Is Britain's domestic gas & electricity really the lowest in Europe?

antrobus

cepheus wrote: »

..they seem to be suggesting they are connected to the Guardian in some way, if not they will get into trouble.

They are connected to the Guardian. Ripped-off Britons is a regular cartoon feature there. It's not very good really. Scene & Heard in Private Eye is a lot better, and shows how a topical cartoon of that kind should be done.

cepheus

Let's look at what I posted

Liebrary: Are Britain's energy companies' charges for domestic gas & electricity really the lowest in Europe?

What the apologists are rather shy about is the fact that the price difference is due to UK taxes on retail energy being about the lowest in the EU. If you strip out the government taxes - money which doesn't go into the pockets of the energy companies - UK energy prices are about the same as the rest of the EU....While other countries who are dependent on imports can plead that global wholesale price force them to put their retail prices up, the British energy companies have no such excuse.

http://www.blog.rippedoffbritons.com/2012/01/liebrary-are-britains-energy-companies.html

Here are some figures, look at the blue bar between the EU27 and the UK, is it about the same? Consider then many of the Western and Mediterranean countries need to import large amounts of expensive LNG. It seems the 'blog' was about right.


It seems to me that you and Cardrew have led me on a wild Goose chase because you hate the Guardian, citing wild accusations and opinions without references or any other sort of proof. All you demonstrate are your free market biases.

withabix

That graph shows that we have the lowest energy prices (with or without taxes) apart from the countries which are close or adjacent to the vast energy supplies available by interconnector from their neighbours in Russia, does it not?

Cardew

cepheus wrote: »

It seems to me that you and Cardrew have led me on a wild Goose chase because you hate the Guardian, citing wild accusations and opinions without references or any other sort of proof. All you demonstrate are your free market biases.

What on earth are you talking about?

Hate the Guardian? Wild Goose chase?

Guardian is a good newspaper which I read on-line most days - if only to see an opposite view to The Telegraph.

You started this thread, and I disagree with some of the findings of that badly written Blog. So any 'Wild Goose Chase' was of your making.

For a start the graphs purport to show that we pay 15 Euros(£12) per kWh for electricity and 5 euros(£4) for gas.

The blog is correct that UK has some of the cheapest gas(particularly) and electricity in Europe - full details can be shown here: http://www.energy.eu/#Domestic-Gas

It is also correct that we pay lower taxes on gas/electricity than most other countries; albeit even the graph you posted shows our pre-tax prices are marginally lower than all but the former Eastern Bloc countries.

The Blog then appears to castigate the energy producing companies - not the distribution companies - for not supplying Britain at below Global market prices because of our proximity to the North Sea.

The fact that Centrica are not allowed to supply British Gas with cheap energy to undercut opposition is ignored. In any case why would they and all the other foreign companies supply UK with cheaper energy and not all the other contries that border the North sea?

antrobus

cepheus wrote: »

...It seems to me that you and Cardrew have led me on a wild Goose chase

So it's our fault is it?

cepheus wrote: »

..
....because you hate the Guardian,

(Sighs) And as has been pointed out to you more than once, the blog concerned is written by a couple of guys who just happen to also have a cartoon published in the Guardian. It isn't published by Guardian News and Media Limited and thus has nothing to do with that company, and so any feelings I (or indeed Cardew) have for that publishing company are neither here nor there.

cepheus wrote: »

...
citing wild accusations and opinions without references or any other sort of proof. All you demonstrate are your free market biases.

The proof I offered was the figures given by the blog you cited. I simply pointed out that the numbers they gave didn't support the conclusion they jumped to.

cepheus wrote: »

...
Consider then many of the Western and Mediterranean countries need to import large amounts of expensive LNG....

Like the UK needs to import large amounts of expensive LNG you mean? Didn't you notice the IEA figures quoted in that blog that show Austria and Germany with zero imports of LNG, and that the figures for Italy and France are lower than the UK?

antrobus

I was also struck by the comment made in another thread on DT;

cepheus wrote: »

..the media have become far more commercial and customer driven, churning out lots of cheap popular stories without checking their accuracy. These are all mainly sourced from the same PR and wire agencies, which are then merely 'adjusted' to the biases of the particular papers target audience..

The Ripped-Off Britons blog seems to be a perfect example of this 'new media' journalism; churning out cheap popular stories whose accuracy have not been checked but which have been adjusted to fit the bias of their target audience.

cepheus

Cardew wrote: »

For a start the graphs purport to show that we pay 15 Euros(£12) per kWh for electricity and 5 euros(£4) for gas.

I am still struggling to understand why you think it is wrong, the Eurostat figures for gas I posted confirm the Guardian blog is correct, your figures seem to assume certain rates of use.

I'm not wasting any more time arguing. I suggest you send them a message in their message box explaining your other disagreements and see how they respond, that is if you are confident enough, otherwise I suggest you both shut up and stop misleading people.

Cardew

For a start the graphs purport to show that we pay 15.00 Euros(£12) per kWh for
electricity and 5.00 euros(£4) for gas.

cepheus wrote: »

I am still struggling to understand why you think it is wrong, the Eurostat figures for gas I posted confirm the Guardian blog is correct, your figures seem to assume certain rates of use.

The average UK customer uses 16,500kWh gas and 3,300kWh electricity.

That means their total annual bill would be Euros 132,000 which at the current rate of exchange is £105,600.00

MillicentBystander

Said it before; comparing the cost of commodities/products etc in different countries when you have to convert from one currency to another is entirely pointless/futile/absurd/fruitless/meaningless/nonsensical/worthless blah blah blah..

antrobus

MillicentBystander wrote: »

Said it before; comparing the cost of commodities/products etc in different countries when you have to convert from one currency to another is entirely pointless/futile/absurd/fruitless/meaningless/nonsensical/worthless blah blah blah..

Well yes, but of course as far as the EU is concerned a lot of their member states do use the same currency, they are trying to create a European market in energy, and so they do produce statistics comparing prices across their member states. It would be a bit silly for them to ignore the UK just because we haven't joined the Euro, and it's inevitable that people will try and draw conclusions from the data. Even a couple of cartoonists who actually understand naff all about the energy market.

But it's a fair point that exchange rates are quite important, and a reason why it would a bit silly to try and draw conclusions from a single month's figures (September 2011 for example) when the dollar or euro could shift against the pound resulting in a different set of conclusions. If I wanted to I could discover that as of 1st December 2012 domestic gas was 7.2 cents per kwh in Amsterdam and 5.98 cents per kwh in London, thus proving that gas was cheaper in London that Amsterdam. Someone else might come along and argue that if you stripped out taxes then the equivalent prices were 4.54 cents in Amsterdam and 5.44 cents in London, thus proving that Londoners were being ripped off by the energy companies. Someone else might then point out that if you stripped out distribution costs then the actual energy cost of the gas supplied would be 3.74 cents in Amsterdam and 3.77 cents in London, thus proving that the UK energy companies were doing a spiffingly good job in buying their energy, in managing to only charge 3 cents more than the Dutch despite having to import all that LNG from Qatar.

But then again, something might happen to the Euro next week and it would all be different.