The cost of living

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Sciolus
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Re: The cost of living

Post by Sciolus » Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:28 pm

IvanV wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 10:01 am
Sciolus wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:57 am
I was specifically after data showing the change in demand in response to increases in price. But as I mentioned, that isn't going to be available yet. So I will rely on petrol/diesel sales to prove that people respond to price increases by moaning a lot, demanding tax cuts, and using just as much as they did before.
I wonder whether you made this comment because you suffer from the syndrome mentioned in this article, that many people on substantially above-average incomes think that they are only average. So such people might tend to think that their own relative comfort in coping with these price increases was normal.

I doubt it. But it was a good excuse to mention this interesting fact I hadn't come across before just now. By random chance when I googled UK median household income just now, to write my previous post, that was the first article that came up.
Heh. I am very comfortably off and aware of it. There's an interesting discussion to be had, but perhaps not on this thread when there's a lot of other discussion going on. But anyway, in this case I was just following the data. I was genuinely surprised that there was no appreciable reduction in consumption in response to a 50% price rise.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by IvanV » Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:52 pm

lpm wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 5:02 pm
Who here is:

- going to get cavity wall insulation or double glazing before the coming winter?
- going to get fibre insulation and shove it in the loft?
- going to do no projects of this kind, but plans to cut gas and electricity consumption via behaviour changes?
- not going to cut consumption at all and will just pay the extra?

And more pertinently, if gas and electricity prices were frozen at current levels - as per Labour's plan - who here would not bother with any of these plans, or would do less of the behavioural changes?
Many people, like me, have already done the easy things to insulate like you mention. In fact, I've already done some harder things, because I had the convenient opportunity to do things like dry-line walls with 100mm of insulation, and large enough rooms to live with that size reduction. And because I don't have either cavity walls or a loft, I had to do some harder things to get acceptable insulation. We also keep the thermostat at 20C, which I think is lower than many. I haven't yet persuaded my wife to limit her winter window-opening habit, so as to "air rooms", but I will mention it again in the context of higher energy bills. Ventilation is a problem for heat efficiency. But mechanical ventilation with a heat exchanger remains uncommon outside up-market new-builds.

But that only takes me (so far as I can estimate) to about borderline D/E on the housing efficiency scale. Insulating my house to could-use-a-heat-pump standards would be very expensive, which is unfortunately true of much of the older housing stock in the country.

I am currently arranging to install solar panels, and thinking about using a diverter to heat my water with any excess generation I am not using locally.

Many people who haven't done the easy things can't, because they can't afford them, or they live in rented accommodation and the landlord won't do them. I'll leave the rented accommodation problem for another occasion. But in the first case, yes, the ideal solution is to improve people's income so they can both afford the higher cost of energy, and afford to put in basic insulation if they need it.

The current Economist had an opinion piece kind-of in favour of the Labour policy, under the subheading "Silly policy can be smart politics". The reason was that it was achievable and was a greater relief to poverty than Tory policy. Obviously income redistribution (using my words for the thing we agree on) would be better. But it won't happen because the Cons wouldn't offer it, and Labour wouldn't be elected if they promised it. So that was the practical reality of the situation that caused them to favour what they called a "silly policy" over the practically available alternatives. And clearly getting sensible policy in the longer term first requires us to remove from government a party whose main objective is tax cuts. Even then, it will be hard.

What remains is a number of people who are quite well enough off to insulate their house to a basic modern standard, and can't be bothered. I know some seemingly very intelligent people in this category. I think it is a surprisingly large category more broadly. Insulation is not an exciting piece of expenditure, when you can go on holiday or have a nicer car or nice shoes. Yes we could hope they get the hint with energy prices, and yes subsidising energy would remove that hope. It doesn't help that insulation is one of the common things you get nuisance and scam telephone calls about.

So what you say is right, but there are grounds for suspecting it is unachievable in practice. At least in the short run. I remember reading an extended description of Anthony Atkinson's famous 2014 book on Inequality: What is to be done? His diagnosis of what would be necessary to get us back to the level of inequality of the 1960s produced the immediate response in me, well that's not going to happen then. And that's a response of disappointment.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Aug 23, 2022 10:06 pm

lpm wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 5:02 pm
You're being a clown now dyqik.

