Mystic politicians are deliberately blind to the truth about green energy – Are you enjoying it?
By Paul Homewood
Excellent works:
In June 2011, 18 months before leaving to serve the Queen in another capacity, former secretary of energy and climate change Chris Huhne gave a remarkable speech in which he asserted that the Government’s green policy, at no cost to households, will really save us money. “Green growth,” he said, can protect the economy by “reducing our exposure to price shocks.” Furthermore, the cost of low-carbon policies through 2020 will amount to “just 1% of the average household energy bill” – and even that given that we can always buy oil with “ last year’s cheap price was 80 USD/barrel. If, as he predicted, oil prices remain high and gas prices rise to meet their needs “then our consumers will not accept our energy policy.”
To be fair to Huhne, he is not the only minister holding this presumption. Many in government, the opposition and the big green have received wisdom that switching from fossil fuels to renewables will make us better off. Now how ridiculous that statement sounds.
We had the green energy revolution that Huhne supported. Last year, the Government announced that for the first time our electricity is generated by renewable energy rather than with fossil fuels (though only if you’re considered “renewable”, the dirty practice of burning wood chips to generate electricity – an industry Huhne himself went to promote after being released from prison) . Coal-fired power plants that still produced 31% of our electricity in 2011 are now down to 2.1% and will be fine in 2024.
But where are the green dividends? Adjusted for inflation, the average household electricity bill has increased by 19% between 2011 and 2020 – from £451 to £571 per year at 2010 prices. But that’s only for newbies. begin. No longer protected from price shocks in global energy markets, consumers are looking at how their bills could double in April when the Government price cap is adjusted.
As for the claim that green policies will add just one percent to our energy bills, Ofgem calculates that 25 percent of our electricity bills are now made up of social and environmental revenues. – ie subsidies for green energy as well as insulation programs for low-income households. . We pay an extra 2.5 percent on our gas bill.
It is true that the current energy crisis is a global phenomenon driven by increased demand from a recovering global economy. But in the UK it was done much worse by energy policies over the course of a decade and a half has persistently pursued the goal of reducing carbon emissions without regard to costs. For years, the Conservatives, Labor and Dems Lib have all tried to blame soaring energy prices on greedy, profiteering energy companies. That has never been true – the deregulated gas and electricity markets have always operated on tight margins – but with dozens of energy suppliers bankrupt in recent months, it’s an argument. has become unsustainable. You also can’t blame the fossil fuel markets for rising bills – a barrel of crude now costs less than when Huhne gave his speech, even before adjusting for inflation. consumption.
We are paying more than we need for our energy because the Government has loaded fossil fuels with a carbon tax, switched electricity production to much more expensive renewables, and stripped Britain of has historically been a very productive natural gas industry. The government has been confronted by environmentalists, who are determined to strangle the nascent industry by raising fears of ‘earthquakes’ – or rather minor tremors, most of them. not even perceptible by humans on the Earth’s surface.
Traditional oil and gas exploration is also being hampered by the imposition of listed companies on punitive decarbonization targets. Shell, which was supposed to be developing the Cambo field off the Shetlands, was oriented to pursue other avenues, like providing my broadband. As a result, we are becoming more and more dependent on imported gas – shipped with cold shale gas from Qatar that we could otherwise produce ourselves. The problem is that in recent months, energy-hungry China has outbid us for it, driving prices up.
Ministers like to point out that the unit cost of electricity production from wind and solar have declined over the past decade, but that ignores the problem of discontinuities. Consumers are paying to burn coal and gas plants that are shutting down to provide electricity at times when, like recent weeks, the sun doesn’t come out and the wind doesn’t blow. At one point in November, energy suppliers were forced to raise £2000/MWh for electricity – about 40 times the usual wholesale price.
Conversely, when the wind blows, we’re forced to fork out to compensate wind farm owners who have asked to shut down their turbines – last year we paid a total of £282m in the so-called is a ‘limited payment’ when the national grid cannot absorb it. all the electricity they are producing.
We’re in this position because we’ve been building more and more wind and solar farms without properly addressing energy storage. The government set up a so-called “capacity auction” in 2014 to try to create a market for energy storage by offering subsidies to anyone who could supply large amounts of energy for a short period of time. short. But the lucky winners tend to be owners of gas and coal plants, with only a handful of battery installations.
Why? Because storing energy is horribly expensive. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the US sets “flattened” costs for energy storage in large lithium battery installations (taking into account capital investment and operating costs over the lifetime of the installation). set) is $336 (£260) per MWh. That’s five times the typical wholesale price of electricity – and we’ve paid it on top of electricity production costs in the first place. There are times in the winter when our wind turbines and solar panels produce almost no electricity for days on end, but we only have enough storage capacity to meet 38 minutes of electricity demand. nation.
Where is the opposition? All Keir Starmer, Ed Davey and Nicola Sturgeon are offering are more expensive energy policies
But if consumers are aiming for a energy shock in April when the price limit is raised, it is nothing compared to what will happen afterwards. In 2026, the installation of new oil boilers will be banned, followed by 2035 new gas boilers. From then on, the only practical way to heat most homes will be electric heat pumps, which cost £10,000 a time, are more expensive than gas, and will fail to keep many older, less good machines. house warm insulation.
Motorists will also be banned from buying new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 – forced to buy electric cars that currently cost half as much. Forget the spin that they’ll be on par with petrol and diesel cars by 2024 – that’s just another part of Huhne-style optimism. Soaring prices of rare metals needed for their batteries prompted a Chinese manufacturer to raise electric vehicle prices by 20% this month.
With the cost of living climbing on all fronts, there couldn’t be a worse time to raise taxes. In April, when higher energy bills are hitting our doormats, the National Insurance rate will increase by 1.5%. Labor has at least opposed that, but if not, where is the opposition? All that Keir Starmer, Ed Davey and Nicola Sturgeon are offering are more expensive energy policies. Was desperate to make myself look better “Progressive” than Westminster, Sturgeon has committed to a 75% reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2030 – a goal that can only be achieved by massive replacement of existing domestic heating systems.
It is strange that politicians will one day lecture us about poverty, especially energy poverty, and the next day propose to increase household bills to achieve their goals. carbon reduction. The only way they can try to square this impossible circle is to pretend, like Chris Huhne did, that going to zero carbon will actually save us money. Or by trying to sidestep the cost issue by claiming that climate change is so severe that it will kill us all unless we eliminate all carbon emissions by 2050.
Sorry but not. Since most people will settle for themselves exactly when they get their soaring energy bills this spring, the biggest danger they face is not being fried or drowned in a warmer world. a little – it’s impossible to cool down because they can’t afford to heat their home.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/01/myopic-politicians-willy-blind-truth-green-energy/
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