By Jo Nova
If the UK had kept the old gas policy, skipped “renewables” — they’d be £220 billion better off
Since there are 67 million Britons, that means every man, woman and child would be £3,283 richer today. For a family of four that’s £13,000 of savings spread over 20 years.
Kathryn Porter has painstakingly unpacked the bureaucratic polyglot to add up the ghastly bill, and published “The true affordability of net zero”
“..had Britain continued with its legacy gas-based power system in the period since 2006, consumers would have been almost £220 billion better off (2025 money) even taking into account the impact of the gas crisis.“
Even if the fuel is free, every other thing about collecting, storing and distributing “free energy” is very expensive.
Ed Milliband might blame fossil fuels for the train-wreck that is UK electricity — but the prices have been rising in the UK ever since vainglorious politicians first dreamt of fiddling with the weather. In the UK, even though wholesale prices remained the same largely, all the other costs of renewables snuck in to household prices to inflate them like the Hindenburg.
Renewables “profits” come from trickery, deceit and subsidy lies, and not from a free market in electricity
Firstly they lied that wind and solar would be cheaper, then they lied that the subsidies were temporary. Instead the subsidies are still growing 35 years after they started. Last year the total cost of UK levies was £17.2 billion. These renewable subsidies were buried under boring anesthetic labels like “contracts for difference”, “capacity market” or the “CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme”.
Look at the rainbow cluster of levies in the graph below, and their growth in the last decade. If wind and solar were actually cheaper, or even just competitive, environmental levies would be “zero”. If wind and solar were getting more effective, the subsidies would be falling, not rising.
And if those levies had honest names they’d be called “Climate Changing Slush Fund”, or “Forced Renewable Support Fee”. The Contracts for Difference would be the “Guaranteed Profits for Windpower Levy”.
The Renewables Obligation levy could be the Banker Support Fund, or perhaps “Foreign Aid for China”.
Ed Miliband’s net zero crusade is adding billions to Britons’ energy bills
By Johnathon Leake, The Telegraph:
According to analysis by consultant Kathryn Porter, green levies on energy bills will hit £20bn by the end of the decade. Staggeringly, this is up from £5bn in 2014, as the vast cost of Miliband’s radical clean energy ambitions rapidly adds up.
As part of Porter’s report into green levies, The True Affordability of Net Zero, she claims the renewables obligation scheme – which is responsible for supporting wind farm construction – is alone adding £7.8bn a year to power bills. That is despite it being closed to new entrants seven years ago. Its successor, the Contracts for Difference scheme (CfD), is adding another £2.3bn, she says.
Kathryn Porter points out that there are 10 levies that are added quietly to electricity bills, rather than being an honest tax. (It’s the same here in Australia).
“If this money was being raised through taxation, it would be scrutinised by the Treasury, the Office for Budget Responsibility, and by voters at general elections,” says Porter.
“But instead, Miliband is taking these subsidies from the pockets of consumers and giving them to renewable generators – without ever having had to win approval for the idea in an election.
These are forced payments from customers who get no choice, and which are hidden in their bills, disguised by lying labels in public announcements, and which are fed through electricity retailers to corporations.
Except for extremely rare circumstances, everything about renewable energy only profits because of State force, deception and trickery.
Read it all: Kathryn Porter: The true affordability of net zero