Brits energiebeleid: hilarisch

Het Britse energiebeleid evolueert in de goede richting: van volslagen krankzinnig naar stapelgek.

Eerst het goede nieuws. Er wordt drastisch gesneden in de subsidies op zonne-energie. In de Britse 'Telegraph' rapporteert Rowena Mason daarover:

Hundreds of solar companies are likely to go bust by Christmas after the Department for Energy and Climate Change confirmed it is looking to halve subsidies for new panels. Greg Barker, minister for climate change, said the "feed-in tariff" subsidies are currently too generous, because the cost of installing solar panels has fallen. The proposed cuts, due to come into force from December, will see the amount earned from each panel fall from 43.3p per kilowatt hour of solar power to 21p. This will save energy customers around £23 a year - or £700m in total - because the subsidies are funded through electricity bills. However, the industry warned that many home owners and companies may immediately back away from the flagship scheme because it wouldn now take up to 25 years to earn back their investments.

Zie verder hier.

Dat is natuurlijk triest voor de betrokken producenten, die bij bosjes failliet zullen gaan. Maar voor de consumenten brengt deze maatregel verlichting. Daarmee is echter het gevaar van energiearmoede voor grote delen van de bevolking nog in het geheel niet geweken.

Nu het slechte nieuws. Benny Peiser zet voor ons nog eens op een rijtje wat het door klimaathysterie gedomineerde energiebeleid de Britse burger kost, dan wel zal gaan kosten (als het allemaal door zou gaan – hetgeen in het licht van de massale maatschappelijke weerstand natuurlijk niet waarschijnlijk is). Onder de titel, 'The REAL reason fuel bills are going through the roof? Crackpot green taxes you're never even told about', schreef hij daarover:

Scottish Power has understandably provoked howls of protests after announcing plans to raise its gas price by a thumping 19 per cent and its electricity tariffs by an inflation-busting10 per cent. And over the next few days and weeks, I am sure its main competitors will announce similar price hikes — leaving Britain's unhappy householders facing annual power bills some £200 higher than they were a year ago.

Of course, the power companies will offer the normal excuses. Media-trained chief executives will point to increases in wholesale power prices, which have gone up by about 25 per cent since last winter. ...

But none of them, I'll wager, will mention one of the biggest reasons why our power bills only ever seem to be heading up and up and why — regardless of what's happening in the wholesale energy market — they could easily have doubled by 2020. Spurred by the Government's stubborn but wrong-headed commitment to renewable energy, so-called green stealth taxes are already adding 15-20 per cent to the average domestic power bill and even more to business users. ...

And yet, despite the growing cost of these taxes, you won't find any mention of them at all on your gas and electricity bills. That, of course, suits the Government down to the ground. If it raised the huge sums required to encourage renewable energy and limit carbon emissions through general taxation it would make the Government itself very unpopular. But by doing it through electricity and gas bills, the Government has cleverly ensured that it's the power companies that take the blame. The fact that these taxes currently don't even appear on our gas and electricity bills makes it even easier for the Government to get away with this cunning sleight of fiscal hand.

So, what should be appearing on our power bills? First is the so-called Renewables Obligation, which currently requires power companies to buy 11 per cent of their power from renewable resources. Chancellor George Osborne has admitted that the aim is to make power derived from fossil fuels deliberately more expensive The problem is that renewable energy — most of which comes from on- and off-shore wind farms, solar panels and biomass plants (power stations fuelled by wood chippings and agricultural matter) — is between three and five times more expensive than power from conventional sources such as coal or gas. So by obliging power companies to buy this more expensive renewable energy — and latest estimate suggests off-shore wind-farms could be up to ten times more expensive — the Renewables Obligation already starts to inflate our power bills.

Dan laat Peiser nog andere regelingen de revue passeren, die in de toekomst tot kostenverhogingen zullen leiden, zoals het 'European Emission Trading Scheme', de 'Carbon Emissions Reduction Commitment', de 'Climate Change Levy' en de 'Carbon Floor Price'.

Maar de klap op de vuurpijl vormen toch wel de subsidies aan producenten van duurzame energie.

Peiser:

It's the final unseen tax, however, that is perhaps the most outrageous. It's now widely accepted that landowners and big businesses have started to invest in renewable energy projects — be they wind or solar-powered — only because of the huge subsidies being offered by the Government. At a time when household savers are struggling to get a 0.5 per cent return on an instant access saving account, some of these renewable energy subsidies — paid in the form of generous payments for the electricity produced, so called feed-in tariffs (FITs) — are guaranteeing annual returns of 10 per cent. ...

It's one of the biggest wealth transfers — from millions of ordinary hard-working taxpayers to a few hundred of the hugely wealthy — in British history. It's staggeringly unfair and, in the growing opinion of many, totally pointless. Not only is much of the science behind the idea of global warming now being disputed but, at a time of such widespread economic hardship, we simply cannot afford to misdirect scarce economic resources on such a massive scale. Britain needs jobs, it needs industry. What it doesn't need is rows and rows of heavily-subsidised wind turbines.

Lees verder hier.

En dat allemaal vanwege een klimaatbeleid dat geen enkel meetbaar effect zal hebben op het klimaat. Het zou hilarisch zijn als het niet zo triest was.

Verklaring van Charles Hendry, Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, 3 November 2011

We as a Government believe that shale gas fits into the potential energy mix in the United Kingdom. Even as we move towards a less carbon-intensive future, oil and gas will undoubtedly remain a vital part of our energy system for many years to come. In that context, the Government are committed to ensuring that we maximise economic recovery of UK hydrocarbon resources, both offshore and onshore. We see it as in our national interest to maximise returns on our indigenous resources. We are moving to a situation where we are net importers of gas, and there is a multi-billion-pound benefit to the UK economy from optimising our resources. We are keen for that to happen.

Bron hier.

De kogel is door de kerk.

Voor een overzicht van mijn eerdere bijdragen zie hier: