Renewable Subsidies Have Cost £78 Billion In Last 10 Years
By Paul Homewood
According to Boris Johnson:
“Overall, if you look at what we have done with renewables it has helped to reduce bills over the last few years and will continue to do so. That’s why one of the things I want to do is use this moment to really drive towards more offshore wind turbines."
Perhaps he should read what the Office for Budget Responsibility have to say. According to their annual Medium Term Forecasts, subsidies for renewable energy have cost the public £78 billion in the last ten years. This equates to about £3000 per household.
Nearly all of this has been added to energy bills, although a small part, the RHI scheme, is funded out of general taxation. As domestic users only consume about a third of total electricity generation, their bills reflect about a third of this cost. However, the public end up paying for the other two thirds one way or another, whether through higher prices and fares, higher taxation and lower public spending.
The split of this subsidy is :
| Type | £bn |
| RO | 46.0 |
| CfD | 5.6 |
| CRC | 4.2 |
| CM | 4.1 |
| FIT | 12.7 |
| RHI | 5.4 |
Note that the OBR no longer include the cost of FITs, even they still exist. I have therefore included estimated costs of £1.6bn a year for the last four years.
I am firing off a FOI to the government, asking for details of their claimed “reduced bills”!
The annual tables are below:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Well sure as the sun comes up my electricity bills have certainly not reduced in the last few years and are set to bankrupt me in the future. BJ should talk ordinary people about life. I have always been a conservative voter now I am totally disenfranchised.
Their own data, even inflation adjusted, shows bills have been rising. See this chart from Kathryn Porter at Watt-Logic.
Only now? The haven’t been conservatives in the Conservative party for years, decades even.
£78B in ten years? That’s about twice as much splurged on ‘track and trace’ in two years.
Bargain!!! (/s)
MPs really know how to spend OPM!
That’s cheap according to Kwasi Karteng. What would rate as expensive in his world?
The ONLY Truth about ‘Carbon Allowances’ that can be said . . . They are a total scam.
All of the power generated by the ‘Clean Energy’ producers can sell ‘Carbon Credits’ under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, ratified by the UN on Feb 16th, 2005. This whole ‘Clean Green Energy’ game . . . This ‘Net Zero’ trick . . . All comes from the tip of a Magician’s Magic Wand . . .
What Is Carbon Emissions Trading?
Emissions trading, sometimes referred to as ‘Cap and Trade’ or ‘Allowance Trading’, is an approach to reducing pollution. This system was designed to protect ‘Human Health’ and ‘The Environment’. Emissions trading programs have two key components. ‘1’ . . . to limit or put a cap on pollution, and, ‘2’ . . . To provide ‘Tradable Allowances’ equal to the limit that authorized ‘Allowance Holders’ can use so they can emit a specific quantity of a pollutant (one ton of CO2). This limit governs how environmental targets, set by governments, can be met. ‘Tradable Allowances’ provide some flexibility for ‘Emissions Generating Companies’ to set their own ‘Compliance Path’ within government guidelines.
These ‘Allowances’ can be bought or sold on ’Carbon Allowance Markets’. These programs are referred to as ‘Market-Based Carbon Emissions Trading Exchanges’. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Agreement of 2015 were International Accords laying out the international CO2 emissions goals. The Paris agreement was ratified by all except six countries. These ‘agreements’ have given rise to all the international Emissions targets and all the regulations supporting them.
With these new regulations in place, the pressure for businesses to find ways to reduce their ‘Carbon Footprint’ has grown. Most of today’s solutions involve the buying and selling of credits on ‘Carbon Markets’. What the carbon markets do is turn CO2 emissions into a commodity by creating a price for CO2 emissions. Emissions fall into one of two categories. Carbon Credits or Carbon Offsets, and they can both be bought or sold on a ‘Carbon Market Trading Exchange’. These ‘Exchanges’ are seen as a simple idea that provide market-based solutions to a complex problems.
What are Carbon Credits and Carbon Offsets?
