Hasn't the UK's energy availability basically collapsed? I keep an eye on the basic stats [0] and it looked like the situation was pretty grim leading up to Brexit.
Someone is really hurting. Either production is collapsing and people are losing good jobs, or it is directly going to result in household pain.
I suppose it would surprise me if 20% of a country's electricity can disappear, almost half its primary energy production is gone, the population grows by 10% and everyone is cheerful. It looks like a situation ripe for rage, tension and people asking angry questions.
This is basically the pigeonhole principle at work. If energy availability is going down and population is rising, someone is going to be developing some profoundly anti-migrant views.
The numbers look like a combination of increased import of electricity and move away from lower efficiency thermal cycles for electricity production (primary energy use is the thermal energy before going through the heat engine; replacement of coal and nuclear with gas and wind would reduce primary energy use even if electricity production were unchanged.)
Can you explain what "energy availability" means in this context? My family lives in the UK and the lights work and the gad flows. Prices increase over time (above inflation, IIRC) but it still works, so I assume you're referring to some other meaning I don't yet know about.
The amount of energy is lower - the UK is producing much less, electricity use has declined and (although it isn't strictly certain) that is suggestive evidence that if you tallied up all the Joules consumed in the UK then there are less of them in 2016 than 2010.
If there are less Joules and more people, some people must - by mathematical necessity - be consuming less of them. If your family can still afford to consume the same amount then maybe someone else on the margins is really being pushed.
That is a pretty decent reason for why a large number of people might be getting desperate for political change. It is a stronger explanation than some variant of the more common "maybe they are just really confused and/or hateful and/or unexpectedly stupid". People don't read economic stats but they'll notice if 20% of their electricity goes away.
I live in the UK, and I don't think energy has anything to do with it. We're producing less electricity because we're consuming less electrcity, which is mostly due to more energy efficient appliances and decreasing industrial usage isn't impacting lifestyles.
If you want to point to something, I'd look towards massively inflated house prices (almost 10x over 30 years in some places), and stagnating real wages.
> ...which is mostly due to more energy efficient appliances and decreasing industrial usage isn't impacting lifestyles.
For energy efficiency to cover the change + population growth with no winding back of lifestyles it would need to be something like a 30% increase in efficiency over 10 years, affecting all electrical devices in the country. There is reason to be sceptical that it is a major factor here.
Add to that there is an argument/observation (Jevons's Paradox) that increasing efficiency of using a commodity generally doesn't lead to reduced usage. If it made sense to procure X commodity when it generated Y, it makes it even more sensibly to procure X when it gets you (Y+something).
As for decreasing industrial use ... the default position when a country jettisons its industry is "gee, that might reasonable upset a lot of people and/or cause social problems!". The changes are rather large. Deindustrialising might foreseeable lead to such things as stagnating real wages, as the country can't produce as many goods, or massively inflated house prices as it becomes more difficult to secure useful work/build new houses.
Electricity usage as a metric for wealth is such a XX-century construct... I have no idea why you would still use something like that in a world where Climate Change has been socially accepted as fact.
The UK temporarily outlawed older-generation lightbulbs, as well as putting in place a number of measures to reduce energy use. Even Conservatives, historically the party of industry, are now heavily committed towards energy-efficiency measures of all sorts (sometimes excessively so, like the push for those terrible heat pumps).
A decline in energy consumption is a good thing and is absolutely not impacting standards of living in any way in UK society. The reasons for discontent are many, for sure, but not related to energy use in any way. The main issue really is wage stagnation (and hence, availability of time) for the working classes.
Although it is possible that it isn't a problem, you haven't actually argued why beyond vaguely being optimistic. Banning older generation lightbulbs will not cause a 20% decrease in electricity over 10 years.
The default position when a country's electricity use drops 20% is to be concerned. If they do the same thing 4 more times they will have returned to the stone age.
If you look at trends, the main driver is the fall in industrial use, which has been consistent since the '70s. This country has effectively abandoned industry with Thatcher, and, unlike others, it has never looked back. British industry is in (un)managed decline, the economy is now entirely driven by services and finance.
Domestic trends are flat or falling softly, driven by those efficiency measures I mentioned. The UK used to have very cheap electricity coming from nuclear reactors that are slowly being decommissioned, which (combined with a typically-botched privatisation of the sector) has driven up domestic prices very significantly, pushing people towards alternatives. For example, there used to be a lot of electric heaters in British homes, which are now invariably replaced with gas-powered ones. That has not meant a significant fall in living standards.
There are many issues with the UK system, particularly a wealth distribution heavily skewed towards one or two metropolitan areas (the centres of services and finance), but falling energy use is not really one of them.
Someone is really hurting. Either production is collapsing and people are losing good jobs, or it is directly going to result in household pain.
I suppose it would surprise me if 20% of a country's electricity can disappear, almost half its primary energy production is gone, the population grows by 10% and everyone is cheerful. It looks like a situation ripe for rage, tension and people asking angry questions.
This is basically the pigeonhole principle at work. If energy availability is going down and population is rising, someone is going to be developing some profoundly anti-migrant views.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom