Tag: rationing

UK Mobile Networks Warn of Signal Rationing as Energy Crisis Deepens

UK mobile network operators (including VodafoneThree, Virgin Media O2, and BT/EE) have warned the government that soaring electricity costs—exacerbated by the ongoing Middle East conflict involving Iran—could force them to consider “worst-case” measures like rationing signal access, throttling data speeds, or introducing surge pricing at peak times.

UK mobile network operators (including VodafoneThree, Virgin Media O2, and BT/EE) have warned the government that soaring electricity costs—exacerbated by the ongoing Middle East conflict involving Iran—could force them to consider “worst-case” measures like rationing signal access, throttling data speeds, or introducing surge pricing at peak times.

Mobile networks are energy-intensive. They consume nearly 1 terawatt-hour (TWh) of electricity per year in the UK—enough to power around 370,000 homes. Base stations and infrastructure must stay “always on,” so operators can’t easily shift usage to cheaper off-peak periods. Energy costs for the sector have reportedly risen by up to 70% in recent years, and the current crisis is pushing them higher.

The operators were excluded from the government’s British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme (BICS), which offers up to 25% electricity bill relief to certain manufacturers starting in 2027. Telecoms argue they provide critical national infrastructure (used by nearly everyone for calls, data, emergency services, etc.), yet they’re treated differently from heavy industry.

Contingency ideas being modeled include:

  • Throttling (slowing) data speeds or restricting access during high-demand periods to cut power use.
  • Surge pricing — charging more for data/usage at peak times, moving away from the “unlimited” plans common in the UK.
  • Possible impacts on voice calls, mobile data, and even fixed broadband.

These are framed as emergency options, not immediate policy. The government has reminded operators of their legal obligations to maintain service.

The UK already ranks last among G7 countries for 5G download speeds, and this could hinder the push for standalone 5G coverage by 2030.

Telecoms contribute billions to the economy (£6.6 billion annually cited in some reports), and operators warn of risks to investment, jobs, or even offshoring if costs aren’t addressed.

This ties into wider UK energy challenges: volatile wholesale prices linked to geopolitics (here, the Iran-related conflict), grid strains from renewables and electrification, and policy decisions on who gets support.

It’s a symptom of how energy policy, geopolitics, and infrastructure intersect. Mobile networks are digital lifelines in a connected society, but keeping them running 24/7 isn’t cheap when power gets expensive. Whether this leads to actual rationing or just pressures the government for relief remains to be seen—operators are lobbying hard, and it’s still in the “warning/contingency planning” stage rather than implementation.

If energy prices stabilize or support expands, the risk could ease. Otherwise, consumers might see changes to “unlimited” deals or performance in the coming years.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Britain at risk of mobile signal rationing as energy costs soar

Telecoms giants draw up emergency plans to help reduce energy use

Mobile network operators have warned they could be forced to ration phone signal access to combat soaring energy prices triggered by the war in Iran. The Telegraph has the story.

Telecoms giants including VodafoneThree, Virgin Media O2 and BT-owned EE have issued a stark warning to the Government over energy costs after being excluded from Rachel Reeves’s support scheme.

Some companies are understood to be drawing up contingency plans as they grapple with heightened power costs.

These include rationing access to their networks or slowing down speeds to help reduce energy use. Another option is surge pricing, which would charge customers an additional fee at peak times.

Mobile phone services such as calls and internet data could be the worst affected, although broadband could also be hit.

Bosses warned that rising energy costs could also force the companies to scale back plans to expand their 5G networks, resulting in jobs either being cut or moved offshore.

In response to the threat, a Government spokesman said mobile network operators are required by law to maintain connectivity.

Industry executives are frustrated at Labour’s decision to exclude telecoms companies from a recent support package aimed at shielding businesses from soaring energy costs.

The Chancellor unveiled plans to cut electricity bills for 10,000 manufacturers by up to 25pc under the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme (BICS) last week, though the measures will not come into effect until April 2027.

Telecoms companies believe their sector warrants support as an operator of critical national infrastructure.

One source branded it a “serious oversight”, adding that it raised questions about which parts of the economy the Government was prioritising.

Mobile networks are highly energy-intensive, consuming just under 1 terawatt-hour of electricity each year. That is the equivalent of powering 370,000 homes a year.

Operators hedge their energy costs to help weather price spikes.

However, prices have still increased by 70pc in recent years as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the outbreak of war in the Middle East, which led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial trade artery that transports a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies.

The price of electricity is mostly set by gas, which has risen by 33pc since the start of the war in Iran.

