Why the energy price cap is needed in order to keep renewables cheap for the consumer

Just as it has been announced that the energy supply companies have returned to making some money, demands are being made to scrap the energy price cap. The energy price cap protects domestic energy consumers against, to put it simply, against being ripped off by energy suppliers if you are not subscribing to one of their contracts. Now the right-wing think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, has jumped in to champion the abolition of the price cap and a return to what they describe as competition. Worryingly Jonathan Brearley the OFGEM boss seems to be leaning also in that direction.

That brings me to the first reason why we should keep the price cap - at least in some form. Competition in the domestic retail market did not work for around 20 years of its existence and there is no reason that it will work in the future. There are simply too many, too small, consumers for suppliers to effectively market. The bulk of these consumers do not have the time or the desire to spend a lot of their time checking which suppliers are offering the best rates and then signing off or on to them. I certainly didn’t!

The price cap brought to an end the practice whereby the suppliers rewarded people who signed up to fixed-term purchase agreements and then soaked the rest of the consumers (the majority) who were on so-called variable (read rip off) tariffs. We do not want a return to this! The Centre for Policy Studies claims that this will be avoided if only we abolish the fixed term agreements, which they call ‘acquisition only tariffs’.

I very much doubt it! The suppliers will just change their tactics and just change their tariffs every little while - probably after an interlude following a quick burst of marketing to pick up consumers before putting tariffs back up later. The Competition and Markets Authority talks about educating consumers to take part in the market. I say, no thanks, I haven’t got the same to play at being a petty capitalist consumer in a market that is really an effective monopoly.

The second reason that the price cap should stay is that it ensures that the money saved on cheap renewable energy schemes stays with the consumer and not diverted down some hole by the energy suppliers. Renewable energy projects that are signed up for ‘contracts for difference’ (CfDs) are giving an increasing amount of money back into consumer’s pockets. The consumers get reduced bills as a result.

This works because CfD contracts involve the generators paying the money back to suppliers when (as they are usually these days) the generators are receiving more than the ‘strike price’ set out in their contract. The way this works is that in the so-called green levies which we pay on our energy bills is a section that funds renewable energy. But when renewable energy saves money these levies turn negative - ie the consumer saves money - or it will do if the suppliers pass on to them the savings in terms of reduced bills.

However, this process is only guaranteed because of the price cap. That is because OFGEM calculates the price cap taking into account these flows of money associated with CfDs. If the price cap is scrapped, ergo, the suppliers can do what they like with the savings for cheap renewables!

The trouble is of course that in the post-Thatcher world anything that claims to involve markets is assumed to be the default best solution, even when it patently fails in practice. My own preference would be put the domestic retail energy supply sector into public ownership, about which I shall say more at a later date. But for now, please don’t let them scrap the price cap!

In a few months time you will be able to buy a definitive guide to the renewable energy revolution and how to save the energy industry from the profiteers - this is my forthcoming book ‘Energy Revolutions - profiteering versus democracy’ to be published by Pluto Press

A publicly owned energy system would have much reduced the present energy price crisis - but nationalising things now won't solve this crisis

 Amidst the unfolding horror of the UK's energy price crisis there is a debate about public ownership of the energy system to make things better. Well, as I discuss below, it's very plausible to argue that things would have been a lot better in the current crisis if energy had stayed in public hands instead of being privatised and liberalised. But whatever the merits of taking parts of the energy system now into public ownership may be, it won't help us beat the current crisis. It is an unstoppable tsunami that will drown many of us.

Let's go back and 'imagine' what would have happened if natural gas, electricity, oil and coal had not been privatised in the first place.

Perhaps most importantly for the present crisis, things could be crucially different if the publicly owned British National Oil Corporation had not been sold off in the 1980s. It could have adopted a role of dominating the nation's oil and gas industries as in the case of Norway with its state owned oil company Statoil. Then the nationalised company could be told by the UK Government to contract with the UK gas distribution and supply agencies to supply natural gas at much lower prices than the global LNG prices which form the basis of our current gas prices.

And there would be most likely be more of the natural gas, as well, because our natural gas stocks would not have been depleted so much. That is because the end of British Gas's monopoly on gas in the 1980s opened the way for the operation of a lot of gas fired power stations in the 1990s, something that was pushed along by the privatisation and liberalisation of electricity markets after 1990. This depleted UK natural gas reserves at a much more rapid rate.

