New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
...
Except both of these claims are utter BS.
My energy bills have gone up about 30% over last year, mostly as a result of being on a good fixed price tariff before and then not being able to find another, and so ending up on the variable rate tariff which has the price cap.
As of October, the prices were due to rise by 80%, and the first thing Liz Truss did was announce that the government was covering a chunk of that, so the rise will be another 40%.
Literally, where are you plucking this 1000% figure from? Because it is utter garbage. People's bills will be less than double what they were 2 years ago. That is still a hell of a rise, but it's nothing like the crazy figure you're quoting.
The current cap in the UK is £1971 typical energy consumption was going up to £3549 in October as you said that no longer happening now going upto £2500 that a 26.84% increase not 40%, since everyone is getting an £400 energy rebate so the real percent increase will be lower.
If the West didn’t support Ukraine and didn’t impose sanctions, there would probably be fighting in the middle of Ukraine right now, orders of magnitude more destruction, and a complete collapse of wheat exports.
Remember: Russia’s advances were bumbling before Ukraine received a lot of support, so I doubt there was any chance that Russia could have finished this war and “restored” order.
So I’m not an economist, but I would wonder if these sanctions/support actually prevented a larger economic problem.
You are talking about your electricity bill. You are not the center of the universe.
A lot of people have received even 10x here in Finland. I know several people who've just had their electricity cost 5x -- We ourselves have had a ~doubling already and expecting more increases. Personally tho, at home i've only seen an increase of like 20% like yours. BUT just because i got only 20% personally at home, does not mean the issue doesn't exist.
The world does not revolve around @ralf or @Mumbly -- That's unbelievebly self centric and narcissistic to say that because you personally have not experienced it, that it does not exist.
Just because You only had 30% increase
Same goes for this -- just because You are not the big loser on that roulette, does not mean others are not. Here is for example Finnish spot pricing: https://sahko.tk/
Chart doesn't go that much back but there used to be a lot of contracts for 3-4cnt/kWh just a few years back. ~5cnt/kWh was the norm. Now a lot of people have been forced into spot pricing, which has been coming a bit down to ~32cnt/kWh, but there's been 1€/kWh days, and for winter it is expected to rise substantially.
Many people have been forced to 50-70cnt/kWh contracts as well, those people very well may have already experienced 10x.
We ourselves are expecting electricity to go up to about 8x at the DC. These kinds of price increases are absolutely murderous on energy dependant industries. Lots of steel mills have already been shutdown for example.
Also sounds like you are from the UK -- which means your Government has imposed socialist regulations (price caps) and subsidizing WITH taxpayer money. The real price has increased and at worst those price caps could lead to a situation where gas and electricity simply are not available (See case Venezuela's price controls)
UK != Entirety of Europe.
They absolutely did prevent even larger issues, and also energy was an exempt, it was Russia who decided to cut off the gas and electricity supply, revealing just how badly Europeans have handled energy in the past few decades, taking the facade off the Green ecoterrorist movement which is heavily influenced and supported by at least Russia, if not also China -- for this very exact purpose.
However, problems began well before the war, the war only exacerbated the issues. Without support Ukraine it would give essentially green light for Russia to attack other countries too, and would have said that we are not a united front in Europe, do whatever you must. That could've lead to a massive escalation.
Ukraine has giant natural resources, that's the bottomline. Ukraine has a lot of oil and gas, development of which Russia has succesfully sabotaged. Oil companies are unwilling to invest because Russia has caused such massive issues. This is all about keeping EU in a energy leash, the control of which Russia has.
You keep saying this phrase but you've never explained what you mean.
At a guess I'd assume people being anti nuclear power, but that isn't limited to people who are pro green energy. Unfortunately the prior incidents with old tech have scared a lot of people. My view: nuclear for base load and green on top.
If you think everyone who is pro green energy and anti oil&gas is a terrorist your vision of the planet won't be inhabitable except near the poles.
Perhaps you could clarify.
Green party, Greenpeace. They were started to stop proliferation of Nuclear energy on the face, the green movement in general has been supported by Stasi, KGB and now FSB at the very least.
The point of the movement is not moving to sustainable energy, or making the environment better. Do you ever notice how illogical some of their decisions are, like crazy illogical? They are not at all, actually very smart sometimes, if you realize that their agenda is not "green energy" and such BUT the absolute corruption and disruption of society as a whole.
Case in point is nuclear power -> Cleanest, Safest and Cheapest. Absolutely amazing for base load and stabilizing the network. They have caused so many plants to be shutdown or not to be built to begin with, or here to be built too large too advanced by getting less permits.
Just this year two crazy things happened, first in Finland: Turf energy, you get this from swamps. Turf is used for many other things than energy too. Commie-Greens got the rule in this country (despite not being election winners, weird system), they immediately raised the taxes on turf to so insanely high it became unprofitable AND then offered a program to scrap all the hardware associated for lump sum payments.
