The cost of electricity across the EU

nesf

OssianSmyth wrote: »

Yes, but is that not also the case for income taxes, property costs, transport and food costs - but on a far larger scale? We rarely hear calls for reductions in these more significant costs.

Eh, people are calling for lower rents, petrol/diesel prices, general food and good prices and such all the time. Haulers are regularly in the news about fuel costs for instance. I'm actually unaware of any country where people don't complain to some extent about income tax!

I'm actually unsure of your point here. I'm not saying electricity prices are the major burden on individuals and industry and I'm not saying other factors affect the economy as much or more. I merely say that high electricity costs are not a good thing and we should be concerned about this along with things like high fuel costs etc.

KyussBishop

Macha wrote: »

True, it is one of the more significant inputs into the economy, which makes the PPP comparison a bit tricky.

In reality, I don't think lower energy costs are an option in Europe in the near future. We'll have to compete with other regions but we're not going to win on energy prices.

Actually, Europe (and most countries suffering economic slowdowns) are in an unusually good position for lowering energy costs: We (Europe) have an enormous reserve of unemployed workers, who can be put to work on manufacturing and construction for new energy sources, like nuclear power plants and renewables, among pretty much anything else you can think of doing with that labour.

You can directly fight inflation in the long run (that will be caused by increasing energy and particulary fossil fuel costs), by utilizing either debt-funded or monetary-policy funded (limited by inflation targets) spending in the EU, to employ all of that idle labour and put them to work.

For all the scaremongering you hear about the use of money creation for spending (which ignores that you can limit it by inflation targets), this is an actual way you can reduce and prevent inflation, which highlights one of the most essentially important roles public use of money creation can provide.

The real deficit in our economies, is not excess government spending (which isn't pushing up anywhere near inflation limits today), it is the waste of labour potential, by having enormous amounts of unemployed people, and a huge output gap; every day it continues, that is a permanent waste of potential human effort, and potential economic activity, that we will never get back.


Arguably, it is only going to be public spending that will provide the amount of effort needed to construct these required power sources, because much of it will simply not be profitable enough for private industry, and private industry (concerned only with short-term profits, not long-term goals like energy price stability) can profit much more by letting the energy problem get worse, so that prices can keep on being jacked up.

Indeed, much of the excessive cost of oil today, is down to speculation on the financial markets, expressly for the purpose of gouging extra profits at the expense of everyone else in society.

nesf

KyussBishop wrote: »

Actually, Europe (and most countries suffering economic slowdowns) are in an unusually good position for lowering energy costs: We (Europe) have an enormous reserve of unemployed workers, who can be put to work on manufacturing and construction for new energy sources, like nuclear power plants and renewables, among pretty much anything else you can think of doing with that labour.

Eh, no, we need to develop much better technology with regard to either nuclear or renewables. This isn't the kind of work the average man off the street can do.

hfallada

Heroditas wrote: »

That statement is no longer true because the market is now fully deregulated.
Coal is currently very cheap and due to the collapse in the ETS market, it is much cheaper to generate electricity here using coal than with gas, also due to the sharp increases recently in gas prices.
However, coal plants are not as flexible as gas plants, hence why gas plants make up the majority of the generatin mix here.

But if ESB gets 60% of the market share again. The market becomes regulated again as a monopoly(what the EU considers a monopoly) has formed

Heroditas

hfallada wrote: »

But if ESB gets 60% of the market share again. The market becomes regulated again as a monopoly(what the EU considers a monopoly) has formed

Are you talking about generation or retail market share though?
They've sold off a load of their plants so they can't gain a monopolising share in the market again.

KyussBishop

nesf wrote: »

Eh, no, we need to develop much better technology with regard to either nuclear or renewables. This isn't the kind of work the average man off the street can do.

We have to do both; we have to construct with existing technology because of the coming fossil fuel cost shocks (it will be getting more expensive, and it is already too late to avoid that entirely), and we have to develop new technology as well.

