Idiots! There is zero need for a “small levy” on consumers to fund long term energy infrastructure projects. This is a choice based on political ideology.
Of course the burden will be on Joe public and not on the massive profits of the energy companies.
The absolute joke that is this government really does boggle the mind sometimes.
So the money I’m going to save when MOT’s become bi-annual is now going to go toward a levy for a nuclear power station that won’t produce any power for potentially a decade?
This is a government of clowns dealing with a national disaster.
This is ignoring a holistic view of cost.
How many people get sick or die due to air pollution from fossil fuel power plants?
How much damage does climate change due to co2 emissions cost?
Just because these costs are dispersed and not directly on the consumer, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Currently the only reason a gas power plant is cheaper is because the damage they cause is being subsidised by taxes for things like healthcare.
“A windfall tax discourages energy firms from investing in British energy. Also, you people will be paying for that investment.”
Checks out.
So we can’t increase taxes because the companies won’t invest so we haven’t but we still need to pay for the investment as consumers ? Make it make sense.
I heard this interview on R4 this morning. When pressed as to how much extra this would add, Kwarteng said it might add up to £30 per annum.
To be fair, I’m currently a lot more concerned with the extra grand I’m expected to find in the meantime.
It’s better and cheaper for the government to finance these things directly, and then end up owning the asset, instead of trying to recover the costs through energy bills and having the asset privately owned. Especially for nuclear plants, financing costs dominate the total cost and we all end up paying for it one way or another, so it’s best to find the cheapest way.
So, who’s going to own these nuclear power stations we are going to pay for? The government?
If all you want is cheap energy we can just start buying it from Russia again…
Got to keep the people poor and busy so they can’t see what we are really up to
Fuck this! Why is it always the taxpayers forking out?
We never get any return on our investment. If Taxpayers are to continue forking out for this and buyouts then it is time we got dividends like any other investors when times are good!
[deleted]
If we pay for them we should own them.
More energy cost is bad, but eliminating fossil fuels should be done at all costs. As a country we can afford to do this.
Most of us can afford a bit of an increase to energy costs if it really is necessary to cover it. But we really should come up with some sort of plan for those who are already struggling.
Yes, it will add, but it will stabilize the price.
Nuclear prices don’t change. They are set in contracts, and once agreed they stick to it.
It’s not like Coal, gas etc which fluctuate upoun markets. Nuclear is dictated on price of uranium, and reprocessing. And as nuclear power plants probably release less pollution than gas/coal do, it seems we will reap benefits in other areas.
Put it with wind, solar, tidal etc. and when the variability of fossil fuels isn’t included, I’m sure the prices will remain a bit more consistent than they are currently.
Wait, so the energy companies make several billions of pounds profit each QUARTER (not even a year); put prices up because the cost of gas has risen; put standing orders up (which were originally bought in to pay for everyone to have a gas meter installed) for so unknown reason, are now suggesting the only way to lower the prices to the general population is to build nuclear power stations at a huge cost to the general population.
It’s almost…bare with me here…they don’t want anything to damage their profits.
But maybe that’s just me being cynical.
> But critics argue this shifts the risk of building new nuclear reactors onto the consumer, without knowing how long projects will take or how much they will cost.
If nuclear power had a good track record of being built on time and on budget, and if the UK government had a good track record of managing large national infrastructure projects, then putting public money into the civil nuclear industry would be a great idea.
As it is, a big reason for the high cost of financing is that there’s a lot of financial risk in the construction of nuclear power stations, which are very complex projects involving multiple sub-contractors that take many years to complete. If the government is financing the project directly, then budgetary oversight will become the responsibility of political appointees, and the whole thing becomes an even bigger political football than it already is. It’s hard to see how that would reduce the financial risks and provide better value for money for taxpayers.
But why? Didn’t the energy companies say that, by not being subjected to a windfall tax, they can make all sorts of investments?!