Let's get personal. Who here is:

- going to get cavity wall insulation or double glazing before the coming winter?
- going to get fibre insulation and shove it in the loft?
- going to do no projects of this kind, but plans to cut gas and electricity consumption via behaviour changes?
- not going to cut consumption at all and will just pay the extra?

And more pertinently, if gas and electricity prices were frozen at current levels - as per Labour's plan - who here would not bother with any of these plans, or would do less of the behavioural changes?
It does though look like many of the low hanging fruit have already been picked.

About 80% of the UK homes with cavity walls that are easy to treat already have cavity wall insulation, likewise about 75 per cent of lofts that are easy to treat already have insulation greater than 125mm. The remaining 25 per cent have less than that (or none).

Data from here, Table 8.5: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... eport-2021

How many of those 20 per cent of cavity walls or 25 per cent of lofts are actually owned by affluent people who could afford to insulate but haven't got round to it? I don't know but I'd be surprised if it was a majority. We're also looking at the rental sector, and owner occupiers who believe that they can't afford it.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Fishnut » Tue Aug 23, 2022 11:45 pm

I thought this was a very informative thread by someone with experience of surviving in an unheated house over winter. It doesn't help that modern building materials seem to be designed to prevent houses from breathing that means when they get cold they get condensation which causes further problems.
lpm wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 5:02 pm

Let's get personal. Who here is:

- going to get cavity wall insulation or double glazing before the coming winter?
- going to get fibre insulation and shove it in the loft?
- going to do no projects of this kind, but plans to cut gas and electricity consumption via behaviour changes?
- not going to cut consumption at all and will just pay the extra?

And more pertinently, if gas and electricity prices were frozen at current levels - as per Labour's plan - who here would not bother with any of these plans, or would do less of the behavioural changes?
I'm looking to top up my loft insulation as the heatwave reminded me just how much heat transfer happens between the loft and the rest of the house. I'd be doing this regardless because even if we weren't going to have more expensive winters, it will make future heatwaves more bearable. Likewise I'm looking to get thermal linings for the curtains that somehow don't have them already. The price rises have made this more urgent but I'm also not exactly swimming in disposable income right now so it's difficult to know if I'll actually be able to afford these improvements before the winter comes. I already have double glazing and cavity wall insulation isn't practical (but the thick walls already provide good insulation). My housemate and I have discussed possibly only heating the sitting room and then using our electric blankets in our bedrooms. We already have the thermostat set at 17C and have it on a timer to come on in the mornings and evenings and try to keep it turned off until as late into the autumn as possible, so there's not much give there, beyond just turning it off altogether. There's only so many behavioural changes you can make and still feel like a functioning human rather than someone just trying to survive.

I remember this house before the central heating was installed and the damp got into your bones. It wasn't too bad when I was a sprightly young kid but I have no idea how my nan coped. I'd really prefer not have to go back to those days. It seems bizarre to be two decades into the 21st century and preparing to live like it was the 19th again.
dyqik wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:08 pm
Have you checked the current supply chain for e.g. fiber loft insulation? How much of it is available to purchase right now, if people want to take the quickest option for insulating their home (I have no idea, by the way)?
I was in B&Q at the weekend and their shelves were almost entirely empty, except for the specialist/really expensive stuff. They said they were having trouble keeping it on the shelves, there's such high demand. Another builders merchants had a similar situation. The cheapest B&Q have is £25/roll for 270mm and at that price it's going to take me a while to save up enough to do all the loft space we have.

I've been trying to research the best-value-for-money insulation and it's been hideously complicated. I don't know if I'm just being particularly useless but the 'explainers' I've found haven't been very good at actually explaining what I need to do. It doesn't help when products are sold in dimensions such as 1160mm width x 3.88m length. Would it kill them to round up to something easily calculable? Or even use the same f.cking units for both measurements?
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Re: The cost of living

Post by dyqik » Tue Aug 23, 2022 11:53 pm

The 1160mm width is so that it fits between 38mm or 50mm wide joists with either 400mm or 600mm spacing, with a small amount of compression.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Millennie Al » Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:16 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 5:16 am
What is fuel poverty?

they are living in a property with a fuel poverty energy efficiency rating of band D or below
and when they spend the required amount to heat their home, they are left with a residual income below the official poverty line
https://www.nea.org.uk/articles/what-is-fuel-poverty/

And those are the figures from last winter. Estimates are that numbers will double or triple, depending on who you ask, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... arch-finds
"Fuel poverty" is a phrase chosen for emotional impact and does not consistently mean anything. Your first source gives a ridiculous definition. Why does the efficiency rating matter? Why should people remain above the official poverty line after spending some of their money?