If electricity had remained in the shape of the nationalised CEGB then we would have had fewer gas fired power stations because the newly privatised regional electricity companies would not have any incentive (they would not have existed) to promote building the gas fired power stations! Certainly the CEGB would probably have built some; combined cycle gas generation was a new, spreading technology then and the CEGB would have wanted to be seen to get ahead - but I'd guess far fewer would have been built than what we have now. We might also have had another nuclear power station built, - Hinkley C in fact, albeit a version only a third the size of the version being ponderously built at the moment. The original Hinkley C was never built because of electricity privatisation. I doubt that there would have been more than this since energy prices plunged in the 1990s making nuclear look costly even for a nationalised energy company (the Governments of the 1990s certainly didn't encourage nuclear build). But we'll just have to wonder about that.

The speed and scale of renewable energy development would have depended partly on how nationalisation was configured. It is difficult to see how a monopoly, whether public or private, could deliver an effective, never mind cost-effective renewables programme without a competitive element. That's what the international examples tell us. Really! Plus of course the nationalised electricity monopoly would most likely have fought against big targets for renewable energy since it would reduce the value and viability of its own power plant. I assume, however, that this could have been largely overcome. 

So probably the force of political gravity would have forced some licensing procedure in which there was competition for contracts to generate renewable energy from a variety of companies, just as today.- not a million miles from the present system we have now of CfDs (contracts for difference) whereby the Government gives direct contracts to the renewable energy developers.

I really do not know where energy efficiency would have been delivered better or worse - there was a recognisable energy efficiency programme organised under the Blair/Brown Government, but that mostly disappeared after the Conservatives failed to renew Labour's programme.

So what are we left with? The Government would easily be able to tell the nationalised oil and gas industry to sell us gas at much lower prices than at present, We'd have a position whereby the UK gas reserves would have been less depleted, meaning that a higher proportion of natural gas was being supplied by our nationalised companies. Carbon dioxide emissions would have been higher. There's unlikely to have been enough new nuclear power to make a key difference there, especially when one considers that we would have had to argue with the fossil dominated CEGB to make a rapid expansion of renewables. And yes, we would almost certainly have more gas storage capacity than we have now since it would have been by definition a political rather than a market choice that it has been left up to - but how much would be a matter of debate. If we had as much storage as Germany, for example, we would be in substantially better shape.

So, all in all, we can argue that the energy price crisis, whilst still bad, would have been much less severe than the terrible position we now face if the energy industries had remained in public hands.

But, I'm afraid, that is not the same as arguing that nationalising the energy industry will make the current situation much better, or at least not better than could be achieved with better regulation at lower cost. That's not to say that there aren't some plausible arguments for public ownership of some parts of the energy industry as a general proposition. But nationalisation now will not save us from our present predicament since the crisis is caused by ultra high global LNG markets upon which we are reliant. Certainly a nationalised industry could pay the nuclear and renewable generators much less than we do at the moment. But we can do that with much better regulation than there is now without having to spend money on buying out the assets of the companies involved.

Ah, yes, we could nationalise North Sea oil and gas assets. But that would be very expensive, and anyone who claims this can be done without paying the full price is talking nonsense. There are too many treaties and international courts and lawyers around to allow that to happen. To give you an example - BP, which used to be owned by the UK Government, would cost over £100 billion including debts. And even then most of the North Sea hydrocarbon assets are owned by other companies.

I don't see much advantage in monopolies such as the transmission and distribution companies being privately owned. True, they have an incentive to reduce costs, and deliver their services with fewer costs, which means fewer employees mainly. But that looks to me like a trade-off between employing people and giving profits to shareholders, arguably also including having fewer people around to give a better service. Added to that the so-called competition in the retail supply sector has always been a joke. It's just too costly for the suppliers to market themselves to so many small consumers. The industrial and commercial sectors might involve some competition, but the gains overall must be small. As we know it's the generation of energy which dictates the bulk of the prices. 

The most likely short-term possibilities for nationalisation would be some suppliers who go bust after consumers are unable to pay their bills!

A radical idea would be to give ownership of energy distribution and supply to local authorities. There would be some accountability to local people there, which might help net zero carbon transition. But of course this will cost money and need to be organised well. I have commented on this before. See https://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.com/2019/06/labour-and-energy-nationalisation-why.html

But, to get back to the reality of our current predicament. We're about to drown. The only way this might be ameliorated in the short term is if a world recession saps the too-fast-growing demand for natural gas in the East. That would moderate global LNG prices. But if our best hope is a bad world recession, you can see how much we're really screwed.........

Big Solar Co-op Launches Community Share Offer

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We’ll be funding our new solar installations with community share offers. Invest now or subscribe for updates' Take a look at the share offer at https://bigsolar.coop/invest/?fbclid=IwAR3pse9jFmQ8PBFtUURt8luUqGg-ctM1dR4sMCMtAqRLjfxpCuDG-EBe0v0

Why Labour's green policies are fatally undermined by its 'nuclear first' stance

 It is now clear from Labour's stance in the House of Commons, that nuclear power comes before every thing else. Indeed, aside from Keir Starmer's emphasis on 'nuclear first' attacks on the Government in the House of Commons, Labour's allegedly massive green energy spending strategy seems likely to be swallowed up almost entirely by its pledge to rush to embrace the Sizewell C development. 

