Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Abernathy, a former Washington Post contributing columnist and longtime newspaper editor, makes a straightforward free-market case: Renewables like solar and wind have long been propped up by subsidies, tax breaks, and regulations. Critics (including conservatives) argued they should compete on their own merits. Now, with the Trump administration rolling back Biden-era incentives, some clean-energy companies are finally adapting to market realities—and that’s “good news.”
Abernathy, a former Washington Post contributing columnist and longtime newspaper editor, makes a straightforward free-market case:
Renewables like solar and wind have long been propped up by subsidies, tax breaks, and regulations. Critics (including conservatives) argued they should compete on their own merits.
Now, with the Trump administration rolling back Biden-era incentives, some clean-energy companies are finally adapting to market realities—and that’s “good news.”
This article was originally published at The Empowerment Alliance and is re-published here with permission.
For years, conservatives and other believers in free markets complained about the subsidies, tax breaks and favorable regulations designed to prop up the “alternative energy” movement. If solar, wind and other “renewables” were truly worthwhile, they should stand on their own, right?
Good news: There are signs that it’s finally happening. With the Trump administration rolling back as many Biden-era subsidies and incentives as possible, the alternatives movement has been forced to embrace the kind of market-based structure many have argued it should have followed all along.
The New York Times recently explored this phenomenon in a story headlined, “How Clean Energy Firms are Trying to Survive the Trump Era,” with a subhead noting that some companies are “looking for ways to carry on without federal backing.”
Many Americans – including those who run businesses and are forced to make a profit to keep the doors open – will find much to smile about throughout the article as leaders of firms specializing in renewables sometimes describe their efforts with a level of discovery that, by contrast, is quite basic and familiar to those steeped in long-held economic principles.
One environmentally friendly company landed on the conclusion that diversifying might make it more profitable. The company decided that by “producing multiple products together” it can “become economically competitive” with traditional competitors. In another instance, the chief executive of a start-up company declared, “We want our technology to be cost-effective no matter which way the policy pendulum swings.”
As the Times reports, “Other companies are making similar bets that they can displace fossil fuels even without government subsidies.”
That’s a welcome shift, but it also begs the question: If companies can, when necessary, figure out how to be competitive and even profitable without leaning on the crutch of government, couldn’t they have done so years ago and saved taxpayers upwards of $2 trillion or more over the course of a decade?
Of course, real-world, free-market economics means that not everyone is a winner. Without a cascading waterfall of tax dollars, some companies won’t make it, and others will have to dramatically scale back. As an example, the Times considers the case of companies working on technology designed to extract carbon dioxide from the air.
“During the Biden years, there was also a surge of interest — and more than $3 billion in federal funding — for companies that were experimenting with techniques to pull carbon dioxide from the air in an effort to slow climate change,” the story noted. “But many of those companies are now scaling back, as global warming has faded as a national political priority and federal funds have been in limbo.”
There is nothing to celebrate when it comes to businesses failing or contracting, even in an industry that relied so heavily on subsidies. A failed or diminished business means jobs lost and lives impacted. But such is the case with all businesses practicing free-market capitalism. Plans are cautiously laid, budgets are carefully estimated, a product or service is designed to be as attractive to consumers as possible and, at the end of the day, the dice is rolled. There are winners, and there are losers.
To be sure, there are those devoted to the cause of renewables who have long understood the need for profitability. A thoughtful analysis of the future of alternatives was presented in an article last year written by John Fitzgerald, then-CEO (now an advisor) of the Dublin-based superconducting cable tech company SuperNode, headlined, “If You Value Renewable Energy, Make it Profitable.”
Fitzgerald – while highlighting the fact that subsidies have also gone to fossil fuels – argued that more infrastructure is necessary to handle growing wind and solar outputs, and advocates focusing on building large continental scale electricity grids “supported by adequate storage.”
“Coordinated economic signals and significant infrastructure development, requiring planning and innovation, are prerequisites to deliver the energy transition,” he wrote. “Without them, national targets for renewables are unrealistic and should be acknowledged as such.”
As Fitzgerald pointed out, “Renewable developers must be profitable to attract investment and deliver the renewable energy projects we need to replace fossil fuels.”
Fitzgerald was primarily writing for a European audience, but his message resonates everywhere. “If we can make renewables as appealing to investors as fossil fuels are,” he concluded, “the energy transition will not only be possible – but inevitable.”
Many of us believe that there will likely be no transition from fossil fuels to renewables on the immediate horizon if “transition” means totally replacing one source of energy with another. Natural gas in particular will power the future, as evidenced by how much expansion the product is experiencing thanks in large part to the proliferation of AI data centers and the reality of their energy needs.
But alternatives can certainly add to the overall energy mix and offer even more choices – the kind of choices consumers enjoy in a free-market system where the government is not deciding winners and losers.
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing opinion columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
While Westminster counts its pennies, a cross-party group of MPs – many from constituencies where the village pub is the last communal hearth – have urged Rachel Reeves to reform business rates for hospitality, now that rural inns have joined family farms on the quiet list of the vanished.
In the gathering dusk of a North Norfolk evening, where the North Sea mists drift in from a cold and indifferent sea, James Nye, 44, whose family has run East Anglian inns for 30 years, stands behind the bar of the White Horse in Holme-next-the-Sea. The pub, a low, Grade II-listed sentinel of stone and brick, flickers beneath strings of fairy lights that feel less festive than quietly defiant. Nye, steward of 10 inns, draws a pint of Adnams Ghost Ship while the low growl of tractors fades along the lanes outside – protest vehicles nursing wounds deeper than any fresh furrow.” “It feels like the Government is piling on pressure at the very moment we need its backing most,” he says to the regulars, farmers and fishermen whose weathered hands cradle glasses that may soon be relics. From April 2025 the measures announced in last autumn’s Budget – employer National Insurance rising to 15%, the threshold slashed from £9,100 to £5,000, the National Living Wage lifted to £12.21 an hour and business-rates relief for hospitality cut from 75% to 40% – have landed on his 10 pubs like a hammer blow, potentially adding £50,000 a year to the ledger of this one alone. In some isolated houses, the rates bill will quadruple overnight – one Cornwall landlady already staring at a jump from £18,500 to £73,000, and a South East pub chain owner facing a £62,000 hit that he says has his business “absolutely at its knees at the moment”.
