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UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

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Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#221

Post by dogma1138 »

trashtester wrote: post #143
missedthecue wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for europe is that solar panels, windfarms, and nuclear power plants don't produce natural gas. Electricity is great, but it's not a replacement for natural gas by itself. In Germany, only 25% of natgas usage is accounted for by electricity production.

Electricity, if the price is low enough, can fully replace almost every use case for natural gas. This will require some level of investment, of course, such as replacing gas ovens with electric ovens (or better, heat pumps) as well as replacing gas machinery with electric alternatives for most industries. There MAY be a few cases where alternatives are harder to find (where you need the chemistry of the gas rather t…

I suggest you look at how much natural gas is used by the chemical industry, in Germany ~25% of the natural gas consumed is consumed by non-energy related uses as in not heating, electricity production, smelting cooking etc, with ammonia and fertilizer production accounting for about 15% of total consumption alone.

That isn’t a small percentage and those industries have an enormous knock on effect globally there is a reason why the UN put the shortage of chemical fertilizers as one of the top priorities.

Cheaper electricity won’t solve that problem and the gas prices must come down because otherwise food prices would sky rocket world wide and we will be at a severe risk of having famine in developing countries.

And whilst there are other alternatives to natural gas such as gasification which is popular in China that still requires biomass and countries like Germany cannot simply shift their production to gasification for both environmental and practical reasons.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#222

Post by frumper »

tomjen3 wrote: post #220
frumper wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound right to suggest there are criteria for using nukes. The only thing that needs to happen is someone with them decides to use them and does.

>Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president, who now serves as deputy chairman of the country's security council, outlined four ways that Russia could be "entitled to" use its nuclear arsenal—even against a nation that is only using conventional weapons. >Number one is the situation, when Russia is struck by a nuclear missile. The second case is any use of other nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies," Medvede…

I don't doubt they have outlined when they will use them, I doubt that I trust humans to always follow a plan. Humans sometimes behave unpredictably, or even irrationally.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#223

Post by rob_c »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #89
rob_c wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the 5% of mostly under 50s in the UK who refused any jab are all secretly dying... Oh wait, im still here... Edit: there will be much more to come when gran can't afford to heat herself at winter. The marginal "200k we think we maybe saved" will be shadowed by the damage of the next 2-5 years I fear. I would love to be wrong. Edit2: apologies I was trying to be whitty, unlike those in charge of policy.

I’m with you - I just wanted to point out that despite the lockdowns, we’ve likely ended up killing even more people.

I wish I wasn't having to agree. Stay safe and best wishes for you and those around you for the next few years. I'm genuinely hoping I'm wrong to be concerned.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#224

Post by armitron »

sofixa wrote: post #190
pydry wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like this was an earthquake that we idly knew would come one day that just suddenly hit us out of the blue. NATO made a deliberate decision to bring Ukraine into the fold in 2019 and Russia reacted predictably, but not before giving us an opportunity to back down first: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/world/europe/us-nato-resp... We dove into this knowing full well the dire energy risks that escalation po…

Russian war crimes apologists are the worst. Nobody forced Russia to invade a sovereign country (or to consider itself the rightful owner of those lands for that matter), that's entirely their fault. And it was mind bogglingly stupid, as we can see a few months in, with the massive losses to their army and economy. It wasn't something to prepare for because it was unthinkable. It was still a huge risk to prepare for…

> Nobody forced Russia to invade a sovereign country (or to consider itself the rightful owner of those lands for that matter), that's entirely their fault.

Alas, the world doesn't operate based on the moral principles you imply, but cold hard realpolitik. Actions have consequences in the great power game between nation states.

> And it was mind bogglingly stupid, as we can see a few months in, with the massive losses to their army and economy.

The Russian economy is doing fine, business with India and China is thriving. "Massive losses to their army" I believe is far from accurate. I'll be greatly surprised if at the end of this, Ukraine isn't economically destroyed, geographically devastated. Territories lost will remain lost, and the deaths of so many people will have been for nothing more than furthering the geopolitical and industrial interests of the main instigators.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#225

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

pydry wrote: post #205
sofixa wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody forced NATO to expand to Ukraine either Cut the Russian propaganda, NATO didn't expand to Ukraine. Ukraine, a sovereign country, wanted to join NATO, as is their every right. Denying Ukraine that right and excusing Russia's war crimes is pretty bad.

I'm not excusing Russian anything and Im not repeating any propaganda. I'm explaining that war, gas crisis and 18% inflation was a predictable and deliberately chosen path that wasnt hard to avoid if we'd wanted to - simply by withdrawing an invitation. You didnt want to avoid this scenario and consider withdrawing this invitation and "denying ukraine that right". I get that.

