Blob: Miliband's policies will add £150 to bills by 2030

Even the pro-Net Zero posse now admit that it's going to cost more and more and more.

According to The Times, a new study of the governments energy policies claims that they will increase electricity bills by £150.

The rise is a result of the huge investment being made by the government in low-carbon power and upgrading Britain’s electricity network, which will be paid off by consumers over the coming decades.

I was on Jeremy Kyle’s Talk TV show this morning to talk about it.

The Times goes on:

Ben James, an independent energy analyst who wrote the report, said that while renewable power was crucial for British energy security, the government “must ensure that the resulting system is cheaper”.

“The single most important objective for consumers and for decarbonisation is making electricity cheap,” he said. “Only 10 per cent of UK emissions come from electricity production. We will not eliminate the remaining 90 per cent — which comes primarily from heating and transport — without cheap electricity.”

James’ website explains his background:

• I work at Axle Energy, where we are building the future of the power grid.

• Worked on the IPCC‘s Sixth Assessment Report

• Built Octopus Electric Vehicle’s pricing platform

So it’s not as if James is a Net Zero sceptic. And as I explained in the video, James joins the voices of many energy company CEOs who are now recognising that Net Zero is a massive political liability. Says the Times.

The analysis echoed warning by leading energy retailers that the cost of clean power was pushing up bills. Executives from Octopus Energy, Britain’s largest household energy supplier, and from EDF and E.On told MPs that the increasing cost of investment that is added to bills risked outweighing any potential falls in wholesale prices.

That is a complete turnaround from the Stranded Assets hypothesis and ESG principles, which have preached that climate change is the greater risk. “Stranded Assets” was the idea developed at the University of Oxford’s green blob-funded department, that climate change would mobilise an angry public to either take action themselves, or demand the government take action against companies that fail to reduce their emissions. This, among other ‘climate risks’ ought to be disclosed, argued these carbon wonks, just as companies are required to publish statements on their exposure to financial risks in statutory filings to financial regulators. Which is what ESG is all about.

But I digress… As is its characteristic, the criticism falls on deaf ears, with little between them, at DESNZ. The Times, again:

The government said that analysis over-estimated the future costs of decarbonising the grid and “ignored the benefits of clean energy”.

“Energy bills are still too high, which is why the government is taking urgent action to support families this winter, including expanding the £150 warm home discount to 2.7 million more households,” they said.

“The only way to bring down energy bills for good is by making Britain a clean energy superpower, which will get us off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel prices and onto clean, homegrown power that we control.”

The “Clean Energy Superpower” line isn’t as much a policy agenda as a mantra. It is what the civil servants and ministers at DESNZ utter, in the same way that a caveman grunts.

From our side of the fence, predictions are far less optimistic even than Ben James’s. In a report for Net Zero Watch, Professor Gordon Hughes estimates that:

Ed Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 plan will add at least £25 billion per year to the cost of the electricity system. This will cause prices to soar, hitting every household in the UK with a cost-of-living increase of over £900.