UK Energy Bill 2023 and the Fusion of Technology and Law
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Which is basically the number of laws I've seen popping up (more especially in the UK and Aus) wherein they don't provide a specific set of criteria or requirements that a person (or more often a corporation) must meet to be in violation of a law or statue but instead empower a body or office to "regulate", "manage", or "investigate" certain issues or affairs. Without specifying criteria or specific actions that would trigger the decision making of the office in question, thus leaving it entirely to the elected official or buearacat's judgement.
I noticed this a couple of years ago where when there was some law around social media being proposed in the Australia where it set out just a minimum revenue value for a company and then left it up to the discretion of the minister of communication.or something like that.
The reason this worries me so much is because one of the foundational cornerstones of western civilization has been the rule of law. Wherein there was a law set forth that set forth specific actions that are allowed or prohibited, e.g. "Don't murder", and everyone knew them and was held accountable to them, it didn't matter how horrible you were or how much evil lurked in your heart or boardroom, what mattered was did you break law X,Y or Z.
However this trend towards delegating power and decision making to an individual office or committee is an abandonment of this principle in favor of a return to rule by individuals who decide at their whim whether to allow or prohibit a thing, where by simply being in favor with certain bureaucrats one can be immune from accountability where politically unpopular targets can be harassed by the state without end simply because they are not politically favored.
It is terrifying and frightening to me that we are choosing to abandon the rule of law in favor of a return to the days where the king and priests would arbitrarily be able to make their divine decrees to punish their foes and exalt their friends.
Curtis Yarvin talks about how FDR created federal departments to ensure his programs could not easily be stopped by his successors. This is spun as “it is better to let experts work out the details.” But we don’t have a good way to determine who is best to make a decision, who is the top expert?
I think almost all policy should be fully democratic and it should be possible for the public to remove bureaucrats who make unpopular decisions. I like the idea of direct democracy but it does require a very well informed population which is a very high bar.
Secondary legislation is very common around the world and is simply a way of delegating technocratic stuff to the relevant department.
A fair criticism of this is the lack of parliamentary scrutiny and placing power in a ministry that might well operate a revolving door with the industry it is meant to regulate.
Even so, the HoL does have scrutiny of secondary legislation and secondary legislation can't take precedence over human rights etc.
Edit: just to stress, the powers delegated are about rulemaking, not arbitrary judgement by bureaucrats.
> 6 Investigation of complaints > (1) The Commissioner may investigate a complaint made under section 5. > (2) An investigation under this section is to be conducted as the Commissioner thinks fit. > (3) The Commissioner may, for the purposes of an investigation, obtain information from such persons, and make such inquiries, as the Commissioner thinks fit. [1]
The phrase "The Commissioner may" and the "as the Commissioner sees fit" each appear twice
> Part 5 of the Bill will when enacted create something called the Independent System Operator and Planner, a legal person (‘likely a company’), which will do all sorts of vaguely-defined but important things, like ‘co-ordinating and directing the flow of electricity onto and over transmission systems’, ‘carrying out strategic planning and forecasting in connection with…the conveyance or supply of electricity [and] the conveyance and supply of gas’, ‘providing advice or information’ to government ministers, and so on. And the Bill also mandates that it shall do these things in view of three requirements: to achieve Net Zero, to secure energy supply, and to promote economy and efficiency.
As part of the bill under discussion in the OPs article.
Those are just 2 instances I found without much looking.
Sauces: 1. https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2021B00157
You're right that it is common around the world. And it's a huge problem. Because nobody can know what's illegal in the US, for example. If nobody can know, then how can we claim we live under the rule of law?
The UK does it's decision making behind closed doors.
The US is not free from bias. The time-wasting setup is no accident. There's plenty of opportunity to make the US more fair for external connections (and internal connections).
I'd take a King and Priest that doesn't choose free market winners, over a system that rewards patents and regulation in the place of real wealth creation.
So selective enforcement a powerful tool of tyranny and oppresion
> And let's not pretend the US is free from bias. The time-wasting setup is no accident. There's plenty of opportunity to make the US more fair for external connections (and internal connections).
The US isn't free from these problems either but it seems to be happening more slowly, which I'd attribute in part to the division of power inherant within a Federalist structure, the more explicit enumeration of rights within the US constitution and the fact that many people in the US get aggressive, belligerent and fight like hell when they feel they've been wronged or want "justice"
> I'd take a King and Priest that doesn't choose free market winners, over a system that rewards patents and regulation in the place of real wealth creation.
They will be choosing the free market winners with the rise of the individual judgement, that's exactly the problem is that their friends will be given to win while they will use the ambiguity to punish people they don't like. Further this has nothing to do with capitalism or anything like that, the state is just as likely to be populated by individuals that are unscrupulous, power-hungry and greedy as anyone in the corporate world.