Telecoms bosses argue the sector is disproportionately exposed to the crisis due to the “always on” nature of mobile networks, meaning they are unable to shift demand to cheaper, off-peak times.

Any move to ration or slow down access to mobile signals, which is understood to be a worst-case scenario, would be a major blow to Britons already frustrated by patchy coverage. The UK ranks bottom of the G7 for 5G download speeds.

Read the full story here.

Ed Miliband’s Plan for Zero Carbon Electricity by 2030 is a Damning Indictment of the Whole Net Zero Agenda

Labour’s manifesto promised we would have a zero carbon electricity system by 2030. It is a pledge that Ed Miliband has been making for years, not least in his party conference speech last year, and it was also one of Labour’s ‘Five Missions for a Better Britain’ policy pledge launched last year.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Paul Homewood

Labour’s manifesto promised we would have a zero carbon electricity system by 2030. It is a pledge that Ed Miliband has been making for years, not least in his party conference speech last year, and it was also one of Labour’s ‘Five Missions for a Better Britain’ policy pledge launched last year.

It would therefore be reasonable to presume that Miliband actually had a detailed plan of how he would achieve this and how much it might all cost. It came as a surprise then when, shortly after taking office, he asked the National Energy System Operator, NESO, to provide practical advice on achieving his target.

NESO has now responded with some bad news.

Many energy experts have long argued that a zero carbon grid simply is not possible at these timescales, because you cannot run a grid predominantly on intermittent renewable energy. It turns out that NESO, whose job is to make sure that Britain has the electricity it needs every second of the day, agrees.

Their report sent to Ed Miliband emphasises that we will need to retain a full fleet of gas power plants, to fire up when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine:

This really is a damning indictment not only of Labour’s energy policy, but also of the whole Net Zero agenda and its reliance on intermittent renewable energy.

Even though NESO says that gas power will only supply 5% of our electricity, there will be many days when we will still need it for half or more. And keeping a fleet of gas plants on standby creates problems of its own. They will need to be fully manned, maintained and ready to fire up as and when needed, all of which will cost a lot of money. With these plants standing idle most of the time, operators will demand billions in standby payments, all of which will end up on our energy bills.

The NESO report also confirms that the increase in wind and solar power demanded by Miliband will drastically increase bills, not lower them as we were promised.

Not only is renewable energy more expensive to produce than gas generation, there are indirect costs to consider, such as paying for standby capacity, costs of storage, curtailment payments when we have too much wind and grid upgrades.

Analysis of NESO data suggests that annual costs could be £20 billion higher by 2030 if Miliband’s plans are carried through.

NESO also says that annual investment of £48 billion will be needed between now and 2030 to achieve targets.

But all of this expenditure will merely end up duplicating what we already have.

If this was not all bad enough, over reliance on intermittent renewables will mean that we will end up having energy rationing. According to NESO, households will have to switch off appliances at times of peak demand. Currently, of course, gas generation is turned up and down to match demand.  

NESO hopes the public will do it voluntarily! Good luck with that.

Unsurprisingly, Ed Miliband has already been bragging that this new report proves that his clean power plan is both achievable and will lead to cheaper electricity. Both are outright lies.

But it looks like we will learn this the hard way.

New United Nations Report Signals Need for Mud and Grass Huts by 2050

A group of elite idiots want us be living in mud and grass huts, eating a meat-free diet and giving up most forms of personal transport.

From The DAILY SCEPTIC

BY CHRIS MORRISON

It’s all a big ‘conspiracy theory’ that by 2050 we shall be living in mud and grass huts, eating a meat-free diet and giving up most forms of personal transport. Maybe we might not believe it if global elites stopped writing copious reports detailing all these lifestyle changes, which are said to be needed to move to Net Zero. The latest such report comes from the United Nations, which sets out a collectivist global vision of primary building materials consisting of mud bricks, bamboo and forest “detritus”.

According to the UN, the world needs to move to “regenerative material practices” using “ethically produced” low carbon earth and bio-based building materials. Examples include mud bricks, timber, bamboo and agricultural and forest detritus. The report harks back to the middle of the last century when the vast majority of cultures built large buildings and cities out of indigenous earthen, stone and bio-based materials, including timber, cane, thatch and bamboo. Contrasting modern concrete, steel and glass buildings, it observes that “massive mud buildings have been maintained for centuries with their structures intact”.

Building-Materials-And-The-ClimateHerunterladen

The UN’s recently published report, ‘Building Materials and the Climate: Constructing a New Future‘, draws on a wide variety of international authors. Heavily involved are Yale University and the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction, the latter operation drawing financial support from the green activist Laudes Foundation and the British Government. The report is one of a number that have appeared recently that have started to lay out the hard changes that will need to be made in less than 30 years if 80% of the world energy produced by fossil fuel is banned under Net Zero. The construction sector is said to account for 37% of human-caused emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide. Making progress on reducing this will require drastic measures with the report stating that materials such as concrete, steel and aluminium will be used only when “absolutely necessary”.