That shock lands hardest in the quiet lanes of rural England. Everyone feels the sting, but the phrase “pub tax” is spoken with particular bitterness in the shires. Out here, where trade is stubbornly seasonal and a wet Tuesday in February can pass without a single stranger crossing the threshold, margins have always been measured in pennies, 12p profit-less than 2% – on every £6.50–£7.40 pint poured. Raise employer National Insurance, slash the threshold at which it bites, force wages higher by decree and then strip away the 75% business-rates relief that has kept thousands of village pubs breathing, and the same measures that irritate a city bar become a death sentence in the countryside. Many such houses, Sacha Lord warns, “will simply cease to exist”.
It is a prophecy that already feels lifted from the pages of a 19th century rural tragedy. A scene Thomas Hardy might have set a century ago. As Nye dims the lamps and turns the key against the night, the tractors’ rumble does not quite die, it lingers like a storm that has not yet decided whether to break. They have not heard it yet.
While Westminster counts its pennies, a cross-party group of MPs – many from constituencies where the village pub is the last communal hearth – have urged Rachel Reeves to reform business rates for hospitality, now that rural inns have joined family farms on the quiet list of the vanished. “Increasing taxes on ‘working people’ would be a ‘red line’,” warns York MP Rachael Maskell, hearing in the policy an echo of promises that rang differently in the shires. Emma McClarkin of the British Beer and Pub Association says the Budget “missed the mark by a long way”. Sacha Lord calls the pre-election assurances a “bare-faced lie”. Transitional relief, they note, is only another name for rises of 300% and more in the loneliest parishes. The patience of the countryside, it seems, is not infinite, only very, very long.
And it is not one policy that delivers the blow, but three arriving together. Three separate policies, each presented as modest and fair, have arrived at the same village at the same time. First, the inheritance-tax changes that from April 2026 will cap agricultural relief at £1 million and levy 20% on everything beyond, already prompting the sale of more than 187,500 acres this year and forcing family estates to offload or hike rents on the pubs that have anchored their villages for generations. Second, Clauses 83–92 of the new Planning and Infrastructure Bill, empowering compulsory purchase of green fields (and the pub’s own garden or car park) at farmland prices only to be flipped at hope-value premiums for housing or renewables. Third, the hospitality measures that are set to close an estimated 378 pubs in 2025 with the loss of 5,600 jobs, with rural ones particularly vulnerable, their trade too local and seasonal to weather the storm of taxes and rates.
These pressures do not spare a single thread of rural life. Inheritance tax is already making landlords decide which of their pubs must be sold to pay the bill, planning reforms eye the survivors’ land for the next solar farm or battery site, and then the pub tax walks in last and switches off the lights. And so, one by one, across rural England — tied house or freehouse, stone-built or timber-framed — the doors close, the beer garden is lost, and no one comes again.
The village pub is not a business that just happens to be closing. It is the last, fragile thread. Pull it, and the entire rural tapestry unravels, the shared stories, the unspoken neighbourliness, the sense that a place still belongs to the people who were born to it. What remains is dormitory hamlets, silent lanes and a countryside that survives only as scenery for those who never lived in it. That is how rural England dies, not with a bang, not even with a protest, but with the soft turning of a key in a lock that will never open again.
Last week, the silence finally arrived in Westminster. The fracture appeared on December 2nd, when dozens of Labour MPs abstained on the inheritance-tax vote and one – Markus Campbell-Savours of Penrith – crossed the floor entirely. A whisper of disquiet has become something closer to a dull, persistent requiem. “Pubs will become the next farms,” one backbencher murmured. The warning drifts across the shires like woodsmoke, the tax that is forcing a farmer to sell a single meadow does not halt at the five-bar gate. It walks on – risking higher rents – and quietly closes the pub next door. The same planning Bill that seizes a floodplain for housing will not spare the beer garden for renewables. London calls it progress. The countryside, older in its sorrows, simply calls it the end.
In 2024, Rachel Reeves entered government talking about fixing the foundations of the economy rather than repeating the old promise of “fixing the roof while the sun was shining”. Out here, the roof is thatch and the sun feels a long time gone. The measures she called modest adjustments have settled upon rural balance sheets with a kind of quiet, unarguable finality. For example, take a typical village pub turning over £250,000 a year, before the Budget it paid almost nothing in rates thanks to the 75% relief, now, from April 2025 it has handed over up to £20,000–£30,000 more in combined costs, on top of the new National Insurance burden and the mandated wage rise. What was once a fragile living has become, almost overnight, no living at all. Even the Treasury’s “transitional relief” feels like a polite postponement of the inevitable. In the shires, they are learning that promises of community and care for the high street can sound very different when the chairs are pushed in for good.
One pub, industry forecasts say, will close every day of the year, and the toll will fall hardest where the lanes are narrowest and the nights longest. Around one in four Britons now reports feeling lonely always, often or some of the time, and the local remains the last place where a nod from a stranger or a quiet “same again love” can still keep the dark at bay. When those doors finally shut, the loss will not appear in barrels or balance sheets but in the slow hollowing of hamlets that once possessed a heartbeat. James Nye, says he survived Covid only to discover the margins have grown thinner than paper. Every harvest supper, every wake, has become a small ceremony of farewell.
That same ceremony of farewell now plays out, more quietly, in the division lobbies of the House of Commons. The Labour abstentions on December 2nd were not the mutterings of metropolitan conscience but the quieter, older hush of rural memory. The roll-call reads like a gazetteer of quiet England: Gower, Shrewsbury, Ribble Valley, South West Norfolk, the Cornish coast, the Cumbrian fells, East Northamptonshire. Markus Campbell-Savours went further and voted against his own side, the whips suspended him before the echo had faded. Tom Bradshaw called them at last “the rural representatives of the Labour Party,” thanking those who “stood up” against the policy. Meanwhile, more than 270,000 petition signatures lie unanswered on the Chancellor’s desk like autumn leaves no one has bothered to sweep.
The convergence is no longer theoretical. At the Fox Inn in Patching, West Sussex, landlord Simon Boxall shut the doors in October after costs tripled since 2021 and a letter arrived warning that his business rates would double next year, leaving the village without its heartbeat. In the Cotswolds’ Ship Inn at Brimscombe, Wesley Birch faces a confirmed 300% rates surge to £31,750, plus an extra £11,000 in National Insurance, forcing 20% price hikes and staff cuts from 75 to 40 – liquidation looming unless relief comes. At the King’s Head in France Lynch, Gloucestershire, that pivotal rural crossroads pub, closed for good this autumn, the owners citing relentless post-pandemic cost pressures – falling trade, soaring energy bills and Budget hikes in wages and rates – that have crushed so many village locals across the country. Meanwhile, looming inheritance-tax changes are already pushing family estates to consider offloading tied houses just to stay afloat.
