By Stewart Dalby Towards the end of part one of our three article series on energy supply problems, I wrote that a recommendation had been made that customers should shop around and “switch” away from the leading energy companies to smaller, cheaper ones. This policy appeared to work for a while, in that towards the [...]
By Stewart Dalby Last week I received a letter, dated 24 March from my energy supplier, EDF. The company said it was going to put up my bill by an extra £127.78p or 9.3 per cent in early April 2021. This means a bill amounting to £1210 per annum. I did wonder why my bill’s [...]
By Stewart Dalby To paraphrase the Queen who in 1992 described that year as her “annus horribilis”, we can say that without fear of contradiction 2020 has been nine months or so of unremitting horrors unprecedented in the lifetimes of most of us. By mid-December over 70,000 people, young and old, had died in England [...]
A floating wind turbine suitable for use in deep water. Image: By Ole.stobbe.offshore, via Wikimedia Commons This article first appeared on the www.climatenewsnetwork.net website by Paul Brown Wind power is the cheapest way to produce electricity, but some are not persuaded. The World Bank is out to change minds. Europe and the United States now accept onshore [...]
By Barney Smith Even before this issue was highlighted, there was no doubt that one of the casualties of the Covid 19 pandemic would be the campaign to reduce the use of plastic in the world, particularly single-use plastic. That is hardly surprising, one of the main focuses of the fight against the virus has [...]
A recent International Energy Authority (IEA) report warned that investment in renewables in 2018 was faltering while investment in, and expenditure on, hydrocarbons was rising. Specifically the figure for coal mining in 2018, at US$80 billion, rose by 2.6 per cent by comparison with 2017, while the figure for oil and gas capital expenditure increased [...]
Fossil fuel burning is pushing CO2 levels ever higher. Image: By Tony Webster, via Wikimedia Commons This article first appeared on the Climate News Network.Net website by Tim Radford The modern world is about to pass a temperature peak dating back for millions of years – because CO2 levels have already passed an ancient record.. LONDON, [...]
This is the second of two articles on the chaos in the UK’s energy policy In the first article on the UK’s energy situation I wrote about the mess Mrs May’s government had got itself into with its attempts to put a ceiling on energy prices for the country’s 30million or so households. The long-delayed [...]
It could only happen to the accident-prone UK prime minister Mrs May, couldn’t it? After more than 18 months of procrastination she finally, last week (on 26 February) put legislation before parliament which would impose a cap, or ceiling, on energy prices. Unfortunately, three days later (on 1 March) the National Grid announced that the [...]
The suave Mr Iain Conn, the head of Centrica which owns British Gas, one of the so-called “Big Six” oligopoly of providers which has dominated the UK retail energy market, can hardly be said to be lacking in self-confidence. As an unnamed colleague of his at the major oil company BP, where he previously worked [...]