War on modern building materials has also been declared by U.K. FIRES, an academic collaboration funded with a £5 million state grant. It has called for a ruthless purge of traditional building supplies, to be replaced with materials such as “rammed earth”. In other reports, U.K. FIRES promotes a world with no flying and shipping by 2050, drastic cuts in home heating and bans on beef and lamb consumption. As we have noted in the Daily Sceptic, U.K. FIRES bases its recommendations on the brutal, and many would argue honest reality of Net Zero. It does not assume that technological processes still to be perfected, or even invented, will somehow lead to minimal disturbance in comfortable industrialised lifestyles.

The latest UN report, along with U.K. FIRES, gives a valuable insight into the fantasy thinking surrounding the belief that oil and gas can be removed from industrial society. Clever people can often be very stupid, especially when group-think takes hold and ‘high status’ opinions – in this case surrounding environmentalism – are required to join the club. Net Zero mandates the dismantling of modern industrial society and the discarding of many of the essentials of modern comfortable living. Using flawed, unproven science, these high-status elites have convinced themselves that the climate is collapsing. Those who know their religious history observe doomsday cults emerging in every era, demanding sins should be purged, and humans pleasures placed on strict, supervised ration.

It will hardly be a surprise that the UN buildings report is riven with demands for legislative action and the use of other people’s money to enforce its crackpot schemes. Government “incentives, awareness campaigns and legal and regulatory frameworks” are said to have been effective in previous recycling schemes. “Recycling systems for building materials tend to require similar kinds of support across countries,” the report states. It need hardly be noted that “far more investment” is required for measures that ensure cooperation across sectors and borders. Due to the complexity of what is being proposed, “regulation and synergistic enforcement is required across all phases of the building life cycle, from extraction through to end-of-use”. 

Needless to say, when re-ordering the lifestyles of eight billion people around the world, it is important to tackle gender bias wherever it is found – in this case, “formal and informal building sectors”. Gender bias is said to be prevalent across the building trade and in emerging economies. Government programmes (quelle surprise) and policies are needed to expand women’s access to new technologies, marketing information and training to sustain their participation on the ground, the report states.

The biggest muddle however arises from the use of sustainable materials, most of which are grown in the ground. That would be the planned agriculture sector that another elite body is busy arguing should be cut back for re-wilding, another group of elite idiots arguing for nitrogen fertiliser to be banned leading to a 50% reduction in crop growth, another bunch of bright sparks demanding more land for bio-fuels and plant-based diets… to be continued.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Sadiq Khan’s Green Globalist Gang Suggests Daily 44g Meat Allowance and Rations Lower Than Second World War

London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ulez punch-down on cars and vans owned by the less affluent is just one example of the attacks planned against town dwellers living in modern industrial societies. Khan is the current chairman of C40, a global network of city mayors backed by numerous hard-Left billionaire foundations.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ulez punch-down on cars and vans owned by the less affluent is just one example of the attacks planned against town dwellers living in modern industrial societies. Khan is the current chairman of C40, a global network of city mayors backed by numerous hard-Left billionaire foundations. Removing cars from cities is just one of its aims. In a Headline Report published by the group in 2019 and re-emphasised earlier this year, a “progressive” target for 2030 was set of a daily per person allowance of 44g of meat (enough for two small meatballs), a daily limit of 2,500 calories, (less than the ration in the Second World War), one short haul flight every three years, eight new clothing items a year and private cars available for only one in five people. This “pioneering piece of thought leadership” was said to seek a “radical, and rapid, shift in consumption patterns”.

When the report about future urban consumption was first published in 2019, it received little publicity in the media. Some of its proposals looked a bit cranky even for mainstream publications. For instance, under an “ambitious” 2030 target, the mayors looked to ban meat and private vehicles altogether. But groundwork was clearly being laid. Mark Watts, executive director of C40, observed that average consumption-based emissions in the wealthier C40 cities must fall by “two thirds or more” by 2030. It was said that reducing vehicle ownership would lead to significant reclamation of roads and 25,000 kms of cycle lanes. This plan is now well advance since the Covid lockdowns provided cover for mass street closures. Recent years have also seen large increases in cycle lanes, and of course the Ulez war on those driving older vehicles, not necessarily by choice.

