Fracking: What the Frack is going on?

With the Government announcing that Local Councils who back fracking will get to keep more of the proceeds from operations in the UK, we thought it might be worth taking a look at the state of play, so to speak.

Fracking is a controversial and hotly-discussed topic in most of the industry and for every 10 people, there seem to be 15 opinions on the subject.

From an impartial, emotionless standpoint, there are many, many reasons fracking seems like a “must do” rather than a “maybe”, and it seems that the whole subject is another example of eye-popping, jaw-dropping images and conjecture clouding and misinforming the general public about the ‘risks’ involved in fracking… After all, which makes the better story, “Fracking could save consumers a little bit on their bills“, or “LOOK AT THIS TAP SPRAYING OUT FIRE!!!“?

The long and short of it is that we need a solution to the current quagmire in which we find ourselves. We are ridiculously over reliant on importing energy, and the import figure is rising.  Renewables are a great way to push us towards self-sufficiency, but there is major investment needed (which, frankly, should have begun YEARS ago, as it did with many countries, most notably, perhaps, Germany).

So where is the energy we use coming from? The Gridwatch website is brilliant. If a little confusing at first…

Without looking at the ‘dirty’ generation elements and focussing solely on ‘renewables’:

• Wind Energy currently provides about 7.8% of our daily grid demand for Electricity (including unmetered farms, therefore an estimate).
• Hydro Power accounts for 1.4% of this daily need (worryingly, as the Gridwatch site states, this could be higher were it not for stations intentionally reducing their output to maximise subsidy rates)
• Biomass contributes 2.14%, however much of this comes from importing timber which, whilst qualifying it as ‘sustainable’, hardly seems far to take into account with a goal of ‘Self Sufficiency’ in mind, does it?
• Solar is, as expected in our tropical British climate, infinitesimal in the scheme of things, and massively weighted to summer months. Estimates are in the region of 0.25GW’s, therefore less than 0.5%, on generous estimates

That, from ‘renewables’, gives you somewhere in the region of 15/16% of our daily demand for electricity. In real terms, unless you are happy with blackouts for (in the region of) 20 hours a day, every day, then we need to find our energy from some other source.

The protesters may have some of their facts correct but there are upsides and downsides to all energy sources all of which seem to cause the same people to object:

• Wind – ugly
• Solar – ugly
• Biomass – save the trees
• Nuclear – aargh Chernobyl
• Coal – let miners keep their jobs, but shut down all the polluting power stations please.
• Hydro – reservoir destroys beauty spot and kills fish, allegedly
• Gas/Oil – yet another ugly power station blighting the landscape
• Shale – caused an earthquake in Blackpool and you can set fire to water
• Tidal Power – destroys habitats of estuary birds.

How many of these protestors are also complaining about rising energy bills from the Big 6?  The price of Gas in the USA has halved since they started extracting Shale Gas in significant volumes.

Microgeneration is likely to provide the long term solution (i.e. micro turbines, solar panels and ground source heat pumps on every new home/office development), but at present, this is a long, long way off and requires the concentration of everyone in the UK all at once… This, historically, has been somewhat tricky to achieve in any area, let alone something as complex, taxing and confusing as Global Energy Management… Apparently, even Eastenders is struggling to do that these days!!

There is an estimated 26 trillion cubic feet of extractable Shale Gas in the UK, based on the latest estimates.  We already have many operations licensed for on-shore drilling in the UK as it stands and this practice began in 1919. Surely, at the very least, this possible solution requires some further investigation? Yes? With things settling down in the US and them becoming a net exporter of energy for the first time in decades in 2011, Shale Gas looks like a very viable, and if properly regulated, safe way of reducing our dependence on Import until we get something better off the ground. Plus, environmentally speaking, the net effect of extracting Shale Gas in the UK is not likely to be as ‘Dirty’ as our current solution, which is to buy fossil fuels from the cheapest source we can.

If the choice was “do it with renewables” or “do it with fracking”, the choice is obvious… renewables it is… That, however, is not the choice… it’s just another part of the energy mix and it’s better to use our own resources in the UK than to pay ever increasing prices for importing energy and when our energy runs out be held to ransom by other countries. So more of everything please.

Image courtesy of Energy Live News

 

Lee Freeman is an Overhead Management Specialist at Auditel in Leeds and is always looking for a better way.

