Yes I find it a useful document. As my day job involves industrial electron accelerators with radiation levels of 100s Sv per hour I need to keep up with the radiation protection and safety related control system literature.

As I said our apartment is heated from a district heating system burning waste wood from the local forestry operations. In theory other than increased costs for electricity for the pumps and diesel for the transport we should be protected from the increase in gas prices.

"But saying they form a "parasitical system optimised to allow the rich to get richer"

They are parasitical insomuch that they are heavily subsidized by those who cannot afford it. Your poor grandmother down the road in her one bed cottage is paying up to 25% more than she needs to because that 25% premium goes to those who own enough land to site windfarms and solar farms upon, and who effectively get their energy for nothing.

I fitted a ground source heat pump installation for a customer 2 years ago - she gets paid £1700 a year in subsidy for it. How can that be fair?

If renewables are truly as good as you say, then let them stand on their own 2 feet, free of subsidy and see how the real economics play out.

And whilst we're at it, get some coal dug up - we are standing upon thousands of tons of it.

whjohnson said:

They are parasitical insomuch that they are heavily subsidized by those who cannot afford it.

That is a non-sequitur. 

Subsidies are things that come from government, and government gets its money from taxes, and can choose where that tax money goes. Everyone can "afford" to pay taxes. So what you must be meaning is that you think other things, which are not currently being paid for by taxes, are more important than putting tax money to pay for renewable energy sources. You are entitled to that opinion, of course. But it is pretty much a truism, which we elect a government to sort out, and is regarded by almost everyone except the Scandinavian countries to be insoluble, for, except for there, there is too little tax money to pay for too many important public goods.

whjohnson said:

I fitted a ground source heat pump installation for a customer 2 years ago - she gets paid £1700 a year in subsidy for it. How can that be fair?

It's fair if everybody does it. And the point of the subsidy is to encourage everyone to do it. 

whjohnson said:

If renewables are truly as good as you say, then let them stand on their own 2 feet, free of subsidy and see how the real economics play out.

If fossil fuels are truly as good as you say, then let them stand on their own 2 feet, free of subsidy, and see how the real economics play out.

(Or maybe you are not aware that fossil fuels are heavily subsidised?) 

Ah fossil fuel subsidies again. This seems to come from an IMF ‘make the numbers up as we go along’ paper.

https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies

If you go to ‘Measuring Fossil Fuel Subsidies’ and click on read more you come to this example of how these subsidies are calculated.

This appears to suggest that the governments are subsidising rather than taxing the pump prices. In Europe I am certain that is not the case. There is a significant fuel tax that governments are going to have to replace with something when we all move to EVs. They then move on to external ‘society costs’. I accept that not using gasoline powered cars will reduce local pollution but will not eliminate it, there are still significant particulate emissions from EV’s tyres and brakes, accentuated by their weight. Will replacing gasoline vehicles with EVs reduce accidents and congestion? I don’t think so. We then have another ‘arbitrary global warming costs’ number without any justification.

There is no explanation for the other fuels, but road diesel appears to contain a value for road damage, implying that heavier EVs do less damage than the lighter diesel vehicles.

All in all a paper with no credible content.

Roger B said:

Ah fossil fuel subsidies again.

Right. They have never gone away.

There is also the implicit subsidy which represents the cost of not pumping all that CO2 generated from fossil-fuel burning into the atmosphere. William Nordhaus estimated that ten years ago at between 1% and 1.5% of global GDP. See The Climate Casino, Yale University Press, 2013.

Roger B said:

All in all a paper with no credible content.

Really?

<Finger trouble>

How about IMF Working Paper 2021/236: Ian W.H. Parry, Simon Black and Nate Vernon, Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, IMF 2021.

 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Still-Not-Getting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-Global-and-Country-Update-of-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-466004#:~:text=IMF%20Working%20Papers&text=Globally%2C%20fossil%20fuel%20subsidies%20were,percent%20of%20GDP%20in%202025.

Peter,

The fact is that the subsidy transfers wealth from those who can least afford it. You can dress it up and even attempt to sidestep the fact by burying it in the 'taxes' excuse.

On the subject of fossil fuels, we have in the UK, 1000's of tons of coal under our feet, which if extracted and used to generate power, even if subsidized would have stabilized the existing rising energy costs and would have served to insulate us against the global gas market price rises.

In order to do this however, you have to suspend your belief in climate change and move forward onto reality. This seems to be incredibly difficult, if not impossible for some to achieve.

I believe that on some future date in history, we will look back on this climate change phenomena and realise that we've all been had by con artists who have made a fortune off the back of it.

whjohnson said:

The fact is that the subsidy transfers wealth from those who can least afford it.

OK, you are claiming a fact. Let's take this step by step. As in an exam.

What is the subsidy, precisely? 

What is the "wealth" you are speaking of, and how does the subsidy transfer it?

Which class of people is "those who can least afford it"?

Can you provide an argument that they can "least afford it"?

Can you provide an argument that they are the only class of people for which the subsidy "transfers wealth"?

The subsidy is derived from a levy on everyone's energy bills regardless of income level. It is currently at 25% of the total for each billing period.

The 'wealth', or rather the money is the income earned by people either working, or from their retirement income which is taxed. Perhaps the term 'wealth' was used incorrectly. Allow me to substitute it for the term 'Income'.

The 'class' as you put it, comprises of those on sub-average wage levels. With energy bills at their present levels and rising, it is becoming a choice to either eat or heat your home this coming winter.

Removing the 25% premium on energy bills would make them more affordable, and that should be on top of removing the 5% VAT which no longer has to be applied post-Brexit.

I'm sure there are many official UK Govt and charity sources who have conducted studies into the future affordability of energy use in homes across a wide cross section of society, you are free to research them yourself.