Why we are in the mess that we are in?

[Deleted User]

For anyone interested in why gas prices are so high, here is an up-to-date and informative briefing paper. I will leave it to readers to determine where the blame for this mess sits.

https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/cost-of-gas-by-default/?utm_source=UKERC+subscribers+2018+post+GDPR&utm_campaign=56e2e0e4a1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_05_20_11_04_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2886c4f7af-56e2e0e4a1-155395937

matelodave

An excellent article

Inigo_Montoya

If they hadnt closed "Rough" I assume we could have bought a lot more gas a year ago at a bargain price ?

Seems stupid not to have a decent amount of storage capacity so you can buy cheap then use it up when you get price spikes like the current one 

Yet all Boris still wants to bang on about is our transition to renewals in the middle of an energy crisis

savers_united

The other issue is no one wants these in their back yard, everyone wants secure and cheap energy but everytime a wind farm gets proposed there is opposition and protests. Same with gas holders many were removed to make way for housing and retail parks,its what many wanted. 

Verdigris

Gas is (was) stored underground in depleted gas fields. No visual impact on anyone.

Armengar

there are a few gasometers in cities, i imagine they need too much work to make safe for use now.

chris1973

Because we are in some kind of race to become the tiny island Martyr for every single problem in the World including those which even by its very name, is a global problem. In the rush to be the first to close down our coal fired power stations, nobody bothered to actually check that the renewable sources we were  spending £billions on replacing them with actually produced the same capacity for both existing and planned future demand. It fell woefully short, especially in periods of high pressure where wind turbines simply don't turn - sometimes for weeks.

So quietly, we've been making up the shortfall by using Energy produced by Gas Turbines, and importing our peak demands from other Countries using cross sea interconnectors. Recently with Gas spot prices being the highest they have ever been due to shortage, plus the loss of our "back up plan" - an interconnector burning out between the UK and France, we are all now going to pay the price for trying to become some kind of Green Daddy Warbucks.

The fact that Drax have now had to bring back online two coal fired power stations, and delay closing a third to try and mitigate this problem, is probably all of the proof you need to show you, that we perhaps shouldn't have closed them in the first place!. After all Germany get to keep theirs until 2038 - its only this Country which is in a rush to make its population Energy Bereft.

Put it this way, if Renewable energy is so efficient and drives our energy requirements, then why has Tidal, Wind, Solar etc increased so dramatically in the last month?, what increased costs associated with these would cause your annual bills to go from £900 to potentially over £1300?. The fact is, despite spending billions on building them these forms of energy contribute so little to our demand that they have no influence on it, if they did costs would be going down, not up - just like the glossy brochures said they would......

Dress it up how you like, make excuses for it, sugar coat it - but that is the crux of it.

coffeehound

The article didnt acknowledge quite how low our gas storage is now. This graph from the beeb is more stark

GingerTim

savers_united said:

The other issue is no one wants these in their back yard, everyone wants secure and cheap energy but everytime a wind farm gets proposed there is opposition and protests. Same with gas holders many were removed to make way for housing and retail parks,its what many wanted. 

Stick a wind turbine in my front garden, please!

[Deleted User]

coffeehound said:

The article didnt acknowledge quite how low our gas storage is now. This graph from the beeb is more stark

World Beating as are most things now under the present management.

savers_united

[Deleted User] said:

coffeehound said:

The article didnt acknowledge quite how low our gas storage is now. This graph from the beeb is more stark

World Beating as are most things now under the present management.

That has not happened overnight, that is through years of successive Gov't not investing in core infrastructure, spending instead billions on overseas adventures and being too reliant on North Sea gas that has now been in decline for a decade or more.