The Treasury knows full well that to get Sizewell C going reasonably quickly the Government will have to commit to a potential bill of £30 billion or more in public spending. This must come, either or both, from hard-pressed energy consumers by adding to their bills, or directly from Treasury coffers. The Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy's (BEIS) spending plans are closely controlled by the Treasury, and the commitment to Sizewell C will swamp the budget and reduce Labour's ability to spend on things like insulation and heat pumps to a trickle.

Keir Starmer thinks he has seen a weak point in the Conservative's energy strategy in that it is finding it difficult to turn the commitment to support Sizewell C into reality. But that's because funding Sizewell out of a public commitment is likely to present the Government with a crippling financial burden. It is especially crippling because Starmer will refuse to acknowledge the fact that to get Sizewell C going will require the Government to fund a black hole of spending as cost overruns inevitably escalate on the project. 

It's a cynical ploy on Labour's part. They know full well that the Government's difficulties with launching Sizewell C are to do with the sheer financial unviability of new nuclear power, not from any lack of faith in nuclear power on the part of the Government. But apparently, Starmer does not care about this, and it also seems that he takes the green energy lobby for granted in that he expects that it will support him regardless. But if other Labour commitments to support really big programmes in areas like heat pumps and insulation are to happen, there's just not enough money going to be made available for them if BEIS's budgets are swallowed up by the commitment to support Sizewell C.

So how should green energy supporters react to this? Well, there's plenty of other parties to vote for. Indeed if this Government does actually go ahead and reverse the English planning ban on onshore wind, there's probably not going to be much difference, in practice, between Labour and Conservatives on energy. Except of course that the Conservative will be more cautious, it seems, on accepting unmanageable commitments to new nuclear power!

world war three is now becoming more and more likely to happen

 As I said in my last blog post, action by NATO to become directly involved with notions such as 'no fly zones' to oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is madness. I stand by that argument in full. However, the pressure on Western Leaders to become directly involved is increasing and likely to greatly increase. Western publics are becoming more and more outraged by the pictures and news coming from inside Ukraine. 

On the other hand, it seems like while the Ukrainian armed services may not be able to halt the advance of the Russian army, the war may now turn into a series of dreadful sieges of Ukrainian cities. Evidence from the examples of the Russian led destruction of Grozny and Aleppo suggests that this process could, even in the case of single cities, take months, perhaps several months, for each city. The grisly razing of Ukrainian cities, one by one, with attendant seemingly never  ending horrific media coverage will increase now strong currents of public opinion demanding that the west enters the war in defence of Ukraine. And as the sieges occur one after the other, for months and months, this pressure will grow ever stronger and stronger.

So far there have been sanctions applied and arms supplies given to the Ukrainians. Sanctions and sending in arms supplies, of course, do not constitute direct military engagement, and indeed there are clear instances of wars since WW2 when such actions have been taken without leading to WW3. The Russians and Chinese supplied North Vietnam in their war with the USA. The USA supplied the mujahideen in Afghanistan in their war against the Russians. The West has practically no alternative but to engage in such action in this case. Hopefully Russia feels that it has an alternative to that of responding with a military attack on the West.

Up until now, barring one or two instances that both NATO and Russia agreed were tangential mistakes, no situations since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 have looked as likely to tip us over the edge into a wider war compared to the present situation. The danger now is not so much a mistake of a stray plane being shot down, or an artillery shell landing in the wrong place, but the result of an intentional strategy that one side or other (the West or Russia) to attack the other.

But direct NATO engagement in the war in Ukraine does not even have to start with a collective decision by NATO. It can come from a member of NATO, or a NATO member interpreting NATO policy in a particular way. Once the action starts, however, even if constructed as a limited act, retaliation and counter-retaliation is likely to lead to a general war. 

It does now look like the war in Ukraine will last for months. Rational arguments from NATO leaders are likely to be overwhelmed by the reactive feelings of the public to the sheer horror being explained on the news bulletins. The seductive but toxic charm of  'something must be done' is likely to eventually triumph. Then the progress towards the apocalypse of a new world world war will achieve an irresistible, and dangerously unpredictable, dynamic. The outcome of this process of escalation leading to general war will means that millions rather than (as seems almost 'priced in' at the moment) tens of thousands will die. Potentially, of course this could be tens of millions, or.........

