Why the UK Energy Price Hikes & Energy Shortages?
Why the UK Energy Price Hikes and Energy Shortages? Its our reliance on imported fuels, rather than developing the huge tidal and wind resources we have around this island. Most UK homes are still heated by gas and many are woefully under insulated.
Multiple factors are behind the gas price increases. Geopolitical pressures, including high demand for gas from Asia and low supply from Russia, as well as last year’s cold winter, which left gas stocks low, are among the main reasons.
Other countries, such as Norway and Germany, have done a much better job of moving away from gas-fired heating and adopting electric heat pumps, meaning consumers are less exposed to price leaps. Many energy companies have gone bust in recent months and new suppliers have had to purchase gas and electricity on the wholesale market. Britain’s entire energy market needs modernising.
Gas bills, for example, are not subject to a carbon price even though gas produces climate change-inducing carbon dioxide. The problem is not the green subsidies as they remain woefully low in comparison to the assistance the fossil fuel companies receive.
Currently, the UK’s tax regime makes it the most profitable country in the world to develop big offshore oil and gas projects. Since the Paris Agreement, the government has provided £13.6 billion in subsidies to the UK oil and gas industry. From 2016 to 2020 companies received £9.9 billion in tax relief for new exploration and production, including £15 million of direct grants for exploration, and £3.7 billion in payments towards decommissioning costs.
In Norway the government receives about $21 per barrel of oil, while the UK receives less than $2 which amounts to the UK taxpayer propping up the big polluters . During the peak of Covid-19, the UK was the only country where Shell operated where it didn’t pay tax, instead directly paying $100m to Shell.
With proper government policies, green industries can create three times as many jobs as oil and gas and when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow the tide and the currents continue around our island, totally under valued!!!!!
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Learn more about saving money and energy through home retrofitting here. Read about helping to grow community energy and other ways you can reduce your use of energy and save money here.
Environmental Education, Speaker, Solutionist
