renationalisation of energy?

[Passenger69]

Would you like to see the renationalisation of energy. We are in a crisis but all I see is a tinkering around the edges.....all I hear from Labour is a windfall tax and cutting vat ....a "refund" of 150 from the tories....

I would like to see energy renationalised with proper long term cross party strategy to protect people who need it and include a workable strategy for green energy.

AIBU?

It’s not a topic I know a lot about but philosophically I think all natural resources should be owned by government. It’s nuts to me the highest bidder would come along and buy all the oil/gas/whatever and then make HUGE profits. Utility companies should then have some sort of public-private-partnership to manage the service with caps on profit.

I think given the changes ofgem are making to the price cap and the protection they are going to give energy companies to protect them against switchers there’s no point in it being a free market any more. If we can’t shop around for the best deal it should be government run then at least the profits will be used wisely (well maybe not with this government)

is re nationalisation that most innovative thing we can think of? Sounds the most lazy and taken straight from 1970s handbook. If the government ran energy companies, you can expect blackouts. Governments are always worse at running things than private companies. Be careful what you wish for.
The problem with energy prices in this country, as with most things, is that everyone want cheap energy but no one wants the infrastructure in their backyard. NIMBYISM and faux virtue signalling around the environment has cause this this mess.
A couple of examples - Fracking which has been hugely successful in the US with no notable risk of earth tremors is opposed by ‘activists’. I use the term loosely as people like this wouldn’t know activity if it hit them in the face. They usually produce nothing and are recipient of other fruits of other people’s work and innovations.
Ok then, you don’t like carbon, let’s build nuclear. Here come the ‘activists’ against nuclear power because it’s not safe apparently because they once heard about Chernobyl and Fukushima on the news, they they probably could point these places out on a map.
Fine, you don’t want renewables. Let’s build an offshore wind farm in one of the best spots in Europe for this sort of initiative - off the Shetlands isles. ‘Activists’ appear to oppose this too. I kid you not, on Radio 4 recently an activists was arguing with the local MP that this would be aesthetically ugly.
Conclusion - we are a nation with too many ‘little islanders’ who want to protest and shave mo interest in getting things done. Opposing everything, solving nothing. So no, nationalizing energy wouldn’t help. You have to deal with the people blocking production to bring down prices.

What we need is a whole load of new nuclear power stations because renewables are too little & too unreliable. Plus loads of research into new methods.

Oh dear, we really have learnt nothing, have we, about the mess governments ALWAYS make when they try and run anything. Funny really, how we don’t trust the govt to run supermarkets. Because intrinsically we know that country would starve.

Yep. Clean nuclear power is the way forward.

There's nothing unreliable about renewables if the energy is stored or converted when there's an excess. Nuclear will play a role but it is too expensive to be the main source.

@sst1234

Snarky much? That’s why I said public-private-partnership as whilst the current govt might not be trusted are you actually suggested fat cat utilities firms have the best interest of the public front and centre of their policies and the status who is acceptable.

And I thought this wasn’t my specialist subject. Seems like it’s not yours either.

*quo

I wouldn't trust the state to run a bath, let alone supply the gas to heat it.

I'm not in favour of nationalisation (would be horrendously expensive for one thing so would no doubt increase costs), however I do feel there should be additional taxes on profits from selling oil and gas (all the time, not just a one off windfall tax), that could be offset with super tax reliefs for any money they spend investing in green technologies and/or supporting customers with bills and insulation. That way there's still an incentive to invest in new technologies and produce green energy

The extra taxes raised could support the cost of bills, insulate homes and be used to invest in new green technologies.

With new smart technologies then batteries and/or thermal batteries can be charged up when there is an excess of energy in the grid, then discharged when less energy is being produced and/or demand is higher. As we move to electric cars, then they can be used as energy stores too (with an override where people know they have a long journey coming up).

According to Wikipaedia: “The Gas Light and Coke Company was the first public utility company in the world. It was founded by Frederick Albert Winsor and incorporated by Royal Charter on 30 April 1812 under the seal of King George III.”

That was the fore-runner for British Gas, so I don’t know why a pp thinks it’s “70’s playbook” stuff. It seems the state managed to run public utility companies for over 150 years pre-privatisation.

Completely agree.

We are looking to get solar panels and battery storage, but we are incredibly fortunate that we are able to do that.

More people need to be supported to get panels and batteries, just removing VAT is not enough. Even in homes where they cannot put solar panels we could add batteries to help smooth out demand.

