Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by craig1912
How many coal fired power stations is China currently building?
Until every country goes green we are wasting our time!
Wow I’m melting and in a T-shirt at 19, my wife still has a blanket on. Amazing how different everyone feels it. I cannot cope with heat and my wife loves it and books the Caribbean each year while I hide in the shade.
How many coal fired power stations is China currently building?
Until every country goes green we are wasting our time!
62p per litre a couple of weeks ago here.
Agree. They have over a 1000, built another 42 last year and have plans for at least another 40 ish
https://e360.yale.edu/features/despi...n-a-coal-spree
Really? You don't watch the news? The full answer probably belongs in the Bear Pit but it is down to our reliance on gas for generating electricity which is mainly imported and in short supply due to world demand. We don't have a "green cover" for when green sources like wind are unable to generate and we've shutdown most coal fired station. France for example has 50 nuclear power stations, has more state control and has capped at 4% increase. Nuclear is apparently green but people are not keen of having one nearby :-)
There was an 'interesting' article in my local council newsletter about its eco-house.
It cost £37,000 to turn a standard c1900 terrace into an 'eco-house', with external and internal insulation, air source heat pump, underfloor heating, 300mm mineral wool insulation, PV panels, etc.
The energy cost savings were calculated at £2,000 per year, meaning the upgrades pay for themselves after approx. 18 years.
Nice idea, but I can't help thinking the figures are slightly ambitious, and of course it relies on the average household having a spare £40k.
In other words, we're doomed.
Link in case anyone is interested:
https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/sit...0Factsheet.pdf
Equally you could say if there was political will to take the burden off the householder we would all benefit. More jobs to do the work, companies providing the materials, lower fuel bills and by association less fuel poverty, green agenda ticked. You could only really do this given our pretty old housing stock at a governmental level. Just saying lets phase out gas boilers is pointless without those extra improvements and as you say most people will never be able to afford them.
We have a two up two down and £125 is what we've been paying for electricity only for the passed year on a fixed tariff with heating and hot water provided by an air sourced heat pump. Mind our house is considerably older, possibly dating back to the 1700's (no records exist before a transfer of ownership in 1882). So dread to think what it will jump to in August when we go back to variable, think the two log burners may become the primary heaters.
I’ve just locked in another year fixed rate at £220 for gas and electricity, up from £130. That’s for a 4-bed 1980’s link-detached house which is occupied almost constantly including working from home.
Things seem so volatile at the moment that locking in ‘only’ a £90 increase felt sensible. With a £60 exit fee it won’t be too painful if I made the wrong call, but at least I have predictable costs for a while. That’s with ScottishPower for what it’s worth.
If you look at the mess we've got ourselves into its an absolute joke, and yes, its our own fault, or rather the powers that be. We have ample fuel to be virtually self sufficient but choose not to be, ( the sight of massive tankers carrying liquid gas from Texas entering our ports is depressing ),we chose to remove ourselves from the dictatorship of Brussels but have done very little to prove it was a good move, we waisted billions over the covid crisis, ( yes this was an unknown, but the VIP list was a joke ), we've placed massive pressure upon ourselves with stupid target dates when the big polluters are just sticking a finger up at it, without them it's futile.
This attitude of "we have to do our bit" is killing us, and costing the British public an absolute fortune.
I'm actually struggling to think of a good idea that this government has come up with.
This. They have cheap electricity to power their industries making goods for us to buy on Amazon. While we have pensioners shivering. Save the planet eh?
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Build a few nuclear power stations, it’s the only way to go. We’ve transferred Drax and Ferrybridge into wood pellets but still pollute the environment, so there’s no winners going green so embrace technology but don’t be narrow minded and try push wind and solar as the only way forward.
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I was watching the news the other day when naga manchetti was questioning a weasel from one of the energy providers saying they were losing money from the wholesale energy price rises and she asked how that could be when they made £100.000000 profit last year but they wouldn’t answer, but then you have a government that couldn’t care less if everyone who isn’t rich freezes to death
That’s the point I was making earlier in the topic, they are not losing money, they are losing profit.
Cheers..
Jase
I get the feeling a lot of company’s would rather go bankrupt than subsidise higher costs with a penny of their profits just pass it all on to their customers wether they can afford it or not or take it off their staff, but then again greed is good isn’t it ?
Maybe the government can give us all loans to see us through the hardship, then pay them back at a minimal interest rate, or even defer for 18months, or not bother repaying at all and the government pays it themselves.
Oh wait! That’s already been done.
Has to be balanced with how much the energy companies lost during COVID. Remember when crude went to $-22 per barrel in 1H of 2020?