The terms are frequently used interchangeably, but carbon credits and carbon offsets operate on different mechanisms. Carbon Credits, also known as Carbon Allowances, work like ‘Permission Slips’ for Excess Polluters. When a company buys a carbon credit, usually first from the Government then from ‘Carbon Markets’, they gain permission to generate One Ton of CO2 Emissions. With carbon credits, carbon revenue flows vertically from companies to Regulators. Companies who end up with ‘Excess Credits’ like Electric Car companies and Wind Farms or Solar Farms they can sell them to excess polluters for a profit $$$. In today’s market that is about $5.00 per ton.
How are Carbon Credits and Offsets created?
Organizations with operations that reduce the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere, say by planting more trees or investing in renewable energy like Wind Farms, Solar Farms, Bio Fuel or Electric Cars have the ability to issue ‘Carbon Offsets’ ‘in an ‘Open Market’. . . for profit $$$.
The Offset advantage . . . New revenue streams $$$ .
. .
There is one more big advantage of ‘Carbon Offsets’. If you’re the company selling them, they can provide a significant revenue stream! The best example of this, beyond those ‘Clean Energy Producers’ mentioned above, is Tesla. Yes, that Tesla we all know and love, the electric car maker. Tesla who sold Carbon Credits on the ‘Market-Based Carbon Emissions Trading Exchanges’ to the tune of over 2 Billion dollars of credits in 2021. About $2,000 per car, because Environmentalists, under the Kyoto Accord, have declared Electric Cars Officially, ‘Emissions Free’ . . . Even though they cause 5,000 pounds of CO2 to be produced on their behalf at electric power stations . . . Every Year.
Those Carbon Credits sold for Each Car . . . Permit ‘Excess Polluters’ to buy those credits and ADD an extra 400 Tons of CO2 to the Atmosphere to meet their ‘Net Zero’ targets without spending a dime on cleanup.
That’s the ‘Net Zero’ and the ‘Clean Energy’ Program hard at work . . .
Just shuffling Pollution around . . . But Hey . . . It looks Soo good . . . On Paper . . . Advocates call this Success . . . I DO NOT !
From . . . https://www.academia.edu/76965285/Clean_Green_Energy_and_Net_Zero_Fairy_Tales_on_Steroids
Since when was CO2 a pollutant?
It’s all part of the lie of course.
I wonder how long they will try to delay the reply to your FOI request?
‘it has helped to reduce bills over the last few years and will continue to do so’
Pretty soon, you’ll be saving so much money that you won’t be able to buy food.
The civil servants no doubt claim its true – based on their original forecast of oil prices rising to $120/bbl and more. That is the scenario they based all of this nonsense on.
World-wide subsidies of non-renewable energy subsidies in the late 90’s, 2000’s.and early 2010 were in the range of $45 billion per year. And the UK grossly contributed too this. see p37/40 https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/inventory-of-estimated-budgetary-support-and-tax-expenditures-for-fossil-fuels-2013_9789264187610-en
More recently the uk has given £9.9 billion to the Oil and gas industry between 2016 to 2020 in tax reliefs for new exploration and production and £3.7 billion in payments towards decommissioning cost? https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=FFS_GBR. Omitting this information from the same website you refer to in the above article is in my opinion missleading, and lacks credibility.
“Tax Reliefs” are not subsidies
BTW – If you actually look at the the first link, through to early 2010, you will see that nearly all the so-called support for the UK is “reduced rate of VAT on fuel and power (p369).
This is not even a subsidy, but a tax! And it has nothing to do with fossil fuels, it is a tax on consumption of all energy
Paul has politely replied. Personally I find being polite (when people have been so stupid to believe this sort of nonsense) rather difficult. Consider this, if the government raises VAT on fuel to 20% from the current 5% are they just giving you your subsidy back? That makes far more sense than the tripe you have quoted.
How is it misleading? The average person & even the dictionary definition of a subsidy (a sum of money granted by the state or public body) don’t see this a subsidy in the traditional sense vs a tax relief – the government deciding not to charge a tax in certain circumstances.
