So, that DECC's renewables plans entirely up in smoke then

One of the little fables, falsities really, of the DECC's approach to climate change rests upon just the one number. And that's what is the price of natural gas per therm going to be off into the future. We could assume that the price will be roughly the same as today. Or it might fall as a result of fracking, or it might rise as a result of supplies running out. But we obviously do need to make a forecast because that's the only way we can work out whether those damn windmills and so on are ever going to be economic. So what DECC did was assume that gas prices would roughly double from their current level. In that manner they could then say that those windmills would in fact be cheaper. Not because the windmills are cheaper now, nor because they're going to become cheaper in the future, but because the gas price is going to double.

They were very insistent about supporting this too. We recall one of their pronouncements being that fracking wouldn't reduce the price at all. Because it would all be exported we think was the mantra. Then they said, well, maybe, a few percent reduction: look, here's a report about Cuadrilla's find which says 3 or 4% reduction in price!

Yes, well, that report was actually about the price impact of just he extra gas find that Cuadrilla had announced as the result of just the one borehole: and that price reduction applied to the entirety of the connected European gas market. Obviously the entirety of the Bowland Shale was going to have a larger impact than that.

But everything, the whole shooting match, the entire strategy of solar, windmills, nuclear and everything, has been based upon that one single number: the price of natural gas is going to double.

DECC's latest projections assume average gas prices for this year of 47 pence per therm, down from the 62p it projected last year. It estimates the price will barely rise over the next four years, remaining at just 49p/therm in 2019, and only ticking up slightly to 52p/therm in 2020. A year ago it had expected prices of 60.3p/therm in 2020, while two years ago it was forecasting they could hit 73.8p/therm.

Ooops! And of course the decline in price is being driven by that fracking that would never affect the UK price. Tight oil fracking in the US has driven down the oil price, to which many gas contracts are linked, and gas fracking has increased the amount of LNG sloshing around the world markets. These price decreases being before anyone's even considered whatever may be fracked right here at home.

The entire strategy thus needs to be re-examined. Starting with those numbers for what the future price of gas might be.

And of course, this is also why planning centrally of anything doesn't work. Here it's obvious that, to put it at its most kindly, people became wedded to a particular analysis and simply did not want to hear of changes to it (less kindly they manufactured that analysis to order). But even when that does not happen, we still end up with a plan which depends upon the assumptions which go into it. Rather than leaving things to market forces, which means that we get a multiplicity of plans, with a multiplicity of such assumptions.

Yes, it's true, climate change isn't a problem that entirely pure markets are likely to solve, involving as it does externalities. But that's why the correct answer is to intervene in the market price, add in that externality, and then still have the markets with their mulitple answers and assumptions. Rather than the monolithic central plan reminiscent of Stalinism. Which has just failed as did that Stalinism, reality having to intrude.