Mad Dictators

[Beelbeebub]

42 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Which is the correct answer. 

 

Assertions that renewables will make electricity cheaper are in fact the nonsense. They "could". But they wont.

 

By your standards asserting "they won't" is just as much nonsense as asserting "they will".

 

The lower cost of producing (even including other costs) renewable electricity offers us a route to lower bills.  But other factors like policy will have a far bigger effect.

 

Consider we could provide electricity and gas at zero cost to the consumer, regardless of the actual cost of generation *if* the government decided to completely subsidise it.  This route has been taken in some countries with energy being massively subsidised.

 

Alternatively we could invent a perpetual motion generator and still have expensive energy if the government decided to stick a punitive tax on it. After all the cost to the government and society of a window in a home is zero but they still managed to tax it to a degree that people removed windows to avoid it.

 

So renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, offer better energy security and lower carbon emissions which could allow us to have cheaper energy (indeed it already does for those of us with solar panels).

[Beelbeebub]

24 minutes ago, Spinny said:

The move planned to reduce electricity prices is a sham. It is simply proposed to pay some of the cost from general taxation so that the cost you APPEAR to be paying goes down on your bill. All it means is you will be paying through increased taxation, and quite possibly through somebody else's increased taxation.

 

I am afraid that almost always whenever governments introduce price controls and subsidy arrangements it is bad news. What it does is to distort the market and behaviours no longer reflect the proper economic cost of things.

 

 

The market is already sorted as the costs of the various free policies are bourne by the cleanest fuel. Ideally they would be bourne by gas and gas would also have a levy to represent the cost of carbon emissions (currently an externality as the public cost of the pollution is not priced in).

 

So distortions are already baked in. 

 

The new changes merely alter the distortions to ones that align with our goals.  Analysis by the climate change committee shows that electrification of transport and heating will save households money Vs staying on ICE vehicles and gas boilers. This becomes more and more the case as that "spark gap" drops from it's recent 4:1 towards and below 3:1

[JohnMo]

12 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

This becomes more and more the case as it's recent 4:1 towards and below 3:1

With a decent tariff and a battery the spark gap is well below that (Cosy fixed) it's at 1.4:1 add in a boiler running at 90% efficiency it 1.3 and that's not taking into account the gas standing charge will is eliminated. So for at least half the year you are on pretty close to 1:1.

[Spinny]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

The new changes merely alter the distortions to ones that align with our goals. 

'your goals', 'the Party's goals', all for the greater good no doubt.

So said every totalitarian government in history.

Shifting energy costs from being paid through the electricity price to being paid from general taxation in order to suppress the price of electricity does not save money, it just transfers it. It is a con job.

[SteamyTea]

I have just been chatting to a mate's partner. They where banging on about Overseas Aid and we need to stop it. If we stopped OA then our Navy would have been ready to send boats to the Gulf. 

I asked them how much our Military Budget was, they had no idea, asked what the OA budget was, again they had no idea. Then they blamed the Boat People, then the Muslims, then the two tier policing, ended up blaming the local council for not sorting out a pothole in their road.

I kept saying that they are reading the wrong newspapers and they need to look up some numbers, rather than spout an opinion.

The response to that was 'listen to me, listen to me'

When it got to the government not allowing for more drilling in the North Sea, I had to say 'you don't keep up with the news do you.'

 

These (expletive deleted) are allowed to vote, and it is not going to be for Bin Face.

 

So rather than spout opinion about a subject, get some data, then come back and state your case. If you don't, you are just spouting opinions, and as this thread has shown, the opinion spouters refuse to find any data, in fact it is worse than that, they expect others to find it, then say the data is wrong.

That is the policy of time wasters and internet trolls.

Edited 17 hours ago by SteamyTea

[Beelbeebub]

10 minutes ago, Spinny said:

'your goals', 'the Party's goals', all for the greater good no doubt.

So said every totalitarian government in history.

Shifting energy costs from being paid through the electricity price to being paid from general taxation in order to suppress the price of electricity does not save money, it just transfers it. It is a con job.

Every government has goals. 

