The best approach I've heard to solving climate change involves a carbon tax. High gas prices are a proxy for that. It's already driving discussions people just weren't having before - how can I make my home more energy efficient? What can I do to save energy? In many ways, high energy prices are a positive thing for society (in the long run).<p>The problem is, of course, that high energy prices are a huge negative for those who can't afford them. All the proposed carbon tax schemes I've seen are a carbon tax <i>and dividend</i> - you tax carbon, and redistribute the profits to those who can't afford the higher prices.<p>Right now, we've got the carbon tax, but the dividend is going into the pockets of oil companies - exactly the people you don't want to be building up cash reserves in the fight against climate change.<p>The other issue we have in the UK (and maybe elsewhere) is that the cost of energy is borne by the tenant, but the cost of renovations would be borne by the landlord. This means that landlords have no incentive to improve the energy efficiency of their houses, and tenants have no ability to. We should be changing that - make landlords of energy inefficient houses pay for it.
I'm fairly sure we are due a political swing back towards the left in the UK, and my expectation is we are going to see increased calls for the re-nationalisation of various national infrastructure and services, including energy supply.<p>As the article says at the end, clearly the Torys are not going to do this, and Labour will be very quiet about this as they need to play the middle ground if they have any chance of gaining a majority. But, if they were to win in the next general election we will see increased calls for them to act on the aspirations of the left of the party to nationalise these things.<p>It will be an interesting time.
Seems to be down, google cache:<p><a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pRc1gqHuRLUJ:https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/02/03/days-of-reckoning/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pRc1gq...</a>
Big issue in the UK is the standing charge and how (thanks Ed Davey) that got raised and was a huge impact for all. Many caps learn towards an ideology of 4.2 children household's in many respects and see's those responsible in energy usage and general low usage household's bear the burden with high energy users in effect getting a cheaper deal on the back of those responsible low usage consumers (yes did raise with local MP at the time - Ed Davey and ignored, though not forgotten).<p>How should this be fixed, well like taxation it should be scaled and a usage threshold per person in which you pay X amount and over that, you pay more for your fuel usage, so the more you use, the higher it gets that you pay and not sadly as we have, the reverse.<p>Sorry but whole subject a bit of a personal issue when my local MP sends out election voting paraphernalia stating how he has saved households money on their fuel bills when the reality for me was the polar opposite and again, he ignored that. But I shall have my day soon upon this.<p>Of course, no model is ideal, though when we see initiatives for solar and electric cars that learn towards those who can afford such items over those who can not and those that can not paying for such subsidies, you do feel the brunt of unfairness and why the rich get richer (not saying having solar or an electric car makes you a rich person, but for those who don't own their own house and rent or use public transport, relativity does become a factor)
I think this article is basically making the argument that the energy cap failed because it didn't do something that no one reasonably expected it to do in the first place. The energy cap was put in place very simply to stop energy companies from slowly raising rates on customers who don't switch, because generally people are very unlikely to switch providers and so could be exploited by the companies. That's what it was there for. Recently, it's actually done a fantastic job of protecting UK consumers from facing quick shock increases in their energy prices, delaying the impact in a way that allowed the government to take action to mitigate the real problem.<p>Now, that's nothing to do with the fact that fundamentally energy prices are the result of long term government policy in terms of how they fund our national grid and invest in building power plants. It's got nothing to do with the price cap that the UK government failed to build (enough) Nuclear power plants and it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that the whole of Germany went insane and shut down all their Nuclear plants just in case Germany suddenly became geologically unstable as forewarned in the factual documentary Geostorm.<p>The real problem is a combination of the fact that the UK government has failed to really tackle its long term energy strategy, and the fact that given this crisis it has chosen some really weird levers to pull to help people, choosing to give out loans and lower council taxes temporarily rather than use the actual benefit systems that they just spent the best part of a decade re-designing.
This is a pretty unconvincing article, because it ignores that the energy price cap wasn't really intended to shield consumers from massive swings in underlying wholesale prices – so it can't really be said to have failed at a thing it wasn't intended to do.<p>The cap was mostly there to stop some people from being fleeced in specific situations when they were on a standard variable-rate tariff or prepayment plans. It was already set at a pretty high level.
There are a lot of errors here. Not least that the price of renewables somehow ignores their lifespan or that there is a price cap in place on the producers of energy that might discourage investors (there isn't).<p>Given that, its not really worth reading.
tl;dr price controls didn't work (again) surprising no one who understands anything about how supply and demand work. If there's an underlying reason why costs are rising then a price control is just a band aid solution as the underlying cost pressure typically doesn't go away.<p>The privatization of energy companies in the developed world to me is a giant failure and a classic example of how public-private partnerships like this just end up privatizing the profit while underwriting the losses and it's sold to us on supposed "efficiency" gains.<p>If you think about it energy consumption is basically a hugely regressive tax. The cost of heating 2000 square feet doesn't change much depending on if you're poor or a billionaire.<p>I'd honestly support nationalizing these companies, cover grid connection through taxation and provide resident individuals (not corporations) a rebate for $X every year in their tax return to cover expected usage.