capacity and will probably carry on for another 40. How many times over has the hoover dam paid for itself? Whenever you build infrastructure it always looks expensive until you look back later and it seems cheap.

The closest I've come is my suggestion the green levies on elec (about 2p) are switched to gas moving the price from around 5p to 7p and elec from around 24 to 22p (ratio 4:1 to 3:1) hardly doubling. The effect on fuel poverty being the principle reason against the idea (though it would help those on elec only heating who are disproportionate representated in the fuel poverty ranks) . The alternative is to simply remove the levy from elec to general taxation which would halve the ratio improvement. Again if you are worried about fuel poverty switching people to efficient HPs will save them money - in the case of those on gas, a little (at current ratio). In the case of elec users a massive amount.

Maybe thr go should buy up renewable power generators and sell the energy to the wholesale market at cost. The final price wouod then be the average of the energy bought via the current wholesale market and the energy provided by the national renewable generator. The cost of operating the renewable would thus be made visible in the auction and there would be incentive for investment (as now) but the total "extra profit" would be lower as thr national generator would be fulfilling some of the demand. Providing energy at competitive rates would be a major economic boon to the UK.

From.... https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/electricity-market It may seem odd that electricity produced with low-cost renewables should cost suppliers (and thus consumers) the same high price as electricity generated by gas-fired power stations. But this is a common feature of competitive auction markets of any kind. The wholesale electricity market could instead be run using a ‘pay as bid’ auction model. In this type of auction, electricity generators would put in bids and be paid the price they bid, rather than the bid of the highest-priced supplier. If low-cost generators submitted bids at their marginal cost, this would lower the average cost in the wholesale market, feeding through to lower prices in the retail market. But there would be no incentive for low-cost generators to bid at their true marginal cost. Instead, they would bid at the price at which they expected the market to clear. If renewable electricity generators were aware that demand was high enough for gas-fired power stations to be required, then they would know they would be able to sell their energy at (or just below) the marginal cost of gas-fired power stations. To prevent this sort of strategic bidding, additional controls on the market would be necessary. Without radically altering the wholesale electricity market, it is difficult to break the link between marginal electricity generation costs (typically from gas) and the prices that consumers pay. But as part of its recently announced review of electricity market arrangements (REMA),[1] the government is considering making the sort of fundamental changes that could break the link. Some options being considered include: * moving to the ‘pay as bid’ auction model – but without additional controls imposed by government this may not lead to particularly large changes in electricity prices * splitting the electricity markets into separate markets for variable power (for example wind and solar) and constant power (such as nuclear) – a more radical option.[2] * the creation of a ‘green power pool’, a government-backed entity that would offer long-term contracts to all low-carbon generators and sell directly to consumers, using exclusive access to cheap green power to deliver lower prices[3]