Greens had gotten away that turf is not renewable, non-green energy few years prior, and this was the end game.
Guess what? Turf is renewable, it grows, is a huge carbon sink (another long story why it's mostly a hoax), just like trees. We were only using 1-2% of what renews annually for our own needs, we have enough of that renewing annually we could supply the entire europe with clean, carbon neutral energy.
The industry died, and we started importing wood chips from all around the globe, and a little bit of turf from russia to cover that loss. It's very green and sustainable to import wood chips from Brazil to Finland, yes?
Another thing where green party had gotten their way is restricting our forestry to the level it makes more sense to import wood chips from literally the otherside of the world, than use our own huge and renewable supplies. What a crazy world.
Greens had also gotten their way with our coal power plants, cleanest in the world, already working and functioning. Could probably be converted to turf or wood chips fairly easily, but regardless, our coal plants releases pretty much nothing but water vapour, that clean they are. They did not have to just shutdown, but they had to be demoed, nothing less would suffice than actually BLOWING them up. Not just regular demo, but actually blowing them up.
Those plants accounted for 2000MW, more than the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant coming online. Now we are short of energy and looking at blackouts becoming a regular thing.
They have absolutely ruined our forestry industry too, our another green gold. We have excellent forest upkeeps, replant always when cut etc etc. but they have made it so expensive that we have to import wood chips by sea freight from brazil, duh.
European Union also made the decision this year that trees do not grow, trees are not renewable any more.
Our green party has pushed this to such a degree that i think now our forests counts are carbon pollution instead of carbon sink.
Diesel and gas generators have to be started all around this country this winter to keep the lights on, and we have huge reserve coal power plant, which green party is trying to keep shut down, and have made it SO EXPENSIVE to operate that even at these absurd prices it apparently does not make sense to start it up until blackouts starts to happen.
Further, greens have been hard at work getting our dams to be demolished and closed down as well. We do not have big elevations, but still, this is renewable, sustainable energy they want to close.
Bottomline is that they want to cancel all forms of energy production EXCEPT the most unreliable ones, least suitable for baseload: Wind and Solar.
But on the other hand, they are at the sametime trying to limit Wind because they are eye-sores, while gathering HUUUGE government subsidies for wind power companies, which have ... ZERO wind mills, and it's just given out as dividends. This is from the top level government, spouse got owned the firm. That's just the highlight of it.
Solar panels is the only thing i don't think they are actively trying to cut off at this moment, but guess what? Solar is useless in the Winter here in the north.
TL;DR; They are doing their utmost trying to destroy society as a whole, meanwhile robbing tax payer money, and themselves being as wasteful as possible flying with private jets all around the globe, and importing their "ecological vegan food" from the other side of the world ....
I see you have been bitten by the propaganda too. I got a newsflash for you; This planet was dying until we started releasing massive amounts of Co2 in the atmo, Co2 was down to something like 200-220ppm, plants require at least 160ppm to survive. This planet has had huuuugely more Co2 in the past, back then Sahara was green.
Plants require less water to sequester Co2 from the atmo when Co2 concentration is high. Co2 maximum effect has been pretty much reached according to nobel winning physicist, and other physicist; works like paint, if you paint your house red, painting it again red won't make it any more red.
Water vapour is by far the biggest greenhouse gas, huge amounts in the atmo, but it is untaxable. So demonize Co2, which plants require, to the point that school textbooks have began skipping all together that plants need Co2 to grow.
Co2 concentrations in the past were 10-30x higher, meanwhile planet was colder than now. Last 12 000 years has been the most stable of this planet's history as well, and we are still in a ice age. It's easy to say it's warming up, when you start measuring from the coldest possible time.
Only thing to worry about is the rate at which Co2 is climbing, but then again, we could bump it 10x with no ill effect, but positive by Sahara becoming green again (about 4000ppm required if i recall right).
No one talks about the new forests etc. appearing all over the globe, and how this planet is getting greener. Nope, coral reefs are being destroyed, plastic garbage patches etc. Nawh, both too are hyperbolic bullshit, coral reefs are actually doing better than ever, and the garbage patches are not like the photos -> it's more like 1 piece of plastic per 1km2.
That being said, we should not shit and destroy the environment neither, there needs to be a balance. For example, car emission controls are really good, because smog and local pollution is an absolutely huge problem leading to a lot of death and health issues. Currently the M.O. is to destroy humankind at any and all costs "for the environment"
I could keep talking about this for the next 12hrs probably. Nobody got time for that.
To learn more, leave your biases and propaganda, and start looking at what actual research says, and watching outlets who do not gain their profits from spreading propaganda, but actual objective narrative of both sides. Follow the data, not the message.
