{"id":64958,"date":"2023-02-06T18:40:06","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T23:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64958"},"modified":"2023-02-06T18:40:06","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T23:40:06","slug":"green-spin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64958","title":{"rendered":"Green spin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Green spin<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Concern over the steep rise in the price of electricity this winter has paved the way for rehashing the old misinformation about the relative cost of generation.\u00a0 So it is that\u00a0Carbon Tracker<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 a non-profit which seeks to focus financial investment on non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) \u2013\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that electricity bills are far higher than they might have been because they are based on expensive gas generation.\u00a0 As Andy Verity at the\u00a0BBC<\/em>\u00a0explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way electricity prices are set has pushed UK household bills up by \u00a37.2bn over two years\u2026\u00a0 Under existing rules, energy suppliers pay the highest price for wholesale electricity no matter how it is made.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cGas-fired power stations are the most expensive way to generate electricity, but only make about 40% of all electricity used by UK homes.\u00a0 That means homes pay over the odds for power generated any other way\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Taken at face value, this is broadly correct.\u00a0 But there is a great deal which needs unpacking here.\u00a0 Most notably, the way in which \u201cgreen\u201d energy policy has had a negative impact on the wholesale gas market.\u00a0 Because, while Verity points to the post-lockdown shortages and energy self-sanctioning (he misspells it \u201cRussia\u2019s war in Ukraine\u201d) as the cause of the recent price spikes, these are only proximate triggers.\u00a0 The deeper cause was environmental policy which drove energy companies out of long-term gas supply deals in favour of the \u2013 far more volatile \u2013 spot market.\u00a0 In effect, having been told by the state that your industry is being phased out, why bother with long-term investment?\u00a0 One result was the closure of the massive Rough storage facility in the North Sea \u2013 which the state is now pledged to reopen \u2013 which would have provided the buffer to iron out most of the upward spike in gas prices in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Green spin Concern over the steep rise in the price of electricity this winter has paved the way for rehashing the old misinformation about the relative cost of generation.\u00a0 So it is that\u00a0Carbon Tracker\u00a0\u2013 a non-profit which seeks to focus financial investment on non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) \u2013\u00a0reports\u00a0that electricity bills are far higher than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[31147,674,31360],"class_list":["post-64958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-consciousness-of-sheep","tag-renewable-energy","tag-tim-watkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64959,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64958\/revisions\/64959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}