20 March, 2017

Gas crisis? Energy crisis? The real problem is lack of long-term planning

If you’ve been watching the news in recent days, you’ll know we have an energy crisis, partly due to a gas crisis, which in turn has triggered a political crisis.

The long view: energy policy needs
to stay firmly focused on the horizon.
That’s a lot of crises to handle at once, so lots of solutions are being put forward. But what do people and businesses actually need? Do they need more gas, or cheaper prices, or more investment certainty, or all or none of the above? How do we cut through to what is really important, rather than side details?

The first thing to note is that what people really care about is their energy costs, not energy prices. This might seem like a pedantic distinction, but if homes and businesses can be helped to waste less energy, then high prices can be offset by lower usage.

The second thing to note is that energy has become very confusing. A host of short- and long-term problems have developed over decades of policy failure, meaning that there is no single solution.


Read the piece by Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT UniversityAlan Pears, on The Conversation -  "Gas crisis? Energy crisis? The real problem is lack of long-term planning.”

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