Also not around your post apocalyptic views with lack of any sense of reality. So much of bullshit as you produce I haven't seen around those pages for a long time.
What's post apocalyptic in this thread? Where have i fear mongered that the whole society is about to end?
I tell you where; Nowhere.
A lot of people will suffer from this, that is a undeniable fact. Just because You don't have an issue, doesn't mean others don't.
It's not the end of the world, but it's a undeniable crisis.
For having so much to say on the topic you've forgotten one massive part of it -- the goal of using renewable energy and the goal of reducing carbon emissions aren't one and the same.
For example, burning "Turf" or peat as we call it - does release a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. If we can use something else that is renewable and doesn't release carbon, the peat bogs will grow and continue sinking more carbon. Same applies to burning wood - it's better than oil and gas as we can replace it, but worse than wind or solar because it's taking carbon from a carbon sink and putting it back into the atmosphere.
Carbon sink only works if it is allowed to grow. If i recall right studies show that even if wood is burned, it is net carbon negative because not everything is burned.
If trees are left to rot, they regardless eventually release their carbon back to the atmosphere. A lot of wood is also used for construction, which they are trying to disallow or hamper as much as possible as well.
Turf/Peat is used for a lot more than just for energy.
Regardless, you bypassed almost everything from the post.
Carbon is not even an issue, just a way to tax more.
The green ecoterrorist movement is trying to use all kinds of excuses to essentially kill society as a whole, nothing is good enough but completely stopping humans existing, except themselves of course.
Wind + Solar btw causes huge amounts of grid issues to manage. Batteries at the scale required is not going to happen for a while -- and will not solve everything globally either. You cannot store energy which does not exist in the first place. Finland can get weeks where it's almost completely dark, super cold and no wind at all during the winters.
No discussion on global warming is complete addressing the issue of methane releases from animal fart, (read: cattle from dairy farms) and no political party has the balls to regulate or tax that. This applies globally.
Carbon is a poor proxy for methane.
The reason I spoke about my bill is firstly it is empirical data rather than some BS 1000% claim that is untrue and secondly it represents close to the worst case-rise - from being on a low fixed-price tariff, to going to the variable rate and by default hitting the government's maximum price cap. So, from about the lowest possible consumer rate to the highest. It's possible some people were on an even lower fixed-rate tariff before, but that will be a very small minority.
Yeah, and the world doesn't revolve around Finland either.
Mate, you say it's narcisstic and then state about your own experiences.
The reason I gave my information is because I was directly responding to a claim made about UK rates that was demonstrably false.
Your government is free to do the same.
Again, I was responding to a bullshit claim about UK price rises.
Methane breaks down in a decade, hence, methane does not enter the discussion as it's irrelevant. Just like Co2 in reality is as well.
UK != Whole of Europe. Most countries do not have price limits or government subsidies (taxpayer subsidies)
No it does not, situation is even worse in Estonia, Germany for example.
This thread is about European energy crisis.
And as I said, your government could introduce them if it chose.
Right, so you're happy for lies to be made about the situation in the UK to be made as long as they support your argument, but as soon as they're challenged because they're not true, then suddenly the UK can't be mentioned because other places have it worse.
I guess we might as well conveniently ignore the fact that the price of gas is starting to come down a little now too, because that wouldn't help your narrative.
Gaslight much? Just a bit?
Yes, gas prices are coming down. Electricity prices are still expected to rise.
UK is not the entirety of Europe still.
It's not just UK, several EU governments, including mine, capped energy prices, introduced scheme which will provide discount on electricity bills for families and businesses, and so on.
Beside that I also don't get where this other guy got 1000% electricity price increase. My electricity provider so far raised prices for 18%. There's announced another prices hiking in the beginning of 2023 which sucks of course, but it won't be more than 20% again.
@PulsedMedia no one's denying energy crisis. Of course it is and that's sucks, I just can't read nonsenses like "you won't be able to buy bread", "there will be 1000% energy prices increase", "my friends already lost their houses" and so on ...
I mean, what the fuck people?
No one said it will be easy. It stared with COVID-19 pandemic and now it's just getting worse, but I simply can't read your and @rcy026 post apocalyptic predictions how Europe will be hungry and frozen. I mean what the fuck people? Do you even live in europe to produce such nonsenses?
Electricity pricing is not the main concern. It's gas pricing that's going to cause the issue because still 95% of all housing is heated with gas and not electricity. And gas pricing did quadruple already (+400%) in the last half year and it's not even winter yet :-)
There is a correlation with electricity power though. Because all over Europe electricity is still being produced with gas factory's as well.
Remember; most food is being produced mostly with gas.
What the hell are you eating? Most of the food I eat is produced mostly by sunlight and water for vegetables or water and grass for meat.
He means industrial mass production, transportation and such.