Action to avoid this outcome rests not only in Western Leaders acting with caution, but also, and indeed primarily, on the Russian Leadership bringing this atrocious bombardment and siege of Ukrainian cities  as quickly as possible to an end. The only way they can achieve this is by now not bombarding and besieging the cities in the first place, or at least stopping it as soon as possible.

Why talk of western imposed 'no fly zones' and NATO attacks on Russian forces is total madness

 I have been horrified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and am fully supportive of the sanctions on Russia and also ammunition/munitions support given to the Ukrainian Government. But the now common talk of so-called NATO-imposed no-fly zones etc,  effectively means Western war with Russia and is utter and compete madness. Far from saving lives the result will be that many more will die. 

At best attacks by NATO aircraft on Russian planes or other military positions in Ukraine will simply drive many so-far war-sceptical Russians into the arms of Putin's war rhetoric, and support for yet more killing and retaliation. Why embolden Putin and convince Russians more thoroughly that NATO is really at war with them? It risks a far, far larger number of lives than we can ever save in Ukraine (whether or not things go nuclear), no matter how barbaric the artillery attacks on Ukrainian cities may be. Once NATO starts an attack, there is no knowing where things will end. War is very unpredictable, so why open Pandora's box?

It may, of course, be that the act of supplying surface to air missiles and anti-tank weapons etc via Poland or wherever risks conflict with the Russian military. Well, on balance, I think that risk is one that is worth taking,   The risk involves the danger of efforts by Russian forces to intercept that support,  and leaves it open to NATO to decide a response if that is the case. 

However, a premediated attack by NATO on Russian forces is an altogether different act. It is a an act of sheer unadulterated madness. You don't require a war gaming analysis to work that one out. Please leaders of the Western World, do not get carried away by too much liberal rhetoric. The road to hell is paved with liberal intentions. 

Why we should definitely protect people with dementia against age discrimination

 I certainly welcome the decision in favour of the discrimination case against Asda brought by a dementia sufferer who was encouraged to retire. But the trouble is that this case also condemns ageist attitudes that dominate society which implictly argues that older people can't do their jobs as well as younger people and that they should be encouraged to retire to make way for them.

Now of course if somebody cannot do their job up to the required standards then they should be asked (and given all reasonable support, including disability support) to do better. Ultimately if that does not prove possible,  standard disciplinary procedures should be applied. If absolutely necessary, they should be fired just as much as somebody younger should be fired if they cannot do the job up to expected standards. But such a process should be independent of their age. In the past before the 65-year default retirement was abolished people were literally shown the door at that age (or 'encouraged' to retire earlier), often as a form of cost-reduction. 

Obviously it is cheaper to hire a newbee than to employ somebody at the top of a payscale, and you can still hear people even on the left arguing in favour of the now (ostensibly) abandoned policy with phrases such as 'giver youth a chance'. But the left is keen to oppose employers who have tried to deploy economic arguments against protecting women giving birth, or acted in a racist or homophobic/transphobic way, and the 'youth first' argument is no less discriminatory than sexist and racist tropes of the past. The political right meanwhile, have historically tended to be slow to protect people against discrimination.

The trouble is that there's often a lot of political rhetoric against 'old' people at the top. If some leader is unpopular and they are getting on in years, you can bet your life that somebody will argue that part of what's wrong with them is that they are 'old'. It is done because it resonates with many people's prejudices, prejudices that are so taken for granted that such tropes go unquestioned most of the time. 

Yet of course the people who suffer most from this type of discourse are the ordinary, often quite poor, older people struggling to find a job. They may be in their fifties/sixties or do not have much of an occupational pension, but are often only hired when the employer cannot find anyone young. At this point people start arguing 'but give young people a chance'. Of course they should be given a chance, but on the basis of their fit for the job regardless of their age. Sometimes, indeed young people are actually passed over because they are too young - that is also indefensible.

Ageism needs to be fought with as much vigour as racism and sexism. Period.

the online banking scandal that the banks don't want to talk about

The banks are very keen to encourage online banking, but amongst all the talk about how their bank's security systems are very safe, what gets much less emphasis is that online banking is only as safe as your own computer or smartphone security. Yet the numbers of people losing money through their own computers is staggeringly large. Compromised passwords and 'trojan' malware that spies on your security information are two top methods by which the fraudsters raid your online bank account. And sometimes this is damn near impossible to stop. Now we all want to improve our passwords and check that we've got the right protection software (after all it's available free of charge), but even if you have done all this there is still a significant risk. Why take it?

Banks don't publish numbers of their customers who suffer losses through online banking. Perhaps if they were published people would think twice about online banking. I've certainly heard lots of reports of people losing money from their accounts, and some reports indicate that the numbers are increasing rapidly. Yet online banking saves the banks a lot of many in employing bank staff to process transactions, either through telephone banking (where call queues are often long) or conventional physical banks (which are rapidly declining in number). Banks end up having to settle a high proportion of fraud cases by recompensing the customers, but I imagine the cost of doing this is worth the hassle. But is it worth the hassle for the customers who have been seduced into online banking?