And the Guardian uses the definition of:
when energy costs exceed 10% of a household’s net income
which is also ridiculous as it means that someone who has a million pounds in cash hidden in their house but no income is considered to be in fuel poverty.
And yes, I too have lived in houses where I had to sleep in three layers, hats and gloves and scrape ice off the inside of the window and couldn't get my clothes dry and so on. It f.cking sucks.
Did it kill you? Do you have long lasting health problems as a result? And, most importantly, is there any level between that extreme and what poor people had last winter?

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Millennie Al » Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:24 am

Sciolus wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:57 am
So I will rely on petrol/diesel sales to prove that people respond to price increases by moaning a lot, demanding tax cuts, and using just as much as they did before.
I don't think petrol & diesel are good examples. One of the reasons the tax is so high on them (and has been for a long time) is that the demand for them is relatively inelastic. Home heating can be turned down to save 10% or run for fewer hours to save 10%, but driving 90% of the way to work or the supermarket achieves nothing. Reducing transport fuel use means chosing a more efficient vehicle when replacing it, or moving house to reduce the distance to travel (possibly thereby allowing switching to walking, cycling or public transport), or changing jobs to allow a shorter journey or working from home. All of these are very long term changes.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:25 am

In terms of effective, politically possible solutions. What would be the big downsides of my suggestion of progressive energy pricing?

Obviously choosing an appropriate threshold could be tricksy, but beyond that.
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Re: The cost of living

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:36 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:16 am
. Your first source gives a ridiculous definition. Why does the efficiency rating matter?
Because, as it explains about 2 sentences later:
energy efficiency is a key driver of fuel poverty, as higher energy efficiency reduces a household’s fuel costs for a particular size of property
Having no heating in a well insulated building is very different to having no heating in a poorly insulated one. That's pretty much why insulation exists.
Millennie Al wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:16 am
Why should people remain above the official poverty line after spending some of their money?
Being at a safe, reasonably comfortable temperature is what most nice, normal people would consider a bare essential in civilised society. It shouldn't leave people struggling to afford food, transportation and - horror of horrors - not being completely f.cking miserable forever.
And yes, I too have lived in houses where I had to sleep in three layers, hats and gloves and scrape ice off the inside of the window and couldn't get my clothes dry and so on. It f.cking sucks.
Did it kill you? Do you have long lasting health problems as a result? And, most importantly, is there any level between that extreme and what poor people had last winter?
I mean this was only about 10 years ago. I'm sure plenty of people were in exactly that situation last winter.

I get the impression some of you have zero clue about the real world tbh.
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Re: The cost of living

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:40 am

As for low-hanging fruit, my mum's also already spent as much as she can afford insulating her roof. It's a crappy old building and doing so was necessary to be comfortable even when she could afford heating (an hour in the morning, a couple in the evening, thermostat set to 18°C , which is the WHO's recommendation for healthy people with decent clothes on fwiw).

I'll suggest she tries a hat. I'm sure she hasn't thought of that. Great tip, thanks.
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Re: The cost of living

Post by Millennie Al » Wed Aug 24, 2022 2:01 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 2:07 pm
You might enjoy this report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems http://www.ipes-food.org/pages/foodpricecrisis, reported on by the World Economic Forum here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/05/ ... rd-levels/
Given the track record of people trying to organise food production with big plans, I'd conclude that these experts are best ignored. The twentieth century saw major famines caused by attempts to plan food production (e.g. Soviet union 1930-1933, and the Great Leap Forward in China 1958-1962). I think enough people have already died to prove that that approach does not work. In contrast, the work of Norman Borlaug shows that if you have a genuine improvement people will adopt it with having to have it forced upon them.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Millennie Al » Wed Aug 24, 2022 2:10 am

