The cost of living... what can we do?

Well for a long time they are bound to make the argument that any drop in price should be used to lower the amount the government are subsidising it by.

 

Not sure about this, The EU has put a wind fall TAX on renewable energy

 

Yeah, but the biggest economy in the EU also put all their eggs in one basket, buying all their gas from a country that nobody has ever trusted.

 

I think it's a monumental mistake to tax renewables any more than taxing fossil fuels. It's on a par with building a dedicated pipeline from a country that nobody trusts. Why? Renewable energy is very profitable, and being profitable means it's worth investing in, which means more gets implemented, which drives down coat in the long run. It also supports a lot of well paid jobs everywhere in the supply chain, and construction. If it's more financially attractive to just find and sell more gas, that's what will happen, and we'll be in the same situation every time two countries have a fall out.

 

Talking about falling prices. My mother had an uncle who had a newsagent/tobacconist back in the 50s'. Every time cigarettes went up in the budget he had just got his stock in, but when they went down he had a shed load of the dear ones to sell. He died a rich man!

 

Why not, they are heavily subsidised. If renewable energy is very profitable, why is Drax receiving in excess of £800 million every year in subsidies, doesn't sound like it's very profitable to me

Take away subsidies and carbon tax, renewable energy is not as cheap as we have been lead to believe.

 

Is DRAX a good example of renewable energy? I thought it was coal fired, but a Google search tells me it's transitioning to biomass. I don't see biomass as renewable. Sure, you can grow stuff, burn it, and grow it back, but it's hardly carbon neutral or negative when you consider the cutting, processing and transportation.

I see renewables as being offshore wind and to a lesser extent for the UK, solar. Elsewhere, where geography and climate permit, I see it as hydro and geothermal.

It would be worth digging out financials on fossil fuel support. I'm going back a few years now but at one point, some big oil companies in the UK were being subsidised.

If genuine renewables are subsidised, I see no problem with that. We have to remember we can't compare like for like. Coal has been the fuel of choice since the start of the industrial revolution. Much longer if you consider the much smaller scale use of it before then. Oil and gas on the scale we see today came much later, but still a long time ago. Renewables at scale is a very new thing, and is only just starting to show economies of scale.

When deciding if something is 'cheap', we should really swap the term 'cheap' with 'good value'. Even ignoring environmental concerns, purely economically, fossil fuels will run out, possibly in our lifetimes (or certainly become increasingly difficult to find and extract) whereas renewables will only grow, and get cheaper as they do. But if we do decide to factor in the environment, what is 'cheap' today might not prove to be good value in a decade or so, when energy security is a massive issue and our kids hate us for ignoring a one time opportunity to not ruin their planet.

 

I too do not see Biomass and Nuclear as renewables. Scotland generates a lot of renewable energy with on-shore and offshore wind, tidal in the Orkneys and hydro. To me, that is real renewable energy. I suppose biomass could be fine as long as carbon capture is used and processing of the biomass is green.

 

We have a dehumidifier. I bought it because we were getting spots of mould in the bathroom and the kids bedroom. The dehumidifier seems to have solved that problem, even though we only run it occasionally.

I can't say I've noticed any heat output, but other than heat from the actual mechanics of it running, I'm not sure why people claim they generate any noticeable heat. It's basically a fridge with a fan. A compressor like you'd find in a fridge, freezes a grid. Air is blown across it, and any water in the air condenses out. As with a fridge there's a hot side and a cold side, but the two balance out.

Still, worth trying if you have one, but I wouldn't recognize folks buying one specifically hoping to get any noticeable heat off them.

 

I have one and we use it all the time for drying washing. It uses 300watts and that is released into the room as heat. I work in the same room and I can vouch for the fact that it makes a difference to the temperature - to my detriment at this time of the year.

 

Even a fridge generates some heat.