Plus reverse the planning rules that have effectively stopped new onshore wind farms, as that is the cheapest form of energy at present (and I don't know about you but I'd rather look at a windfarm any day rather than a nuclear energy plant).

We also need to reduce our energy use by insulating our homes properly. The more expensive energy gets, the less the payback period is. There was a great article in The Times from the Octopus Energy boss acknowledging that lots of homes will be difficult to upgrade, but we need to go for the low hanging fruit first and upgrade the homes that are easiest to insulate (so 1970s onwards). No point complaining and saying we can't do all homes so doing none!

Pity that you didn't read further down the Wikipedia page then. The Gas Light and Coke Company paid dividends to the holders of its 80,000 shares. It wasn't nationalised until 1949.

It was a "public" utility company in the same sense that First Group runs "public" buses - any consumer in the area they supply can pay to use their services, as opposed to a bus company supplying vehicles for private hire or distributing wholesale gas to a factory or power station.

I don't know about you but I'd rather look at a windfarm any day rather than a nuclear energy plant

Nuclear power stations might be big ugly buildings, but you can at least look the other way, they only occupy a tiny portion of the view. Windfarms on the other hand are much more expansive. Stick them offshore.

Take a look at some of our essential services run by government...
Passports
Driving licences
HMRC

Do you honestly expect a government run agency to be run more efficiently and effectively than the current private companies? Honestly? We'd have rolling blackouts within a month of the government taking over.

That aside, where's the magic money tree coming from to make this happen? Our trade agreements with other countries would implode if we took back the energy supply (EDF, Scottish Power, EON, Green Network Energy, npower, Octopus and Shell all foreign owned - these are just the suppliers) without fair compensation to the owners/shareholders. Then there's the black hole that would be created in millions of pension schemes because most of them have long term investments in utilities.

At best this is a naive idea which is why not even the Labour party have seriously touted it. At worst it's a fucking terrible idea.

@perenniallymessy I don't expect to see much more onshore wind in the UK, planning is difficult and the wind patterns are less favourable. Offshore is already planned to expand by 500% within 10 years. Floating wind will add even more.

Is that the magic money tree that the right always bring up yet always seem to strip those leaves with nary a comment when it comes to bribing other political parties so they can stay in power, for ferry contracts with a company that had no ferry's, for a non functioning track amd trace system and never mind all the dodgy ppe contracts, that magic money tree?

I agree a windfall tax would achieve nothing. Shell, BP etc. pay taxes in boom years but later get it all refunded by utilising carried forward losses, or tax refunds related to the decommissioning of old oil platforms. It means that rather than paying tax on its upstream operations, shell actually received a refund of $121mn last year.

It would cost billions...and that's just to sort out the initial mess. Ongoing necessary investment would be further billions which can only be raised via taxes or pricing. There is no economical basis for re-nationalising energy without substantial cost increases.

Plus, the bit that most are consistently missing is this is not a downstream problem (aka suppliers) but an upstream one. They are the ones setting the prices of gas, largely from other countries too - how the fuck nationalising suppliers when we still have to buy gas from Bob in Dubai to burn in power stations will decrease costs for the end consumer I'd love to know.

As others have pointed out, the only way to fix this situation is to make all of our electricity home nation generated, either through nuclear or green energy. Ending reliance on gas for power stations is the only way to control and properly stablise the home market.

Nationalising and increasing the nuclear infrastructure would be a more sensible suggestion given that all of ours is foreign owned, thankfully there are steps towards this now with British investors being preferred for future nuclear capability. In the meantime it's best not to upset France or China.

Why is Private sector always the answer instead of demanding efficiency in public sector?
Instead of dismissing nationalisation because we're looking at bad application shouldn't part of the solution be how to do public better?

The ONLY thing a government can do better than private industry is borrow money cheaply.

Well sort out the existing public sector to show how it could run things well before trying to take on something new.

UK wholesale energy prices have been starting to drop, with day ahead gas prices down at £120/MWh compared to £190/MWh in the EU. This means that we can also generate electricity cheaply.

I'm on an Octopus Agile tariff so notice any change in wholesale electricity prices (I get billed by the half-hour), my bills have been considerably lower over the last couple of weeks than they were a few months ago.

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/18/uk-energy-exports-europe-hit-record-levels/

Couldn't agree more!

Just one example of a competent and efficient government run essential service would be a great start.