'This is why change is coming to the price of energy' - Reader's letter
.jpg?width=96&crop=1:1,smart)
Graham Wroe on the price of renewable energy...
Lee tells us (The Star 29/5) ‘There are more questions than answers’ but actually ‘The answer, my friend, is Blowing in the Wind’!
Lee wants to know why our bills keep going up if renewables are cheaper. In the UK, the most expensive power source sets the price for all electricity. Most of the time, that expensive source is gas. This means even when the majority of our electricity comes from cheap renewable energy, even a tiny top-up of gas can make the whole bill expensive.
As we move away from fossil fuels and expand renewables, this old system has kept our prices unfairly high. But thanks to Greenpeace it is changing.
Putin’s war on Ukraine and Trump’s war on Iran have caused massive spikes in all our energy prices.
Greenpeace’s Great Gas Rip Off campaign demanded the Government break the link between gas prices and renewables and the Government has responded.
Many new renewable projects sit outside of the complicated pricing system – years ago, the government started giving new renewable projects ‘set prices’ for their energy so they wouldn’t be affected by fluctuating fossil fuel prices. Now, they are moving older, renewable and nuclear plants into this same system.
This means more electricity than ever is capped at set prices, meaning less of the electricity we need to meet demand will be affected by high and volatile gas prices.
Unfortunately, renewables will never be free. All renewable projects need maintenance and investment and employ people. We need to pay for the grid to distribute it. But the price of renewables is far less than that of fossil fuels.
The Government should go much further by nationalising energy companies and stop them making obscene profits while ordinary people can’t afford to heat their homes.
But at least change is moving in the right direction.