Energy Prices Will Rise but the Problem is More than Rising Prices

(Before It's News)

The British consumers of energy, both domestic and industrial, face the inevitability of even higher energy prices over the next few years. At the moment electricity prices are about the same in the United Kingdom as they are in continental Europe, but natural gas prices are just over half the price of natural gas. All that is going to change and if you feel that you are paying far more than you envisaged for energy now, then you will have to budget more carefully in several years’ time.

Rising energy prices is not the main problem, although rising prices are a problem. The main problem is gaps in the supply of energy, both heat and power.

There will be a shortage of electricity, almost inevitably. Electricity cannot be stored; the UK is closing its coal and oil fired power stations thereby helping the environment with fewer emissions of greenhouse gases and less pollution. The government at one time said that it would not subsidise nuclear generation but now people are talking of a forty year nuclear subsidy; to me forty years is an unrealistically short time frame for nuclear energy; the actual subsidy will have to include waste storage for hundreds of years.

Wind turbines are subsidised to produce electricity (when they produce it) at about three times the cost of electricity produced by natural gas or other fossil fuel. Even if we built thousands of wind turbines overnight wind generated electricity would suffer from intermittency and the only quick method of producing sufficient electricity to cover this is to use gas generated electricity. Inevitably, the lights will go off in the next few years, from time to time and from place to place whatever we do.

There is sufficient natural gas to power and heat the United Kingdom, but most of it lies outside these islands, and we shall have to compete with many nations, including many larger nations that are becoming increasingly prosperous, for natural gas; that will send natural gas prices higher and higher. Fracking will not provide a solution, although it may make a small contribution, if we are prepared to take the health, safety and environmental risks that fracking engenders.

There are solutions but governments have been reluctant to take them. The best solution involves using less energy. As far as electricity is concerned appliances are becoming more efficient but the energy drain continues because as appliances become more efficient we use more of the; the same applies to lighting.

As far as heat is concerned it is clear to me that our heat policy must include three key policies:-

1. We must build much more natural gas storage facilities. As a nation we should keep in stock twelve months supplies; that would prevent the nation being held to ransom by fluctuating prices and supply competition.
2. We must mandate much higher standards of insulation in homes. So much energy is wasted heating up roofs and walls.
3. We must mandate solar water heating. If every home in the United Kingdom had solar water heating the consumption of gas in residential properties would fall by about 12%. That gas in better applied to being used in the generation of electricity. We should not use gas to heat water when we can use the free energy given by daylight.

Most of the media deals with the forthcoming energy crisis in terms of the lights going out. The lights may go out and we will have to use candles and stop watching television when they do. We can cope with that. What is more serious than the lights going out is there being no heat and no hot water. No one to my knowledge ever died from not watching television. Plenty of people die from being too cold or being unable to keep a good hygiene routine because there is only freezing water.

Filed under: carbon emissions, climate change, energy, global warming, solar energy, solar panels Tagged: climate, environment, greenhouse gases, natural gas prices, price of natural gas, solar water heating

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