Isn't stopping people from murdering, and stealing from, each other a purpose? A scary "statist" purpose of building something like the beginning of modern civilization even?
> being able to approach a set of facts concerning a dispute, and apply legal rules to determine the likely legal outcome ... to order the conduct of otherwise free citizens.
Law 2.0
> Legislatures ... delegate power to administrative agencies or technical experts ... to make ad hoc, flexible rulings; issue guidance and recommendations; publish codes of conduct; give and revoke licenses; and so on as and when they see fit - often with a very wide discretion.
Law 3.0
> Making it impossible not to comply, through the deployment of technology. And in its way, this is the worst affront to the dignity of man out of them all, because it destroys the very conditions of moral agency. I reiterate: if one does not have the freedom to choose, because one is compelled to act morally, then one’s moral conduct is not really moral at all. The Energy Bill 2023 is therefore not only bad law because it is unclear, because it mostly delegates authority to make ad hoc decisions rather than rules, and so on. It is bad law because it seeks to automate compliance.
I think TFA is trying to say that Law 2.0 doesn't say "Don't steal", it says instead that "The minister or an agency designated by the minister, which may be a company, shall promulgate regulations to protect property rights." And Law 3.0 says "The Agency shall cause automatic money transfers from thieves to victims to occur, to compensate victims of theft."
I deplore Law 2.0-type legislation; TFA notes that secondary legislation is subject to review by the House of Lords, but the fact is that this will be in committee; committees don't get a lot of media attention, and nothing that happens in the Lords gets much media attention. Basically, secondary legislation isn't really subject to public scrutiny, in the sense of press campaigns and proper debates, in and out of Parliament.
Also, primary legislation that provides for secondary legislation is an abstraction; it doesn't say what the law is going to be. You can read the primary legislation all through, and yet have no clue what it means, because it means nothing until the secondary legislation is implemented.
Law 2.0 also allows bills to be really badly-drafted, because the meat is all in the secondary legislation. "Let's just get it passed - ministers can fix it later, if it turns out to be a PoS." TFA notes the length of this bill - 427 pages. Even ministers don't read bills that long; MPs certainly don't, at least most of them don't.
My view is that you can't hold someone to a law that they can't reasonably be expected to know.
That means that the law must be clear and explicit. If it can't be expressed concisely, then it isn't clear. All supporting documentation (e.g. industry regulations) must be equally clear and explicit, and free for anyone to read (so no incorporation by reference of industry standards that cost £1500 for a single printed copy).
Let's say a power station fails unexpectedly. There are several options.
1) Wait until Parliament can reconvene to debate and pass a law which limits people to x kWh of electricity per day with a maximum of y kW at any moment.
2) Let people suffer rolling blackouts / brownouts as the energy supply struggles to keep up with demand.
3) Have a team of technical experts (the horror!!) send signals to people's washing machines asking them to only switch on when there's surplus power.
Quite obviously (1) is impractical. And (2) is the sort of self-sufficient Libertarian nonsense which imagines a hellscape for everyone except themselves. And (3) is... boringly pragmatic. I guess with the slight risk that it might be abused to... what? Deny people their constitutional right to run a high power vacuum cleaner whenever they want?
Giving them power to reach into my home and turn off the outlet my washing machine is on is definitely not "asking."
It seems to me that we've managed to have stable power for... decades?... without having rolling blackouts or the ability of politicians to reach into my home and turn off my computer.
Easy solution anyway: Unlimited kwhs, for £100/kwh, controlled kwhs for £0.05/kwh
Rather you should accept a transition to energy that is highly dependent on stable weather given the fact that we are supposed to face unstable weather. We don’t know if we’ll get less sun and wind due to the collapse of the jet stream. Therefore we need to invest in more solar and wind. It’s not hard.
Allow the government to be more authoritarian. Notice I’m not recommending the fascist governments like the GOP (yes I know the article is on the UK). No, I’m recommending the soft handed authoritarianism provided by our leftist benefactors. They’ll let you love whoever you want (including children if you’re a MAP). Love them. Accept them. Allow them to quarter people in your home. After all you wouldn’t even have a home if it wasn’t for the government.
Have you heard of batteries? Nuclear power?
Although I'm quite sure that there will be a class of appliances available for people who don't perhaps want their heated pools to become cool.
Are you using a fallacy as a basis for your argument? Past performance is not a reliable predictor of the future.
But I agree with you, giving technocrats control of rationing decisions leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Consider a freezer where you have the thermostat set to -18c. Your freezer will have some tolerance on that, so maybe it kicks on the compressor at -16c and turns it off at -20c. In the event that we've had a sudden loss of generation capacity, the freezer responds to the signal by temporarily setting the the range to -15c / -18c, or to delay the next compressor run for an hour, or some other minor change that you likely won't notice or care about.
