The UK’s Electricity Crisis is Not Caused by “System Failure”. It’s Caused By Net Zero
The Carbon Economist recently published an article innocuously entitled ‘Outlook 2026: UK electricity – Today and tomorrow‘. The Carbon Economist is an offshoot of the Petroleum Economist which has had a long and illustrious publishing history, providing oil and energy market analysis since 1934. It’s the subtitle that is striking:
Net Zero is not the problem for the UK’s power system. The real issue is with an outdated market design in desperate need of modernisation.
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Artificial Intelligence will fix it, don’t worry.
The obvious system design matter is the commercial split between transmission and sale of power to customers. Where I live, the firm that used to do both sold off their utility side to another (SSE sold it to OVO). So SSEN is the DNO, and loads of others do the sales.
For some of us dynamic pricing is technically possible. OVO read my import meter every 30 minutes, but at present I still have a day/night deal, with 7 fixed hours at night rate. That said, the differences between day and night are much narrower than they were a couple of decades ago. 21 night, 29 day now, cf 8 night, 22 day ( all at p/kWh).
The problem is the wholesale electricity market is not wholly supplied by viable, competitive businesses, because solar/wind have intermittent, uncertain revenue streams, cannot plan or match output to demand therefore would be bankrupt within a month – if they ever got started in the first place – cannot predict and control cash flow, and cannot provide a return on investment to shareholders.
The “solution” is to introduce an intermittency cost into the wholesale market that pushes prices way above free market competition prices.
As for “dynamic” pricing – this is an added intermittency cost trying to make demand match supply.
Whilst the supply/demand/price mechanism works to balance supply and demand via price, the price is not imposed it spontaneously occurs, and serves to stimulate supply to meet demand whilst dampening demand in the short term.
The whole problem with dynamic pricing in our rigged electricity market, is that whilst higher pricing can dampen demand, it cannot stimulate supply since supply is uncontrollable.
When Government takes over planning and control of the economy or any sector of it, ruin follows.
The night rate was caused by nuclear generation being inflexible, as nuclear becomes a smaller part of the mix the need to offer cheap off-peak power reduces in line with it.
These concepts remain largely theoretical, supported more by modelling exercises than by real-world evidence…
…Therein lies the problem of climate claptrap and the energy heist.
What does this say about PhDs and Oxford University?
It’s ok, as soon as most people heard he works at Oxford, that bastion of radical far left bullshit, they stopped listening, no matter how marvellous his fellow travellers think he is!
Why don’t people just acknowledge the simple fact that co2 emissions are not the cause of catastrophic global warming therefore net zero is pointless.
What, not have anyone to blame for all their problems, and not being able to denounce everyone for not doing enough to save the planet and everything, while knowing that no-one would ever be able to prove that they themselves did not also do enough?! Come on, James.M, man made climate change is the gift which just keeps on giving – endless opportunities for righteous indignation and virtue signalling! It’s fantastic!
🤣🤣🤣👍
“there is no incentive to shift demand from peak, expensive and most polluting periods to less pricey ones, making electricity more expensive for everyone”.—–Yes but people do not watch TV or cook dinner in the middle of the night, and the kids are not doing their homework and using their computers at 3 in the morning. Dynamic pricing is simply an excuse to charge more at not just peak times (4-10pm) but also when there is little wind, or if there is some huge event that means millions are using electricity all at the same time. The whole of the Net Zero Politics is all about getting us to use LESS energy (and less of everything else) because the UN/WEF has stated we in the wealthy west have used up more than our fair share of the fossil fuels (cheap energy) in the ground. As the former head of the National Grid (Steve Hoilday) said a few years ago “We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available”——-In other words “Do without”. Welcome to 21st cnetury energy policy all over the western world, except under TRUMP, who the eco socialists call “an… Read more »
It’s Procrustes all over again, isn’t it? Same with immigration – import peoples that the natives are uncomfortable with, solution = blame the natives rather than stop the importing. Electricity demand outstrips supply, solution = suppress demand rather than try to increase supply.
Exactly where, apart from places like DS is it fashionable to blame massively excessive electricity prices on Net Zero Policies?
Certainly not on the MSM, or as I like to call it Bastard Lying Media (BLM), MSM just seems too kind and accommodating for what they really are!
Criticism of Net Zero Policy on BLM is much rarer than Hens teeth or rocking horse sh1t, and you’d never see a proper accounting of all the subsidies, balancing costs and withholding payments.
You never see Paul Homewood, Tilak Doshi or Chris Morrison as guests on BBC politics shows or guests on David Attenborough documentaries putting the “other side” of the argument.
The only balance we see is the gas power stations taking up the slack on the horrendous intermittency of the so-called Renewables (Unreliables).
Try here:-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
https://thegwpf.org/
https://open.substack.com/pub/irinaslav?r=j1tdz&utm_medium=ios
If only, a century ago when the national grid was being designed, the architects had foreseen UK politicians taking money from consumers pockets to subsidise weather-dependent generation plant being located in illogical places including miles offshore – the grid would then have been constructed with cabling in the right places to accommodate the madness of the politicians. Unfortunately it could not be foreseen that the net zero religion would exist and the electorate vote for the mad people who had fallen for it.
Thank God not many have been taken in by the EV hoax. Our sanity is keeping the lights on.