Kunnen we verdienen aan 'groen'?

British families have been told the shocking truth about the price of green energy. They must prepare to go without electricity for extended periods, warns UK’s top electricity boss.

Steve Holliday, National Grid’s chief executive, issued a stark warning over the consequences of the UK ‘going green’ speaking to listeners to Radio 4’s Today program.

The shock admission was immediately picked up in the Daily Telegraph (March 2, 2011) in the article, ‘Era of constant electricity at home is ending, says power chief.’

Britain’s largest energy supplier, National Grid is one of the most lucrative privatised monopolies in the world. It dealt the cold realities to a nation already committed to spending £18 billion per year on unnecessary and unpopular ‘green’ taxes.

Here is a nugget which I would have never dared to put into a speech, and as my victims will attest, I never was shy:

“We’ve made a big bet on electric but the pace at which that develops, I think anyone who can tell you that is lying.”

What is most significant is the choice of venue for these choice words. It was like preaching Satanism to a nun’s convent. According to a survey conducted at the ECO:nomics conference, half of the respondents said they planned to buy an electric car in the next decade. Most likely, they lied also.

Things aren’t going too well for the Prime Minister’s boast of leading “the greenest government ever”, giving us, as he said last year, “a real opportunity to drive the green economy, green jobs, green growth”. In 2007, Mr Cameron made a big play of opening a factory in Coventry to build electric-powered vans. Last week, after making only 400 vehicles in four years, the firm, Modec, sacked half its workforce and went into administration with debts of £40 million.

Meanwhile, in Australia, ridicule greeted a radio interview with Jill Duggan, a senior British official with the European Commission, who is playing a key role in the EU’s bid to reduce CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. Taken aback at being faced by two well-informed sceptics, she admitted she had no idea how many hundreds of billions of euros this would cost, or how much it could hope to achieve by way of reducing global temperatures. Nevertheless she claimed that “tackling climate change” has created “over a million new jobs” in Europe, including “many hundreds of thousands in the UK”.

Citing a new study which estimates that diverting £330 million into renewable energy destroyed 3.7 British jobs last year for every one created, the interviewers suggested that, with an unemployment rate of 10 per cent, there didn’t seem to be much Europe could teach Australia.