Across England the same quiet verdict is being read out, village by village. The rural inn – last bastion of civilised conversation and mildly adulterated ale – finds itself caught in a movement as slow and inexorable as the turning of the seasons. Dearer to run, harder to inherit, perched on land suddenly too valuable for mere pleasure, it waits beneath a quiet sentence of death. When the last one closes, no one will mark the moment. The tables will stay bare, the pumps will stay dry, the regulars will drink at home or not at all and the only sound in the village after dark will be the wind against an empty building.
And still Westminster refuses to hear the silence. Nine cross-party MPs on a letter, 84 abstentions, one suspended martyr – these are not the signs of a government at ease but of one discovering that the countryside remembers longer than the tearoom gossip lasts. CLA polling suggests deep rural discontent with the Budget, with Reform UK surging in support – Labour has dropped to third place in a recent Ipsos poll’s voting intentions (behind Reform UK at 33% and the Conservatives at 16%), with broader polls showing Labour around 18–31% nationally. More than a quarter (27%) of 2024 Conservative voters now lean toward Reform UK, signalling a continued shift – especially in rural and working-class areas where Reform has gained ground – and potentially threatening Labour’s hold on marginal seats.
In a hundred villages tonight, the same thought settles like frost on the windows of the last lit pub. Labour’s national renewal was sold to the cities, out here it is fading, one closed door at a time. Raise a glass while you still can. Somewhere in the Treasury a calculator clicks, still counting the pennies it will never see again.
And somewhere, someone is already thinking the same thing you are now.
Wherever your political affiliations lie, pause tonight and remember your local. The wedding that spilled into the beer garden at dusk. The Christmas and New Year’s Eve singalongs that grew warmer with every round. Nights out with friends that ended in laughter and last orders. The quiet gent who came in for a pint just for some company, and the low murmur that told him he wasn’t alone.
Now picture that same room dark. No voices, no bar stool pulled out for you. That is what is being arranged, one village at a time. If the thought chills you more than the beer in your hand, walk through the door while it still opens. Buy a round for someone you don’t know. Because soon the only thing left to raise will be a For Sale sign. The light isn’t flickering any more. The light is simply gone.
“Just over a decade ago, coal made up nearly two fifths of UK electricity generation, but the rapid advance of renewables has made it obsolete,” declared Greenpeace.
But what really killed King Coal wasn’t renewables – it was taxes.
In 2015, the Government doubled the carbon tax levied on fossil fuel power stations, effectively crippling the business model of coal-fired plants. This was in an attempt to slash emissions – and by that measure it has been hugely successful.
But now these same taxes are pushing up electricity prices for households and squeezing the life out of British industry, experts and businesses say.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire tycoon behind petrochemicals empire Ineos, has warned that carbon pricing is “killing manufacturing” and increasing the UK’s dependence on imports from countries with less stringent standards, such as China.
“The reason we get frustrated, and the reason that we criticise carbon costs, is because the Government can do something about this at the slash of a pen, if it wishes,” says Stuart Collings, the boss of Ineos’s chemical plant in Grangemouth, Scotland.
Collings says carbon taxes are costing the Ineos plant “tens of millions of pounds” per year and severely denting its competitiveness when compared to rival factories in the US and Asia.
In July, the average cost of power generated by gas-fired plants was £79.24 per megawatt hour. Of this, £25.64 or 32pc was carbon taxes, according to figures published by the think tank Ember.
This is important as most of the time, gas power plants set prices for the rest of the electricity market – meaning the cost of carbon taxes is inflating everyone’s bills.
Ed Hezlet, head of energy at the think tank Centre for British Progress, calculates that the levies accounted for about 7.5pc or £70 per year of a typical household’s power bill.
Let those figures of £79.24 and £25.64 sink in.
We keep being told that renewables are cheaper than gas. But the strike prices for AR7 are set at around £117/MWh for offshore wind.According to Ember, who are a left wing, pro-renewable lobby group, the pre-tax cost of gas power is less than £54/MWh.
Just a few final observations on the Carbon Budget:
Transport
The targets for EVs are not a surprise, given that they are in line with the ZEV mandate and the 2030 ban on ICE vehicles.
However, they effectively have ruled out hydrogen powered HGVs and have set a target of 63% electric HGVs on the road by 2040, despite the fact that the technology does not exist to make it workable.
There is also the usual nonsense about switching to public transport and walking, with a 7% switch by 2035.
Heat Pumps
The CCC want annual installations to hit 450,000 in 2030, and 1.5m in 2035. This will inevitably mean a ban on gas boilers by 2035 but also raises the question of how people will be forced to buy them in the interim.
Agriculture
CB7 demands a massive reduction in emissions of 39% relative to 2022 in the agricultural sector, and this will mean large reductions in the number of cattle and sheep, along with planting woodlands on good agricultural land.
However, reducing meat and dairy production in the UK will inevitably lead to replacement by imports, with a much higher carbon footprint. The CCC therefore demand import controls and tariffs to price them out of the market.
The end result will be much higher food prices.
In terms of numbers, they want us to eat 25% less meat by 2040, with a similar reduction in livestock herds. The effect on British farming will be catastrophic, and once again we have to ask how all of this will be enforced.
Aviation
The CCC veered away from earlier attacks on flying, quite deliberately in my view. Otherwise, Miliband’s position in the cabinet would have been untenable, given the plans for new runways at Heathrow and Gatwick. This really does prove that the CCC is not the independent body it is made out to be.
In place of demands to reduce flights and frequent flyer taxes, they call for emissions cuts of only 17% by 2040, with the emphasis on sustainable aviation fuel. The cost of this, estimated at seven times the price of kerosene, will be passed onto passengers, which they hope will reduce demand.
Passengers will also have to pay the full cost of “engineered removals” – basically direct air capture, the mammoth expensive and unproven process of taking carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it – to cover residual emissions.
Hope for alternative fuels and direct air capture rely of course on technology developing, but the CCC have this ominous warning of what is to come if it does not:
Translation – limits on flights.
Holidays abroad in a few years’ time, along with much of our lives, will be controlled by the government.
