[grnmamba]

Of interest is that none of the points in the "What could be done to reduce bills?" section increase the the availability of gas. The tax cuts, support packages, price freezes, etc. will result in more money chasing the same amount of energy.

[happymellon]

And the UK has a lot of North Sea gas that should be used while we are in the transition away from these fossil fuels.

It's been argued for years that it should happen as a short term fix for energy security, but didn't. And now we are here.

Sad, but unsurprising.

[ZeroGravitas]

We still have that gas (about 40% maybe, or maybe half of that if the other half is Norwegian).

But we are paying market rates for it, which puts lots of profits in the hands of fossil fuel companies that came out of normal people's pockets.

Returning it to them is the economically efficient answer.

[paganel]

That would have brought ESG numbers down, we wouldn’t want that. This feels like an early 1970s Soviet economic mis-investment story (when they had to import grains from the US even though they had some of the best agricultural land on the planet), curious how it will all end up.

[neilwilson]

Correct. We don’t have a cost of living crisis per se.

We have a Gas crisis - like the Oil crisis of the 1970s.

To get more gas we’d have to outbid other nations, and to do that we’d need to strengthen Sterling.

Which we could do by reducing other imports - particularly Chinese ones (leveraging their dirty peg to the dollar).

All we can do is reduce demand for gas or move the problem to some other nation via the floating exchange rate.

There are no good solutions for this winter.

[ZeroGravitas]

Reducing the usage of gas is exactly as effective as magically creating that same amount of gas, but cheaper and more scalable, and puts the money spent in the pocket of someone not selling fossil fuels.

All the thing suggested by this blog do that (insulation, more renewables, efficiency).

They also mention some government things which don't help, but that's not what they are recommending.

[jl6]

This seems to be a really basic economic point that isn’t in the mainstream dialogue anywhere. Subsidizing demand is simply bartering up the price and hoping the UK can outspend everyone else to get hold of the same finite quantity of gas.

[kaashif]

The problem is that other countries are already subsidising their demand. If the UK doesn't follow suit, prices will quickly rise beyond consumers' abilities to pay. But if everyone uses this logic, prices will just keep spiralling out of control with no end.

I guess the UK does have some domestic gas production, so could ban exports of that and institute price controls severe rationing.

[_dain_]

subsidize demand -> prices go up -> people get angry -> subsidize demand

[ZeroGravitas]

Note the similarity to housing, as people that own the land syphon off the profits.