IvanV wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:52 pm
The current Economist had an opinion piece kind-of in favour of the Labour policy, under the subheading "Silly policy can be smart politics".
The silly policy could also be utterly disastrous. If the cause of rising energy prices is lack of energy (which it certainly seems to be) then forcing a fixed price (which thereby guarantees supply in excess of what is actually available) will drive the subsidy up until it is impossible to pay it - just like happened on Black Wednesday where the government foolishly tried to deny reality and force a fixed limit on the exchange rate for Sterling.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Millennie Al » Wed Aug 24, 2022 2:28 am

discovolante wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 2:32 pm
I had wondered if there was some really complicated important reason why all wholesale energy prices had to remain linked with gas prices but it seems there probably isn't?
There is a tendency for the price of something (sufficiently fungible) to be the price of its most expensive supply when demand is limited by supply. Imagine a free market in which energy costs 10p/kWh from gas, 6p/kWh from wind, and 5p/kWh for solar. As demand rises from zero, the market price will start at 5p, but once the demand exceeds the capacity of solar, it will rise to very slightly below 6p because someone buying at that price from anyone has nowhere cheaper to go. The solar suppliers cannot gain any extra sales by dropping their prices since they are at capacity - all they would do is reduce their profits. Similarly, once the demand exceeds that of wind and solar, the price rises to effectively 10p, since now customers have nowhere to go to get it cheaper and no supplier will increase profits by dropping their price. Free and fair competition is what keeps prices down to the (marginal) cost of the most expensive suply. But also notice that if the market rate is 10p, then there is a strong incentive to build more wind and an even stronger incentive to build more solar, so supply should expand and drive the gas suppliers out of the market, bringing the price down.

Of course in the real world we seldon see this in action. Tins of beans have different prices because people don't regard them as fungible (and, indeed, different brands do taste different), while supply is not fixed either.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by bjn » Wed Aug 24, 2022 6:05 am

lpm wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 5:02 pm
You're being a clown now dyqik.

Let's get personal. Who here is:

- going to get cavity wall insulation or double glazing before the coming winter?
- going to get fibre insulation and shove it in the loft?
- going to do no projects of this kind, but plans to cut gas and electricity consumption via behaviour changes?
- not going to cut consumption at all and will just pay the extra?

And more pertinently, if gas and electricity prices were frozen at current levels - as per Labour's plan - who here would not bother with any of these plans, or would do less of the behavioural changes?
I already have double glazing and a fully insulated roof. My house is solid brick, I’ve priced up cladding, horribly expensive and disruptive.

I’m going to look at thermal curtains. I will double check that the boiler actually is condescending properly*. I’ll be a nazi about washing and drying clothes. Absolutely minimal use of the drier at off peak times. I’ll turn down the thermostats and have us wear more woollies.

*https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/optimi ... ur-boiler/

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Grumble » Wed Aug 24, 2022 6:42 am

My house had cavity insulation done many years ago, long before I moved in. The insulation has started to degrade, but it can’t be redone. Once it’s in that’s it. Injecting more would only compact it.
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Re: The cost of living

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Aug 24, 2022 8:00 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:25 am
In terms of effective, politically possible solutions. What would be the big downsides of my suggestion of progressive energy pricing?

Obviously choosing an appropriate threshold could be tricksy, but beyond that.
Two issues. In practice there very likely just isn't time to change the energy companies' billing systems. We've got about ten to twelve weeks until the first frosts in English cities, and temperatures that would cause hypothermia much sooner.

Secondly, the thresholds would be very difficult. A sensible threshold for new built one bed flat occupied by one person would be very different to the sensible threshold for a family of five renting an four bedroom house built before modern insulation standards. A single threshold per energy bill risks giving the single person very cheap energy and no incentive to be frugal, or driving the family bankrupt.

A solution might be to assess each household and give them different thresholds based upon need. But as with explicit rationing, the problem is that the UK government doesn't know how many people there are and where they live. I don't see how that information on each household could be collected over the next ten to twelve weeks.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Stephanie » Wed Aug 24, 2022 8:36 am

lpm wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 5:02 pm
Let's get personal. Who here is:

- going to get cavity wall insulation or double glazing before the coming winter?
- going to get fibre insulation and shove it in the loft?
- going to do no projects of this kind, but plans to cut gas and electricity consumption via behaviour changes?
- not going to cut consumption at all and will just pay the extra?

And more pertinently, if gas and electricity prices were frozen at current levels - as per Labour's plan - who here would not bother with any of these plans, or would do less of the behavioural changes?
I grew up in a house without central heating (my parents still don't have it), and the only insulation it had on your list is double glazing. We didn't even have carpets in all the rooms, and drafts (and dust) would come up through the floorboards.

