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From the article: >The investment bank predicted that the country’s retail energy price cap — which limits how much households pay for heating and electricity — would be raised to £4,567 in January and then £5,816 in April, compared with the current level of £1,971 a year.... Nabarro said Citi’s new forecasts had taken account of a 25 per cent increase in wholesale gas prices last week and a 7 per cent rise in wholesale electricity prices. No price controls can account for the fact that energy prices are up a lot globally. Pretending they're not up and keeping the price cap in place is worse. First it doesn't discourage energy usage. That's a big purpose of prices in a market economy. Second, when something is priced below market price it inevitably leads to shortages. This will have to be addressed through some kind of political action that will be sub-optimal. Rather than a young person seeing higher energy prices and adjusting their AC, while an old person may choose to pay the higher price, you'll see ham-fisted conservation measures. If you're against having the customer's price reflect more closely the market price, you have to propose an alternative. Do you want people to use less? If so, how do you do that? Or do you want people to continue using the same, pretend the high prices don't exist and just pay for it through taxes? Either way, the money will have to come from somewhere or rationing will have to take place. There's no free lunch |
We already don’t have AC in summers which are growing more and more extreme (regularly over 90F, and sometimes over 100F) - there’s nothing there to turn off.
Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and so is generation.
Tax that aggressively to start with.