A new “grocery tax” designed to achieve the Government’s Net Zero targets will push up household shopping bills by up to £1.4 billion a year. GB News has more.
The green tax will add as much as £56 to annual household shopping bills, according to Government calculations.
The scheme, which charges retailers and manufacturers based on their packaging materials usage, has been quietly passed into legislation as part of the U.K.’s waste reduction and Net Zero strategy. Critics warn the measure will increase food costs for families while creating additional bureaucracy for businesses.
Under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme, which comes into legal force on January 1st, 2025, businesses will face charges for packaging waste collection and disposal.
The system, originally devised by Michael Gove during his tenure as Environment Secretary, was previously put on hold following opposition from Conservative MPs and retailers. The first charges will be implemented in autumn 2025, shifting the cost burden from local authorities to manufacturers and retailers.
Despite the change in funding responsibility from council tax to businesses, there are no indications that councils will reduce resident taxes. According to Government forecasts, the scheme will increase household bills by £28 annually in a “low scenario”.
In the Government’s “central scenario”, costs will rise by £48 per year, while a “high scenario” could see increases of up to £56 annually. The British Retail Consortium believes Labour’s £1.4 billion cost estimate is too low, suggesting the true cost to retailers will be closer to £2 billion.
The Government expects 85% of costs will be passed on to consumers in a “central scenario”, rising to 100% in a “high scenario”. Lord McKinlay, chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Committee, criticised the “rapidly introduced, yet little noticed grocery tax legislation”.
“It heaps more than a billion pounds of new and unnecessary costs on consumers, but as ever when Government departments estimate implementation costs, these are often hopelessly underplayed,” the Tory peer said.
He added: “It needs to be called out for what it is: yet another Net Zero tax which adds to consumer cost inflation, and further adds to the administrative burden on U.K. businesses. Another growth-destroying measure by an inept government.”
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) tells Australians that record breaking extremes are getting worse because of our cars and our air-conditioners (that’s “The State of the Climate“). But when the BOM can’t predict record breaking rain a month in advance, or even the day before, we know the BOM doesn’t understand what drives the climate.
Australians are angry the BOM didn’t see the flooding rains coming
Worse, we’re betting the nation on the BOM’s ability to predict the climate.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) tells Australians that record breaking extremes are getting worse because of our cars and our air-conditioners (that’s “The State of the Climate“). But when the BOM can’t predict record breaking rain a month in advance, or even the day before, we know the BOM doesn’t understand what drives the climate.
Somehow the BOM expect Australians to spend trillions and rearrange their economy based on their fifty year prophesies, but not to mind when “this summer” goes right off the rails.
But the real weather gods had another idea, and all the places under any shades of green below got somewhere from 100% to 300% of the average rainfall. The indigo and purple zones got even more.
This was a savage downpour — seven feet of rain in five days fell at one location:
No fewer than 12 locations across far north Queensland posted record rainfall totals.
Some areas received a year’s rainfall in a single day, isolating towns, closing highways and leaving hundreds stranded by surging floodwaters. Black Mountain near Cooktown recorded a cumulative 2189mm over the five days, while Mossman South, an hour northwest of Cairns, had 1935mm.
The BOM suddenly wants to absolve itself of liability
People have noticed there is now a mandatory check box forcing users to agree to a legal disclaimer clearing the BOM of all liability:
Users of the BOM app now have to agree to a 699-word “terms and conditions” statement that includes “information at this app … may not be accurate, current or complete”.
“To the maximum extent permitted by law, the bureau excludes any liability that may arise in connection with the BOM Weather app or any information or material presented therein or your access to or use of any of the same,’’ the bureau says in a “terms and conditions” statement that appears when a user attempts to download its app. — Mackenzie Scott, The Australian
They know they are in trouble.
I say the BOM can have immunity the same day Australians can also tick a box excluding ourselves from any and all costs, imposts and taxes related to any BOM predictions.
To be fair to the BOM, a hysterical and ill-informed media has allowed climate alarmism to infect reporting of what should be routine weather events.
For thirty years the Australian media has made hyperbolic scare stories about the weather while the BOM tacitly stood by and smiled. Where were they as the tenets of science were trashed, and critics were called “climate deniers”? If the BOM are victims of this hyperbole now, they reap what they sowed.
The BOM raised the stakes, and they don’t get to weasel out by saying “we used the best science” as if the best science wasn’t riddled with holes. If the science is good enough to throw away trillions of dollars, then the worst failures need a truckload of explanation.
Predicting the weather is hard. We could forgive the BOM for getting a complex immature science wrong, but not when they also tell us it’s just simple physics, they’re absolutely sure, and there is no doubt they’re wrong (give us your money!).
Engaging in happy talk about wind energy saving customers money and garnering the approval of the ESG obsessed will never substitute for reliable operation.
Until about a year ago, I thought about public utility regulation as too boring, too far outside my education, and unrelated to my interests and experience to bother with. I was wrong.
Figure 1. The relationships among interest on bonds and dividends to preferred shares (collectively called debt) and return on capital to return to ordinary shareholders (equity)
What prompted my change of view was recognizing that a frontline in the war, if you will, to remake the electric grid will take place not in arguments about the reality of climate change, but when utilities decide to change the way they generate electrical energy and pay for these changes. The permission to make these changes, and how the ratepayer gets hit afterward, are decided in the public service commissions which by law have to make their deliberations substantially transparent to the public. In particular permission for changes are gained in hearings of public necessity and convenience; how the ratepayer gets hit is decided in rate cases. I plan to examine only rate setting in this brief essay.
My principal goal is this. Many of us are pretty certain that pouring more renewable energy into a network makes delivered energy more expensive and less reliable. We often point to a graph that shows costs rising with percent renewable contributions to generating capacity. Yet, our antagonists claim that adding energy from renewables should, and in fact does, reduce utility costs. They have data, too. We strengthen our case by demonstrating specific reasons, or lack thereof, for rising utility bills. The rate setting process ought to make those reasons visible.
I also suspect most people know little about rate setting and are unaware about its complexity. It’s important to understand this bit of the order of battle.
Where I live we are in the middle of a general rate case affecting one-half the state. It calls for substantial rate increases (21.6% or over $140 million) and has become exceptionally contentious. It resembles rate cases that have been decided or are in progress across the U.S.[1] The application for this general rate case includes thousands of pages of exhibits and appendices.