Currently I live in a rented house. It has double glazing. I think being a terrace means some walls are a little warmer because of neighbours on either side? I'm limited in terms of what I can do, but the letting agent sent someone round to assess a few years back, and they said we can't get cavity wall insulation anyway. We don't have a thermostat. We just put the heating on for an hour in the morning and then maybe a couple in the evening. Not every day and we've certainly never run it all day. I don't think it's that great anyway, we're not able to run around in t-shirts or anything.

Other than not using the heating at all, I'm not sure what else we can do. I already variously use blankets, coats, a cape, gloves, scarves, hats, slippers, etc, but sometimes you just can't get rid of the chill. I suffer with chilblains too, which makes it harder.
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Re: The cost of living

Post by IvanV » Wed Aug 24, 2022 8:49 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 2:10 am
IvanV wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:52 pm
The current Economist had an opinion piece kind-of in favour of the Labour policy, under the subheading "Silly policy can be smart politics".
The silly policy could also be utterly disastrous. If the cause of rising energy prices is lack of energy (which it certainly seems to be) then forcing a fixed price (which thereby guarantees supply in excess of what is actually available) will drive the subsidy up until it is impossible to pay it - just like happened on Black Wednesday where the government foolishly tried to deny reality and force a fixed limit on the exchange rate for Sterling.
I kind of hope that's the point. They get elected on it, implement it, demonstrate it is unworkable, and then do something sensible instead.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 24, 2022 9:21 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 2:01 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 2:07 pm
You might enjoy this report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems http://www.ipes-food.org/pages/foodpricecrisis, reported on by the World Economic Forum here https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/05/ ... rd-levels/
Given the track record of people trying to organise food production with big plans, I'd conclude that these experts are best ignored. The twentieth century saw major famines caused by attempts to plan food production (e.g. Soviet union 1930-1933, and the Great Leap Forward in China 1958-1962). I think enough people have already died to prove that that approach does not work. In contrast, the work of Norman Borlaug shows that if you have a genuine improvement people will adopt it with having to have it forced upon them.
hahahaha good one
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Re: The cost of living

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 24, 2022 9:29 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 8:00 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:25 am
In terms of effective, politically possible solutions. What would be the big downsides of my suggestion of progressive energy pricing?

Obviously choosing an appropriate threshold could be tricksy, but beyond that.
Two issues. In practice there very likely just isn't time to change the energy companies' billing systems. We've got about ten to twelve weeks until the first frosts in English cities, and temperatures that would cause hypothermia much sooner.

Secondly, the thresholds would be very difficult. A sensible threshold for new built one bed flat occupied by one person would be very different to the sensible threshold for a family of five renting an four bedroom house built before modern insulation standards. A single threshold per energy bill risks giving the single person very cheap energy and no incentive to be frugal, or driving the family bankrupt.

A solution might be to assess each household and give them different thresholds based upon need. But as with explicit rationing, the problem is that the UK government doesn't know how many people there are and where they live. I don't see how that information on each household could be collected over the next ten to twelve weeks.
Yeah, you'd have to fudge it based on something like council tax bands and energy efficiency ratings, or just set a threshold high enough to capture normal usage in a drafty 4 bed house and not worry too much about smaller properties. I bet there's some Pareto thing where 20% of properties are doing 80% of the waste or something, and they'll be big ones.

I'm less worried about time. If there were sufficient political will they could get something sorted in a few months. Or just do handouts till the new price system is sorted. Or at the very least people would know that something was being sorted, even if they had to spend a few months wearing extra hats.
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Re: The cost of living

Post by Woodchopper » Wed Aug 24, 2022 9:59 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 9:29 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 8:00 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 1:25 am
In terms of effective, politically possible solutions. What would be the big downsides of my suggestion of progressive energy pricing?

Obviously choosing an appropriate threshold could be tricksy, but beyond that.
Two issues. In practice there very likely just isn't time to change the energy companies' billing systems. We've got about ten to twelve weeks until the first frosts in English cities, and temperatures that would cause hypothermia much sooner.

Secondly, the thresholds would be very difficult. A sensible threshold for new built one bed flat occupied by one person would be very different to the sensible threshold for a family of five renting an four bedroom house built before modern insulation standards. A single threshold per energy bill risks giving the single person very cheap energy and no incentive to be frugal, or driving the family bankrupt.

