Recently, you may have noticed your energy bills start to rise significantly. This is due to several contributing factors. With so much oil and natural gas in the world normally being exported by Russia, and the subsequent trade embargos following their invasion of Ukraine, this has helped to drive the price of oil to astronomical degrees by other producers like Norway, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. In addition, the price of renewable energy is set by rises in fossil fuels, to maintain incentives to work towards carbon neutrality. With oil running out in the world also, the price of fuel is not going to get cheaper any time soon. How then are the people supposed to afford to run their homes in any kind of sustainable way.
Insulate Your House
Well, whilst those people blocking roads in the UK in protest were a major inconvenience, and arguably did more harm than good, they did have one good point, and that is the amount of energy wasted every year by poorly insulated homes. This can be in the form of cheaper solutions, like glass wool insulation in one’s attic, or more complete overhauls, such as contacting a metal roofing company– every little helps.
Smart Meter Readings
The most important thing about paying one’s bills is not to let your energy provider charge you for anything that you are not using.You can either do this by setting up a fixed rate contract before enormous price hikes (a bit late for that now though), by sending regular meter readings, or by getting a smart meter to do this for you. Otherwise, energy providers will waste no time bleeding you dry, and honestly, that sob story about how you have a mortgage to pay and kids to feed will go in one ear and out the other, because they’ve heard it all before.
Energy Investments
The politicians are not entirely wrong. If the economy is impoverished following Covid, then raising taxes from that impoverished ecosystem solves little, and oil and gas producers are already subject to enormous corporation taxes, which will be needed to rebuild the public sector. What the economy needs, therefore, is fresh funding from outside, and that generally comes by attracting foreign investors. Similarly, one of the ways to benefit from someone else who is making obscene profits is to invest in them yourself and become a shareholder of that success. This is otherwise known as being on the winning side. Just remember that nothing lasts forever and, eventually, this rise in oil and gas prices will crash.
Go Solar
You can also invest in other ways, such as by contributing to energy production yourself. This is especially cool if you run an electric vehicle, which you can then fuel up for free, not to mention saving on road tax. Of course, this only really helps throughout the summer months.Once winter sets in, chances are you will be back to oil and gas again, unless the wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear industry picks up somewhat over the next few decades. Fingers crossed.