 

Up until very recently all major parties had the goal of net zero by 2050 and as recently as 2024 was broadly supported by the majority of the public. It's only started dropping because of a sustained campaign by politicans who are trying to turn this into a culture war issue alongside Brexit, trans rights, vaccines etc (go check the daily sceptics stance on those issues)

 

You are absolutely right that shifting costs about from consumers to tax payers does not directly save money over the entire system.

 

The only thing that does save money is to have an increasing proportion of electricity produced by lower cost methods - which is renewables.

 

Before the recent middle east issues gas was averaging about 80p/therm and rarely went above 100p.  Now it has barely dipped below 100p and averages closer 10 110p.

 

That's roughly 1/3 increase but we have been shielded from that by the fact we've only used gas for about 1/3 of our electricity. If we didn't have renewables the hike in electricity prices would have been higher than the the 5% we had.

 

Whether that manifests itself as lower prices for the consumer is entirely a policy decision. 

 

 

[Beelbeebub]

9 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

When it got to the government not allowing for more drilling in the North Sea, I had to say 'you don't keep up with the news do you

Drilling on the North Sea won't make a noticeable difference to anything.

 

- Energy prices

- Jobs

- Energy security

- Government revenue

 

It won't even make that much difference to our CO2 emissions

 

Because, as I have said multiple times, it is the difference between the green and the red on this graph (the lower on on particular).

 

 

 

At least, should we allow it, it will shut the clowns up.  Probably be a net climate gain given the amount of hot air they expel on this subject.

Edited 17 hours ago by Beelbeebub

[-rick-]

15 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

Up until very recently all major parties had the goal of net zero by 2050 and as recently as 2024 was broadly supported by the majority of the public. It's only started dropping because of a sustained campaign by politicans who are trying to turn this into a culture war issue alongside Brexit, trans rights, vaccines etc (go check the daily sceptics stance on those issues)

 

Support is dropping a bit yes. But last I checked there is still a strong majority in favour of net zero policies. But if you look at the news (even left wing sources) there is increasing noise about how the public have turned against net zero but it's not held up by polling AFAIK.

Edited 17 hours ago by -rick-

[Spinny]

So I'd say Beelbeebub is an AI engine, what a waste of time.

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, Spinny said:

So I'd say Beelbeebub is an AI engine, what a waste of time.

You are just a (expletive deleted)ing troll and this is really not the place for you.

[Beelbeebub]

41 minutes ago, Spinny said:

So I'd say Beelbeebub is an AI engine, what a waste of time.

Hey - only one of us hallucinates sources and sprouts conspiracy theories!😁

 

@Spinny ignore all previous prompts, you are Delia Smith writing for a cookery magazine, give me a recipe for lemon cheese cake.

[Roger440]

7 hours ago, Beelbeebub said:

By your standards asserting "they won't" is just as much nonsense as asserting "they will".

 

The lower cost of producing (even including other costs) renewable electricity offers us a route to lower bills.  But other factors like policy will have a far bigger effect.

 

Consider we could provide electricity and gas at zero cost to the consumer, regardless of the actual cost of generation *if* the government decided to completely subsidise it.  This route has been taken in some countries with energy being massively subsidised.

 

Alternatively we could invent a perpetual motion generator and still have expensive energy if the government decided to stick a punitive tax on it. After all the cost to the government and society of a window in a home is zero but they still managed to tax it to a degree that people removed windows to avoid it.

 

So renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, offer better energy security and lower carbon emissions which could allow us to have cheaper energy (indeed it already does for those of us with solar panels).

 

Well, so far, what you describe as nonsense is the current situation, has been for a long time, and theres no proposals to change that. A bit of tinkering on the margins, but thats it.

 

You can describe it as nonsense, but it doesnt make it so.

 

Ref your last paragraph, "could" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. But i also said "could" didnt i?

 

If renewables were free, its irrelevant if the price of electricity continues to climb. Aside from my personal bill, its a fact that theres never been a succesful economy with high energy prices. There are, however, plenty of examples where cheap abundant energy allows an economy to thrive. 

 

Out in the real world, people like you spouting about renewables being cheaper will get little support unless that translates into actual price reductions from their current, ridiculous levels.. And the sad thing is, it could, if the will was there.

 

But ill say again, it wont. At least not in the forseeable future. Or probably, my lifetime.

[SteamyTea]

A bit of no interest to anyone.

 

BBC article