A non-corrupt government would tax the bejaggles out of their insane profits and make a public investment into the UK’s energy program themselves.
So with no sign of an election on the horizon, I’m not holding my breath.
“We’ll build more nuclear plants to lower energy bills”
3 months later: “Building more nuclear plants will mean energy bills have to go up!”
Turns out building power plants is not free…
I’m a bit salty towards all our politicians past and present as this is not already done, and had it been would have been sold off and the bills would be going up anyway.
edit and i thought the standing charge and the unit rate covered the cost of everything already anyway what the fuck. What do we pay taxes for!??
Renewables aren’t cheap either. I thought the point was to stop climate change by stopping emissions, now we know wind and solar don’t work nuclear is the best option, so the goalposts are moved to be about cost now. Big oil supports wind and solar as it guarantees them business, nuclear would put them out of business, it’s that simple.
They’re really getting the hang of this.
But the public don’t want nuclear power…
The most expensive source of power might be expensive eh?
A wee of bit a change from the 1950s/60s when Nuclear Power was also claimed as going to provide electricity -“**Too cheap to meter!**”. :O
I’m so sick of this kind of shit. No it won’t, nor does it have to. If they’d been taxing the oil and gas companies properly instead of actually giving them money, they wouldn’t need everyone else to foot the bill. When a company has to invest money into something for everyone else’s benefit, that should come out of the shareholders dividents, not out of the end user’s pockets. Because you can guarantee that with this, and with energy bills, food, rent, everything else, we all end up having our prices increased while board members, shareholders and the richer people out there don’t just not foot the bill but *they actually make a profit*.
Capitalism is fucking broken.
Can someone please tell me why there is a reluctance in the uk to invest in TIDAL generation?
It’s clean and without any nuclear waste.
It could produce a HUGE amount of the UK’s energy!
I don’t know why we’d want any more big nuclear power plants building when we could be making Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactors if the government stop taking 2 years to give approval for them.
30 comments
Idiots! There is zero need for a “small levy” on consumers to fund long term energy infrastructure projects. This is a choice based on political ideology.
Of course the burden will be on Joe public and not on the massive profits of the energy companies.
The absolute joke that is this government really does boggle the mind sometimes.
So the money I’m going to save when MOT’s become bi-annual is now going to go toward a levy for a nuclear power station that won’t produce any power for potentially a decade?
This is a government of clowns dealing with a national disaster.
This is ignoring a holistic view of cost.
How many people get sick or die due to air pollution from fossil fuel power plants?
How much damage does climate change due to co2 emissions cost?
Just because these costs are dispersed and not directly on the consumer, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Currently the only reason a gas power plant is cheaper is because the damage they cause is being subsidised by taxes for things like healthcare.
“A windfall tax discourages energy firms from investing in British energy. Also, you people will be paying for that investment.”
Checks out.
So we can’t increase taxes because the companies won’t invest so we haven’t but we still need to pay for the investment as consumers ? Make it make sense.
I heard this interview on R4 this morning. When pressed as to how much extra this would add, Kwarteng said it might add up to £30 per annum.
To be fair, I’m currently a lot more concerned with the extra grand I’m expected to find in the meantime.
It’s better and cheaper for the government to finance these things directly, and then end up owning the asset, instead of trying to recover the costs through energy bills and having the asset privately owned. Especially for nuclear plants, financing costs dominate the total cost and we all end up paying for it one way or another, so it’s best to find the cheapest way.
So, who’s going to own these nuclear power stations we are going to pay for? The government?
If all you want is cheap energy we can just start buying it from Russia again…
Got to keep the people poor and busy so they can’t see what we are really up to
Fuck this! Why is it always the taxpayers forking out?
We never get any return on our investment. If Taxpayers are to continue forking out for this and buyouts then it is time we got dividends like any other investors when times are good!
[deleted]
If we pay for them we should own them.
