rwmjBritain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables
> Britain paying highest electricity prices in the world for second year running
> Ed Miliband’s net zero targets are facing fresh scrutiny after Britain was found to be paying the highest electricity prices in the developed world.
> New data published on Tuesday showed the price paid by UK industry for power was 63pc higher than in France and 27pc higher than in Germany.
> Britain is also the second-most expensive country in the world for household electricity, with billpayers paying twice as much as those in the US.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/britain-paying-highest-e...
Yes. But these things can be orthogonal. Or actually brcause gas is expensive.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crkep1vx3mro
The price for wholesale electricity is set by a bidding process, with each generating company saying what it would be willing to accept to produce a unit of electricity.
Once built, the cost of generating power from renewables is very low, so these typically come in with the cheapest bid. Nuclear might come next.
Gas generators often have the highest costs, because they have to buy gas to burn, as well as paying a "carbon price" - a charge for emissions.
The wholesale cost is set by the last unit of electricity needed to meet demand from consumers. This means that even if gas only generates 1% of power at a given time, gas will still set the wholesale price.
> Or actually brcause gas is expensive.
Gas in the UK is expensive because the Tories spent decades selling off the storage so developers could turn them into real estate. This continued well into the 2000's when, for example the lettuce (Truss) closed the Rough storage facility in 2017.
Gas in the UK is expensive because of 1980's privitisation. Another one of the Tory's great ideas. The UK privitisation model is designed to generate profit. Norway made a different choice. Equinor is majority state-owned, and Norwegian extraction operates within a framework designed to capture resource rents for public benefit. Britain privatised its way out of that option decades ago in the Thatcher-era and has never seriously revisited it.
Analysis from the University of Oxford[1] found that maximising oil and gas extraction from the North Sea would only save households £16 to £82 per year – and this would rely on tax revenues collected being distributed to households to offset their energy bills.
Dr Anupam Sen, co-author of the analysis, said the idea that “draining” the North Sea would make the UK more energy secure and significantly cut household bills is “sheer fantasy”. “We show that regardless of the remaining lifetime of North Sea oil and gas, a ‘drill baby drill’ approach to extraction would actually cost households more money versus continuing on our path to clean energy.”
The authors stress that savings gained from the clean energy transition are recurring annual reductions in bills which would continue indefinitely, whereas North Sea oil and gas are finite resources that would run out around 2040.
[1] https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/news/drill-baby-drill-appro...
“Drill baby drill” approach to North Sea would cost households more than a fully renewable UK, finds Oxford analysis
A UK powered fully by renewable energy could save all households up to £441 a year on their energy bills, according to a new Oxford Smith School analysis. In comparison, maximising oil & gas extraction from the North Sea would save households a modest £16 - £82 per year - and only if the tax revenues collected were distributed to households to offset their energy bills, the authors say.
Why would additional storage make a significant difference to the price of gas?
Presumably because the price is a volatile, and storage gives you more flexibility around when you buy.
> Presumably because the price is a volatile, and storage gives you more flexibility around when you buy.
I will give credit to the person who got there before me. :)
Smoothing out price volatility is a big one.
But also it gives you options:
You can buy it "today" when its cheap and store it for when you need it (e.g. winter months).
You can also trade on that basis too. For example you can make a future-dated commitment to buy gas (knowing you have the storage available to take delivery). But if the situation changes and you later find you don't need it, you can sell that contract to someone else (or you can still take delivery and re-sell it). But you can't do any of that without having the ability to take delivery, because the person who sold you that future-dated contract will want both your money and to get the gas they sold you off their hands.