We're given this steer now that only old fuddy-duddy people don't do online banking. Well, I think smart people will deliberately avoid it, and save themselves a lot of worry for the cost of a bit of extra inconvenience. Sure, I used to do online banking and of course it's simple, easy. But it's also simple and easy for the well-trained crook. So I stopped using online banking.

Now most of us do online purchasing a lot - especially since the corvid period. And yes, the thieves can get into your shopping accounts as they can to your online banking. But whilst this is bad - who wants to find that you've been buying pizzas for some stranger in Montreal? - it's not as potentially ruinous as thousands of pounds being stolen from your bank account. So I draw a line at that one. The pity is that so many people fall victim to the banks' pressure to go online and suffer as a result. I say, let's stop doing this. Let's see the banks employ more bank employees to work from real banks, and we won't' be giving so much more money to the fraudsters instead!

Why the Tory plan to switch to FPTP for Mayoral elections won't do them much good

 Priti Patel's plan to use First past the post (FPTP) rather than supplementary vote probably won't give them much, if any advantage, and actually may hurt their cause of getting more Tories in office.

See the report at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/09/government-to-change-english-voting-system-after-labour-mayoral-victories

It's seductive for the Conservatives to look at the London Mayor election and see how an FPTP lead by Khan over Bailey was doubled when it came to counting the second preferences, and a light switches on in their heads and they think, let's make it FPTP!

But things don't work quite that way. Of course us greens would like to think that a vote for the Green Party will always be a vote for the Green Party come rain or shine, but in reality it isn't. If people sense that their Green vote could end up letting in a Conservative by default then a lot, if not most, of the London green voters are likely to peel off and vote Labour in a FPTP contest. Result - Bailey loses by much the same margin as he has done. Moreover if the seat allocation for the London Assembly itself is decided by FPTP then there will be a straight Labour majority rather than the current 'hung' position - not much help for a Tory Mayor there either!

In general the sometimes-talked-about disintegration of the non-Tory vote (which weakens Labour) could actually be staunched if the Government purges the current electoral arrangements in the cities and sets up straight FPTP elections. It's called unintended consequences. There's a lot of it about!

Book launch event for ‘Nuclear Power in Stagnation - A cultural approach to failed expansion’ published by Routledge, March 2021

The event is by zoom, noon – 12.55, Wednesday March 31st - if you register to attend this FREE event you will later be sent the zoom code for the meeting. Register for the event through Eventbrite by clicking here 

The book focuses on the role of nuclear safety issues in curbing nuclear power development. See book details by clicking here

The authors will talk about the book and there will be a keynote talk by Professor Benjamin Sovacool on the subject of the cultural dynamics of decarbonisation 

Itinerary:

11.45 Webinar opens for networking

12.05 pm David Toke, the lead author of the book,  introduces the book and the event (3 minutes)

12.08 Professor Benjamin Sovacool (Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex ‘Cultural Dynamics of Decarbonisation’

12.18 Antony Frogatt (co-author and Senior Research Fellow in the Energy, Environment, and Development Programme at Chatham House, London, UK) will talk about  Nuclear Power: The Missing ‘Renaissance’

 12.24 David Toke (Reader in Energy Politics, University of Aberdeen) Outline of scope and main conclusions of the book

12.39 Geoffrey Chun-Fung Chen ( Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Department of China Studies at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University) Nuclear Power and Safety in China

12.49 Richard Connolly, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy and Director of the Centre for Russian, European,  and Eurasian Studies at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. Nuclear power and Safety Policy in Russia

12.55 close

Invitation to tender to do a model/scenario for 100 per cent renewable energy in the UK

Attention energy academics and consultants! Invitation to tender to do a model/scenario for 100 per cent renewable energy in the UK. There is little work on this topic because for the most part the only finance available to do energy modelling or public policy reports comes from the big energy companies themselves who, because they have financial interests in either or both fossil fuels or nuclear energy won't fund work to research 100 per cent renewable energy scenarios. Hence this initiative. Best Wishes, David Toke, Director, 100percentrenewableuk Ltd (a non-profit company limited by guarantee)

Why 100 per cent renewable energy is better to balance solar and wind power compared to using nuclear power

 Video: Why nuclear power is a bad way to balance renewable energy. Toke, Fairlie and Eppel from 100percentrenewableuk discuss how a 100percent renewable energy system is much better for the UK than one involving nuclear power https://100percentrenewableuk.org/blog 

The Government says that its vision for a 2050 electricity system is for the majority of electricity to be supplied by wind and solar power, but around 20 per cent will be supplied by nuclear power. Nuclear is supported because it is called 'despatchable', but the Government avoids the fact that it is, at least on financial grounds, unswitchoffable. This inflexibility will mean that lots of nuclear generation will be counterproductive in that it will waste large amounts of renewable energy which will have to be switched off to protect the electricity system.