The Essence of Rate Setting
Long ago people recognized that the delivery of utility services was probably best handled by allowing a private firm to have a monopoly over this service. At the same time people also recognized that the inherently bad effects of monopoly power had to be addressed. The response was to create public utility commissions whose decisions regarding utility expenditures and methods of financing those expenditures would have the force of law.
The basis of utility rates are best explained as follows in two equations.
Needed revenue = operating expenses+depreciation+taxes+(rate of return x rate base)
Then; rates = needed revenue / assumed volume of service.
The usefulness of this organization is apparent. Operating expenses, and taxes are aligned pretty well with the immediate delivery of services. Depreciation is how capital expenses are eventually recovered as assets wear out. Rate of return is necessary to provide access to capital markets where the resources are garnered for construction of assets to provide service.
There is some overlap. For example, some maintenance could be a capital expenditure and depreciated. Nonetheless, this is a pretty clear summary of revenues required to operate.
Equation 2) appears far more simple than the actual situation. What we call rates is actually a large set of tariffs each of which involves many components and which apply to various customers. The tariffs are structured to prevent one group of customers, such as residential consumers, from subsidizing another, say industrial consumers; while at the same time supplying the needed revenue of Equation 1). The “assumed volume of service” category is actually a guess at the volume of sales. It occasionally happens that the utility over-estimates its sales volume and cannot reach its proposed revenue requirements – a case of volumetric risk.
The goal is to arrive at revenues allowed by the Commission and a structure of tariffs that are “just and reasonable”. The standard of “just and reasonable” became a governing standard through a couple of Supreme Court cases in the 1920s to 1940s.[2] It means, in effect, that customers are truly paying for the value of the service they receive while the utility can earn enough money to stay in business and maintain access to capital markets; all the while the service that results being affordable and reliable. The most contentious aspect of any rate case is justifying and ordering the rate of return on equity.
There is another standard which serves as a worthy goal but which is rarely mentioned in my experience of reading documents and attending meetings. This is “used and useful” which is where the value of a net-zero grid becomes doubtful. It is allowed through Wyoming Statute (Wyo. 37-2-119) but which might be missing in the enabling statutes of other states. The idea is that prudent planning and expenditures should be useful to the delivery of service and actually used in the delivery of service. Stuff falling outside this domain, such as excessive compensation or excess labor or poorly justified projects are the very definition of unnecessary and unjust, unreasonable expense. Dispatchable versus non-dispatchable generation without dedicated backup cannot be viewed as equally “used and useful”. The standard of “just and reasonable” has trouble weighing the differences.
Two other things are important. First, there is dreadful asymmetry with regard to knowledge between the utility and practically all other parties to the rate case. The president of the utility verified this when he said that there are no parties who know more about the topic or the rate case than the utility company itself. This standpoint is entirely reasonable, but it unwittingly also makes the point that since parties are biased toward their self-interest, the greater knowledge of the utility must come with skepticism about their claims.
Second, proof of the reasonableness of the proposed costs, revenues and tariff adjustments is made by applying them to a test year to show how they would work in practice. Traditionally the test year was a historical year for which almost all the data involved, except the new tariff structure, were known quantities. About 15 years ago the utilities began making a case that a future test year (FTY) was more appropriate because it would reduce the regulatory lag between identifying shortfalls in revenue and new tariff structure. Wall Street endorsed this view also. However, having utilities and Wall Street, who both stand to gain by shifting their risks, endorse this new model should raise a flag of caution.
The FTY contains unknown quantities; inflation, capital markets, economic activity, volume of service, demographics changes, and so forth have to be guessed at. Combined with the asymmetry of knowledge, the uncertainties in using a FTY serve not only to make expenses obscure,[3] but potentially reduce market discipline. Regulatory lag aided market discipline by making the utility responsible for costs during their “naked” interval. Lack of market discipline leads to overcapitalization and bloated O&M.
A Current Rate Case
How the simple picture painted above of utility regulation departs from practice is well explained by our rate case. The rate case in question was born on March 1, 2023 when the utility sent its application and all supporting appendices, which amounted to thousands of pages, to the Public Service Commission. A historical year running from mid-2021 to mid-2022 provided a data gathering period to project into the FTY which is 2024. The order resulting from this hearing must be rendered by January 1, 2024 when the new tariffs become effective.
The utility makes its case for rate increases in the application thusly:
(1) continued capital investments including, the Gateway South, Gateway West Segment D.1 transmission lines and the Rock Creek I wind project, along with the Foote Creek II-IV and Rock River I wind repowering projects, which are required in order for the Company to meet its obligation to serve its customers and includes an associated rate of return of 7.60 percent on all capital investments; and (2) NPC.
So, there are three categories of costs; (1) capital expenditures which are recaptured through depreciation, (2) cost of capital which involves the debt involved (bonds and preferred stock), and return to common stock (see Figure 1), and, (3) net power cost (NPC) which catches the rest of Equation 1).
The first two categories are, in my view, relatively clear in their cost of power implications. New capital expenditures will enter a depreciation schedule and the rate structure will directly reflect those depreciation charges. What has to be determined is, on a per kW capacity basis, do renewable energy assets cause larger depreciation charges than the thermal assets they replace? I think the answer is yes for two reasons. First because the average capacity factor for renewables is far lower than thermal assets, the capital cost to replace thermal assets is going to lead to a larger book value to depreciate. I’d say at least 50% larger first cost for equivalent capacity.
Second, renewable assets have shorter depreciation schedules (20 years is widely quoted) than thermal assets (40-50 years is widely quoted). Treated as a perpetuity of sorts, renewables are decommissioned and replaced twice as often. A complication in this instance is that while coal assets are being abandoned (early in some instances), there are some new gas-fired assets that are needed largely as backup for non-dispatchable assets. These will have useful lives much shorter than typical thermal assets (15 years if the schedules in the typical integrated resource plans (IRP) are followed). Even if these plants have utility left in them by the time they are decommissioned, the remaining value will enter some sort of account that will be amortized on an accelerated schedule.
