We’re in the middle of an energy and cost of living crisis. In the short term, we urgently need to make energy affordable so people can heat their homes. In the long term, we need to move to 100% green energy, made in Britain.
That’s because when we make all our own energy through wind, solar and green gas, the prices of fossil fuels on the international markets won’t affect us.
Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, Britain’s greenest energy company, explains the best way to solve the current crisis and how energy market rules need to be overhauled to make sure it never happens again.
“The new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has promised to fix average annual energy bills at £2,500. This is great news for millions of people who did not know how they were going to get through this winter.
“The plan is not perfect. Support should have been targeted to those that really need it – and it should have been paid for from the rampant (£170 billion) profits of the oil and gas sector.
“There’s risk too: £130 billion is the estimated cost today, however that could easily double or triple.”
“The first thing to do is to break the link between the price of gas and the price of electricity – only 40 percent of Britain’s electricity is made from gas, but we allow the price of gas to set the price of all our electricity – including the 60 percent we get from nuclear and renewable energy.
“The second thing is to price cap North Sea gas – half of Britain’s gas is produced there but it has not saved us a single penny during this crisis because we allow the global energy market to set the price that we pay for it.
“If we control that wholesale price in the same way we have the retail price, allowing a simple two percent profit margin – we could reduce the price of half of our gas back to pre-crisis levels.
“These two changes to how our energy market works can insulate us from global drama in the energy market in the short term, while we work on the only feasible long-term answer – end our use of fossil fuels altogether. This is a fossil fuel crisis after all.
“We can make this energy crisis the last one we ever have if we take control of the situation.”
Ecotricity is Britain’s greenest energy company, using 100% of their profits to build new sources of renewable energy. www.ecotricity.co.uk
The Permaculture Magazine team have been publishing books and magazines since 1992.
Their YouTube channel www.youtube.com/PermacultureMagazine shares a range of videos from no dig organic gardening and food forests, to regenerative farming and keeping bees.