A solution might be to assess each household and give them different thresholds based upon need. But as with explicit rationing, the problem is that the UK government doesn't know how many people there are and where they live. I don't see how that information on each household could be collected over the next ten to twelve weeks.
Yeah, you'd have to fudge it based on something like council tax bands and energy efficiency ratings, or just set a threshold high enough to capture normal usage in a drafty 4 bed house and not worry too much about smaller properties. I bet there's some Pareto thing where 20% of properties are doing 80% of the waste or something, and they'll be big ones.

I'm less worried about time. If there were sufficient political will they could get something sorted in a few months. Or just do handouts till the new price system is sorted. Or at the very least people would know that something was being sorted, even if they had to spend a few months wearing extra hats.
Yes, council tax bands would be a start. But its still going to be complicated, especially with large houses that have been rented out to several different tenants. Council tax bands are also only partly based upon size, but also on other things that affect value like location.

As for time, people should be wary of assumptions that complex problems can easily be fixed as long as there is enough will and money. Often times they can't.

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Re: The cost of living

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Wed Aug 24, 2022 10:11 am

Turning housing stock into minimal source of energy use is an infrastructure investment problem. Domestic energy use is second only to transport in the UK by sector. Seeing as it's a matter of national concern that people can (a) live in warm homes, and (b) lower their dependency on gas, there needs to be government investment to do the following:
  • Compel all landlords to undertake insulation installation and lower energy use, contributing money
  • Compel (not merely incentivise) households to electrify their heating and install solar & wind power where possible by 2030, covering 75-90% of the cost.
  • For single-skin homes with poor heat performance, compel (not incentivise) wall insulation installation where possible
  • Similarly, install decent loft insulation in all possible homes
  • "Where possible" should be determined by experts, not property owners
  • As a prelude to banning new ICE cars by 2030, all new cars must be expected to be hybrid (to cut out idling and force regenerative braking) by 2024.
  • All new homes built to passivhaus standards, with solar, wind and air-source heat pumps. If built in communities, install ground source heat instead.
Seeing homes as an Englishman's castle, rather than a drain on scarce resources, is part of the problem here. Individualism will be as large a failure with this as in so many other areas of economics.

The Government has the power both to raise the capital funds required and force the installation of this stuff. It should use it.
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Re: The cost of living

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 24, 2022 10:51 am

Returning to the theme of low-hanging fruit, it's worth noting that domestic energy consumption and expenditure already show downward trends:
Energy consumption per person fell from 0.8 ktoe in 2000 to 0.6 ktoe in 2020 with consumption per household
following a very similar trajectory. Disposable income has increased more quickly than population and so the
consumption per unit of disposable income has decreased even more rapidly. The improvements to energy
intensity in this sector are likely related to higher energy efficiency of homes resulting from improvements to
insulation measures, boiler, and other appliance efficiencies4.
From here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistic ... he-uk-2021
Note that this is despite two periods of lockdown which saw increased heating use (adjusted for n° of degree heating days).

So it does seem that people are already making changes, and that having a lower energy cost relative to disposable income doesn't affect that trend. Industry and services also show decreasing energy use.

There's also a useful report here https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... bility.pdf on household energy consumption. The distributions look like this:
energy.jpg
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My suggestion is that the long tail is where rationing should be targeted. The median was 12,300 and the 75%ile 16,600 kWh/y - about a third of consumption is from the top 25% of households.

By far the most important predictor of energy consumption is property size, whereas thermostat temperature barely makes a difference:
variables.jpg
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So, charging more for energy over the 75%ile would mainly affect people using an unusually high amount of energy, who tend to be people living in bigger (and detached) houses who we can expect would be better able to pay either the bills or for insulation.

The high importance of SAP (energy efficiency rating) also shows the value of Insulating Britain.

Other interesting snippets about gas:
Gas consumption was found to vary across households in different income quintiles, where
households in the highest income quintile showed the highest level of gas consumption in the
morning and evening periods, compared with households with lower incomes. In addition,
households in the lowest income quintile had the lowest and latest morning peak compared
with households with higher incomes.
For households in the detailed gas consumption subset, households in fuel poverty had greater
levels of gas consumption in the morning and throughout the day, compared with households
not in fuel poverty (Figure 3.14). This result is likely influenced by the types of household that
make up the fuel poor group, as fuel poor households were larger and more likely to be in
during the day. The nature of the LIHC definition also means that they were more likely to live
in less efficient dwellings which, on average, result in higher energy costs.