Would it be better to utilise such (effectively zero cost) production instead to produce energy that can be stored for the long term for generation when there is not enough wind or sun? I'm sure it would. Certainly it is better than churning out many times more nuclear power at ultra-high cost. 

We need some smart thinking from Government to seriosly look into the best ways of organising a 100per cent renewable energy system - as opposed to merely dismissing it or loading studies with pro-nuclear assumptions from the start.

AND........You can download and listen to a nuclear versus renewables debate on Radio 5Live Science which featured myself batting for renewables. You can tune into the debate from around 35.40 minutes from the download at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09674b1

Why Boris Johnson cannot say 'no' to a second Scottish independence referendum

In the face of polls showing increasing desires in Scotland for an indyref 2 Westminster is busy trying to sound as stern and pompous as they can in saying 'never, never, never'. But Boris Johnson must know that so long as the firm majority of people in Scotland want a further referendum this will, ultimately, be impossible to resist.

Why do I say that? Well, it's not because the SNP, having increased their majority in the forthcoming Parliamentary elections, may decide to hold their own unilateral vote. I hope they decide not to do this simply because the unionists will boycott the vote rendering it meaningless, and no, I can't see the Scottish Government seriously attempting to declare unilateral independence, though they might joke about it. That's because in practice it would end up being a joke.

No, the problem for Westminster is that after the Scottish Parliamentary elections, if Scottish sentiment continues to increase in favour of a vote, then. to cut a long story short, English voters will start piling on the pressure for Johnson to agree to an independence referendum. First we shall see demonstrations in Scotland, maybe then civil disobedience campaigns (more and more likely as things drag on), and of course the Scots will descend on Westminster in large numbers. The only barrier to all of this I suppose, is the extent to which social distancing criteria will still apply. But then it didn't deter the BLM protesters in the USA last summer. Oh yes, and suggestions that anyone in England who has some connection with Scotland will also get a vote in the referendum will be simply blown away by Nicola Sturgeon. In the end the Johnson Government will have to deliver a referendum on terms which are mutually agreeable.

Now as to whether another referendum will actually produce a Yes vote, now that's another question, and I'm not going to make a prediction on that. We have to remember way back in 1995 when the Quebecois had a second independence referendum. The Yes vote was leading by a large majority in the polls but ended up losing by one per cent in the actual vote. But maybe it is actually in nationalists' interests for the whole argument about Westminster granting a second referendum to drag on for a while since the sense of indignation at Westminster's stubbornness may encourage more Yes voters to turn out and deter the unionists. 

Westminster can forget any argument that it is too soon after the last one to hold another vote - after all everyone knows that since then Brexit has happened which fundamentally changes relationships. On the other hand of course it is simplistic to argue about how soon an independent Scotland would be able to (re)join the EU. This is simply because Scotland, in practice would, for a time at least, join the European Single Market, like Norway, rather than be a full member. That is because Scotland would not, as a full EU member, be able to negotiate its own trade agreement with England that was different with the now current UK-EU agreement.

But of course, for political scientists not to mention everyone else, we're in for an interesting time ahead!

Could there be a fascist takeover of the US in 2025?

 It is now possible to conceive a plausible scenario where there could be a civil conflict followed by fascist takeover in 2025 following the 2024 elections. NBC has published an opinion piece concerning the alarming propensity of new Republican lawmakers to support the over-turning of the elections on January 6th and how in a close election in  2024 a Democrat Presidential victory could be overturned at the ensuing joint session of Congress. Yet the NBC's scenario may leave out further possibilities for undermining an election result.

The NBC, drawing historical parallels, points to 1860 when lawmakers from the South walked out of the joint congress in opposition to the election of Abraham Lincoln in a move that foreshadowed the civil war. Of course it is quite possible that if the Republicans win the mid term elections in 2022 then they could have a majority to enable them to refuse to certify a Democrat Presidential victory at the joint session in January 2025. That would require all or most Republicans to go along with this, which did not happen this time.

But another plausible scenario is that Republican officials or administrators at a state level refuse to certify election results which could simply lead to them not being counted when the Electoral College met in December. Indeed there was a threat that this might happen in Michigan last November when Republicans initially refused to certify results in Wayne County (with a very large batch of mainly pro-Biden votes). Such actions could swing the electoral college, certainly in a close race depending on one state's votes, towards giving the Presidency to the Republican challenger (Trump or Trump-like?).

