Like many of us, I am sure, I pay my gas bill by monthly direct debit. It is easy, I don’t have to try and remember it each month, or each quarter, it is the same amount each month and I know that by the start of autumn there will be a credit on my account to go towards the increased gas usage throughout the winter. All very simple – or it was.
A week ago I received an email from my suppliers advising me that my direct debit was going to increase by around four times for the next 12 months. I immediately contacted them and pointed out that I was not going to pay it, but I would allow them to take an increase of approximately 25%. Much to my surprise, they didn’t argue, but agreed to that. The moral of this story seems to be that if you don’t like the increase proposed for a direct debit payment, challenge it, you might just win.
We all know that energy costs are rising dramatically, whether it is oil (and therefore petrol and diesel) or gas (and therefore also electricity), and the media tell us on an almost daily basis, why – covid recovery increasing world demand, war in Ukraine causing reduced supplies from Russia. The knock-on effect, of course, being that almost all food and other goods now cost more both to produce and to get to the shops or our homes.
But does this need to be the case? Shortly after the end of WW2 the government took the view that the UK should be self-sufficient in food production, or at least of all essential foodstuffs. That policy has largely been ignored now for many years, but why does the principle not apply to energy?
In 1945 the only raw energy-producing material we had in any quantity was coal, and so a self-sufficient energy policy was not a practical one, but today is very different. North Sea oil is still abundant as is gas both from the North Sea and under our feet on the mainland (perhaps not literally under Rye, but certainly throughout many parts of the rest of the country).
I can almost hear the splutters of indignation from the green fraternity as they pick up their pens to tell us that we are signing the death warrants of both ourselves and our children, but why should this be?
There is no reason to change the target date for net zero and I am sure that we are all aware that it is better to use renewable sources rather than fossil fuels, but it is a fact that in 2022 renewables are not sufficiently developed in either quantity or efficiency to take over yet. The time will undoubtedly come when they can. In the meantime, petrol and even diesel are becoming cleaner and vehicle engines more efficient, the process of carbon capture is well understood and could be used in gas-burning plants more widely, and, best of all, it is all available on our doorstep.
We don’t need Russia and we don’t need to go cap in hand to the Arabs asking for a reduction in oil price – it is all here under our feet and gas, in particular, is obtainable relatively cheaply by fracking - and no, there won’t be an earthquake, nor will your house fall into a crack in the ground as the sort of idiots who glue themselves to motorways would have you believe.
So we have sources of energy that can be obtained easily with less cost than buying from foreigners who want to extract the last penny that they can from us. No need to buy at world market prices, we can set our own for home consumption and never again will I, or any of us, receive a demand from our utility company for an immediate fourfold increase in the price we pay them.
All it needs is a government brave enough to do it.
