Press release: Coutinho’s plan is “sleight of hand”
By Paul Homewood
London: 2 April 2024
Campaign group Net Zero Watch warned Claire Coutinho against removing renewables subsidies from electricity bills. It was revealed yesterday that the Energy Secretary is looking at plans to move the levies onto gas bills or general taxation.
But Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford has warned that she can only temporarily hide the true cost of renewable energy:
"It’s a sleight of hand. She is simply trying to hide the subsidies while simultaneously insisting that wind power is the cheapest. It’s yet more socialist market-rigging of a kind that the Callaghan government would have recognised."
And Mr Montford called for the government to make good on its promise to come clean about the cost of decarbonising the country:
Mr Sunak has said the Government needs to come clean on the cost of Net Zero, but we are still waiting for him and his Energy Secretary to tell us the truth about renewables. If they don’t come clean soon, their place in the history books will be as a pair of confidence tricksters.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Andrew is of course right. When will the general public be told by government or read about it in the newspapers?
When Trump gets in, he will close down the “climate” racket
Not in UK or EU
The global climate scam cannot work without the active support and encouragement of the USA.
It was largely in the doldrums until it got fresh legs in 2020 when Trump was ousted and Team Climate got its pick installed as US Government.
If the US joins China, India and Russia in ignoring the climate hoax then it will embolden others to reject it and start the dominoes falling. If are to see a Far Right – as defined by BBC-Guardianistas – triumph in the EU elections in June then a Trump victory will see them pushing to dump the policies that are slowly destroying their industries.
If they don’t come clean soon, their place in the history books will be as a pair of confidence tricksters.
Just taking their place in a long line, where renewables for electricity are concerned.
An untrustworthy politician ? Imagine that !
The last set of offshore wind contracts finally and irrevocably blew the gaff on this scam, with renewables proving ever more expensive. The ‘nine times cheaper than fossil fuels’ claim was and is an outright lie.
They’re no longer able to maintain the subterfuge so are ‘resetting the narrative on their terms’. Events dear boy, events.
with renewables proving ever more expensive.
If batteries are used to supply meaningful storage then the cost of achieving net zero could be as high as 25 TRILLION £££££ , as previously posted.
Trillion of ££££ spent to deal with a belief.
Notwithstanding that the materials to build sufficient batteries to cover for no wind are not available, added to it being impossible to build enough wind generation to charge the batteries up again AND keep the grid going at the same time.
Wind power could be even more expensive soon if the UK follows this new EU policy of claiming Chinese-made wind turbines carry a cybersecurity risk.
Europe quietly works on Huawei-treatment for Chinese wind turbines
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/europe-quietly-works-on-huawei-treatment-for-chinese-wind-turbines/
A lot of the subsidies for unreliable energy have been hidden for a long time .
The ETS scheme , Carbon Credits etc have all been about taking money from everybody else by increased prices , and passing it on [ via a few backhanders ] to the wind /solar generators
Even Tesla,s figures from a year or 2 ago showed that a $700 million profit came from $1.5 billion government subsidies .
So very little media attention is given to how all of the Net Zero insanity is paid for massively by Joe public .
watch the “ cold truth” movie on YouTube it says it all about the climate scam.
They have been doing exactly the same thing with ‘our’ NHS since 1948 to hide its true cost to the taxpayer – and push the notion it is ‘free’ – and reveal what poor value for money it is, or allow cost comparisons to be made with private insurance/provision
By contrast ‘our’ BBC is paid for out of an hypothecated tax so everyone sees how much the dross is costing them and compare with satellite and streaming service. As a result there is a great deal of hostility to the BBC and the licence fee.
the govt are desperate to get gas prices to consumer to be the same as electricity. ASHP installation then looks cheaper. Coutinho is turning out worse than Milliband.
Valid point but that still wouldn’t overcome the fact that for the vast majority of homes heat pumps do not work so even at parity of cost you have a much worse experience.
Unless the Government decides to accept the truth that there is no climate emergency and that man is not to blame for any warming, the the whole climate edifice will fall on the cost, but we may all have to broke before the numskull;s in Government say ‘enough’
It doesn’t even have to do that. It simply has to remember where we started from, which is, compare discounted future costs with costs today of avoiding those costs. If it did that – honestly – virtually nothing Green would be done now, as the costs of climate change are lower and further out and the costs now much, much higher than originally forecast.
Net Zero is stupid now because the original net zero was cost, not emissions.
Typical of this unelected Government of Wannabies, lies and subterfuge are as natural to them as breathing, preparation for their new jobs in corporate consultation, where the only thing they will have to trade is………lies, more lies and yet more lies.
Parliament, Net Zero 2050 ‘debate’. You can imagine the scene; do we Save the Planet or not? Obviously the question answers itself. Likewise can we afford it? The answer to that question would also be how can we afford NOT to? Once that’s accepted landslide MP support (with it going through via a SI I believe) was a given, regardless of consequences.
Questions about whether we could install hardware, hit targets and consider cost/benefit values were rendered redundant by the first question. No planet means The End.
The complete idiocy of accepting there’s a ‘climate emergency’ that needed such massive intervention explains the total lack of planning from an engineering and logistical view, plus the obvious matter of costs, which are now blighting this Net Zero nonsense in every direction.
Government can’t contain electricity or gas costs, can’t deliver grid capacity, national level storage, reliable dispatchable energy, EV rollout or anything else. We haven’t even got national energy security because they’ve rushed into committing to intermittent wind and solar, plus French interconnectors. None of those are reliable.
The only things they’re trying to save now are their legacies and their individual reputations. What a monumental S show.
Sleight of hand, by a government ? Surely not !!
A bag of rotten apples.
There doing this as medium term outlook for gas prices is favourable with a shed load of additional LNG trains coming online between 2025-28 and not all with long term offtakers so price will certainly be favourable.