Signatory cities are committed to “high impact accelerators”, which include creating low or zero emissions zones along with “implanting vehicle restrictions or financial incentives/disincentives such as road use or parking charges”. An early sighting here, perhaps of Khan’s suspected wish to implement road pricing after his Ulez infrastructure is in place.

There is also an early sighting of unsourced statistics with a claim that eating less meat and more vegetables and fruit could prevent 160,000 annual deaths associated with diseases such as heart attacks, diabetes and strokes in C40 cities. It is not immediately clear if these deaths actually occur in such precise numbers, or whether they are a Ulez-style ‘statistical construct‘.

Over 100 cities around the world are part of the C40 network and they are required to sign up to “performance-based requirements” based on a number of leadership standards. One of these standards specifies that they must innovate and start taking inclusive and resilient action, “to address emissions beyond the direct control of city government, such as associated with goods and services consumed in their city”. The largely unpublicised C40 operation is backed by finance and support from many well-known green foundations including Climate Works, Hewlett, IKEA, Oak, FR and Clinton. Three “strategic funders” are identified including Christopher Hohn’s Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a major financial contributor to Extinction Rebellion. Another strategic funder is Bloomberg Philanthropies, whose controller Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, is president of the C40 board.

Of course interest is now growing in what all these people have been smoking over the last few years, as the Con/Lab green blob (different countries, different mainstream political combinations) organise to de-industrialise and cut human progress in the name of tackling a supposed ‘climate crisis’. The C40 Headline Report gives clear guidance of the scale of economic and societal change required under a collectivist Net Zero agenda. U.K. Fires is an academic project funded by the British Government, and it also gives a brutal assessment of life under what it terms absolute net zero carbon dioxide emissions. Again it is not discussed much in the public prints, but the Daily Sceptic has reported on its findings. These include no flying and shipping by 2050, drastic cuts in home heating, bans on beef and lamb consumption and a ruthless purge of traditional building materials such as bricks, glass, steel and cement. Such is the admirable honesty on display in their reports that they note these building materials can be replaced with “rammed earth” – mud huts for the lower classes in other words.

Sadiq Khan has been badly shaken by a popular uprising against his hated Ulez scheme. Backing in his own Labour party is wearing thin, not because most senior members are particularly anti-Ulez, but because after the Uxbridge by-election they can see a little more clearly that attacking the cars of the poor is a slam-dunk vote loser. For his part, Khan seems to have become more hysterical attacking those who oppose Ulez as conspiracy theorists. Earlier this year, reports the Daily Mail, Khan said that some of those who opposed the scheme’s growth across all London boroughs were “anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, conspiracy theorists and Nazis”.

The evidence provide by Khan’s own C40 Headline Report, along with the work of U.K. Fires, shows clearly the actual agenda that is now being ruthlessly deployed. The only conspiracy rabbithole in sight would appear to be that occupied by a freaked Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Cuban Diet and Gasthma Debunked…by Science

Over the past few months, numerous stories have been paraded around in the media about the catastrophic health impacts of using a natural gas stove.

From Friends of Science Calgary

Over the past few months, numerous stories have been paraded around in the media about the catastrophic health impacts of using a natural gas stove.

Hilarious images circulated on Twitter.

Fortunately, SCIENCE has come to the rescue.

Warren Kindzierski, Stan Young and John Dunn published a study in May looking at junk science behind the push to ban gas stoves:
https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijsp/article/view/0/48824

Additional posts about this study on:

JunkScience.com
Gas stove study busted
https://junkscience.com/2023/06/gas-stove-study-busted/

American Thinker
The fallacious claim that gas stoves cause childhood asthma
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/the_fallacious_claim_that_gas_stoves_cause_childhood_asthma.html

American Council of Science and Health

Gas stove ban and the nitrogen dioxide−childhood asthma causal claim
https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/06/12/gas-stove-ban-and-nitrogen-dioxide%E2%88%92childhood-asthma-causal-claim-17121

Watts Up With That?
Gas stove ban and the nitrogen dioxide−childhood asthma causal claim, Part II
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/13/gas-stove-ban-and-the-nitrogen-dioxide%e2%88%92childhood-asthma-causal-claim-part-ii/

Seems it’s all just a move to make sure you have the same personal #carbon RATION as an impoverished Cuban. And in between, they’ll sell you an induction stove – something that seems to not be a big seller, so maybe this is just a fancy demarketing campaign?

Those climate activists love the fact that the world is at war, because for them, human lives and misery are simply a stepping stone to “Climate Change and Rationing” which they think is ‘fair’ for all.

Funny how “Deadline 2020” was written in 2016, advocating for a 2.9 tCO2e carbon footprint for everyone. Then what happened in 2020?