My favourite examples being the reduced rate of VAT on domestic energy or freezing the fuel duty escalator – Joe Public does not see these as subsidies. Also tax reliefs tend to generate taxable income elsewhere than otherwise happened so the headline figure of what the tax reliefs were worth are lower in reality; yes, lower taxes can generate more tax income overall.
The problem is the renewable industry has decided to misrepresent this knowing many won’t read pass large headline figure to justify it own subsidy gravy train that don’t seem to be in the public interest or even meet the probable aim of these subsidies to replace fossil fuels in the generating of electricity as it seems to have being a more successful reverse robin hood transferring money from poor to rich (e.g. feed in tariff)
I personally struggle to understand how anyone who says they care about Co2 emissions, human rights, poverty, national security can oppose nuclear power where we have clear example its safer than fossil fuels (and wind for that matter) & can replace fossil fuel e.g France (Messmer plan). It not dependant on inter-season TW/h electricity storage that is yet to be invented.
So the government has “subsided” domestic oil exploration and production by £10billion over 5 years, though in reality this is tax relief. Rest assured the state has taken the very maximum out of UK oil over the years, the only reason they don’t take more is that doing so would kill the cash cow. This is quite an uncertain cyclical industry, those us working in the Patch think the government is basically bleeding us dry. Though Graun readers think the government are beholden to Big Oil, it ain’t so!
You’re backside, handed to you, on a plate
“I am firing off a FOI to the government, asking for details of their claimed “reduced bills”!
|
Heh, good luck with that Paul.
I hope you’re aren’t holding your breath!
Wouldn’t it be better to report/sue Boris for a public office offence, misconduct, misfeasance… whatever? It can’t be possible for someone to say black is white and cause immense financial loss to voters, without being held to account in law some way or another – surely?
I wonder how much it costs to administer all this stuff?
“Note that the OBR no longer include the cost of FITs, even they still exist.” Missing “though”?
OFGEM’s latest report on FiT:
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/feed-tariff-fit-annual-report-2020-21
The scheme payout should now be fairly stable for the next few years, allowing for inflation indexation, since it is closed to new capacity, and the oldest applicants only start falling off in 2027. There may be some variation depending on how sunny the weather is from year to year, as it is almost all PV solar.
From AON Risk Solutions about 10-12 years ago:
“…it takes a lot of money to validate, register, monitor, verify, and certify a carbon offset project on both compliance and voluntary markets. A small-scale project faces anywhere between $40,000 and $200,000 in total transaction costs, which in turn, can represent over 40 percent of the total value of a certified reduction.
This high cost is another major point of contention, and also why to date most offset projects have been coordinated with large corporations, which in places like India and China receive the vast majority of carbon offset finance.
One of the central difficulties involved in the commodification process of carbon offsets is the fact that for every offset project, consultants have to create a unique storyline describing a hypothetical world without the project, and then assign a number to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with that imagined world.”
So it’s all a load of smoke and mirrors then?
Yet another flat-out lie!
Perhaps the committee who will decide if Johnson misled Parliament with respect to partygate should widen their remit and include this ?
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/281528
“Climate Warriors: The RAF’s quest to go green”
Just for a change, Boris is lying. Quelle surprise! If he was so proud of his achievements he should simply admit that his energy policies and the higher prices he has inflicted on the rest of us are merely a continuation of the policies agreed by his predecessors going back to the Blair/Obama era to ‘save the planet from climate change’.
High energy prices aren’t merely an accidental by product of these policies but a deliberate aim. As Obama himself proudly proclaimed back in 2009, ‘Under my plans…electricity prices will necessarily sky rocket’. And, so it came to pass….
Unfortunately, for these political shysters, admitting that it is a deliberate policy to inflict fuel poverty on, and curb the freedoms of, the nation now to theoretically save us from a modelled temperature rise in 30 years time that no one alive will notice, is not a vote winner. So they lie.
Don’t forget this whilst this is a big part of the story there is also all the costs for reinforcing the grid to accept renewables but of course its never enough because somehow windfarms get connection agreements and are then paid to be constrained off – tantamount to fraud in my book. Then on top of this there is all the extra balancing costs especially on frequency that are now increasing year on year. Its utterly unbelievably how people have been duped over this.