Electricity Generation - Below is the results from an OBR report from 2023. The "enhanced levelised costs" includes upgrading the grid and additional cost accrued by, e.g. wind to allow for the fact that it's inherently unreliable. NB the gas cost in BLUE - the "invasion" is Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Obviously, gas prices are even higher with the military action in Iran, so the levelised cost of generation with gas is higher than the blue section now. So, even when you take grid upgrades into account, onshore and offshore wind and solar are still cheaper than gas, and they are immune to shocks in gas prices
The ONLY economies that still use coal as its main source of energy are South Africa, India, China and Poland. China is the only major one and 2026 will be the peak of its carbon emissions, since it is investing waaaay more heavily in renewables, planning to only use coal for non windy/sunny days. In the UK, generating using coal would be 40% more expensive than gas and 130% the cost of renewables
UK largely stopped mining coal because it was peak Maggie capitalism and it was just cheaper to buy from abroad, plus, as you say, gas had been discovered in the North Sea and generating electricity from gas was/is cheaper than from coal.
So, the reason that our energy prices are the most expensive is that we use too much gas. And the reason that jet fuel and diesel are up in price is that these are world commodities - unless your government are controlling your country's supply, you have to buy on the world market which is currently f**ked
Turned into a long post. I hope some of it is interesting
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