The timing couldn’t have been worse. Under leaden November skies, came news of what many have suspected: energy rationing for British households could be officially on the cards.
The NESO-Miliband plan for a low-carbon future is going to involve a lot more than just waiting a while for a cup of tea
The bearer of these tidings is the National Energy System Operator (NESO), the UK’s new energy systems operator which began work last month. NESO’s first main act has been to publish a report arguing that ‘demand side flexibility’ – which appears to be a euphemism for rationing at peak hours – is vital if the country is to make the transition to ‘clean energy’ by 2030.
From the government’s point of view, the timing couldn’t be better. Just as it looked as if Labour’s election promise to complete the switch to a renewables-based energy system within the next few years was impossible, ‘independent’ experts announce that it is, in fact, quite do-able – provided the public makes the necessary sacrifices.
But NESO is not independent from the government. The first single organisation to run the country’s energy system and incorporating the National Grid, NESO is technically a company. Its shareholder is the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which effectively means the person with significant control is energy secretary Ed Miliband.
With Net Zero set to dramatically increase the country’s reliance on electricity, attempts to persuade consumers to cut their consumption have been mounting. The National Grid ran a trial scheme in 2022 whereby Octopus’s 1.4 million smart meters customers were offered free energy if they reduced their usage at certain times. NESO has said it will continue to offer such incentives. Does this suggest that a form of future energy rationing could be achieved via ‘smart’ appliances which can limit power use at certain times?
That might explain all the fuss about smart meters. The government has been using every possible means short of outright compulsion to achieve a national roll-out of smart meters, with minimum annual installation targets for energy suppliers enforced by heavy fines. For householders, this translates into pressure bordering on harassment – my provider tells me it is ‘obligated’ to offer me a smart meter ‘on a frequent basis’, while a friend complains that British Gas has repeatedly made appointments for the installation of a smart meter against her express wishes.
Energy regulator Ofgem, with the backing of suppliers such as Octopus, have also been singing the praises of surge pricing – time-based tariffs enabled by smart meters to discourage consumers from using energy at peak times.
Taking all these things together, it seems we may be heading into an era of planned energy rationing. The NESO report, of course, puts the matter rather differently:
‘Flexibility is vital in a system with more variable renewables. There are large opportunities to increase flexibility in both demand and supply, across residential and commercial applications, and in industry. However, flexibility is not currently valued in full and faces multiple barriers.’
It seems we may be heading into an era of planned energy rationing
Some research from Leeds University provides an insight into the kind of thinking behind planned rationing. In a 2023 report, the researchers argue that WWII-style rationing is a ‘fair’ way to flight climate change: ‘Records from World War II show that compulsory food rationing was more acceptable to the UK public than voluntary changes to diet when resources became scarce’.
Governments, they go on, could ‘regulate the biggest polluters, such as oil, gas and petrol, long-haul flights and intensive farming, creating scarcity in products that harm the planet. Rationing could then be introduced gradually, to manage the resulting scarcity with the aim of meeting everyone’s basic needs’.
Creating scarcity which necessitates rationing sounds like Net Zero in microcosm, while the gradual introduction of rationing is a good description of the path we’re currently treading.
Perhaps it’s my background, but the idea of WWII-style rationing is particularly unattractive to me. I have a parent from each side of the war and the tales of their youth did not shout ‘fun’. The most striking elements were not dramatic experiences of childhood evacuation, military conscription and prison-of-war camps, but the ongoing misery of scarcity. Post-war, my mother fled a Britain still in the grip of shortages, while my father left a Viennese home illuminated by a single lightbulb. They met and married amid the bounty of California, so you could say I’m the fruit of rationing rejection.
All of which is to say: has Britain really considered what a new era of ‘demand side flexibility’ would be like? Imagine. You can’t rush to the aid of an elderly relative because your electric car, which you bought as part of the national low-carbon effort, has no charge. That Zoom call for work will have to wait. Cosy evenings in the pub, singing in the local choir, the activities that make up a flourishing civil society and help to get us through the British winter, become few and far between.
In a meteorological reminder of the risks of depending on new technologies, this November is peculiarly devoid not just of sun but also wind, the two sources of natural power on which ‘the transition’ depends. We might take a lesson from Ecuador, a Latin American country in the grip of an ongoing energy crisis as drought cripples its hydroelectric power plants.
‘It’s chaos and much worse than expected,’ president Daniel Noboa told a recent United Nations General Assembly. Ecuador has been having blackouts of up to twelve hours a day, both planned and unexpected for some time. The consequences affect every aspect of life, from hospitals to the transport system, bringing economic losses to a country that was already struggling to move beyond third-world living standards.
The NESO-Miliband plan for a low-carbon future is going to involve a lot more than just waiting a while for a cup of tea. Britain’s got some serious thinking to do.
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