Renewables fastest way to reduce fuel prices

IT saddens me that we are seeing so many letters from people calling for fracking, drilling and even mining for more fossil fuels. Don’t these people consider the consequences of climate change?

Dropping Net Zero by 2050 would be incredibly expensive and damaging for future generations. This is the conclusion of analysis, not the views of scare-mongers or protesters. Drilling, and so on, will not even help consumers.

In a House of Commons debate on March 2nd, Alok Sharma said that the fastest way to reduce fuel prices was to increase our use of renewables. Kwasi Kwarteng agrees. He points out that our problem is not a reliance on Russian gas, rather the result of international markets. He is clear that North Sea production and fracking won’t materially affect the wholesale price quickly enough to help, if ever.

Why? Electricity generated from renewables was already cheaper than from fossil fuels before the Ukraine crisis started – more so now. Even if you are comfortable with nuclear energy, it is more expensive and slow to develop so cannot help.

Reducing demand will have the quickest impact. The best thing many of us can do at this time is to insulate our homes and, for those who can, turn our thermostats down.

Existing solutions can be deployed to help intermittency of supply from renewables and more are being developed all the time.

We don’t have to stop using fossil fuels immediately, but the faster and further we go to reduce it, the cheaper our energy will be. Michael Carter

Exeter