Why it's time for heated conversations on the cost of energy

I overheard women talking about it in the park. I wasn’t intentionally listening in, they were moving at a trot, but fragments caught my attention. 

They were talking about the mini-industry that has sprouted around items available for people to keep warm while working from home, without having to put the heating on. Reading that back it does seem less than riveting. It’s basically blankets, heated blankets, heated garments, shawls and hand warmers. These are hardly new. Neither is the idea of labelling what exists as something else, or tweaking what was there, to exploit the market. 

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Still, there is no sign of things slowing down. The global heated jacket market, currently worth around £288 million, according to Future Market Insights, is expected to grow to just over £935m by 2035. Over half are battery powered, since you ask. I’ll bring this up if I meet the walkers back in the park. 

All those heated bits and pieces do intersect two of the key issues of our time – working from home as a new normal for many, and the runaway cost of energy. 

The energy element impacts everything. Domestic bills show no sign of significant drops. The UK energy costs are among the highest of any developed nation. In the early 2000s domestic electricity prices were the second lowest in the (then) EU 15. According to a research paper published last week by the House of Common’s library, this winter’s average household bills are still 44% higher than in winter 2021/2022.

It goes out of house too. So many small businesses, particularly in hospitality, are struggling due to these galloping bills. Which has a knock-on impact for work available and cyclical economic buoyancy. 

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The previous administration blamed the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine for pushing up energy costs. It remains to be seen if the putative peace agreement will bring those costs down. As an interesting aside, Robert Bryce, the international energy expert, claims part of the fancied Russian outcome is for them to draw much of the energy – up to HALF – of that produced in Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the sixth-biggest nuclear plant in the world, back across the border. If so, it makes it more clear why Russia has dug in at that plant since March 2022, after forcing military control, even though currently it’s barely functioning.

It is to nuclear that Britain may be increasingly looking for long-term, self-sufficient, answers. Not in the monster plants that have existed since the 1950s, and that are so expensive to build. They are so costly that in 2015, George Osborne insisted on getting Chinese state backing to build Sizewell C in Suffolk.

In 2022, amid increasing concerns over Chinese influence on British infrastructure, the government paid £679m to get out of that deal. Sizewell C has since had a commitment of £14.2 billion from the Labour government. It’ll still take another decade to complete. 

Small Modular Reactors offer more possibilities. Construction of the first one is set to start in Anglesey, Wales, next year. They are a fraction of the size but can still produce a third of the energy and at around £2bn each (though more for the first ones) they will also come in much cheaper. And as the idea is to build them in factories, as kits, they can be assembled and brought online faster.

The issue of nuclear energy waste has not been clearly resolved. Currently, taxpayers are still paying to deal with waste from the 1950s around Sellafield. It’ll cost to make things cheaper.

Those park walk conversations are going to carry on for a time yet.

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on X.

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