If a Democrat win was reversed this way at the Electoral College then it would be the Democrats who would be mounting the (probably unsuccessful) challenge at the following joint session of Congress. This would be attended by rising civil disturbances as Democrat supporters mounted demonstrations against the election chicanery. A new Congress, perhaps with a Democrat majority in either or both the House and the Senate could refuse to cooperate with the new President alongside some Democrat-run states. There could be a mounting civil conflict which may give to rise to increasing interventions by the National Guard and, ultimately,  the military. Arrest of Democrat leaders accused of formenting civil unrest could follow....................

The effect on the world as a whole of development of autocracy in the USA would be dramatic. The UK Government (Labour or Conservative) usually has a pretty craven attitude towards whatever the US President wants, for example. But there could be much worse outcomes than this. The world would enter a terrible phase in which it would be dominated by effective dictatorships in Russia, China and the USA. Much worse could follow.

Clearly it is time to call out the conspiracy theorists for what they are, but have rising levels of fascist-style intimidation already risen too high for many Republican politicians to resist? A key problem is that many closet racists in the USA simply regard any US Government formed on the basis of a multicultural ideology as being illegitimate. This overrules democratic norms. They yearn for the old times when civil rights were, at best, accorded minorities on the assumption of a white supremacy which is now seen as being under threat. It is a fundamental problem with US identity politics which makes the drive towards populism and the undermining of democracy especially severe in the USA. 

The argument is not really about patriotism or whether America should be first - otherwise so many of the right wing politicians wouldn't be arguing for secession by Texas and other states! It is about whether the USA exists as a white supremacist state or a multi-ethnic, multicultural state. It is a deeply existential struggle.

Yes, the USA is heading towards autocracy

Until very recently comparing contemporary events in the West with the 1920s was little more than a joke that one could make but gradually bit by bit some key indicators are becoming comparable. The first most obvious sign is the reluctance by leaders of one or more major parties to recognise democratic outcomes as being legitimate. The second sign is the increasing activism of armed militia associated with political parties. The third is the socio-economic environment. All three, at least in the case of the USA, are showing uncomfortable signs of mirroring what happened in 1920s Europe. So far the similarities seem to go only so far, but the danger is the direction of travel, and the likelihood that background economic conditions will worsen in the coming years.

The first point is the refusal to recognise the legitimacy of elections by the defeated candidate Donald Trump.  The danger now is that anyone who does recognise as legitimate elections won by Democrats are going to be purged from the party. Those Republicans willing to recognise a future Democratic Presidential victory may simply be forced out of office. In addition to this is the tendency towards Republicans refusing to certify elections that have been won by their opponents. For instance in Pennsylvania Republicans were very reluctant to certify Biden's victory (he won by 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania), and are now refusing to certify an otherwise elected State Senator. Will Republicans adopt this strategy in the 2024 Presidential elections, but more thoroughly next time?

The second point is the growth of armed militias. In the 1920s there were the blackshirts in Italy, the falangists in Spain and the brownshirts in Germany. True, they faced militant factions from the left (until they were crushed by dictatorship), but in the USA there is also rising militancy from the left. In the US interventions by armed 'Trumpist' militia are, as we all now know, becoming more significant. In the 1920s the far right militias had sympathisers in the police, and it seems there is no shortage of sympathy for Trump amongst the US police.

The third point are deteriorating circumstances for lower middle classes and increasing inequalities of income. Whenever we emerge from the current coronavirus crisis there will be a debt laden public and private sector. With this is likely to come rising inflation that cannot be tamed by increases in interest rates because of the effect on householders and businesses. 

Of course there are various dissimilarities. Niall Ferguson has talked about some of these, though as he recongises, in the shadow of recent events the extent of the dissimilarities have narrowed. As one Guardian columnist has recorded, Hitler's putsch in 1923 may have been unsuccessful, but he was all too successful a decade later. Will history record the storming of the Capitol Hill as a turning point? Quite probably - but maybe in the wrong direction as far as US democracy is concerned. It could even lead to a much wider civil conflict involving, ultimately, the military. The left tends not to do well out of these conflicts in modern capitalist states. If the elite fear being controlled by neo-fascist tendencies, they tend to settle for charismatic strongmen who rule an attenuated democracy, or not all. This can range at best from a limited democracy as in Orban's Hungary to outright dictatorship as in Dolfuss in Austria in the 1930s.

We need better regulations and incentives, not carbon taxes on domestic gas, to save the planet

 Whenever an economist or someone who seeks to make themselves out as being a go-ahead free market type wants to declare their interest in saving the planet from climate change, you can bet your life it will largely involve a call for hefty increases in carbon taxes. And now people are saying that is what we need to get heat pumps installed in the UK. That includes a lot of people who should know  better, judging by evidence to the House of Commons' Environmental Audit Committee recently.