2014 Energy Market, ‘Flat and Flatter’ and the value of 3 Year Deals

With all the recent brouhaha regarding Energy over the back half of 2013, we thought it would be worth giving our thoughts as we go into 2014 on the energy market in general and some of our reasoning.

Regardless of what the perception is, the market is flat. It’s flat now, and it’s been flat for a while. Today’s pricing is almost exactly the same as this time last year. The difference between the commercial market (which energy companies buy at AND sell to businesses at) and the domestic market is what causes the confusion here. We sit at home watching our bills go up and the news telling us about price increase after price increase, but, not to labour a point, the wholesale market is flat. In fact 5 of the Big 6 have announced price decreases for domestic tariffs in the past month but you’ve not seen that on the front pages have you! The press are as much to blame for perception of increases.

The domestic market lags behind the commercial market for many reasons, about some of which we’ve written in the past.

As it stands, long term deals seem to be more productive at the moment, which, again, regardless of perception, is unusual (but not unheard of).  Energy companies have to build in a lot of uncertainty into long term contracts. Usually, the gut feel is you have tended to pay in the region of a 10% premium for this. Historically, this has not been far away from what we have experienced over the years.  Currently, however, we are often finding that the cheapest annualised contract price is actually the 3 year deal, the graph below is a genuine client’s tender results:

So, what could be causing these oddities and the pricing anomaly?

1. The Pressure?  There’s no doubt (and little coincidence) that the furore started by Mr Miliband in August (and now carried through by almost everyone within 50 miles of the Commons) had the respective PR machines at the Big 6 pushing the overdrive button. However, this long term pricing strategy seems far more considered and reasoned than just a good old fashioned knee jerk. Have Ed’s claims to control the energy markets borne fruit, purely by stimulating the market forces he derided in the first place?
2. Shale Gas? Very soon, and for the first time in a LONG time, the USA will be a net exporter (in around 2 years) of energy and British Gas have already begun to purchase future supplies from them in anticipation. Is the Middle East’s stranglehold on pricing coming to a close?
3. ‘Green’ tariffs going into general taxation?  Much has been made of this in the recent press, with the energy companies themselves coming out in support of the exchequer funding the UK’s clean energy drive. Is this just ‘story swapping’ as the ‘Price Freeze’ tub-thumping runs its course?

There are also many other factors at play here, but the general message is that all of the aforementioned point to energy suppliers themselves feeling the market will stay flat or actually trend down over the next 3 or 4 years, barring any major disasters and/or conflicts.  This may, or equally may not, be borne out, but that is the gamble energy companies take with this pricing strategy.

All this speculation could lead you into thinking you might be better off leaving this to the experts… I’d certainly agree with you there!

 

Lee Freeman is an Overhead Management Specialist at Auditel Leeds and is open to the idea of 3 year energy deals at the moment.

How to buy Green Energy for Business

Green… But at what cost?

A recent survey of very high value energy purchasers (up to £17m per annum) revealed that as few as 19% of them had “buying Green Energy on their agenda”.

On the surface, this is worrying. But, as is often the case, it isn’t the full story.  A further 32% suggested they would consider going green, but only for little or no additional cost.

The negative 19% figure is a better headline than what is likely the real truth. The survey itself actually shows the real figure they found was 51% who had “buying Green Energy on their agenda”… So “Most”, then… The caveat that it needed to be cost effective doesn’t take it off the table, does it?  “Of course it does”, I hear you say. Not if you work with Auditel!

More on that later, but a little deeper thinking around those figures can give you some further insight… Depending on how full or empty your glass is, so to speak.  With whom does the job of putting green energy on businesses agendas lie?  There are many answers to this, but in our opinion, the most important one would be the suppliers.  Is the survey suggesting that the remaining 49% of high value buyers, given a choice between green and non-green (with cost removed from the equation entirely) would still choose traditionally sourced supplies?  We don’t think so… and our maths suggests that green energy CAN be on the agenda for 100% of high value buyers… Importantly, at the right price.

We work with a number of suppliers who provide a mix of green energy at no additional tariff, some of whom will provide 100% Green with the same “No additional tariff” promise.

Does “Zero” sound like the right price to you?

Lee Freeman is an Overhead Management Specialist at Auditel Leeds and this blog post is brought to you by the number ‘Free’ and the colour ‘Green’.

More info: ‘Green’ or Sustainable Energy is defined as energy that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Hydroelectricity, Wind Power, Solar Power, Tidal power, Geothermal energy and Artificial Photosynthesis are all examples of ‘Green’ or Sustainable Energy.