The impact on cost of capital follows similar thinking. There is a differential cost on an equal capacity basis which the rate structure will deliver a return on capital, dependent on the utility’s capital structure and interest rates on debt, but which is typically 7-8%. Let’s just take a wind plant as an example. For wind with an annual capacity factor of one-third to deliver energy like a coal-fired plant with annual capacity factor of 0.85 would require building 2.55 times as much wind plant (0.85/0.33). A quick estimate of the differential first cost would be $825 per kW of nameplate. The impact across rates would be around $100 per kW per annum of additional depreciation and return on capital. In fact, the overbuilding might be much larger. Xcel Energy advertises net dependable power of non-dispatchable sources as needing an overbuild relative to dispatchable coal being three to six.[4]
One could analyze many other new assets the same way. For example, some new transmission lines would not be built if not for the need to gather widely dispersed wind or solar energy. There may be some offsetting savings in debt because of an ESG preference for valued assets versus thermal derived energy, but considering the planned investments in renewables and the enabling transmission lines there cannot be but growth of rates from depreciation and return on capital.
Keep in mind that people might confuse depreciation with return on capital, but they are very separate and additive – one provides for recovery of capital expenditures the other affords access to capital markets.
The complications of NPC
Now we come to that place where the story becomes hazy – net power cost (NPC). The term NPC isn’t clearly related to any single item in Equation (1). The legal definition I have placed in the notes.[5] Its definition seems to open the door to all sorts of things.
Moreover, NPC is not directly determined from accounting entries which is what Equation (1) implies. Instead, in our rate case, it results from modeling. In our case, a sophisticated modeling and optimization program, “Aurora”, has input to it all the assumptions and projections (and uncertainties) of the FTY plus the known characteristics of generating, transmission and distribution assets. In working to find a least-cost solution to the problem of delivering specified power to all customers, it also produces a detailed projection of the components of NPC for the test year. I won’t remind readers of WUWT about the pitfalls of modeling future outcomes vis-a-vis desires.
In our rate case one witness produced a detailed picture of NPC factors affecting policy and operations. Examples are:
Taxes; including a direct $1/MWhr wind tax in Wyoming to an indirect $24.75/MWhr carbon tax (the CCA) in Washington State levied against a natural gas plant that probably does a lot of balancing wind and solar.
Abandonment of hydroelectric plants on the Klamath River.
Market purchases of 1) Day Ahead/Real Time (DA/RT) purchases, 2) summer shortages of thermal plant capacity, 3) Coal to gas conversion requiring temporary market purchases. The utility claims these costs of market purchases of power have risen 200%. What causes this market price inflation?
Environmental concerns such as the Ozone Transport Rule (OTR) and NOx emissions.
Thus, many factors that could fall under a category like “environmentalism” have substantial impacts on NPC.[6] Even a small factor like net power purchases or feed-in tariffs from residential wind and solar have the effect, one witness said, of increasing rates across all classes of customers. Perhaps the rising NPC and adoption of wind generations are simply both correlated with the endless stream of environmental demands.
Our utility claimed in multiple instances that wind energy saved customers $85 million because it has no fuel cost. A person would really like to see the cost accounting that substantiates such a claim. However, in absence of such data we could ponder Feynman’s dictum that “if you start a [classical] argument in a certain place and don’t carry it far enough, you can get any answer you want.”[7] Carrying far enough in this case means saving customers even more money by adopting 100% wind energy right now which is what the Sierra Club and a majority of voters apparently want.[8] Figure 2 shows this to be patently impossible.
Figure 2. Generation data from EIA in the PacifiCorp East balancing authority area this past week.
What Figure 2 shows first, is that wind disappears routinely. In fact, October 2023 has delivered four separate wind droughts in the EIA Northwest region; one of which was a full week long. More important, though, is to note the anticorrelation between wind or solar and coal thermal energy in Figure 2. Coal is 70% anticorrelated with solar and 50% anticorrelated with wind. Coal is balancing both with some limited help from natural gas. The amplitude of the total adjustments in coal output are as large as 3,000MW; sometimes more than once a day. It would not be remotely possible to run PacifiCorp East (PACE) on wind energy without coal or its equivalent. Moreover, the indicated capacity factor of coal plants is 51% and wind is 27% in Figure 2.
No one in their right mind designs a coal thermal plant, especially a base-load plant, for 50% capacity factor. Instead coal design should figure 100% at maximum demand and some reserve and running capacity at about 80% or even higher.[9] What has happened to the capacity factor?
Figure 3. Trend of U.S. thermal plant capacity factor. Data from EIA. Figure for 2023 is based on January through August with estimates for the balance of the year.
Figure 3 perhaps supplies an answer by illustrating a trend. The capacity factor of coal plants in the U.S. has been on a long decline commensurate with adoption of more renewables. This same tendency of declining capacity factor is true of all networks worldwide and especially among coal thermal plants but is true of renewables as well.[10] In other words, a universal consequence of adding renewable energy to networks is more costs devoted to delivering less energy per unit of investment.
People try to explain this observation in ways convenient for their worldview but I see a simple explanation.[11]
Renewable generation took the best locations early and as more is added these less capable locations reduce overall capacity factor. The variations in renewables, clearly visible in Figure 2, grow larger with more renewables. Thus, the balancing dispatchable source of energy, typically thermal, has to supply larger power levels for the worst cases of renewable shortfall, but has to be curtailed to accommodate the occasional large contribution from renewables. Thermal plants can only be curtailed so far but any curtailment leads to a reduced capacity factor.[10,12] The limited ability to curtail thermal plants inevitably leads to more curtailment of renewables which lowers their capacity factor further. The two very different generating sources walk one another to lower and lower capacity factors. Eventually capacity factor declines to whatever source dominates the grid.
The utilities and environmentalists might contemplate how forcing thermal plants to accommodate and balance non-dispatchable energy, with its poor capacity factor and wild swings of output, leads to: 1) reduced efficiency of thermal plants, 2) increased maintenance costs, and 3) shortened asset life.[12] Perhaps someone could quantify these factors and apply them to the cost of delivering “free” wind energy just to humor us skeptics. Yet, the answer doesn’t matter. No matter how the costs are accounted for, the consequences demand higher rates.
Conclusions
Engaging in happy talk about wind energy saving customers money and garnering the approval of the ESG obsessed will never substitute for reliable operation. Whining about thermal assets being inflexible and preventing full adoption of wind and solar is simply PR. Someone must admit the realities that Figures 2 and 3 show.
References and notes:
1- Minnesota PUC cut Xcel Energy’s request of 22% to 9.9% in June 2023. The New York State PSC cut rate requests by NYSEG and RG&E by about 50% in October 2023.
2-These are referred to as Bluefield Waterworks (1923) and Hope Natural Gas Co. (1944). However many other early decisions could serve just as well. See for example, Herman Trachsel, Public Utility Regulation, Irwin Publ., 1947. I’m not sure why these two cases seem to have exerted the most influence.
