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The government has published this UK gas supply explainer.
There has recently been widespread media coverage of wholesale gas prices, and the effect this could have on household energy bills. The impact on certain areas of industry, and its ability to continue production, has also attracted attention.
This explainer sets out the background to the issue and the action the government is taking to protect the UK’s energy supply, industry, and consumers.
Natural gas prices have been steadily rising across the globe this year for a number of reasons. This has affected Europe, including the UK, as well as other countries around the world.
Later, the author of the “explainer” reassures us consumers that energy prices may not go up as much as one might expect:
The high wholesale gas prices that are currently visible may not be the actual prices being paid by all consumers.
This is because major energy suppliers purchase much of their wholesale supplies many months in advance, giving protection to them and their customers from short-term price spikes.
The Energy Price Cap is also in place to protect millions of customers from the sudden increases in global gas prices this winter. Despite the rising costs of wholesale energy, the cap still saves 15 million households up to £100 a year.
Isn’t it nice that the government protects consumers by stopping energy firms passing on price rises?
Completely unrelated: Four more small energy firms could go bust next week, the BBC reports.
Some of you may remember that the Bishop Hill blog used to cover climate and energy issues in a moderate and well-informed way. Unless I missed the announcement of a move, that blog does not seem to have been active since 2019. However I recently found that the Bishop is on Twitter, one of the few reasons left to visit that horrible place.
The deforestation statistics are startling to anybody who listens only to green activists. In 2018 a team from the University of Maryland concluded: ‘We show that – contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally – tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km². That’s 7 percent more forest globally than in 1982. New forests have been planted and old ones have regenerated naturally, as the footprint of farming shrinks, thanks to better yields.
– Matt Ridley in the print version of The Spectator, article titled Viral misinformation.
These fanatics are fond of pissing our money up the wall on their insane schemes. And I am not going to buy an electric car. These monstrosities are not remotely environmentally friendly. Smug, self-righteous arseholes in developed countries get to feel all self congratulatory about their lack of emissions while in developing countries child labour is used to destroy the local habitat, but who cares about brown people and wildlife if you can virtue-signal in your latest electric motor, eh?
Although I always thought Boris Johnson was something of a lightweight probably unfit for high office, even I have been surprised by just how bloody awful he has been since getting into Downing Street. We might just as well have elected Jeremy Corbyn.
– Longrider
“Politicians have spent trillions of dollars subsidizing renewable energy with no effect on climate. Nuclear power, which would sharply reduce CO2, is taboo among the greens. Innovation in developing low-cost natural gas, which substitutes for coal, may have done more than any government policy to reduce U.S. emissions. Yet President Biden wants to crush the gas industry with regulation. The IPCC report doesn’t justify putting the U.S. economy into the hands of government. A sensible climate policy will continue to monitor trends, while allowing a free economy to find solutions and build the wealth that will allow for adaptation and amelioration if the worst happens. This lacks the drama of the Apocalypse, but it will better serve the world.”
– Wall Street Journal, responding to the latest IPCC report on global warming (aka climate change).
“It has become something of a cliche, but it also happens to be true. If you want to do your bit for the planet, forget Tesla and other super-expensive electric vehicles: just carry on driving the same old gas-guzzling banger you’ve always had. As much, if not more, carbon tends to be expended producing a new car as actually driving one.”
– Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph (£).
I own an S-Type Jaguar (V6, 3-litre) – one of the last ones to be built – and it drives as smooth as you like, and what makes it all the sweeter is knowing that every time I turn that big black cat’s engine on, a little bit of Greta Thunberg’s cult hopefully dies.
“Jury acquits Extinction Rebellion protesters despite ‘no defence in law’”, reports the Guardian.
I remain a supporter of the principle of jury nullification, but, sheesh, guys, this isn’t 2018. Obviously I am in a bubble. I had thought that the blowback after XR stunts like disrupting public transport and doorstepping Sir David Attenborough – stunts that seemed calculated to target potential allies – had turned most people against them. Evidently not all.
If you need a bit of a giggle, not to mention some informative bricks to throw at certain people, occasionally take a peek at the Extinction Clock.
