The party proposes nationalizing the country’s major energy providers
The UK’s Green Party has proposed permanently nationalizing the country’s five major energy companies to ease the current cost of living crisis, The Guardian reported on Wednesday, citing party leaders.
“By bringing the big five energy retail companies into public ownership, setting the price of energy at an affordable rate and absorbing the global price rises, the government could make sure everybody can afford to get through this cost of living crisis,” the party’s co-chair Carla Denyer said, as quoted by the news outlet.
According to the report, the party based its proposal on a recommendation last month by the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), which called for bringing British Gas, E.ON, EDF, Scottish Power and OVO under state control. According to the TUC, the move would cost around £2.9 billion ($3.5 billion), which is not much more than the £2.7 billion ($3.3 billion) the government spent on bailing out another energy firm, Bulb, last year.
Read more
Cost of keeping Britons out of energy poverty revealed
In addition, the Greens put forward an initiative to roll back the energy price cap – the maximum amount that households pay for energy – to the level of last fall. At the same time, the party urged London to raise taxes on excessive profits made by the UK’s oil and gas corporations.
“Only the government can intervene properly to avoid disaster this coming winter,” Denyer was quoted as saying.
London already raised the price cap on electricity earlier this year, which resulted in the average annual bill for a British household soaring 54% to a record £1,970 ($2,400). At the end of August, the UK regulator is expected to announce a new cap rise, which could result in annual electricity bills soaring to over £3,000 ($3,600) in October and even higher bills next year, according to recent forecasts.
Natural gas reserves will last less than three months if Russia cuts off supply, the regulator said
Germany’s energy regulator has warned that the nation will struggle to have enough natural gas to get through the coming winter, even if reserves are topped up in line with government targets, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
The Federal Network Agency says natural gas storage sites are currently 77% full, which is two weeks ahead of schedule. However, according to the regulator, the target of being 85% full by October could be challenging, taking into account the risk of a cooler-than-normal autumn and the chance of further supply disruptions.
It further noted that the November target of 95% seems “hard to achieve” because some storage sites require more time to fill. Even if that target is reached it would cover less than three months of heating, industrial and power demand in case Russia cuts off gas supplies completely, the FNA warned.
“I cannot promise you that all storage facilities in Germany will be 95% full in November, even under good supply and demand conditions,” said FNA president Klaus Mueller. “In the best-case scenario, three-fourths of them will meet the target.”
The German government, which has been racing to fill its winter stocks, has also urged businesses and citizens to lower consumption, warned of energy rationing and this week slapped a levy on gas use.
The UK’s consumer price inflation surged to a new high of 10.1% per annum in July, up from 9.4% in June, according to new estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The figure is rapidly drawing closer to the Bank of England’s expectations for October, when inflation is predicted to top 13.3%.
According to the ONS, the rise in food prices made the largest contribution to the growth in inflation.
“Supermarkets have had little choice but to pass on price increases from suppliers, themselves contending with unprecedented inflation in raw material and ingredient input costs… This has been particularly acute in labor and utility intensive categories like dairy, with reports of the price of a pint of milk having more than doubled in some stores since the start of the year,” Kien Tan, director of retail strategy at PwC, told CNBC.
Meanwhile, core inflation, which excludes energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, also grew to 6.2% from 5.8% in June.
The price rise has affected the UK’s real wages, which have plunged by an annual 3% in the April to June period, their sharpest decline on record, according to figures released by the ONS on Tuesday.
Crude purchases restarted in July after falling to zero in the previous month
Japan resumed its purchases of Russian oil in July, according to information released on Wednesday by the country’s Finance Ministry.
In the previous month, imports fell to zero as local refiners started to phase out Russian crude amid Ukraine-related sanctions.
While the ministry did not disclose the exact volume, it said July oil imports from Russia were 65.4% lower than the same time last year. The volume of liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from Russia also decreased by 26.1% compared to July 2021, while coal imports dropped by 40.1%.
Despite the decline in physical volumes, the value of Russian fuel exports to Japan increased by 45.1% compared to last year due to rising global commodity prices.
In May, Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Koichi Hagiuda vowed that Tokyo would gradually reduce its dependence on Russian energy resources, but said it could not give up Russian oil immediately. Japan also supports the G7 plan to impose a price cap on Russian oil, which is currently under discussion.
Meanwhile, Japan has also significantly increased its crude imports from the Middle East. They rose 10%, while total oil imports from all countries to Japan rose by 3.8%. The Middle East region accounts for over 90% of Japan’s total oil consumption, but due to its proximity Russia is a valuable supplier of energy for the country.
