UK Energy Savings Fail To Materialise
April 7, 2019
By Paul Homewood
One of the central planks of the government’s decarbonisation agenda is energy saving.
The latest figures from BEIS however suggest that progress has slowed to virtually nothing in the last five years, at least as far as electricity is concerned:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/electricity-section-5-energy-trends
Consumption fell sharply after the 2008 recession, and further smaller savings were made up to 2014. Since then however supply has hardly changed at all, dropping from 338 to 333 TWh.
We find exactly the same pattern with overall energy consumption
Back to the drawing board, Ms Perry!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
What happened to your holiday, Paul? Still charging the EV?
It’s Fanny Craddock job – here’s one I made before!
But the bills keep rising.
This is surely excellent news . If energy consumption is NOT falling it implies that we are NOT in a recession. Given that, as Mark (above) says, the cost of energy is rising, there must be good economic incentives that keep the consumption steady- a thriving economy. How can that not be good?
I think you have posted before that all the low hanging fruit has been picked. There is still the car industry and petrochem that can leave, possibly with a no deal Brexit. Glass making especially now Pilkington is a Japanese company could go as that is energy intensive but it depends if it using gas or electricity for heating.
Well if Corbyn gets in which is likely from the mess May has made of Brexit, companies will be leaving in droves, so no problem really.,
Do the stats include power actually used
.. or power actually paid for ?
ie Does it include power from windfarms ..that isn’t delivered due to constraint payments ?
Also because you have wind/solar in the system, you have to generate more power
.. #1 you have losses from delivering power from Scotland
.. #2 You have all the power involved in building wind/solar infrastructure.
Remember their CO2 footprint is built into their construction phase
.. they do not reduce CO2 on day one, in fact they spend the first few years trying to recoup all the CO2 used in their construction
It’s generation supplied to the grid (Inc imports) rather than consumption after line losses
The most depressing part of this is that precious few of these thoughts make it into the settled science of the BBC and other media – I wonder, with Christopher Booker’s retirement, whether the DT will find a suitably sceptic new voice – I do hope so but breathing normally until ….
Odd isn’t it. When you consider cheap, reliable power has done more to further human progress and bring billions out of poverty, we’re now targeted to use less, and then to pat ourselves on the back.
From the UK Energy Statistics, 2018 & Q4 2018, we learn that renewable electricity capacity was 44.4 GW at the end of 2018, and this generated 111TWh.
So renewables’ overall Capacity Factor was 28.8%.
A comment on Page 2 is deliberately disingenuous:
The 3,800 kWh per annum for electricity rose by £49, yet the 15,000 kWh per annum for gas rose by ‘only’ £16
Translation: Electricity prices per kWh rose 12x as much as gas prices.
Click to access Press_Notice_March_2019.pdf
Yet if we look at OFGEM we find that TDCVs (typical domestic consumption value) were changed during 2015 and again during 2017, so the mythical “standard consumption” has been progressively revised downwards. What goes into a “standard bill” is a very moveable feast, with OFGEM introducing an entirely new methodology during 2017.
Its ‘designed ‘ to change like that
‘TDCVs are calculated based on data from the two most recent years available. So the figure is as representative as possible for the average customer, we use “median” consumption values for those years.’
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/gas/retail-market/monitoring-data-and-statistics/typical-domestic-consumption-values
Given the rapid increase in the population, it is not surprising that consumption is not falling, .
“Given the rapid increase in the population …”
Actively encouraged by the Green Party.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=green+party+refugees+welcome&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZy6TQub7hAhW1URUIHf5rB6gQ_AUIDygC&biw=1035&bih=680
The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
Ah… the deranged and deluded Natalie – the gift that just kept on giving – to everyone. I really miss her! The Diane Abbott of the Green Party.
Where is she now?