The whole CfD question will hopefully be looked back on as a turning point for the COOPs. In a nutshell it a misfit question; it’s asking for members to have a clear view on a complex proposition which is way out of the experience of (I presume) most of the target members of the coops. None of us are able to accurately forecast the intricate relationships between unknowable future sources of price instability, not even to guess if CPI is a good measure of retail energy price inflation. I was not interested to dabble in complex market instruments, instead just to buy a capital share of new non-fossil-fuel energy generation. While its great that many on the forum here have detailed mental models of the finance and economics etc of the renewables pricing, even these are not always in mutual agreement.
So I come back to reflect on the principles of investing in a Coop: not to take a subsidy from Government e.g. to the detriment to other citizens, not to hog the available subsidy for innovation in the renewables sector, but to take a measured risk alongside other like-minded folk. That hasn’t changed for me, hence CfD is a question I would prefer not to have been asked about.
The CfD question has been put to members 100% in good faith, however its not the sort of rumination I would want to be bothering myself, and I guess if it hadn’t been put there would be very few who would even notice, it certainly doesn’t ‘spin my rotor’. The simplicity of the Ripple/Coop model is one of its key features so I personally hope it remains simple. I don’t wish to ‘rain on anyone’s parade’ however I think the conversation needs to reflect ordinary members as well as being a field exercise for economic geeks 😊 (no disrespect to economic geeks, and BTW in my world CFD is Computational Fluid Dynamics, the stuff that lets us design optimal turbine arrays, not a question I would expect the Coop to be asked to adjudicate on either!)
I bought a few shares in a scheme
Its rotors went around like a dream
they spun on most days
while I was aways:
Examining the intricacies of government organised subsidies for non-fossil fuel power generation in an uncertain world following an un-predicted wholesale price spike.