Skip to main content

Coal imports doubled in the UK.

 Rising gas prices resulting from the war in Ukraine have forced the UK to nearly double its coal imports in the fight to keep the lights on through the Winter. The increasing use of coal-generated power in the UK comes after years of the country shifting to cleaner electricity from gas-fired power plants and renewables but is deemed vital as Russian president Vladimir Putin crimps gas supplies to Europe. Figures from Kpler, a commodity analytics firm, show that last month more than 560,000 tonnes of coal came into British ports, compared to the 291,089 tonnes that arrived in October 2021, a 93 per cent increase. In the first ten months of this year, the UK imported more than 5.5 million tonnes of coal, already exceeding the 4.2 million tonnes throughout 2021.

«Absent the option of burning fuel oil - the most cost-efficient power generation option right now - coal- is very much the best option out there, albeit the most polluting one, too.» However, with gas prices like these, relying on natural gas for power generation is a no-go zone for anyone who can switch between fuels. «Gas prices have increased rapidly since the invasion of Ukraine. The extra coal flowing to the UK is thermal coal which is burned to create steam used for electricity generation, as opposed to coking coal, used for making iron or steel. » Since the UK’s «dash for gas» in the 1990s, coal’s share of electricity generation has halved, and there are now only three coal-fired plants running.

Tony Lodge, political and energy analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies, said the UK’s reliance on gas made it vulnerable to shocks. Lodge said that the government should have a more balanced energy mix that would make the UK less vulnerable to shocks. The disruption in energy markets from the war in Ukraine has delayed the UK’s plan to end the use of coal power by 2024. In May, Kwasi Kwarteng, then business secretary, asked National Grid executives to work with the owners of Britain’s three remaining coal fire power plants to ensure energy security for the Winter.

Last month, Uniper SE, which owns the Ratcliffe-1 coal-fired power plant in Nottinghamshire, announced it was going to keep the plant open to secure winter energy, despite plans to shutter it this year.

www.sba.tax

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Cloud Bookkeeping

HS2 cost cuts new routes and add delays.

 Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have begun work on «Project Sil­ver­light» sug­gest­ing the high­speed rail scheme might face four addi­tional years of delay. The planned High Speed 2 rail line faces fur­ther delays of up to four years and more cuts to the project under plans being drawn up by min­is­ters to rein in its bal­loon­ing costs. The extra delays to the coun­try’s biggest infra­struc­ture project would mean that it would not be com­pleted until as late as 2045 — 12 years after ori­gin­ally planned. «This is a func­tion of infla­tion; we are hav­ing to find huge sav­ings because the cost of everything the depart­ment is already doing will have become so much more expens­ive by then,» said one gov­ern­ment offi­cial. In Octo­ber, the FT repor­ted that the Treas­ury had asked HS2’s man­age­ment team to identify poten­tial cuts or «scope reduc­tions» to the high-speed line. Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have sub­sequently begun work on Project Sil­ver­light aimed at fi...
4 comments
Read more

Doubt on CS's collateral.

  Credit Suisse provided an emergency $140mn loan to Greensill Capital based partly on invoices to companies that deny ever doing the business stated on the documents. The Swiss bank provided the loan in October 2020, less than five months before the collapse of Greensill, a supply chain finance firm that counted former British prime minister David Cameron as a senior adviser. Invoices issued by metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Commodities and sold to Greensill formed part of the collateral for the loan, according to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the transaction. Yet several of the parties named on the invoices have told the FT they did no business with Liberty. GFG has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Credit Suisse’s loan had a clause dictating that the collateral value had to be equal to or greater than the $140mn borrowed. The terms of the debt agreement only allowed invoices on Green-sill’s balance sheet to count towards this tally if t...
2 comments
Read more

Small business will be excluded from fraud law.

  Min­is­ters are plan­ning to exclude small busi­nesses from anti-fraud legis­la­tion by nar­row­ing the scope of a crim­inal offence tar­get­ing com­pan­ies that fail to pre­vent eco­nomic crimes. MPs and anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign­ers had hoped the gov­ern­ment would seek to amend the eco­nomic crime and cor­por­ate trans­par­ency bill to ensure the new offence covered all com­pan­ies. The plans to limit the scope of the amend­ments will also dis­ap­point those who had hoped the legis­la­tion would remove key hurdles to the pro­sec­u­tion of white-col­lar crime. A new «fail­ure to pre­vent» offence for fraud would bring it in line with exist­ing sim­ilar cor­por­ate offences for bribery and tax eva­sion. At present, pro­sec­utors need only prove that organ­isa­tions lacked «reas­on­able» or «adequate» con­trols to pur­sue the offence in bribery and tax eva­sion cases. «It would be much more sens­ible for the gov­ern­ment to provide strong guid­ance for SMEs on what these pro­ce...
3 comments
Read more