The whole reason energy prices are sky high is that there has been little investment in fossil fuels for a couple of years, and not much investment before COVID given the previous price volatility. I expect it to get worse before it gets better as investments today will take years to fruition.
Another reason is that green energy investments are great, but the country is fooked for its base load energy requirements when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine.
It’s back to fossil fuels or nuclear, hence the reason the U.K. is now rushing investments heavily in both, but neither of these come cheap. Climate change means very high energy bills are here to stay.
Rather than complain, an option is to buy some energy company shares as a way of hedging your energy bills. If you can’t beat them, join em.
It is easy to moan about energy companies without batting an eye when many folk upgrade their iPhone at 45% profit margin for Apple. Take a look at the market cap and profit of Apple vs energy companies. I know the former is discretionary, but you get what I mean.
I have extreme sympathy to the low paid and elderly in this regard as they have no other option.
But, unfortunately it is called capitalism and the election polls tell us that it is what people want.
I am not sure your average Joe Public has much knowledge or even cares about the stock market hence they will buy an iPhone as they see it as a day to day commodity but not invest in shares in say BP and monitor the market with the 400 quid they placed there rather than a phone that could be in their hands.
I don’t know anyone who invests in shares but plenty of people worried about the increase in fuel bills.
My 2 eldest in 20’s who are now home owners and feeling it are getting offers to enter into fixed contracts as follows.
Gas 10 PPU
Electricity 37 PPU
Now call me cynical / risky but
The cap from April 1st is set at ….
Gas 7 PPU
Electricity 28 PPU
So in theory if the markets ease off by October they / we could all be shooting ourselves in foot by signing up to fixed deals right now rather than stay on variable with CAP in place…
But i guess a gamble if October sees the market still unstable and the CAP further increased.?
Tough decisions….
No idea what £100.000000 means but the first supplier I checked, OVO, had an operating loss of £109 million in 2019 and one of £7 million in 2020.
Still waiting to get my £6K back i spent on Solar pannel system almost 10 years ago.
The "green eco source of energy" is an absolute joke, ( I challenge anyone to prove it will supply us with a sustainable energy source for the future ).
They are not building houses now that will be sustainable, just cheap and not affordable, please prove me wrong?
What are we going to replace gas boilers with?
What are people, like me, who have no mains gas going to use? apart from oil which we currently use, along with log burners.
We do not live in a perfect world, so how does it all work out for future generations.
^^^^ https://www.power-technology.com/fea...-tidal-energy/ ... in its infancy but has great potential. Quite likely that energy storage systems will evolve to take advantage of e.g. tidal power. In effect, we could be using 'lunar power' ;)
Last edited by sundial; 5th February 2022 at 20:43.
"Well they would say that ... wouldn't they!"
Those fixed rate deals seems pretty high.
I'm currently on a Scottish Power pre-rise fix which expires at the end of this month. I'm being offered an existing customer deal of...Electric: 21.64p per day/28.35p per unit and Gas 21.37p per day/7.18p per unit.
Martin Lewis is saying that market forecasts currently are for another increase to the price cap in October of 20%.
For an average user, you should only go for fixed options that are 59% or less of the existing standard tarriffs. (If there was no October increase of 20%, this drops to 44%).
Using average usage figures, my rise on the deal offered is 51%...so it's looking like going for the fix might be worthwhile if I gamble on that further price cap increase happening in October.
Last edited by Christian; 5th February 2022 at 23:15.
On the point of tying yourself into a fixed deal being a gamble, it's only a gamble if the fixed deal comes with a tie-in period (i.e. early-exit penalties). Im with Octopus and signed up for their Loyalty fixed rate deal from March (marginally cheaper than the new price cap from April), which has no early-exit penalties (i.e. I can move on if prices come down). So, win-win; or maybe more like minimising-my-losses.
The world is perfect, but there are too many of us living in it.
Even the worst fixed deals tend to be quite cheap to exit. Mine above would be £60, but the fix is until June 2023. As long as the price cap doesn’t drastically fall in October, which I’d bet it doesn’t, then it makes sense for me to fix on this one I think.
When suppliers go bust, the SoLR is allowed to claim back the extra energy cost (market cost Vs price cap) and that's going on all our bills as 10p per day for the foreseeable. Goodness only knows what bulb will cost as they are allowing bulb customers fixed tarrifs to continue afaik which is ridiculous.
So remember all those cheap deals that were almost too good to be true? Now we are all paying for them....
Yup.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
I grew up able to see sizewell a&b from my bedroom window and am still close enough to be seriously ****** by any accident, yet I am definitely pro nuclear.
At these prices it looks much more affordable as well
The problem is, we don't have any storage. We (idiots in charge) decided not to replace the rough storage facility as we could get 'just in time' LNG instead at decent rates.