The main thing we can't agree is the extension of this crisis and it's effect on the Europe as it seems.
"It sucks, we will need to cut down some expences, but we will manage..." vs "omg, we're going to dieee hungry and frozen".
Greenhouses are mostly heated by gas here at evening/night. Also, transportation is still not on hydrogen. How do you think they produce diesel?
And in the winter the farmers also heat their cattle to make sure they don't freeze to death.
Here I disagree with you but that's ok. There are millions of people not able to even now buy their food (in EU) in NL it's around 600.000 people now and probably 2M by end of 2022 (shortage of money). They don't walk around with Gucci or Prada stuff or a Rolex. Those are also the people being affected the most.
I agree, not buying luxury stuff might be depressing for some people, but try not to eat for 3 days. You will not recognise yourself :-)
That's exactly what I posted one page ago.
It's general "apocalypse over the Europe" narrative I don't agree with. It seems like poverty gets recognition only in discussion like this, then some complaining about prices increase and then business as usually.
I do agree most people are just used to a certain standard and prefer not to change that.
The reality for many people is that dire. Just because it's not for @Mumbly doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Not everyone gets hit equally. All the power for you if you are insulated from these events. BUT some people are going to go without heat or food.
Here in Finland it's ironically those low wage workers who will go without heat or food, they are the poorest. For unemployed this is a nothing burger, govt social benefits cover electricity. Food might be a bit tougher if prices rise radically.
Not sure how it's in other European countries, but every country has their own class of low income who will face these issues in the coming winter.
except it's not just low income, it's the middle class too which needs to make tough decisions unless energy prices get under control soon.
Just because you made it up it doesn't mean that I said anything like that. You have some strange fetish in twisting reality just for the sake of argument winning.
Do you want me to quote again what I posted?
I would appreciate if you would actually read and use some brains before you respond mentioning me next time. Products of your imagination don't have any value for the discussion.
Does Finland have Earthquakes? If yes, then having some concerns for Nuclear plant is rational.
I'm a fan of Nuclear, but you do need to keep in mind the damage if shit goes bad. There's many examples people can cite in our lifetime. It doesn't matter if risk is less than 1%, it's not 0.0%.
When they're talking about putting pipelines in our Province and people couldn't understand how the Natives would be against it despite $$$ and chance of catastrophic spill like 1 per 88 years or something, it's because if their water and food supply is damaged from a spill, they're FUCKED. Not a little, but up the ass and out the mouth FUCKED. It's a risk determination, much like stock market, but when talking about lives for millennia, you err on side of safety.
Nope, we do not have any earthquakes.
Nothing has risk of 0.0% -- further the data shows that nuclear is very safe compared to other forms. Sure, when things go bad, they can go bad spectacularly, but even counting all that, it's by far safer.
It's just it's easy to fear nuclear because it's so spectacular when things fail, no one notices the occasional lung cancer from coal plants (well new ones are safer), or wind turbine caused deaths etc.
It's bizarre, but even solar panels are less safe. I guess it's people falling off roofs etc. when installing / maintaining them? inverter fires and such?
Don't quote me but i think it was like an order of magnitude difference to next safest.
Newer plants are also much safer than older ones, and once thorium reaches commercialization the risks are nearly nill - disaster strikes? No worries, they physically auto shutdown and was it that they even bury the nuclear material automatically, and reaction cannot be continued unless it's intentionally continued with thorium.
There are plenty of good docs on youtube, curiositystream etc. about that subject.
Electricity prices in southern Sweden in January 2021 averaged 0,2460 kr/kWh. In August of 2022 the price average was 3,304 kr/kWh. Do you need a calculator?
Again, if this discussion is going to make any sense at all, you guys have to stop looking only at your own situation and see the big picture, Europe is not just one country.
It's in Swedish so I understand if it's of limited usability for most people, but here is the current situation in Sweden. The power company is officially declaring that they might be forced to shut down parts of the grid this winter to be able to maintain a reliable service in the rest of the grid, and that will leave people without electricity. And yes, even those that pay the bill will be cut off.
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/svenska-kraftnat-kan-tvingas-koppla-bort-elanvandare-i-vinter
I do not need a calculator. From your own claim:
THAT is bullshit. Nobody's prices in the UK have gone from £300 to £3000 a month. That is what I was calling out because it's utter nonsense.
If you weren't talking about the UK but instead talking about Sweden, why did you respond to someone talking about prices in the UK and not make it clear that you were talking about a different country. If you just wanted to show the difference, you could have said from 3600 SEK to 36000 SEK per month. But your claim was about bills in GBP. And NOBODY who's billed in GBP is going to experience even a doubling of prices over the year, let alone a 10-fold increase.
And if your bills are really 36000 SEK per month now, let's see the before and after bill. It doesn't sound plausible to me for a country where over half the electricity comes from renewables.