The picture for electricity is broadly similar:
leccy.jpg
leccy.jpg (34.41 KiB) Viewed 837 times
ie it's bigger (detached) houses with lots of appliances.
The fuel poverty status of households was not found to be an important factor in explaining the
variability in electricity consumption, when considering other variables within the final combined
model. Based on bivariate analysis, fuel poor households were found to use around 10%16
more electricity than households not in fuel poverty, however, it is likely that this is influenced
by characteristics of the households who were more likely to be in fuel poverty (for example
fuel poor households tend to be larger).

So it does seem like per capita energy consumption is highest for people that have most money, which suggests to me that the most effective, as well as fairest, way to effect rationing would be to get rich people to use less fuel, not price poor people into unpleasant and potentially dangerous conditions. I posit that progressive pricing would work quite effectively in the manner intended.
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Re: The cost of living

Post by lpm » Wed Aug 24, 2022 11:11 am

IvanV wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 8:49 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 2:10 am
IvanV wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:52 pm
The current Economist had an opinion piece kind-of in favour of the Labour policy, under the subheading "Silly policy can be smart politics".
The silly policy could also be utterly disastrous. If the cause of rising energy prices is lack of energy (which it certainly seems to be) then forcing a fixed price (which thereby guarantees supply in excess of what is actually available) will drive the subsidy up until it is impossible to pay it - just like happened on Black Wednesday where the government foolishly tried to deny reality and force a fixed limit on the exchange rate for Sterling.
I kind of hope that's the point. They get elected on it, implement it, demonstrate it is unworkable, and then do something sensible instead.
Their silly policy doesn't matter in itself, because it's just politics. God knows what the situation will be like in 2024.

What's worrying is why and how they reached their dud conclusion. It's crappy Corbynism. Give everyone free broadband instead of raising benefits by £10 a month. Give everyone subsidised fossil fuels instead of raising benefits by £80 a month. They are starting from the wrong principles. It's not a left wing policy. It's more like 19th C protectionist principles, the sort favoured by old Tories in the fight over Corn Laws.

And it's extremely distressing they don't start at the climate crisis and work out the policy from there.

And it's pretty amazing our BoaF, normally so determined on the climate collapse, somehow ended up thinking subsidising fossil fuel burning is a good thing. When you find yourself in agreement with the fossil fuel giants - who obviously are excited to have their product subsidised - you know you've gone badly wrong.

This is such a good opportunity to destroy fossil fuels earlier than hoped. The UK death toll from our largely self-inflicted poverty is coming the failed NHS and general economic crisis, more than from anyone dying from hypothermia. And the UK situation has to put in context of the destruction of Bangladesh and the failure of agriculture in the third world.

I want a Labour Party that can think long term, securing Britain's independence from the vile fossil fuel countries and building a resilient energy system, while simultaneously always looking to secure respectable wages, pensions and benefits.
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Re: The cost of living

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Aug 24, 2022 11:26 am

lpm wrote:
Wed Aug 24, 2022 11:11 am
And it's pretty amazing our BoaF, normally so determined on the climate collapse, somehow ended up thinking subsidising fossil fuel burning is a good thing. When you find yourself in agreement with the fossil fuel giants - who obviously are excited to have their product subsidised - you know you've gone badly wrong.
No, I've been clear enough in this thread that it's a bad thing, and have suggested measures to reduce it, such as improvements in energy efficiency, and electrification linked to a decarbonised grid.

But the solution to ending fossil fuels isn't to force poor people to freeze. It's to invest in infrastructure so that (1) less can be burned, and (2) energy use doesn't depend on burning fossil fuels.

Investment takes time. What I'm suggesting here is progressive pricing, so that ordinary people's conservative use of energy doesn't force them into poverty during the next winter, buying time for those investments to take place. An across-the-board subsidy isn't necessary or desirable, unless it's the only politically feasible way to stop poor people suffering even more under the collapsing Tory regime.

But I am taking it as axiomatic that some degree of heating is necessary in the UK climate, and that it shouldn't push people into poverty. It appears you disagree. As for fossil giants, I'm more than happy for any subsidy to come out of taxing them specifically, so they don't win. But the government's long-term failure to invest in energy efficiency and decarbonisation shouldn't be paid for by the country's poorest, who can do nothing about it.
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