This isn't a choice either, because we must act in order to alleviate the future fossil fuel cost increases, otherwise we will be experiencing general price/cost inflation as a result of it; we can ignore it, but at the cost of future inflation and energy supply/cost instability.

You can get a lot of people employed, working on construction of nuclear power plants for starters, and you can train people as part of any public program as well. The resources and labour potential are all there across Europe, ready to be put to use (even if it requires training for many - might as well get that started now).

Macha

KyussBishop wrote: »

We have to do both; we have to construct with existing technology because of the coming fossil fuel cost shocks (it will be getting more expensive, and it is already too late to avoid that entirely), and we have to develop new technology as well.

This isn't a choice either, because we must act in order to alleviate the future fossil fuel cost increases, otherwise we will be experiencing general price/cost inflation as a result of it; we can ignore it, but at the cost of future inflation and energy supply/cost instability.

You can get a lot of people employed, working on construction of nuclear power plants for starters, and you can train people as part of any public program as well. The resources and labour potential are all there across Europe, ready to be put to use (even if it requires training for many - might as well get that started now).

I agree - there is investment needed in the roll out of existing technologies - transmission grids, interconnectors, wind farms, PV etc. But there is also a need to invest in R&D for new technologies.

Something to note: nuclear is not very job intensive - possible the least job intensive of the main energy technologes.

nesf

KyussBishop wrote: »

We have to do both; we have to construct with existing technology because of the coming fossil fuel cost shocks (it will be getting more expensive, and it is already too late to avoid that entirely), and we have to develop new technology as well.

This isn't a choice either, because we must act in order to alleviate the future fossil fuel cost increases, otherwise we will be experiencing general price/cost inflation as a result of it; we can ignore it, but at the cost of future inflation and energy supply/cost instability.

You can get a lot of people employed, working on construction of nuclear power plants for starters, and you can train people as part of any public program as well. The resources and labour potential are all there across Europe, ready to be put to use (even if it requires training for many - might as well get that started now).

1) Building a nuclear powerplant isn't going to happen in the next decade with the political issues regarding it so let's ignore that.

2) Building windfarms etc, there's a relatively small amount of general labour available with such but a lot of the work involved is quite specialist and isn't the kind of thing you can pull people off the dole queue for unfortunately. Especially if we're talking about offshore wind which I think (but I'm no expert) is something we should definitely be building more of.

3) Power generation, outside of dam building, isn't a huge labour sink you can use for stimulus spending. Road building, overpasses and similar are better ideas in this respect normally because they are more labour intensive and require less specialist work than power generation building does.

TL;DR: Stimulus spending I don't have a problem with but I don't think power generation is a panacea here.

Macha

Energy infrastructure isn't just generation, it's also transmission lines, substations, upgrading the distribution system, installing smart meters, electric vehicle infrastructure, etc etc.

nesf

Macha wrote: »

Energy infrastructure isn't just generation, it's also transmission lines, substations, upgrading the distribution system, installing smart meters, electric vehicle infrastructure, etc etc.

Most of those are fairly specialist jobs. Unless you want to leave randomers play around with switchboards, install transformers and generators etc.

There's work there definitely but it's not "shovel ready" stuff, we'd have to train people before letting them erect power lines for instance. Substation work, beyond building the physical shell, is really not something you're going to leave anyone but specialists at.

KyussBishop

True enough, a lot of that is indeed very specialist and perhaps not very labour intensive, but the way I look at it, is we need to do it as part of a multi-decades-long project, for transitioning our energy generation resources away from fossil fuels; this is on a timescale long-enough, to make it worth sinking the time into training (even if that would take a long time). I don't just talk of Ireland either, but Europe as a whole.

Certainly though, it would not (and shouldn't try to) use up all available idle labour; there is significant room for action here though, and if Europe wanted to (as a whole) it has the resources available, to make a Manhattan-project style push, towards research and facilities aimed at developing multiple new sources of power generation; many of the more prominent ones being Generation IV nuclear plants, such as breeder and thorium reactors, as well as the multiple different types of fusion reactor types, not to mention more advanced photovoltaics and efficiency improvements in power transmission.

