[iso1631]

Doesn't matter in the UK, there's no incentive to turn off the set to save yourself £20 a month, because the taxpayer will subsidise your excess electric use thanks to the latest idiotic socialist idea to simply get future generations to pay for today's excess use.

[MomoXenosaga]

I am childless and atheist so I don't particularly give a shit about future generations. Those who do have a vested interest in the future of mankind are welcome to donate their money to the State.

[richrichardsson]

> the latest idiotic socialist idea to simply get future generations to pay for today's excess use

You misspelled "get future generations to subsidise the power companies profits today".

[InCityDreams]

Tory government idea?

*for non-uk: the Tories are The Conservative Party, considered right wing, and certainly not 'socialist' by any stretch.

Reading any UK newspaper of late, I would consider a £20pcm saving tip almost front-pageworthy. I also believe Viz might accept it in their Top-tips section, if you want to reach a wider audience.

[iso1631]

Supply is low, demand is high, prices have increased as the market does, which sends signals to consumers to reduce usage

The government has taken those signals away by agreeing to pay whatever the price is

They could have simply given £1000, or £100, or £10000, to every household, but they chose not to.

[explaingarlic]

Bailouts are only socialist when they benefit the average person, seemingly :P

[iso1631]

These bailouts give money directly to energy producers, taken from future workers.

A far better solution is to give the money directly to the average person and let them choose what to spend it on.

[explaingarlic]

What?

Do you think these price increases are strictly on the retail side?

[iso1631]

Providing help to commercial consumers is essential, look at the energy usage last year and base it on that.

However just paying the suppliers directly gives no incentive to invest in increasing energy efficiency - if I'm paying 70p a unit and can spend £1000 to save 3000 units it makes sense. If the government is capping it at 20p a unit then why would I bother paying to increase the efficiency? That means more needless energy use

[explaingarlic]

I don't necessarily disagree with using increasing efficiency as a vehicle for survival in this European apocalypse but you need to consider proportionality/scale of the problem.

In less than two years, the price of the usage of public grid electricity will have increased in the U.K. from ~£1,600 to £6,500. These useless household statistics only help to hide the fact that businesses, who do things with this electricity that don't include running a T.V. pointlessly for 8 hours a day, or heating an unoccupied room, are going to suffer more than anyone. It's easy to take the British consumer's word for it, and understand that a bill which served as a relatively small expense in a past life will now be 4x bigger than it was before, but the reality is that doing things is significantly less affordable. Manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare, public and private services etc. will all be smashed to bits, and their utilities bills aren't going up 300% but more like 500-1500%.

Is it remotely possible to push energy efficiency to the point that we are using half of the energy we were before? It's entirely possible, in my mind. With trillions of dollars of investment.

It's simply not worth it. It's better to take the money and run, if daddy warbucks is offering to give us 3.9% APR on a couple hundred billion dollar loans, than it is to pay in cash and pray for better times with improvements that come along with science and technology.

Loans on the scale that nations take add additional risk to the creditors - the risk of not paying them back is a final one.

If a million people don't pay their credit cards off in a year, it doesn't matter - the market is full of those that will. But if U.K. gilts don't pay out, then a lot more people are screwed, and there's a lot more incentive to keep that cash cow mooing.

[iso1631]

That's fine, give the extra money directly to the person consuming electricity, which allows them to choose whether to use that money to fund the energy use if they need to, while encouraging

My company has a lot of equipment it keeps on needless because it's cheaper than the manpower to turn it off and back on. If demand is lower at the weekend they could use the money to shift some of their electric use to a weekend and pay people more to use it then.

Instead we are encouraging people to use energy as before, which was slightly more profitable than another option, rather than taking the same money but putting the power into the hands of the people using it. It's a paternalistic socialist approach which disempowered the person buying on the market, it's the exact opposite of what the conservative party should be about.