More energy cost is bad, but eliminating fossil fuels should be done at all costs. As a country we can afford to do this.
Most of us can afford a bit of an increase to energy costs if it really is necessary to cover it. But we really should come up with some sort of plan for those who are already struggling.
Yes, it will add, but it will stabilize the price.
Nuclear prices don’t change. They are set in contracts, and once agreed they stick to it.
It’s not like Coal, gas etc which fluctuate upoun markets. Nuclear is dictated on price of uranium, and reprocessing. And as nuclear power plants probably release less pollution than gas/coal do, it seems we will reap benefits in other areas.
Put it with wind, solar, tidal etc. and when the variability of fossil fuels isn’t included, I’m sure the prices will remain a bit more consistent than they are currently.
Wait, so the energy companies make several billions of pounds profit each QUARTER (not even a year); put prices up because the cost of gas has risen; put standing orders up (which were originally bought in to pay for everyone to have a gas meter installed) for so unknown reason, are now suggesting the only way to lower the prices to the general population is to build nuclear power stations at a huge cost to the general population.
It’s almost…bare with me here…they don’t want anything to damage their profits.
But maybe that’s just me being cynical.
> But critics argue this shifts the risk of building new nuclear reactors onto the consumer, without knowing how long projects will take or how much they will cost.
If nuclear power had a good track record of being built on time and on budget, and if the UK government had a good track record of managing large national infrastructure projects, then putting public money into the civil nuclear industry would be a great idea.
As it is, a big reason for the high cost of financing is that there’s a lot of financial risk in the construction of nuclear power stations, which are very complex projects involving multiple sub-contractors that take many years to complete. If the government is financing the project directly, then budgetary oversight will become the responsibility of political appointees, and the whole thing becomes an even bigger political football than it already is. It’s hard to see how that would reduce the financial risks and provide better value for money for taxpayers.
But why? Didn’t the energy companies say that, by not being subjected to a windfall tax, they can make all sorts of investments?!
A non-corrupt government would tax the bejaggles out of their insane profits and make a public investment into the UK’s energy program themselves.
So with no sign of an election on the horizon, I’m not holding my breath.
“We’ll build more nuclear plants to lower energy bills”
3 months later: “Building more nuclear plants will mean energy bills have to go up!”
Turns out building power plants is not free…
I’m a bit salty towards all our politicians past and present as this is not already done, and had it been would have been sold off and the bills would be going up anyway.
edit and i thought the standing charge and the unit rate covered the cost of everything already anyway what the fuck. What do we pay taxes for!??
Renewables aren’t cheap either. I thought the point was to stop climate change by stopping emissions, now we know wind and solar don’t work nuclear is the best option, so the goalposts are moved to be about cost now. Big oil supports wind and solar as it guarantees them business, nuclear would put them out of business, it’s that simple.
They’re really getting the hang of this.
But the public don’t want nuclear power…
The most expensive source of power might be expensive eh?
A wee of bit a change from the 1950s/60s when Nuclear Power was also claimed as going to provide electricity -“**Too cheap to meter!**”. :O
I’m so sick of this kind of shit. No it won’t, nor does it have to. If they’d been taxing the oil and gas companies properly instead of actually giving them money, they wouldn’t need everyone else to foot the bill. When a company has to invest money into something for everyone else’s benefit, that should come out of the shareholders dividents, not out of the end user’s pockets. Because you can guarantee that with this, and with energy bills, food, rent, everything else, we all end up having our prices increased while board members, shareholders and the richer people out there don’t just not foot the bill but *they actually make a profit*.
Capitalism is fucking broken.
Can someone please tell me why there is a reluctance in the uk to invest in TIDAL generation?
It’s clean and without any nuclear waste.
It could produce a HUGE amount of the UK’s energy!
I don’t know why we’d want any more big nuclear power plants building when we could be making Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactors if the government stop taking 2 years to give approval for them.
https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#section-latest-news