3- One consistent feature of testimony of the utility and the intervenors, both written and oral, is to seemingly forget that the NPC is for a test year which is in the future. There is a tendency for the utility witnesses, when asked to justify some driver of NPC, to immediately begin discussing some event of the recent past or the present rather than their effects in the FTY and especially not into the uncertainties of their projection.
4-American Experiment, June 20, 2023, Minnesota’s energy transition threatened after Xcel’s reduced rate increase. Online at “Minnesota’s energy transition threatened after Xcel’s reduced rate increase.pdf” If a person considers storage to replace dispatchable thermal assets, then the amount of overbuild expands greatly.
5-From Lawinsider.com the definition of NPC:
Net Power Cost means, for any period, the cost during such period of purchases by Power Marketing of Deficit Station Power, increased by (i) the amount of any transmission or other costs incurred by Power Marketing during such period in delivering Deficit Station Power to the point of sale, (ii) the amount of any state or federal Taxes paid or required to be paid by Power Marketing with respect to the purchase of Deficit Station Power or otherwise with respect to the performance of its obligations hereunder, and (iii) the amount of any other costs paid by Power Marketing during such period in connection with the purchase of Deficit Station Power, including an arms-length, commercially reasonable allocation of overhead and administrative expense.
6-As of this morning I received notice of a hearing on continuation of a 0.3% per month surcharge on all billing statements to establish a Carbon Capture Use and Storage (CCUS) portfolio standard – currently deferred but which the deferred balance accumulates interest at the allowed cost of capital.
7-Feynman’s Lectures on Physics, Vol II, Chapter 34 Section 6.
8-The Sierra Club actually believes PacifiCorp could abandon thermal assets immediately and claim that depending on thermal assets was always a “risky” proposition. A survey indicates that voters in Utah want more solar and wind generation by a majority of 8:1.
9-The factor includes some down-time for turnaround maintenance and additional curtailment because of variations in day/night demand.
10-Natanael Bolson, et al, 2022, Capacity factors for electrical power generation from renewable and nonrenewable sources, PNAS, 119, 52, doi:10.1073/pnas.2205429119
11-Such excuses include the idea that thermal plants were overbuilt through poor projections of energy demand. Some decline might be related to aging of plants with underinvestment in maintenance.
12-The lower limit of curtailment depends on many factors but could be 30-70% of maximum. Generally, the lower the limit on curtailment the worse the efficiency of fuel use and aging of plant.
13-IRENA, 2019, Innovation landscape brief: Flexibility in conventional power plants. International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi. Available online at http://www.irena.org/publications
Lower CO2 emissions to limit global warming and climate change. Concept with manager hand turning knob to reduce levels of CO2. New technology to decarbonize industry, energy and transport
The cost of decommissioning the grid could reach a total of £65bn, according to a draft National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) report.
It is the first time a public body has examined the future of the 176,000-mile network of buried pipes, which serves eight in ten homes but risks becoming obsolete under plans to reach net zero carbon emissions. Unused pipes must be removed or they risk decay and experts fear the potential collapse of roads.
Households could be left to foot the bill through higher energy bills or taxes since there is no provision for decommissioning in current government budgets, and energy companies are not obliged to cover the costs.
The NIC did not dispute the figures when contacted, although an insider insisted the report was a draft and could change before final publication next month.
The NIC believes the grid could theoretically be converted to carry hydrogen, which is cleaner, but that would also come at cost of “tens of billions of pounds” and there are doubts over the suitability of hydrogen as a mass heating solution.
Craig Mackinlay, a Tory MP who chairs the Net Zero Scrutiny Group in Parliament, said: “Bit by bit, the true astronomical cost of net zero is being revealed, and it’s far from clear the products we are being forced to switch to are any better than their forebears.
“The forced conversion from gas boilers to heat pumps appears to be a case in point; it will also leave the country with a vast network of redundant infrastructure that will take tens of billions of pounds to decommission.
“I’m worried the command and control approach to net zero that the Government is taking will leave us with a cost of living crisis that stretches far into the future.”
The prospect of hydrogen heating looked “dead in the water”, Mr Mackinlay added, after Grant Shapps, the former energy secretary, appeared to rule it out in July.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business and energy secretary, said the Government’s net zero plans were “stuck in cloud cuckoo land”.
He said: “The Government cannot decommission the gas grid, because it can’t afford to.
“They have got to look very seriously at whether the legal obligation to reach net zero is realistic.”
However, Kwasi Kwarteng, another former business and energy secretary, said the costs of decommissioning was “hypothetical”.
He said: “Given the infrastructure we’ve got, it doesn’t make sense to decommission the whole grid at vast expense. I cannot see a government doing that.
“It’s unrealistic to expect that all household heating in this country will be electrified.”
Under current proposals for households and businesses to “stop unabated burning of natural gas”, ministers are backing electric heat pumps as the main replacement for gas-fired boilers.
But if most households ditch their boilers, the existing gas grid cannot just be switched off and left in the ground due to safety concerns.
One industry source said: “We’ve got large-diameter pipes criss-crossing major cities. If we were to just turn them off and not maintain them, they would decay – and roads could start falling in.”
Shutting down the gas grid would be a complex but gradual process as people switch to alternative technologies, requiring engineers to safely close off certain areas while allowing gas to keep flowing in others.
The ultimate fate of the network, which was privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1986, will depend on how much is repurposed to carry hydrogen.
At least some of the grid is likely to be used to supply hydrogen to heavy industry, which cannot easily decarbonise, in future. But ministers are waiting until 2026 to decide whether hydrogen will also be used for home heating.
Many experts have also poured cold water on that idea, pointing out that hydrogen is energy-intensive to produce and must be burned in much higher quantities than natural gas to produce the same amount of heat.
In the meantime, the monopoly owners of the gas networks continue to invest billions of pounds in upgrades, replacing metal pipes with plastic ones, in a programme that stretches into the 2030s.
These investments will be paid for by consumers through their bills – in addition to any future cost of decommissioning.
Dr Richard Lowes, an expert in heating at Exeter University, said the Government should review whether the upgrade programme was still good value for money or would make energy bills unnecessarily higher.
He also warned that as more households abandon gas, those still using the network could be forced to shoulder an ever-larger share of decommissioning costs – raising the risk that those who cannot afford a heat pump become financially “trapped”.