But they are barking up the wrong tree. Sure, price rises affect energy behaviour, of course, but can economists point to any big green technological changes that have largely been promoted by energy tax increases? Advances in wind power, solar pv, energy efficiency in buildings, efficiency in lighting appliances etc have all been achieved almost entirely through carefully targeted regulations and incentives.

The same will be true for heat pumps; especially for heat pumps! Heat pumps are partly stymied in the UK because they are manacled by certification and building regulations that were drawn up for gas heating. See more on this at 100percentrenewableuk.org/blog. Heat pumps are very successful on the continent for two reasons, only one of which is the fact that prices for domestic gas supplies are much higher relative to electricity on the continent, making heat pumps much more cost-effective. 

The other factor is that building and certification regulations allow them to be built for the market, that is they do not have to be built as big for a given house as UK regulations insist, and they can be run without 'zoning' which, again allows them to operate much more efficiently. An especially terrible example of the disinformation and confusion spread by the big energy companies is described in one of the more useful type of consultancies, that is something commissioned by environmental groups. on the amount of self-serving nonsense spread by the gas industry trying to inflate the case for hydrogen.

But let us get back to the price argument. If you want to make the technology more cost-effective in terms of price, then do not go down the path of trying to impose large increases in gas prices through a carbon tax or something similar. That will produce massive political resistance in the case of the highly sensitive domestic heating market. Instead have incentives that work properly - like a mixture of the renewables heat incentive and installation grants together. New build housing and housing in areas not connected to the grid are good markets to establish a British heat pump industry initially. The Energy Saving Trust says as much anyway.

Of course we have to source the money for the incentives from somewhere - and here levies on energy consumption for specified purposes can usually be politically acceptable. On the other hand we should resist the pressures from the big energy companies for self-serving subsidies that are added to the costs of electricity. The roll-out of so-called smart meters is a case in point which is paid for by a levy on electricity consumers. Most of these have been given to companies who do not offer smart tariffs, yet the scheme is costing energy consumers large quantities of money just to save the companies themselves some meter reading costs. 

Then there are the subsidies for Hinkley C and then Sizewell C which will be levied just at the time when the levies used to prime-pump the renewable industries are falling. Yes, keep electricity costs down by sourcing electricity from renewable energy, not nuclear power or carbon capture and storage.

A lot of the problem results from the confusion spread by economists who are hired by the big energy companies. They know their free market theory and equations about supply and demand, and they know what the companies who commissioned them want them to say. But in fact they know little about the institutions - the regulations and the industrial practices - that act as barriers to, and ways of framing, real life markets. 

Webinar on achieving 100 per cent of Scottish energy consumption from renable energy

 Recording of webinar on how and why the Scottish Govt should set a target to achieve 100 per cent of ALL energy from renewables - see https://100percentrenewableuk.org/blog If you live in Scotland, please sign the petition! https://100percentrenewableuk.org/achieving-100pc-of-energy-in-scotland-from-renewable-energy-petition

how all or most of our energy needs can be provided using less than 7 per cent of UK waters

 Yes, you've probably guessed it! Offshore windfarms will do the trick of providing all our energy needs using around 7 per cent of UK waters. Of course it makes sense to have as much onshore wind and solar as well - it's always good to have diversity and it spreads business around and lowers cost.

You can read more about how we get this calculation by visiting the website of 100percentrenewableuk

Happy renewables!

Government slashes energy efficiency spending by 80 per cent in so-called 10 point climate package

 Andrew Warren, the Chairman of the British Energy Efficiency Federation, says that spending on energy efficiency has been slashed by 80 per cent. Meanwhile the gas and nuclear lobbies are being paid many hundreds of millions of pounds for projects that are unlikely to cut carbon emissions for many years to come, if ever. See https://100percentrenewableuk.org/blog

Join the fightback against the Government’s toadying to nuclear and gas interests and register for the FREE WEBINAR on December 3rd to support the campaign for Scotland to set a target of achieving 100 per cent of ALL energy used in Scotland from renewable energy.

Please sign the petition for Scotland to set 100 per cent renewable energy target

 Please sign the petition for Scotland to set 100 per cent renewable energy target. 

See the 100percentrenewableuk blog at https://100percentrenewableuk.org/blog and you can access the petition page directly at https://100percentrenewableuk.org/achieving-100pc-of-energy-in-scotland-from-renewable-energy-petition

Register for the free webinar (on December 3rd) on how Scotland can reach this target at https://100percentrenewableuk.org/register-for-webinar-on-how-scotland-can-get-all-of-its-energy-from-renewables-december-3rd