Energy

Despite economists predicting $200-per-barrel oil by 2010, what actually happened – and what has happened every time since – is that high oil prices caused a major economic shock

If super-efficient Germany can no longer sustain a wind turbine industry, Britain has zero chance of building its own.

When it comes to individual energy sources, economic complexity makes attempts to calculate EROI akin to medieval scholars attempting to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

The stark reality is that there are no more large and cheap oil deposits left to fill the gap between production and consumption.

Britain is a country which can only keep its lights on by paying businesses and households not to consume electricity when the wind isn’t blowing.  And if ever there was an argument for keeping the economy as analogue as possible, this is it.  Because anything and everything digital depends upon …

Concern over the steep rise in the price of electricity this winter has paved the way for rehashing the old misinformation about the relative cost of generation.  So it is that Carbon Tracker – a non-profit which seeks to focus financial investment on non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) – reports …

Since the 2008 crash, we’ve all had to get used to “shrinkflation” – where, at least until recently, manufacturers kept prices down by shrinking the content.  A 150 gram bar of chocolate, for example, would become a 125 gram bar but would sell at the same price.  Okay, that’s easy …

Some of my readers who read my August post, Nobody could have seen it coming, will have gone on to revisit the 2004 BBC docudrama, If… the lights go out.  Those who made it to the end, will have noticed something odd and unexplained… how, exactly, did everything go back …

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 …