Then global demand for LNG skyrocketed (mainly driven by Asian demand) and the price went up to match it. We have the lowest storage in Europe, it's a complete joke.
Selling goods below cost price is not really sustainable, it leads to supplier collapses and this vicious cure we are on.
The generation and supply businesses are seperate, just because a generator makes a profit doesn't mean there is any margin the supplier can subsidise you from.
Energy cap = suppliers selling at a loss = this sorry mess
The cap will rise again. I would not bother fixing though.
I can’t get my head round the fact that those of us who stuck with the large energy companies because we didn’t trust cheap deals end up paying for those that had the advantage of riskier firms pricing. Meanwhile these companies have been allowed to do this over the years and walk away scot free by going bankrupt and passing the debts on.
The more I read, the more an October increase looks inevitable because the wholesale price is effectively still averaging above the Aprils cap. If you the factor in the Russian uncertainty, then the risk of increase looks very high. Sunaks £200 household “loan” isn’t going to do much next winter!
Last edited by Christian; 6th February 2022 at 11:21.
It’s only going up 4% in France and the French government are sticking a windfall tax on energy companies they don’t own, that’s a bit of a difference
Thinking of swapping out a gas fireplace which we never use for a log burner as downstairs is fully open plan….
But it feels counter intuitive to the going ‘green’ agenda
Re France they do seem to be putting consumer before companies which is admirable providing it does not harm the company’s trading stability…
Last edited by TKH; 6th February 2022 at 12:41.
Don't take this the wrong way, but if you don't use the fire why pay out to have something else installed, ( the cost won't be cheap ), or would you actually use it once installed and maybe cut down on other heating methods.Thinking of swapping out a gas fireplace which we never use for a log burner as downstairs is fully open plan….
But it feels counter intuitive to the going ‘green’ agenda
Re France they do seem to be putting consumer before companies which is admirable providing it does not harm the company’s trading stability…
We currently light our wood burner most nights and only put the oil fired heating on for a couple of hours before going to bed, not really sure if it's saving us anything but we just love a roaring log burner.
yep the idea is that we would could turn off the gas boiler which feeds 4 radiators in a room 44 x 14 and hopefully a Log burner would heat the area and much of the heat given off would also go upstairs ??
also like you a burning fire is such a nice thing ...and hopefully the existing chimney for gas fire will be ok without upgrade for a log-burner ? so cost minimal..
I'm thinking ahead to October > as generally we turn heating off completely from (May >< September)....
PITA for everyone
We never used our gas fire and replacing it with a log burner was the best decision we made. We use it so often and enjoy having proper flames.
I have yet to notice it warm the room above or any other parts of the house though. I originally expected to be able to move the heat upstairs. Perhaps it does but the main room is so much warmer that the other rooms and they therefore feel cold.
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I had my smart meter installed today. I had no idea until now how much I was spending on gas. Not a good start...
It’s a right mess, we had a estimate for the next 12 months of gas of £13k plus £2k required right now. This was BG taking over our old Peoples Energy account.
They had used a meter reading of over a 2 years ago I think it was as their baseline . Easily sorted as it was easy to spot, but I wonder if it had been a little off we would have noticed.
Thats about right once the war escalates
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RIAC
Sadly you might be right!
Cheers..
Jase
Unfortunately we've been lumbered with BG in the new house.
I set up the account and DD and they estimated my monthly usage at £89 for gas only. Fair enough.
But then today I received an email telling me I'm not paying enough and in 12 months I'll be £1300 in debit. They suggest I pay £210 per month instead, or alternatively, pay them £1300 now. This is after less than 1 month in the new house and without a smart meter so how the feck they can suddenly come up with those figures is beyond me.
I wonder if anyone actually jumps in and just pays it? It must freak some people out as well, making them think they're going to be £1300 in debt before they've even started. Shady bastards!
I think I'll give it 3 months of meter readings and see what transpires.
British Gas…that’s where you’ve gone wrong
Not sure we had a choice with the account porting.
Cheers..
Jase
I don’t deny it but BG is to be avoided imho
Agree with the comments re. British Gas, i am still disputing a £1.5k bill for a commercial premises and its been going on for 3 months!
UNISON doing their best to improve things:
https://www.unison.org.uk/news/press...d-says-unison/
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ne...-delays-survey BG the worst. Glad I got moved to Octopus when Avro went bust as they have been good to date.
i didnt either , had to accept the transfer from Peoples Energy, tbh i like their app, they have already credited by credit from old account, they can take readings straight from the smart meters and cost iis only £85 a month
+1
I fail to see how £200 will help a single pensioner on Pension credit and with no savings. £177 per week income and with energy prices looking like going to nearly £60 per week by next winter...
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