Can Octopus Survive Contact With Reality When It Employs People Like This?

I don’t think so. Not even in the post truth fictional world of Mad Miliband’s Net Zero clean energy superpower politics. Because that ship is going down. The signs are all around:

Companies which ignore reality and ignore their customers in preference to ideological posturing (like Arla in the UK) are starting to feel the force of consumer displeasure. I think Octopus Energy is going the same way. They’ve jumped the shark with this:

Zoisa North-Bond (the name itself is enough to make you want to run a mile!), a graduate in History and Archaeology, thinks she can reinvent the rules of energy, aka the laws of physics and thermodynamics. Whilst she’s at it, she intends to rewrite the laws of economics and engineering as well, in order to help Mad Miliband and Stark Raving Bonkers achieve their Mission Impossible 95% decarbonised National Grid by 2030. But people on X are not impressed (and more importantly, existing customers are not impressed):

There are few if any positive endorsements on that thread. Finally, James sums it up:

But they won’t learn from this. 003 and a half Bond - Zoisa Bond (gone North) is an ‘expert in renewables’ as well as History and Archaeology, who wants to create an ‘abundance of Green electrons’ in our own little corner of the Universe:

Our approach is very different to others in this space; we want to create an abundance of green electrons and to pass on these super cheap electrons for customers to use. I just don't think there's another organisation out there with this approach to investing in generation. We genuinely care about improving the energy system to one that is 100% green, and providing cheap energy to consumers.

When I was at university, an electron was a negatively charged subatomic particle which, apart from being characterised by whether it was bound or not to a positively charged atomic nucleus by the fundamental force of electricity, did not possess any other defining characteristics, such as being ‘Green’. There was no talk of nuclear physicists at CERN or wherever wishing to create an abundance of this particular type of ‘Green’ electron. But maybe there are woke electrons nowadays who merely identify as being Green, and that’s enough to ‘reinvent the rules of energy’. I haven’t kept abreast of developments in nuclear physics, I have to admit. Green electrons also identify as ‘super cheap’ electrons, which is great, because Zoisa energy expert tells us that these Green electrons flowing from solar panels and onshore wind turbines don’t need no stinkin’ subsidies:

So why is the government subsidising onshore wind and solar then? Or are these particular ‘renewables’ not included in the increasingly generous renewables auctions? I don’t know the answer to this because I’m not a ‘renewables expert’ employed as an Energy Generation CEO at Octopus Energy. I was also not aware of the blindingly obvious solution to the problem of what to do when the wind ain’t blowing and the sun ain’t shining:

Oh God, yes of course, if I wasn’t such a ‘thick far right fash’ obsessed with boring old Enlightenment era Science, I would have realised straight away: you can just suck back the Green electrons from the batteries of 40 million EVs - cos peeps won’t need to drive anywhere that day. And if that doesn’t work, you can import solar energy from the other side of the planet during the dead of night and from the middle of the Atlantic when the wind isn’t blowing across Europe during Dunkelflautes! Simples.

Update:

This, in the Telegraph:

At this time last year, more than 2m consumers had signed up to the so-called demand flexibility service.

But today the figure stands at about 750,000, a drop of about 62pc, according to the National Energy System Operator (Neso), which manages Britain’s power grid.

It follows a decision to slash the payments offered to customers by as much as 90pc.

Energy industry insiders said the decision had dented the attractiveness of the scheme, leading to a lacklustre take-up from most suppliers.

‘Steep’ fall in rewards

Octopus Energy, Britain’s biggest electricity supplier with around 6.8m customers, accounts for 740,000 or about 99pc of sign-ups this year – a total almost entirely made up of households rather than businesses. That was also down from around one million the company signed up last year.

Kieron Stopforth, of Octopus Energy, warned that the rewards offered to consumers had fallen off “quite a steep cliff” this winter.

Whereas last year consumers could receive up to £4 for every kilowatt hour of electricity they saved, Octopus said it was only able to pay around 60p per kilowatt hour this week under the latest version of the scheme.

Mr Stopforth said: “There’s a lot of latent interest and we think customers are really excited about the potential of demand flexibility. But if they don’t see the benefits, then they’re not going to participate.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/12/15/net-zero-target-threatened-electricity-rationing-scheme/