Energy

There is something deeply tragic about watching people who would be dead within a fortnight without oil nevertheless calling for oil – and fossil fuels more broadly – to be banned immediately.  It is possible, of course, that these people believe that food grows inside supermarkets or that the chemicals …

It takes a special kind of cynical self-interest to make people pay twice for something they already cannot afford, while claiming you are doing them a favour.  This though, is the energy price relief package announced by Liz Truss yesterday.  The package plays that old political card of being not …

There is a deep irony that Europe’s wind turbine factories were among the first to close in the face of our growing energy crisis.  Nevertheless, it goes a long way to demonstrating the fundamental flaw in the net zero project – while the harvested energy of the wind may be …

Eighteen months ago, the UK average annual combined gas and electricity bill was £1,287.  Later this week, we expect to learn that it will rise to £3,582 in October and to £4,266 in January 2023.  Not, in reality, that anybody is going to pay that amount.  All but those at …

Germany is in trouble.  The IMF has revised its projected growth figures down to just 1.2 percent for 2022.  Even this may prove to be optimistic now that gas imports from Russia have dropped to just 20 percent of what was anticipated prior to the EU sanctions.  With autumn approaching, …

Let’s talk about “value.”  Value, at its simplest, is merely the consequences of acting upon the world in a manner which “improves” (some might say despoils) some part of it.  If, for example, someone takes a pile of timber, a saw and some glue and nails, and then turns it …

There is a story, attributed to Richard Buckminster Fuller, which uses the development of bridges as an example of technological progress.  The story begins with two groups of humans separated by a large ravine.  They can shout across to each other, and they soon come to understand each other’s language.  …

Neoliberalism’s greatest success is about to be revealed as its greatest weakness.  In the 1970s – the previous inflation that the central bank generals are trying to fight – the perceived threat came from over-powerful trade unions and a too-protective welfare safety net, which together, the neoliberals argued, had driven …

Here’s something which will likely be universally unpopular:  The government shouldn’t do anything to subsidise energy prices.  I say this in the face of a £700 or so increase on annual bills announced today.  And this is just the beginning, because, as Nils Pratley at the Guardian points out, when …

It’s half past three on a cold Friday afternoon in mid-January.  The temperature is just five degrees centigrade.  The sun is already low on the winter horizon.  There is barely a breath of wind.  Once again, Britain sits beneath cold high-pressure air.  And once again we have had to turn …