Further evidence green policy will push up household energy bills 4

Liz Holliday Let Them Eat Carbon

A cautionary, yet familiar, tale on how Coalition energy policies will affect homeowners was published this week in The Daily Telegraph. The article centres on a six-page document, entitled the “impact of our energy and climate policies on consumer energy bills,” and suggests that the Government’s move to increase alternative energy (like wind turbines and nuclear power) will increase the average family’s yearly energy bill 30 per cent by 2020.

The figures in the paper, written by David Cameron’s senior energy advisor, Ben Moxham, reportedly now have the PM “very worried.” The document asserts the simple logic that increasing energy bills, at a time when most household budgets are already tight, might not leave voters at their happiest.

The notion that Coalition green policies will increasingly impact consumer household bills in the long-term is not new. Our Director, Matthew Sinclair, has been imploring the Government “to give families a better deal and cut unfair green taxes” for quite some time now. The threats of green taxes and subsidies on taxpayers are covered in details in Sinclair’s new book ‘Let them eat carbon’ In the book he discredits the claim that green taxes were “justified by the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions,” with new figures that show the taxes as “excessive compared to the harms they are meant to address”.

It looks like the message may have finally gotten through to Cameron and his team. The Daily Telegraph reports that “Ministers and officials from the Treasury, DECC [Department of Energy and Climate Change] and the Department for Communities and Local Government are expected to be called into No 10 for a high-level meeting to discuss how to pursue the policies.”

However, whether or not Cameron will finally heed the warnings have yet to be seen. Perhaps he should pick up a copy of ‘Let them eat carbon’ before taking the meeting.

Liz Holliday

Follow @presentliz

Bill

Just past a insulation installers van which has a faded advert on its side which claims the insulation could save up the £300 a year!
Seems to be yet another made up figure that if repeated often enough becomes the truth.
Arthur W Ellis

It’s good to know he’s reportedly worried about something!hopefully he will get to work on doing something in all areas of government after 19 months of spin and inaction….
Monima O’Connor

I am a huge fan of the TPA, but I think you might be missing the wood for the trees. Of course the carbon emissions legislation is bunkum. The subtext is energy security for the UK – as we are far too dependent on Russia for gas and the Middle East for oil. In the absence of imminent nuclear energy grid coming on stream, it is a vital move by the Government now I believe, however unpalatable for consumers in the short to medium term. This is why the feed- in tariff for Solar PV electricity is so generous and returns anything between 9 to 15 % p.a tax free, index-linked and guaranteed for 25 years.