Waiting for future proof energy

The Royal Society has issued a statement saying that the United Kingdom’s way of providing and delivering energy to the population is “no longer fit for purpose”. I wonder what took them so long.

Why aren’t new homes required to have solar panels?

The National Energy Foundation has called for every property built in the United Kingdom to have solar panels. The foundation points out that the energy from solar is infinite and there is no good reason why every new home and building should not be required to have solar panels. It will reduce dependence on imported fuel and will reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

So why has not the government enacted a simple law requiring solar panels on homes?

London’s weather today is …er..

For the last few days London has been enjoying what for Londoners is very hot weather. The temperatures have reached 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit) and it threatens to rise another couple of degrees for the next few days.

Consumer energy price rip off or not?

I wrote yesterday about the allegation by Consumer Focus that the big six energy companies are overcharging their customers, because they are not putting prices down as energy prices fall. A year ago oil and gas prices (as well as coal prices) were at an all time high. Oil was $147 a barrel and it subsequently fell to just under $40 a barrel; it now stands at $73 a barrel.

Energy, monopolies and cartels

 The ambition of every business is to become a monopoly, if it cannot achieve that, its ambition will be to become part of a cartel. The ambition of every government should be to prevent monopolies and to outlaw cartels.  A business having a monopoly or being part of a cartel enables it to make profits without any market mechanism to restrain those profits. It can charge what it likes and its owners will live a life of great riches.

Carbon dioxide levels have never been higher – almost

The highly respected journal Science published research recently which has attempted to discover what the world atmosphere’s carbon dioxide levels were for the past two million years. Bärbel Hönisch, is a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and with her colleagues she has been looking at the shells of single cell plankton which have been buried under the Atlantic Ocean.

Journalists, polar bears, caribou and climate change

There is a kind of simplistic approach that some journalists use when it comes to climate change. Some treat climate change as a religion claiming that a single very hot summer is evidence of climate change. Some are climate change deniers who can be even more fervently religious in their approach.

What an annual £5000 energy bill means and what we can do about it

Yesterday I wrote about the spectre of £5,000 per annum energy bills for the average UK household. The figure was put out by an internet price comparison site, uSwitch with figures from Ernst & Young. It did not come as a surprise to me as my own analysis of the energy market has consistently come up with ever increasing energy prices and this analysis twelve years ago started the journey which resulted in Genersys, the solar thermal supplier.

Annual £5,000 energy bill for households in ten years time

The average household in the United Kingdom in 2004 was paying £580 a year for its household energy bills, usually its gas and electricity bills. Today that figure has slightly more than doubled with the average household paying £1,243 a year. Recent calculations by Ernst & Young, one of the world’s top accounting firms, indicate that by 2020 the average UK household is likely to be paying around £5,000 a year for its energy – that is to say its electricity, its gas (or oil or other energy source). If you will be approaching retirement in 2020 you may well need a specific pension pot, just to keep warm.

What is a climate change negotiator?

If a diplomat is someone who lies abroad for his country, then what is a climate change negotiator? There are climate change negotiations that have been going on in Bonn, and other bilateral climate change negotiations between China and the United States. Neither set of negotiations have made much progress.