There's no silver bullet technology for resolving this problem, but there are dozens upon dozens of technologies in development that resources and effort could be sunk into, and which private industry isn't likely to develop fast enough on its own.

When you're dealing with projects you want to be lasting over the long-term, training isn't really a roadblock to that at all; these are things most can agree, are pretty important (if not essential) technologies to be developing and constructing rapidly.

Macha

nesf wrote: »

Most of those are fairly specialist jobs. Unless you want to leave randomers play around with switchboards, install transformers and generators etc.

There's work there definitely but it's not "shovel ready" stuff, we'd have to train people before letting them erect power lines for instance. Substation work, beyond building the physical shell, is really not something you're going to leave anyone but specialists at.

Hah, true. There would definitely be some upskilling needed for large parts of the required workforce but there is a lot of basic construction work as well that is subcontracted out.

There is a difference, of course, between jobs generated in the energy industry itself and the impact of energy prices on jobs in the economy as a whole.

Thujrog

Victor wrote: »

Because there was no investment or renewal going on. We are now playing catch-up.

Name their foreign generation / supply businesses.

ESB International. Check out www.esbi.com

Victor

solas111 wrote: »

The irony is that the ESB is running successful businesses in many other countries

Victor wrote: »

Name their foreign generation / supply businesses.

Thujrog wrote: »

ESB International. Check out www.esbi.com

I think you mean http://www.esbi.ie/our-businesses/generation/generation.asp and http://www.esbi.ie/our-businesses/generation/generation-portfolio.asp

* Rousch 412MW CCGT - Punjab, Pakistan - 7.5% share
* Amorebieta, 755MW CCGT - Basque Country, Spain - 50% share
* Corby 350MW CCGT - Northamptonshire, UK - 100%?
* Marchwood 840 MW CCGT - Southampton, UK - 50% share
* 25 MW wind farm, West Durham UK - 100%?

So, "many other countries" appears to mean three.

Thujrog

Victor wrote: »

I think you mean http://www.esbi.ie/our-businesses/generation/generation.asp and http://www.esbi.ie/our-businesses/generation/generation-portfolio.asp

* Rousch 412MW CCGT - Punjab, Pakistan - 7.5% share
* Amorebieta, 755MW CCGT - Basque Country, Spain - 50% share
* Corby 350MW CCGT - Northamptonshire, UK - 100%?
* Marchwood 840 MW CCGT - Southampton, UK - 50% share
* 25 MW wind farm, West Durham UK - 100%?

So, "many other countries" appears to mean three.

These are just the plants that ESBI has a share it. It is also contracted to manage power plants in Malaysia, Pakistan and Spain (see http://www.esbi.ie/our-businesses/operations-and-maintenance/o-and-m-portfolio.asp). They offer consultancy and expertise in the setting up of power stations and infrastructure. Examples include Croatia (http://www.esbi.ie/our-businesses/case-studies/ESBI-Transmission-and-Distribution-Croatia.pdf) and Tanzania (http://www.esbi.ie/our-businesses/case-studies/ESBI-Millennium-Challenge-Account-Tanzania.pdf), Vietnam (http://www.esbi.ie/our-businesses/case-studies/ESBI-Hai-Phong-Vietnam.pdf) and Bahrain (http://www.esbi.ie/our-businesses/case-studies/ESBI-Hidd-Bahrain.pdf)

ESBI are a well-respected international company. They compete for and win large contracts to develop and manage power stations. They are an indication of strong technical and business expertise in power generation in Ireland.

Victor

But those are essentially engineering contracts, not generation and sale of electricity - it is somebody else's power station.

Thujrog

Victor wrote: »

But those are essentially engineering contracts, not generation and sale of electricity - it is somebody else's power station.

In some of the examples ESBI runs the entire plant. In other situations they have a partial role in managing the plant or have a role in the development of the plant.