British Gas has just put our monthly Direct Debit up by 67%. 67%! Unbelievable. What's worse is that a recent report said that gas prices were the highest in our region for the whole of the UK.
I know world prices have gone up and I've heard all the well rehearsed arguments on the radio, but I can't help but wonder how we've got ourselves in this position.
Has the constant pressure of years of deregulation and competition meant that energy prices have been forced artificially lower? Have we simply not been paying the right price for our energy? When you watch all the advertising for energy, it appears everyone can save you money. If that were true, then by now someone would be paying me to take gas and electricity off their hands. And then there's the "Buy both from us and it will be cheaper than using two companies approach." That doesn't sound much like competition to me.
In the end I think we've got ourselves in a real mess over energy and I remember the questions we asked when privatisation was first mooted: "In the end, who will really benefit from taking utilities out of public ownership?" Because we can't run the clock back and watch price changes over the same period with a nationalised energy market, we will never know the answer, but the question remains.
And finally, I don't keep up with all the changing technology and the advancements in R&D, but when I worked for British Gas 30 years ago we knew then that the resources were finite. We knew then that we needed to work on what comes after natural gas. There were projects looking at SNG (Substitute Natural Gas), where has that research gone in 30 years? Perhaps R&D was deemed non-profit making, too costly for the company in a shareholder economy and as a result the ideas shelved. I do know that the laboratories where I worked closed shortly after privatisation and, coincidentally my departure too. Although it must be said that I take no responsibility for the said closure!
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