They know not what they do… confusion over stocks and flows is very widespread… Quite sad really….

As a general principle I find it weird when people use static models, and then comment on savings and investment. I struggle with time as well, but that is seriously messed up 😉

In person I use far more colourful language, I’m just trying to control myself. I also need to cut back on direct statements and accidentally implying policy conclusions – and I think swearing actually relates to that.

All-in-all I’m trying to facilitate marginal improvements in the value of statements that come out of my mouth and fingers 😛

Well, there are low barriers to entry so maybe kicking it off with misleading facts isn’t disastrous. OTOH, maybe the misleading facts frame the entire debate that follows and act as a bad anchor for beliefs. Either way, the likely counterfactual is ‘no debate’ rather than ‘a highly informed debate with the sole goal of better informing the public’.

I was having a similar question about work regarding how to value security of supply. I’d like to see any cost savings that are said to come from changes in market structure to be compared to the change in the probability distribution for an annual browout. That way, we have the appropriate margin for asking the consumer “how much they would be willing to pay” for energy security.

Capacity isn’t supply and it isn’t security. 300 MW of wind is a completely different proposition, when it comes to ability to instantaneously meet demand, from 300MW of fossil fuel generation. Tidal, hydro, geothermal are different again. Given that no amount of generating capacity will ever provide 100% certainty all of the time (and the more you have, the more it costs, in environmental as well as financial terms), you need a policy call as to what level of probability of meeting demand is acceptable, and then to ask – of that 300 MW, how much can be relied on, to that level of probability, to be available when needed?

Is there insufficient investment – That depends on how much you value security of supply, which is difficult for retail consumers to signal. In the UK, when they had something resembling an energy market, large/wholesale consumers (steel manufacturers, chemical plants etc) were able to signal how much they valued security of supply by how much they were willing to pay for guaranteed-supply contracts (as opposed to contracts for supply which could be curtailed when the supply/demand balance got tight). Retail consumers don’t have the option of paying less for less reliable supply; it would be interesting to see how many of them would take it if they did.

Indeed, however surely there is a responsibility for the conclusion to have some connection to what would actually happen. A debate based on very misleading facts isn’t necessarily a good thing.