On the other hand, if you get an SMS asking you to change your freezer's thermostat for the next hour, are you going to go home and do that?
Edit: Also doesn't clause 236 part 6 permit us to modify our own devices as we see fit: "Energy smart regulations may not provide for a prohibition to be contravened by an end-user of an appliance (in their capacity as such) or for such a person to be enforced against as described in section 237 or 238."? If it's so important, I'm sure one can figure out how to block the signals.
I think your comment perfectly highlights that, essentially the advancement of technology has now allowed the technicians and "experts" to now reach into your home and control how and when you use power arbitrarily at their discretion.
You know what I noticed when I had an old house with old AC? It could barely keep up. On really hot days, it didn't. They offered me $5/month off my bill to allow them to turn off my AC remotely up to 15/min/hour. For a lot of people this would be precisely what you said: "small changes that you wouldn't even notice to your most energy intensive devices" In that house, it would have meant the AC would need to be replaced.
"Oh yeah, and you're totally allowed to turn this off if you can figure out how, and we'll never charge you with a crime. Good luck!"
"Wait! Why are you arresting me?!"
"You've been intentionally violating the DMCA!" lol
Let's say a power station fails unexpectedly. There are several options.
1) Expect politicians to do their job in times of emergency.
2) Rolling blackouts.. or maybe build or incentivize through fines and regulations adequate backup and reserve in the system?
3) Give up and hand over control of peoples possessions to the corporate giants. (ask them nicely not to just use this to reduce reserves and maximize profits)
Never mind that there hasn't been a real power shortage in my country for 70 years.
Huh. The power for most of Marin County, California (just north of San Francisco) was turned off for 48 hours without only a few hours or maybe a day of warning because some Federal judge ordered the entity (PGE) that owns most of the transmission lines never to spark another wildfire and because the meteorological conditions became such that the risk of wildfires was very high.
Perhaps the commenter isn't from the USA?
How much do you trust the sea of embedded device manufacturers.
s/asking/commanding/
I think Adam Curtis's "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace" is partly about this; I haven't watched it for a while, and it can be hard to figure out what his documentaries are really about.
I bet Orwell didn't see this coming.
Bad headline. Trying to pull in readers by talking about "UK", "energy", and "fusion" in the same breath. The context is that the UK is a leader in fusion energy research investment. Use any other word to mean "marriage" and you don't violate the cooperative principle.
Load control is to keep the lights on and costs down in a system with a high penetration of non-callable generation. And because some dolts$ will insist on deliberately ignoring the carrots, some sticks are needed to help ensure the lights don't go out at critical moments.
$Sometimes performatively, for their fans/followers. Making the world worse for the rest of us, unnecessarily, for ego and personal profit...
Want to have a firm and interruptible supply? Pay more for your energy, as the grid will require reinforcement to make that happen.
Want more people to start flexing their demand to avert load shedding? Pay more, and more people will opt in to having their appliances turn on and off at the command of the system operator.
You presume to better know somebody's reasoning to do something than they do. Maybe 90 year old Dorothy is using the kettle during the illegal time to make soup, because the heater refuses to turn on - if she could afford to run it even if it did.
> [..] some sticks are needed to help ensure the lights don't go out at critical moments.
Stopping the lights going out is just one of the reasons this could be used. Another is simply to meet relatively arbitrary net zero goals (+). The energy company may choose to cut your power because you signed up for a fixed deal of £100 per month, and to service you during that time they would have to make a loss.
What's really funny is that when these smart meters were originally offered to people, they were sold on the idea of it helping them. There were critiques who were called conspiracy theorists and laughed at, now they turn out to be right.
The UK government needs to stay out of my home.
(+) Despite your feeling of net zero, somebody or something will decide when you suddenly become unable to use power to meet a goal in that moment, which could be the least useful time possible.
As other responses allude to, many of the grid-responsive actions that would be useful are on the scale of sub-second to minutes, and happen day and night, eg when people may not be awake or near equipment to manage it, or just too fast or frequent to be reasonable to manage with a human in the loop. Auto-pausing the heating of your wash water or water tank for a minute or three when grid frequency falls will likely make no difference to you at all, but drops your grid demand (say) 2kWh ot 3kWh to help the grid quickly stabilise. More such responsive instant load shedding might have avoided the last couple of times that the GB grid had to shed several hundred thousand users entirely for a while. Those users definitely noticed.
There are conversely many grid response actions that are on scales where it is reasonable (and maybe optimal) to have humans intervene manually to some degree, such as chosing to do laundry on sunny days when it can be solar powered and line dried at a day scale, and hotter 'maintenance' washes in summer (and not in winter) at a seasonal scale.