Dr Lowes said: “It’s a huge issue and no one [in the Government] has got their head around this properly.
“Fundamentally, there’s two options: You pay for it through bills, or via the tax system.”
One way to ensure the burden is spread fairly would be for the Government to nationalise the network, which is valued today at about £20bn, he said.
A government spokesman said: “This claim is simply untrue. Our gas network will always be part of our energy system and therefore any such estimations are wrong.
“We have and will always put affordability at the heart of our approach to improving it. We will continue to work with the industry to explore if using hydrogen offers value for money for consumers and meets the required safety standards.”
The govt response is the usual head in the sand one.
“Our gas network will always be part of our energy system “
Seriously? What will it be carrying then – certainly not gas! And not much in the way of hydrogen either by all reports.
For all of the promises of a golden Net Zero future in thirty years time, the harsh and undeniable reality is that there are enormous costs to be paid for, both now and in the next decade or two. It is no consolation to be told we might be a bit better off long after we are dead!
This story also highlights a very serious dilemma.
As more and more households stop using gas, per govt plans, the increasingly small number still using gas will have to pay a much bigger share of the overheads associated with the gas network, and not just these decommissioning costs. As this very good article outlines, the alternative will be for government to assume responsibility for the gas grid and its costs.
A further problem, also outlined, is how we will be able to gradually decommission the gas grid, district by district. If, say, there are a few homes in a street still using gas, will their gas supply simply be cut off regardless?
This conversation draws attention to the importance for a rational, data-inspired response to global issues. As a successful entrepreneur, I say often, data is the most information rich data stream. Every decision you make and in every approach to solving novel problems, data must be at the center of the decision, otherwise you’re speculating and relying on emotion.
I hope you’re ready for a truly thought-provoking conversation with Bjorn Lomborg, a globally recognized author and thought-leader renowned for his innovative perspectives on addressing global issues. If global warming and climate change has you feeling a bit panicked, by the end of this episode you’ll see the picture behind the panic and understand exactly what Bjorn thinks is a bigger problem to solve than climate change.
Bjorn Lomborg has published multiple bestselling books such as ‘False Alarm,’ ‘Skeptical Environmentalist.’ and his latest book, ‘First Things First.’ with a mission to help people discover the most effective solutions to the world’s greatest challenges, from disease and hunger to climate and education.
This conversation draws attention to the importance for a rational, data-inspired response to global issues. As a successful entrepreneur, I say often, data is the most information rich data stream. Every decision you make and in every approach to solving novel problems, data must be at the center of the decision, otherwise you’re speculating and relying on emotion.
Lomborg emphasizes the need to prioritize spending in various sectors, the role of education, and poverty reduction in improving societal outcomes. We also explore the potential implications of automation and the need for innovation in tackling climate change.
Together, we tackle topics such as global warming, automation in elder care, and the need for data-driven decision-making. Hear Lomborg’s fresh insights on channeling spending into prioritized sectors and the role education and poverty reduction play in societal outcomes. There’s so much to discover, don’t miss out on this enlightening episode!
BJORN QUOTES:
“Panic is not any kind of mode to be in if you want to solve issues.”
“When it comes to global warming, it’s a problem. It’s not the end of the world.”
“I tend to see the world very much as a marginalized conversation, and I’m simply trying to set out some unpanicked advise that in a pretty panicked world can help us be a little smarter.”
“We don’t have enough resources to deliver everything to everyone.”
“If you take a look at the last 25 years, each and every day, the world has lifted 138,000 people out of poverty.”
“We don’t have enough resources to deliver everything to everyone.”
“We used to have a very strong understanding from the elite in the world that more trade was actually good. We also used to neglect the fact that it’s not good for everyone.”
How heating your home fuels climate change – and why government measures are failing to stop it
Published: July 3, 2023 9.15pm AEST
The UK’s housing stock is old, energy inefficient and heavily reliant on fossil fuel heating systems – mainly gas boilers. With heating responsible for 17% of the UK’s carbon emissions, homes and their central heating must transform if the country is to achieve net zero by 2050.
…
Ban the boiler?
Launched in 2022 under Boris Johnson, the boiler upgrade scheme offers homeowners a £5,000 grant to replace their gas boiler with an air-source heat pump (£6,000 for a ground-source heat pump) and aims to lower the cost difference between the two. Installing a new combi-boiler costs between £600 and £2,150 whereas a heat pump is £5,000 to £8,000 after the government subsidy.
The government also plans to implement a clean heat market mechanism that will ask boiler manufacturers to sell four heat pumps for every 100 gas boilers in 2024/25, or pay for the equivalent in heat pump credits if they can’t (one heat pump credit is worth £5,000).
…
Beyond targets for boiler manufacturers, the UK government will ban natural gas boilers in new buildings from 2025. While Germany’s governing coalition is implementing a ban on installing gas boilers in existing properties from 2028.
Before such a ban is tabled in the UK, there are policies that could raise the dismal heat pump installation rate. First, like the Dutch, the UK could gradually lower taxes on residential electricity and increase them on gas.
There are other big problems with the heat pump and home insulation push.
Britain is a very wet place, a lot of homes are sitting on soil which is always wet. Houses in such places, especially older houses, are built with hollow walls and lots of exterior air vents, so any moisture drawn into the house structure can be vented before it does damage.
If you fill these hollow spaces with insulation, and stop the moisture from being expelled from the house, a lot of bad things can happen, both to the houses and to the occupants. Aside from the obvious problems of living in a dripping damp house, one of the worst case outcomes, the newly installed cavity insulation can wick up so much ground moisture, it swells and causes structural damage, eventually bursting the interior or even the exterior walls of the home.
But the biggest problem, tax or other coercion is not going to force compliance from people who are so poor they cannot afford to eat regularly. All extra taxes will do is add to their misery.
This could all have been so different. Instead of punishing poor people, with one permit the British Government could alleviate Britain’s energy poverty misery.
Britain, especially Lancashire, is sitting on top of a vast reserve of frackable gas. Caudrilla boss Francis Egan has been begging the British Government for over a decade to let him drill, to provide energy security, stimulate manufacturing, and provide cheaper energy and to bring down domestic gas bills. But other than a brief respite under Prime Minister Liz Truss, British politicians have chosen for over a decade to throw poor people overboard, to let ordinary people suffer for the sake of their political climate fantasies.
Tom Bilyeu
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