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The gathering crisis in the UK

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Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#61

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

mikeiz404 wrote: post #50
ceeplusplus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we thought things were bad in the US. That inflation is mostly driven by energy costs, which are a direct result of European policy failures on nuclear and fossil fuels. The US is mostly a net neutral producer/consumer of fossil fuels and energy, which is why it's insulated from the impacts of Russia cutting off gas.

From an energy security standpoint being net neutral or better is good but is the US insulated from fossil fuel prices? From a market perspective I would have thought a decrease in supply (say sanctions on Russian oil) would up the price of oil. This would effect domestic oil prices as well since either the domestic producers also participate globally or other sources of oil available domestically are also available…

> From an energy security standpoint being net neutral or better is good but is the US insulated from fossil fuel prices?

The US as an economy is mostly not effected by fuel prices anymore.

But the average US consumer is - that's probably the important part.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#62

Post by mnd999 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #5

"Brexit has delivered some deregulation, though: notably, the Conservative government ditched EU standards on effluent discharges, resulting in the (private) water companies discharging raw sewage into almost every river, and the seas around the UK coastline. So it is no longer safe to swim in UK waters." Holy crap! "the Bank of England are forecasting 13% inflation towards the end of the year." And we thought things…

It’s pretty grim at the moment.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#63

Post by stu2b50 »

mikeiz404 wrote: post #50
ceeplusplus wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we thought things were bad in the US. That inflation is mostly driven by energy costs, which are a direct result of European policy failures on nuclear and fossil fuels. The US is mostly a net neutral producer/consumer of fossil fuels and energy, which is why it's insulated from the impacts of Russia cutting off gas.

From an energy security standpoint being net neutral or better is good but is the US insulated from fossil fuel prices? From a market perspective I would have thought a decrease in supply (say sanctions on Russian oil) would up the price of oil. This would effect domestic oil prices as well since either the domestic producers also participate globally or other sources of oil available domestically are also available…

Not fully insulated - US oil prices should also go up when marketplaces as a whole does. However, the laws of physics indicate that domestic markets are still cheaper to supply to - if it is at all possible (and LNG is more quite a bit expensive than pipelines).

Furthermore, a super strong dollar when US oil production is sold in, of course, dollars makes other parts of the world that want to purchase more US energy in lieu of Russian energy pay top dollar for it compared to domestic customers.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#64

Post by mrec »

chroma wrote: post #8

I'd ignore Stross. He's been predicting inflation and famine since Brexit passed.[1] Something about the past decade has broken his brain. Obviously the issues he mentions are worth worrying about, but they're not going to cause the UK or the rest of europe to fall into anarchy. 1. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-o...

Yeah, Charlie was an early victim of Brexit Derangement Syndrome. I stopped following him after a long "state of the world" links post where every single link was to the Guardian. Granted, the Grauniad isn't much worse than any other paper, but if it's your only window onto the world then you're going to get a very distorted picture of reality.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#65

Post by throwaway787544 »

> This is the sort of crisis that brings down nations.

It's really not. This is some pretty sad FUD.

Unsafe to swim in waters. Trash not taken out. Crop failure. Inflation. Low heating fuel reserves (in a country that doesn't even get snow). Strikes. Absent politicians.

This is basically an average week in many countries.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#66

Post by eisa01 »

This is not limited to the UK

Europe has been in an energy war with Russia for the past year, we have a drought affecting hydro power and the French nuclear fleet is just out of service

The government action up to now has been almost nothing, basically amounting to announcing a few LNG import projects and updated 2030 targets. Nearly nothing has been done to the demand side nearly six months into this crisis

What needs to be done that can help 0-6 month time scale:

Gas supply

* Ramp up of Groningen (with payments to affected people living there)

Electricity generation

* Restart of all possible coal plants (only two have announced restart in Germany!)

* Removal of any restrictions limiting oil and diesel fired gensets from operating

* Extension of the three reactors in Germany, and likely also the three shut down reactors

Demand

* Have utility field forces inspect every gas boiler, starting with the vulnerable population, to set the correct flow temperature on condensing boilers (saves 5-10% !), check for easy fixes (e.g., leaky drafts that can be plugged)

* Mandate utilities to pay for avoided gas/electricity use for people on fixed retail tariffs - everyone need to be price responsive, not only large industrials

* Mandate commercial customers to raise AC setting to 25C

* Mandate everyone to lower thermostat to 18C

* Cash payments to households (at least vulnerable customers), but do not link it to the consumption levels and do not lower the price indirectly by other means (e.g., VAT reduction)

This will also require that permits, supply chains, labor etc. get fixed. Apparently that's stopping some of the coal restarts in Germany. That would not be a restriction if this was a shooting war...