Blog it, Gab it, Fakebook it, Twatter it, email it to green-inclined folk you know. This is absolutely perfect for dinner party discussions and family gatherings as well, as you do not need to explain it, just get them to read it and stand back with a smug expression saying nothing 😁
When I read this zinger:
“It is absolutely clear that climate change is a threat to our collective security and the security of our nations,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who presided over the meeting.
I thought it was perhaps the most succinct summation of why (1) the ‘Conservative’ Party should be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act (2) I will never vote for them again.
It is bizarre to think we can thank Russia (an enemy state run by gangsters) and India for providing the voice of sanity.
I pledge to assist my government in achieving ‘net zero carbon emissions’ by 2050, but due to the seriousness of the climate crisis I will try to achieve this by 2030 through changing my personal lifestyle to the frugal one existing before the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago.
– Tony Brown
“Our fearless leader has descended from the mountain with a 10-commandment plan for a green industrial revolution. At a cost of £12 billion, he will have all Britons driving electric cars powered by North Sea wind turbines and giving up their gas boilers to heat their homes with ground-source heat pumps. He will invent zero-emission planes and ships. This vast enterprise will create 250,000 jobs.”
– Matt Ridley, who is as unimpressed by the UK government’s fantasy energy policy as I am.
For me, the drive towards a supposedly “zero-carbon” economy is an obsession that I fear will blight much of what is left of my life and those of many others. Pushing back on this will be on a par with the drive to bring down the Soviet Union decades ago.
I was watching this interview with “lukewarmer” Matt Ridley, who agrees that global warming is a problem but who thinks technology and market-driven solutions are a way to address it, not State dictats. He was being asked about the UK government’s proposals (I have no great confidence this will be remotely achievable) to ban sales of petrol- and diesel-powered cars by 2030. As he noted, such changes will weigh disproportionately on those on low to medium incomes. Even if electric cars and other appliance costs fall because of economies of scale, there is a high probability in my view that a push for “net zero” carbon emissions in the UK is going to require a big rise in electricity costs, and hence prices. And because energy is central to so much of our economy, that means more expensive food. More expensive everything.
Almost two centuries ago, free market lobbyists set up the Anti-Corn Law League to fight against tariffs on grain imports – and other items. Their cry was for “cheap bread”. It was a potent political message. I wonder if any political figure has the gumption to make “cheap energy” such a rallying cry. Because once the full, eye-watering cost of “net zero” becomes evident to ordinary consumers – forcing them to rip out gas appliances, lose their reliable cars and so on – the groundswell of anger is going to be considerable.
Another problem is that there is no real political opposition to this madness. The Labour Party – at least at the moment – is in thrall to this hairshirt Greenery. The Tories are for the moment rallying behind Boris Johnson although one wonders for how long once the costs come even more painfully evident. My hope is that a lot of those MPs in Midland and Northern seats who were swept in last December may be among those telling Johnson to show some realism.
Recent spending and delivery overruns on projects such as Crossrail give me no confidence the UK could create a grid to enable electricity-powered vehicles by 2030 on a scale to fill the gap left when petrol and diesel are taken off the table.
The cynic in me says that Johnson, who is mainly a political stunt artist, does not really care about the details, and will probably be retired from front-line politics, in a cushy job somewhere, once the nature of this mess comes home, and that someone else will have to clear up the mess.
Here’s another interview with Ridely about energy innovation. I can also recommend Alex Epstein’s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, which has the sort of title designed to raise the blood pressure of today’s Green humanity-diminishers.
“Fall is almost here in California. So we know the annual script. A few ostracized voices will again warn in vain of the need to remove millions of dead trees withered from the 2013–14 drought and subsequent infestations, clean up tinderbox hillsides, and beef up the fire services. They will all be ignored as right-wing nuts or worse. Environmentalists will sneer that the new forestry sees fires as medicinal and natural, and global warming as inevitable because of “climate deniers.” Late-summer fires will then consume our foothills, mountains, and forests. Long-dead trees from the drought will explode and send their pitch bombs to shower the forest with flames. Lives, livelihoods, homes, and cabins will be lost — the lamentable collateral damage of our green future. Billions of dollars will go up in smoke. The billowing haze and ash will cloud and pollute the state for weeks if not months. Tens of thousands will be evacuated and their lives disrupted — and those are the lucky.”
– Victor Davis Hanson.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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