I don’t think it would be an original phrase but… I don’t believe it! Unfortunately, I cannot read the whole document as MIGO after a few pages due to my eye problem but, from what is written and what I have read so far of the long document - THIS IS TOTAL MADNESS! Please disabuse me if I have misunderstood but…

As I understand it, the proposal is to have me pay even more for my electrical consumption that is already levied up to the hilt so that the likes of Amazon and Google can in their profligacy, use even more power to heat the air and the sea (and of course we really need to heat the oceans even more don’t we?) so that they can crunch even more chips into submission and make even more untaxed profits! This proposal must have been written by Hellina Handcart! Disgusted, Toodles.

Well they asked for opinions so I've sent my email as requested. The guts of it reads as follows:

I was unaware any compensation or discount scheme had already been introduced but I believe it to be a flawed and unfair scheme. However, since it is already implemented I will simply say that it is absolutely outrageous that domestic bill payers should be in any way asked to fund the discount. The energy intensive industries being compensated do not operate in a vacuum and so already provide goods or services on which they make a profit - provided by those wishing to buy from them. The idea that I should effectively be paying for something I don't want to buy - or that, if I do wish to buy it I pay twice for it - is utterly immoral.

In addition to that, it is already well known - and being actively debated - that the price of electricity is fundamentally linked with the price of gas and is therefore kept artificially high. It is well within the power of the UK Government to remove that price link and, until it is done, it seems only reasonable that the discount within the NCC scheme should be funded in some form from the windfall profits this unnecessary price link generates. I wholly object to the idea that the domestic consumers should be required to pay unnecessarily high prices and then to subsidise businesses so they don't have to do the same thing.

There are so many different ways of saying this proposal is unacceptable and sadly just as many different suggestions one could put forward as to how energy intensive businesses could be served without impacting the general domestic public. I have little hope of being listened to and fully expect that the costs will be passed on to households anyway in a unilaterally unreasonable way whilst this request for feedback can be used to suggest "opinions were sought". I would love to be proven wrong.

Let's see.

I have written as follows:

Adding Data Centre’s electricity Costs to Domestic Bills

I would like to express my incredulity to the proposed imposition of additional charges on domestic energy bills to effectively subsidise those of the large data centres such as run by the likes of Google and Amazon.

As I understand it, the proposal is to increase the domestic user’s bills which are already some of the most expensive in the world, by adding to the levies already imposed on a strange price structure that is based around the price of gas! Adding even more cost to the consumer’s heating bill to reduce costs for the Data Centre companies who already make profits from their users is to me, total madness, extremely unfair and counterproductive to the whole concept of ‘going green’.

I for one have invested thousands of pounds in Solar PV, a battery system and an Air Source Heat Pump, having already invested in home insulation projects from under floor to loft and double glazing. May I suggest that this proposal is dismissed as it it should be for all the reasons given above?

I am only one individual but I think for every individual who like me spends the time to contact you, there will be many thousands of others (most of whom cannot afford these proposed additional charges) who will share my sentiments.

Regards, Toodles.

Posted by: @lucia

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Data Centres anyone? 

Erm...

I'm trying to respond to this Ofgem consultation by the end of today...

... but the likes of data centres do not appear on the Government list of Energy Intensive Industries published just before the release of their proposals for the British Industry Supercharger strategy in Feb'23.

As such, I think the submission from @toodles will be discarded.

I've now filed my 3-page response.

I've made the observations that Electricity Intensive Industries (EIIs) should, where possible, be incentivised to

• relocate to areas where there is an over-supply of renewable energy which is otherwise being discarded
• install their own Battery Energy Storage System (BESS)

I don't expect there will be a tremendous move to build factories in the Scottish Highlands,
but I do think there should be incentives for economic regeneration in the energy-rich West Country.

If high-demand industry doesn't install BESS when it could reasonably do so, then we will also need to subsidise the grid upgrades to deliver that electricity to them.
That cost is already a component in consumer bills.
So it's not just extending the electricity price cap to them which needs considering.

Government has changed since the original publication of the British Industry Supercharger Network Charging Compensation Scheme in Feb 2023.

So Ofgem really shouldn't be taking forward a scheme based on strategies proposed by the previous administration.
It should've been re-evaluated, and a fresh list of proposed EIIs released alongside the consultation document.

@transparent But there again, Ofgem would ‘benefit’ from such a proposal - even though it is from a previous administration. ‘Tax the poor Consumer’ seems to be the motto.

Excuse me for misinterpreting that the Data Centres would be beneficiaries; I do not have the eye stamina to read screeds of verbiage before knee-jerk reacting, must keep my fingers off the keys at such times in future. (Though, in my defence, I did see that data and archiving are included) Regrets, Toodles.  

Tax without representation shouldn't be happening.
I thought we'd resolved that situation a century ago.

Ofgem and DESNZ are each trying to make policy without having a consumer 'taste group'.
They then launch a consultation to ask us about their proposals.

If they first convened a 'sample set' of consumers, then they'd be better able to produce policies which achieved support from the wider population.

Inevitably I respond by changing their proposals.

So in this case I'm objecting to the stark list of EIIs which Dept of Business and Trade published.

One example I gave was indeed a data centre.

And another was to query why a Dairy and Cheese-manufacturing Plant should be on the DBT list,
whilst the dairy farms who produced the milk in the first place are not.

Unfortunately I missed this deadline since life activities got in the way. That’s how they get away with such outrageous acts the poor victims only find out too late.

Meant to add this but have been buried under piles of work.

My submission:

Isn’t there a consultation on ofgem in process about now?

And since I missed this gem I feel another letter to my MP coming on!

Yes @judith - DESNZ has a Call for Evidence on the future of Ofgem, which closes at the end of Feb.

The lines of demarcation between Ofgem, DESNZ and NESO don't seem to be particularly clear.
Each seems to be promoting projects and initiating policy, but only DESNZ appears to have democratic accountability.