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#67

Post by idiotsecant »

seibelj wrote: post #7

Green energy (except nuclear) is inefficient, expensive, irregular, and the money for it goes straight to China and developing nations who mine the rare earth elements. Even Germany finally backed off from de-commissioning their last nuclear plants as the Greens realized it was illogical. Need to remove red tape, stop controlling prices, de-regulate business, establish free trade agreements, and do all manner of thin…

Non-dispatchable generation sources are just fine, so long as you also consider storage requirements and transmission improvements in the total cost. If we could get commitment to those things as part of generation rollout I suspect the total cost per MW would be comparable to nuke, provide the same base loading capacity (better actually, since it could quickly respond to demand) and not generate nuclear waste. If we aren't able to summon the political will to tackle the storage and transmission issues then I agree nuke is the best option but it;s silly and reductive to paint it as 'nuke good renewable bad'

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#68

Post by dragontamer »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #55
klelatti wrote: post #45

I think Brexit has allowed a sort of nihilism to creep into U.K. politics. If you can live with a policy that has such a demonstrable adverse effect on the economy and so many other things then why worry about the impact of other policies. The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. And this is on top of the huge distraction that Brexi…

> The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term. Was this ever not the case?

* The 1800s of the USA were marked by a large, government program to invent pocket watches to solve the issue of trains crashing into each other.

* There were additional long-term government projects, such as ARPA's Network (aka: the internet).

* Strategic supercomputer initiatives as well.

* The debate over USA's social security is all measured in the year 2040 or later. People constantly use social security as an example of "short term thinking", but policies from the 1980s have been forward looking for at least the next 50 years.

-----------

I dunno much about UK politics, but I imagine that similar forward looking projects and/or decisions / debates have occurred.

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#69

Post by seibelj »

willyt wrote: post #52
seibelj wrote: post #7

Green energy (except nuclear) is inefficient, expensive, irregular, and the money for it goes straight to China and developing nations who mine the rare earth elements. Even Germany finally backed off from de-commissioning their last nuclear plants as the Greens realized it was illogical. Need to remove red tape, stop controlling prices, de-regulate business, establish free trade agreements, and do all manner of thin…

What is 'red tape' though? No-one ever defines what red tape they would remove. Also, surely the problem at the moment is that energy prices are controlled by series of regional monopoly energy providers, the only thing stopping them from putting bills up astronomically is price controls. If you removed the regulation stopping them from raising prices energy bills will be so high that you will have rioting in central…

> What is 'red tape' though? No-one ever defines what red tape they would remove.

Where do I begin?

- Stop setting prices by government diktat for medical professionals' salaries and procedures. Stop preventing private enterprise from building competing clinics and hospitals. Enable public health insurance to go towards the cost of private treatments in order to reduce lines.

- Stop requiring licenses for all manner of jobs that don't need them. You shouldn't need a license to cut hair, be an interior decorator, and all manner of work that expensive licensing requirements do nothing to help

- Radically increase the speed to approve new housing and transportation development. Do a single environmental review, get 1 round of feedback, then move forwards

- Reduce import taxes and establish free trade agreements so goods breeze through customs from trading partner countries

- Increase legal immigration to expand the consumer base, expand the labor supply, and allow entrepreneurial foreigners to come in and start new businesses

- Drastically reduce corporate and income taxes to promote productive economic development

Or do the opposite of all this and be surprised when economic activity stagnates and people get poorer year after year

Re: The gathering crisis in the UK

#70

Post by ska »

eisa01 wrote: post #66

This is not limited to the UK Europe has been in an energy war with Russia for the past year, we have a drought affecting hydro power and the French nuclear fleet is just out of service The government action up to now has been almost nothing, basically amounting to announcing a few LNG import projects and updated 2030 targets. Nearly nothing has been done to the demand side nearly six months into this crisis What nee…

> This is not limited to the UK

Sure, everyone is struggling but there are some unique twists and turns in the UK right now, and some have been made worse by own goals.

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