[minimaul]

This is well beyond ‘market prices will fix this’ - market prices will mean a very large chunk of the population will literally be unable to afford to cook dinner and heat their houses.

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.

[bko]

> Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and so is generation.

The largest gas provider in UK (British Gas) profits in millions of pounds:

2009 147

2010 226

2011 258

2012 291

2013 153

2014 96

2015 73

2016 43

2017 11

2018 8

2019 -5

2020 27

I couldn't find more recent data but please provide it if you have it. These are in millions of pounds. Suppose their profit jumped to 100 million pounds (4x the 2020 profits). Do you think 100 MILLION pounds would solve the problem? To put this in context, public sector fuel and energy expenditure in 2021 was 456 BILLION. And this is only public sector. Profits aren't even a rounding error.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/521474/centrica-energy-e...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/298887/united-kingdom-uk...

[minimaul]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-28/profit-bo...

As an example for more recent information.

[bko]

I would look at the company's financial statements. The article doesn't really provide much insight. I took Centrica, which was mentioned in the article and looked at their 2022 results ending on June 30th 2022:

> British Gas Services & Solutions adjusted operating profit fell by 88% to £7m.

> The reversal of a £50m Covid-19 and industrial action impact from H1 2021 was partially offset by an increase in customer compensation following disappointing service levels over the past winter, continued higher absence rates earlier in the year, and increased workload, which we believe is a function of customers choosing to have non-urgent jobs they had been delaying during the Interim Results | Group Overview (continued) Centrica plc Interim Results for the six months ended 30 June 2022 7 Covid-19 pandemic completed. These temporary factors negatively impacted adjusted operating profit by approximately £25m

It's difficult to tease out, but the profit numbers are so tiny compared to the aggregate increase in price experienced by consumers. I think focusing on profit makes for good headlines but underlying issues are a lot bigger. Taking away the tiny sliver of profit these companies have will reduce innovation and new entrants while doing absolutely nothing to alleviate higher consumer prices.

https://www.centrica.com/media/5723/centrica-2022-interim-re...

[gruez]

> This is well beyond ‘market prices will fix this’ - market prices will mean a very large chunk of the population will literally be unable to afford to cook dinner and heat their houses.

Advocating for "market prices" doesn't necessarily mean letting everyone fend for themselves. You can provide grants/subsidies for the poor, while still keeping market prices so everyone is still incentivized to save as much energy as possible.

>Edit: Big power retail companies in the UK are making record profits, and so is generation.

Sounds like a great way to discourage investment and make future shortages even worse. The energy industry runs on a boom-bust cycle. Why bother investing for the boom years (ie. right now) when you know the government is going to seize all your profits?

[AlexandrB]

Why bother investing at all when you can just buy back stock and make the owners/CEO rich[1]? If you think these companies are sinking their profits into investing for the future, you're dreaming.

[1] https://financialpost.com/investing/energy-firms-pay-record-...

[gruez]

1. As per BP's Q12022 reports, their capital expenditure was $2.9B compared to $1.6B of buybacks. Is that too much? Too little? I don't know. However, I do think your characterization is way too simplistic.

2. the boom-bust cycle is exactly the reason not to reinvest all the surplus profits now. You might intuitively think that investing now will help lower oil prices, but it takes years for an oil project to be online so by the time the project is complete there will be an oil glut.

https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c...