Net Zero threatens to cripple British households as costs are dumped onto energy bills
By Paul Homewood
From GWPF:
Currently, UK consumers are funding renewable energy investors to the tune of £12 billion per year, taken from consumer bills as stealth taxes. These subsidies are projected to grow over the coming years, reaching a total of about £13 billion a year in the mid- 2020.
But on top of this huge and rising cost, the government now plans to add a whole catalogue of additional Net Zero subsidies, as the recent news reports below reveal.
* The government plans to force consumers to subsidise the installation of charging stations for electric vehicles (EV) by raising electricity bills.
* Ministers are in the process of drawing up legislation that will force households to fund the construction of new nuclear power plants through the use of a surcharge on energy bills.
* Households face paying an extra £200 per year to fund greenhouse gas removal technology.
* The wind energy lobby has warned that consumers will have to subsidise offshore wind farms indefinitely, refuting the often repeated claim that renewables are close to becoming “subsidy-free”, and confirming analysis showing that wind power costs have not fallen.
* Energy bills face an additional rise in cost as the power grid operator is increasingly forced to pay wind farms to switch off turbines. ‘System balancing’ costs alone were £2 billion last year and could hit £2.5 billion per year over the next decade as renewable capacity continues to grow.
Industrial and commercial consumers with the option of relocating to countries with cheaper energy will obviously do so.
Households, the other hand, will simply have to cut down on food and other expenditures in order to pay their energy bills and cut their standard of living.
The GWPF’s director Benny Peiser said:
It is fairly certain that most households would be unable to keep their heads above water as this torrent of additional Net Zero costs overwhelms their domestic budgets. Neither Boris Johnson nor his government would survive this unwise and unjust imposition on the British people.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Quite. We are going to drown in bills, not rising seas.
Wait til they find that temperatures are falling thanks to the Sun’s cycle.
£400/yr? I think it will be much much more than that. How can this aspect of Net Zero be pushed harder towards the general public who don’t follow these aspects of life? Will it only be when there is no power available in winter for their central heating, cooking and lighting?
These policies prove that our politicians are not as thick as we thought. The plan has always been to use CO2 as an excuse to rip off the public in every way possible, based on the fraudulent claim that CO2 is a pollutant. No wonder that the puppet bureaucrats at the IPCC have, right from the start been pushing the AGW myth.
This must surely be the BIGGEST SCAM in the history of politics. They MUST NOT get away with it.
I guess there will be mass migration to the tropical areas north and south of the equater. These areas will be developed to a standard that is “enjoyed” by northern industrialised areas now and then along will come the greenies to tell us we are not making enough CO2 and that plant life is not providing enough food for us all and that we will have to subsidises the pumping of CO2 from under Barrow Island.
Facetious I know, but how else can you talk about this religion that has gripped the world and which is giving a minority a wonderful life style.
The Government’s decision to squander billions on wind and solar power is a disgrace, yet they expect the tax payer to pick up the bill. The whole lot of them should be dismissed for incompetence, and an independent enquiry set up to bring sanity back to Westminster.
The main problem is that none of this is getting onto the mainstream meja. GB News is the only news channel that seems to question any of the hype; RT is frightened to go against the meme, as it is threatened by censorship / bans from the USA and UK extremists. Al Jazeera seems to have decided that the Middle East stands to gain from the west’s self-destruction so is encouraging any junk-news that stokes the fear campaign. It seems that GB news and the right wing press are the only hope of any balance in the fear-campaign.
I wonder what chance protesters will have at COP 26, and, even more, whether they will be reported.
Jack: you have more confidence than I in GB News. So far I have found them very ambiguous about “climate change” and certainly not challenging the collective insanity we are living under.
The billionaires who control our media and government are conspiring to starve the “difficult channels” (GB News and RT) of advertising revenue. This is why GB News is finding life difficult and being more cautious than most of their reporters would like. I have seen a lot of the junk-science criticised there, never on the mainstream maje.
“Ministers are in the process of drawing up legislation that will force households to fund the construction of new nuclear power plants through the use of a surcharge on energy bills.”
Confirmed on page 20 of the UK Government’s December 2020 Energy White Paper (Powering our Net Zero Future) –
“Building a cleaner, greener future for our country, our people and our planet, by measures including:… Aiming to bring at least one large-scale nuclear project to the point of Final Investment Decision by the end of this Parliament, subject to clear value for money and all relevant approvals.”
To argue the value for money case, HMG is flying various loopy and expensive kites which are bound to be deeply unpopular. Having been softened up, we are supposed to get down on bended knee to praise our Saviour, nuclear power.
I would disagree with your point on nuclear power. The entire point that Rolls Royce and others are making about Small Modular Reactors is that they are economical to private investment. I quote
“Each UK SMR will cost GBP1.8 billion (capex) and GBP40-60/MWh over 60 years.
“By getting the price down to GBP1.8 billion, it’s very much in the territory now of being able to access private equity to buy and run a reactor, which means we believe that nuclear power can really mushroom in a way that hasn’t been the case for when it’s been a state-funded enterprise,” Stein said.””
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-on-track-for-2030-delivery-of-UK-SMR
Rolls Royce have after all been made over 40 “small modular reactors” over the last 60 years so they do know what they are talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_PWR
The likes of EDF with the EPR are giving a false impression of the future of nuclear. The likes of Westinghouse, NuScale, Moltex and others are more indicative of the future of nuclear in a privately funded role.
A claim of a 30 day site fitting period is really quite spectacular.
https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/new-plants/evinci-micro-reactor
Not everybody in nuclear power is asking for subsidy or nation state funding and it is not a climate change argument for nuclear rather the ultimately inevitable finite nature of other fuel sources.
Thanks for your comments Ray.
Private businesses (including insurers) cannot accept uncapped liabilities. A business with uncapped liabilities cannot be valued, and is therefore worthless.
Nuclear operators need the benefit of some form of liability cap. There will always be some special arrangement in their jurisdiction. Like the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage.
If the State bears the bulk of the risk (the uncapped liabilities), the State makes the difference between whether or not it happens. There is a legal principle that we cannot claim ownership while denying liability. This means nuclear is a nationalised industry – OK, with private involvement in the form of subcontracting elements of the operation. But no escaping it – nuclear cannot be compared to a private business (wholly private liabilities which can be valued). Whatever costs are claimed for nuclear power operation, they can never be comparable to private sector investment. There is no private market willing to take all the risks.
It’s possible that the RR SMRs might develop a different ownership model, where a central agency has ownership of the nuclear island. This might be a way to spread the significant scientific and technical overheads demanded by regulation (which require operators to demonstrate competence). It might be a way to more effectively channel and manage the liabilities. But it doesn’t alter the fundamental point above.
A final comment is the GBP1.8 billion capex estimate. This is almost certainly the vendor cost. The owner’s cost will include a suite of others, including land, planning, and connections. A cautious assumption would be a 25% uplift to GBP2.5billion to get to total owner’s cost at handover.
I wonder if the Sheffield steel plant, just nationalised by the Government, will be exempt from paying so called carbon taxes, rather like Mr. Gummer’s listed mansion?
Reblogged this on Jaffer's blog.
Your government hates you. Deal with it.
“Neither Boris Johnson nor his government would survive this unwise and unjust imposition on the British people”
Sadly I can’t agree with this statement as the other main parties will impose similar if not greater burdens on ordinary people in pursuit of the same green nonsense.
As has been seen with lockdown, if there is no effective opposition the government can get away with whatever madness it wants.