By Paul Homewood

h/t Patsy Lacey

“Angry and frustrated” parents say their young children are going cold as heating costs on an Isle of Wight housing estate skyrocket to ‘unaffordable’ rates.

Residents of Bluebell Meadows and St George’s Gate claim they have been ‘lied to’ and feel ‘let down’, having been promised cheap bills and houses which were economical to run.

Residents faced soaring costs
Despite the estate using a unique biomass heating system — a centralised system which burns wood chippings to provide heat and hot water to homes — those living there say they have faced soaring costs in recent months.

Those responsible for the estate — Barratt David Wilson Homes, the Isle of Wight Council and Sovereign Network Group, which together form the Pan Management Company — say the surge in prices “reflect the handover of the biomass centre” to the estate management company.

In a joint statement, they said they were looking at the fuel supply arrangements to try to help reduce costs.

Lack of proper answers
Residents claim there has been a lack of “proper answers” and a meeting for residents arranged earlier this year was cancelled.

Mum-of-one, Amy, 28, is among those who have been calling for accountability.

In December, she said she was “mortified” to see her bills more than double, from £38 to £100 a month.

“There is only so much wrapping up in clothes and blankets you can do”
Amy said residents were ‘trapped’ and could not switch energy providers.

She said,

“Like many others on the estate, one of the main reasons I purchased a new build Barratts home was because of their unique selling point – the homes were economically efficient to run and now I can certainly say that is not true.

“I understand bills are going up, I expected them to, but not this much. Me and my little one have been really ill this past winter and there is only so much wrapping up in clothes and blankets you can do.”

Another resident, Louise, says she has had to buy electric heaters for her house but still has to pay her standing charge, which like other prices, has risen.

She said,

“I just want to heat my house without having to worry how I would have to pay for it.”

Told biomass system was the “most economical choice”
Meanwhile, resident Tina said when she moved in four years ago she was told the biomass system was the “most economical choice”.

Now it is ‘just ridiculous’, she said, as there is no protection for residents as Pan Energy is not regulated with Ofgem, meaning there is no price capping.

https://onthewight.com/isle-of-wight-families-struggle-with-soaring-heating-costs-in-eco-friendly-homes/

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March 29, 2024 at 04:06PM

By Paul Homewood

The technology doesn’t work as planned. The numbers don’t add up. And ordinary people may have their lives ruined by a system that barely even recognises they exist. If ITV is looking for a follow-up to it’s hit drama about the Post Office scandal its producers and script writers do not have to look very far. It is playing out in real-time right now. In reality, the smart meter fiasco risks turning into the next Horizon scandal.

Like so many government-backed technologies, it was sold as a way of making the system more efficient, with the added benefit of helping us hit our net zero targets. Smart meters installed in our homes would give us more accurate readings of how much electricity we were using, while the little monitors in the corner might gently nudge us towards consuming a little less (which would be helpful, given that the Government has woefully failed to make sure we have enough power to keep the lights switched on).

What’s not to like about that?

Well, quite a lot as it turns out. According to the latest figures from the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero, of the 30 million meters installed in British homes, almost four million are not working properly. The estimate was 2.7 million in June last year, but has now been revised dramatically upwards.

The results of that can often be painful. Households may well have been overcharged for the energy use, and at a time when many are already struggling to pay their energy bills. Some households might now have to go back to manual readings if they want to question their bill, but the technology can make that difficult, too.

There is a depressingly familiar pattern starting to emerge. The computer system doesn’t work as it should. There is plenty of buck passing, with people initially denying there is anything to worry about, then blaming someone else for the problems, and finally denying that anything can ever be done to fix the problem. It seems that no one has learned anything from the Post Office scandal. Instead, ministers will grimly press ahead with a technology that clearly doesn’t work, and if people are forced to pay an inflated sum, then it will simply be brushed under the carpet.

Even more terrifyingly, the meters may eventually be used for “time-of-day” charging. It would not be much of a surprise if Ed Miliband, as energy minister in a government led by Sir Keir Starmer, introduces some form of energy rationing. After all, there seems to be little hope of ever hitting our net zero targets without it. Your smart meter might then decide when you can and can’t boil the kettle, regardless of whether it works properly – and if it doesn’t work well enough, that’s tough.

There are two clear lessons from this latest catastrophe. Firstly, the Government should stop relying on computer “revolutions”. We have plenty of evidence that Whitehall almost always gets IT wrong. And secondly, it should stop trying to micromanage every household. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with “smart meters” any more than there is with smart phones, or smart speakers, or smart TVs, or any other device where the addition of a couple of microchips upgrades performance.

But it should leave it to the market to decide. If the product is genuinely better, people will be perfectly happy to buy it, and if it is rubbish they will probably decline. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/27/the-smart-meters-scandal-is-about-to-explode-in-our-faces/

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Of course it never was about “efficiency”. Yes, twenty years ago a smart meter would have done away with the cost of sending out a meter reader and the problem of estimated bills. But then the internet came along, people were able to submit their own readings every month and computers could then raise bills automatically. All much better and efficient than the monolithic rollout of smart meters.

No, from the start it was all about rationing energy, whether through price or switching off supply.

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March 29, 2024 at 04:06PM

By Paul Homewood

Chris Morrison covers the latest on Judith Curry’s blog:

The climate events of 2022-24 have been “truly extraordinary”, notes Dr. Javier Vinós writing in Dr. Judith Curry’s online blog. The rare convergence of a number of events “that may not be repeated for hundreds or even thousands of years” represents a “unique learning opportunity” for climatologists. Interestingly, Dr. Vinós downplays the roll of the current El Niño. He says that the January 2022 Hunga Tonga underwater volcanic eruption, that boosted upper atmospheric water vapour by a remarkable 10%, is the most likely cause of the recent warming, which in turn led to an unprecedented three sudden stratospheric warming events. As the excess water leaves the atmosphere, observes Vinós, it will induce a cooling effect at the surface potentially lowering temperatures for the next three to four years.

Full story here.

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March 29, 2024 at 04:06PM

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

We might just as well shut down the North Sea now:

North Sea energy companies could be forced to close oil and gas fields or be prevented from opening new rigs unless they slash emissions.

Currently, more than 280 platforms extracting oil and gas from UK waters produce 3pc of the country’s total emissions, the equivalent of about 17 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

However, UK oil and gas fields also account for half of the country’s energy needs.

Despite this, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which regulates the offshore sector, has told producers that they must convert platforms to run on green electricity or low-carbon fuels.

This means all new developments before 2030 must be designed to run on electricity, while all those after that must be fully electrified from the start.

Critics say the new demands will deliver a fatal blow to many of the older platforms operating around British shores.

Some date back to the 1970s or 1980s and would be hugely expensive to decarbonise.

For many, it would mean running power cables from the shore or building a wind farm close to each platform.

Stuart Payne, NSTA chief executive, said closing some low-producing, high-polluting installations earlier could be necessary to allow higher-producing and cleaner new assets to come online.

He said: “Energy production, reducing emissions and accelerating the energy transition are at the heart of everything we do.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/27/north-sea-oil-rigs-threatened-shutdown-unless-run-green/

As always the Telegraph commentators are spot on:

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March 29, 2024 at 04:06PM