> deliberately chosen path that wasnt hard to avoid if we'd wanted to - simply by withdrawing an invitation.

Yes, imagine what would have happened to Chechnya or Georgia if we had let them into NATO. No, that would have been an invitation to attack Ukraine, we should have let them in.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#226

Post by mytailorisrich »

makomk wrote: post #170
cirrus-clouds wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if French citizens were facing energy bills as high as the UK (£5,816, €6850). French citizens would never tolerate such levels. From Reuters: " France has committed to capping an increase on regulated electricity costs at 4%. To help do this the government has ordered utility EDF (EDF.PA), which is 80% state owned, to sell more cheap nuclear power to rivals " (Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/…

France really feels like they're building towards serious trouble in the near future. The gap between the discounted electricity costs paid by consumers and the actual underlying wholesale prices is only widening (to the point I think they may even have the lowest consumer costs and highest wholesale prices in Europe, or at least not far off), and that basically all has to be subsidised by the government using debt.…

They are finalising the full nationalisation of EDF, their main electricity supplier and owner/operator of their nuclear power plants.

Then, the electricity wholesale price on the open market becomes irrelevant. As long as their set a price that covers their actual costs for their own consumers they are fine and it is sustainable, and certainly does not require any debts since it does not actually cost anything (beyond the cost of buying the remaining 20% of EDF).

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#227

Post by pydry »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #225
pydry wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not excusing Russian anything and Im not repeating any propaganda. I'm explaining that war, gas crisis and 18% inflation was a predictable and deliberately chosen path that wasnt hard to avoid if we'd wanted to - simply by withdrawing an invitation. You didnt want to avoid this scenario and consider withdrawing this invitation and "denying ukraine that right". I get that.

> deliberately chosen path that wasnt hard to avoid if we'd wanted to - simply by withdrawing an invitation. Yes, imagine what would have happened to Chechnya or Georgia if we had let them into NATO. No, that would have been an invitation to attack Ukraine, we should have let them in.

Well, we put Georgia on a NATO membership action plan after years of meddling in their politics and that triggered the invasion in 2008.

Ukraine isnt the first time this happened. It's just this time stirring up ethnic conflict along Russia's border is causing us to really suffer.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#228

Post by Lyapunov »

data_maan wrote: post #37
TrackerFF wrote: post #20

Hopefully the current energy crisis (in Europe) will further accelerate development in renewable energy. Seems much of Europe is still chained to LNG, and that demand is even wreaking havoc in countries which have been previously quite self-sustained, or really don't use LNG much themselves - with Norway being a good example.

There is nothing that needs to be developed for renewables per se , it is already available: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy It just needs to implemented! Just imagine how much the politicians suck: Science has given them the solution for the energy problem, science has showed how to even make it economically, and has done that already years ago. All politics would have to do is implemented. B…

Hydro isn't available everywhere and wind as well as solar are unreliable. Energy storage in the required dimension is an unsolved problem too. So whatever you're trying to say here is unfounded.

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#229

Post by archagon »

azangru wrote: post #67
twelfthnight wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Where would you go?

Peter Zeihan thinks that the US is in the best position to weather the coming years :-)

The US is at great risk of becoming an authoritarian, single-party dystopia in the coming years.

(Yes, I mean the Republicans.)

Re: UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% next year, energy bills may rise to £6000

#230

Post by Reason077 »

data_maan wrote: post #132
Reason077 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Renewables: The solution exists already but no gov't (in particular the UK) is implementing it" The UK govt has done better than most on renewables in the past decade. Wind energy in particular. In 2020, wind power supplied 24.8% of all UK electricity, and this will continue to increase as major new wind farms - some of the largest in the world - come online in the coming years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_…

You say "better" but you're not giving a comparison. The UK doesn't appear anywhere in the ranking on the Wikipedia link of countries with >90% electricity from renewables. You're last link also pertains to electricity only BTW (you make it sound like all energy is considered) and the UK aims for 2025 to have "periods" of fossil-free electricity generation, while other countries do that already today and not just for…

It's not valid to compare the UK to various small countries that have always had renewables in the form of large hydroelectric systems, which the UK's geography simply doesn't have.

My point is that, in the past decade, the UK has transitioned to renewables faster than any other major industrialised nation.

As recently as 2012, nearly 45% of UK electricity still came from coal. This has been cut to around 1% in 2022, and all remaining coal-fired power stations will be closed completely by 2025.

Obviously there is still much more to do, but the UK compares favourably here to, for example, the USA or Germany.

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