Vote Energetic Ken

I had to check that we hadn't gone back in time a couple of weeks - Ken Livingstone wants your vote because he will set up City Hall as an energy provider:

The former mayor signalled he was prepared to fight companies if they tried to block his vision of running an energy co-operative within the Greater London Authority to cut household energy bills by an average of £130 a year.

Because one of the first things City Hall looks for in its recruitment is expertise in the energy markets. Right? It's obvious there must be hundreds of pounds per consumer just lying around for the taking.

How is he going to achieve this feat?

Livingstone is confident he can offer cheaper energy to Londoners by exploiting a Transport for London contract which allows it to buy energy at "half the price" of a domestic consumer.

Umm. There are what, 6 million people in Greater London? Assume 2 million households, and that Ken supplies 20% of them. Average minimum energy consumption at 0.5kW in the summer (fridge, computer, TV). That's 200MW, or about 30% of the output of Medway gas-fired power station. And Ken thinks he can get that amount of energy at half price? Good luck.

Commentator jonbryce makes a point that has perhaps been overlooked:

So he buys this energy and gets it delivered to a London Underground substation. How does he plan to get it from there to peoples' homes? That costs money to transport it over the local grid network.

It does raise some questions about exactly what that TfL contract says; I find it entirely conceivable that the delivery endpoints are specified for exactly this reason. Surely Ken can't be making promises that he could never actually keep?