It’s privatisation, stupid
Published in the Edinburgh Evening News, August 22nd and The National, August 24th.
Ofgem, whose real role is protecting the private energy cartel, will lift the price cap in October. Scots will pay 9% more for what’s already the most expensive energy in western Europe despite our producing the lion share of the UK’s cheap renewable energy. Scottish renewables delivered an equivalent of 113% of Scotland’s overall electricity consumption in 2022, the highest to date and up 26% on 2021.
English Labour lied when it said GB Energy will lower energy prices. In reality, it will funnel public money to private companies. English Labour won’t do the one thing that would lower bills - renationalise energy.
Compounding the misery, Rachel Freeze Reeves’ revocation of the paltry winter fuel allowance means vulnerable pensioners will suffer.
Now look at The Netherlands, where all water, electricity and gas networks are publicly owned and it’s illegal to privatise any of them. So far this year it has posted more hours of negative prices, where consumers are paid for the energy they consume, between January 1 and August 17 than it did in all of 2023. As renewables capacity expands, negative energy price hours are expected to increase from 450 this year to between 800 and 1200 by 2026.
Octopus Energy CEO said Scots should be enjoying the cheapest electricity in Europe, but are paying the most. That’s because every stage of energy production - generation, transmission, distribution and supply - has been privatised. Half of UK offshore wind is owned by foreign governments - Denmark, France, Spain and Norway - who reap the rewards. Last year the National Grid paid shareholders £1.6 billion in dividends, money that should be have reinvested into the grid system.
Privatisation is why Scotland receives just one seventh of Norway’s oil and gas income - £4 billion vs Norway’s £29.66 billion. And because Westminster, not Scotland, controls energy and tax policy, the UK will collect just £3.8 billion in oil taxes in 2023/24 versus Norway’s £29.7 billion.
English Labour won’t dare to renationalise energy for fear of alienating their oligarch donors. Before the election, Reeves bragged to City banksters that Labour’s manifesto had their “fingerprints all over it.”
Time for Scots to revolt?
Yes Leah, 'No' voters and several daeless SNP elected majorities have a lot to answer for. They have given away Scotland's renewable energy industry which will soon be worth £100 billion+ a year, every year. They have ensured Scots suffer from the highest energy prices in western Europe, four times higher than in Norway. And they have consigned Scotland to being commercially un-competitive, an industrial backwater when access to our own cheap energy should have boosted our economy. 'No' voters and a deceitfu SNP have facilitated the colonial plunder and poverty of Scotland.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2024/04/18/the-realities-of-an-energy-rich-scotland-plundered-under-colonial-rule/
https://www.nationalgrid.com/
You can see here, it is still part owned by a US company. Investment seems to be concentrated in England mostly in midlands and south.