The radical shift to green, renewable energy will have cost £319bn by 2030
The huge sum is three times the annual NHS budget for England
The policy will be adding an average burden of £584 a year to every
household by 2020 and £875 by 2030
Shocking report takes its calculations from official figures issued by
government
By David Rose for The Mail on Sunday
A bombshell report reveals today that despite years of promises by Labour,
Coalition and Tory governments, the radical shift to ‘green’ renewable
energy will have cost the economy £319 billion by 2030 – three times the
annual NHS budget for England.
Instead of cutting energy bills, the policy will be adding an average
burden of £584 a year to every household by 2020, and £875 by 2030. Yet
this is only the start. By 2050, green energy policy will be costing every
household £1,390 a year, based on 2014 prices.
The report’s calculations are derived entirely from official figures issued
by Government departments and the Office for Budget Responsibility. They
reveal for the first time the true cost of levies on bills to fund the
shift to renewable energy.
The impact results from the 2008 Climate Change Act, and will be felt
mainly by the poorest and so-called JAMs – those families who are ‘just
about managing’.
Over the period 2014-2030, the report says, the accumulated burden borne by
every household will be £10,800. The countrywide cost to the economy in
2014-2020 will be £95 billion, rising to £319 billion in 2014-2030, and an
eye-watering £1.035 trillion from 2014-50, by which time the economy,
thanks to the Act, is supposed to have become almost decarbonised.
The report, The Cost Of The Climate Change Act, is by Peter Lilley, the
Conservative MP and former Trade Secretary. He was one of only three MPs
who voted against the Act, piloted through Parliament by then Labour Energy
Secretary Ed Miliband. The report will be published by the Global Warming
Policy Foundation, the think-tank founded by Lord Lawson. Sometimes
attacked for its sceptical view of climate science and energy policy, its
advisory council includes some of the world’s leading experts.
Senior figures from all main parties have claimed repeatedly that green
energy would be good for the economy and save money. In 2005, Chancellor
Gordon Brown said most businesses could ‘easily achieve 20 per cent
reductions in bills’.
In 2014, the Lib Dem Energy Secretary Ed Davey claimed ‘the impact of all
the Government’s energy and climate change policies mean that household
bills are currently around £90, on average six or seven per cent, lower…
than otherwise’. But this, the report says, was ‘an astonishing claim to
make of a policy that involves massive subsidies of costly energy sources’.
In fact, as Mr Davey spoke, the Government’s own Climate Change Committee,
which sets the country’s ‘carbon budget’ targets under the Act, had quietly
issued figures showing that, even then, the average household was paying
out £248.
Philip Hammond echoed the claim while he was Foreign Secretary last year by
insisting: ‘Renewables… will reduce the cost of energy and the risks of
climate change.’
The Act is the world’s most aggressive law, imposing rigid emissions cuts:
35 per cent from the level in 1990 by 2020, and 80 per cent by 2050 – a cut
so deep it will require total economic restructuring.
Yet it has so far done nothing to reduce the threat of climate change. The
report says the UK’s unilateral measures are increasing its carbon
footprint, because industries and jobs are being ‘outsourced’ to
high-emitting countries such as China and India, and our imports from such
countries are rising.
Under the much-vaunted UN Paris Agreement, India is allowed to triple its
already-massive coal production by 2030, and has not said when its
emissions will peak. China says it will only begin to reduce its emissions
after that date.
Mr Lilley’s report says previous calculations of the cost of green energy
have been massive underestimates. First, they take no account of the green
levies and taxes paid by businesses, two-thirds of the total, assuming they
have no impact on consumers. In fact, official figures show, the cost is
passed on.
Second, they fail to take account of the huge ‘system costs’ of connecting
and managing renewable energy sources by the National Grid, and of paying
for back-up fossil fuel plants needed when – as during the recent still,
cold spell – neither wind nor solar panels produce more than a tiny
fraction of nominal capacity.
Also being hidden is the colossal cost of restructuring the entire economy:
if emissions are cut by 80 per cent by 2050, not only will electricity have
to come almost entirely from non-fossil fuel, but total output will have to
roughly triple, to power millions of electric vehicles and heat most homes.
It is time to pierce ‘the cloud of messianic idealism’ that has so far
dominated policy discussion, the report concludes. ‘Only then can we have a
realistic debate about the most cost-effective ways of reducing emissions,
and whether it is worthwhile sticking to the Climate Change Act targets.’
While JAM families suffer, the rich will prosper. Citing the lucrative
payments made to landowners for wind farms and solar panels, former Cabinet
Secretary Lord Turnbull says in a foreword that the only people to benefit
will be ‘the better-off, those who own large properties and extensive land,
pocketing most of the subsidies’.
An Energy Department spokesman said: ‘Our priority is ensuring families and
businesses have a secure, affordable, clean energy supply.’
Now SECOND set of data shows world temperatures have cooled… and spikes
were caused by El Nino – NOT by man
New official data issued by the Met Office confirms that world average
temperatures have plummeted since the middle of the year at a faster and
steeper rate than at any time in the recent past.
The huge fall follows a report by this newspaper that temperatures had
cooled after a record spike. Our story showed that these record high
temperatures were triggered by naturally occurring but freak conditions
caused by El Nino – and not, as had been previously suggested, by the
cumulative effects of man-made global warming.
The Mail on Sunday’s report was picked up around the world and widely
attacked by green propagandists as being ‘cherry-picked’ and based on
‘misinformation’. The report was, in fact, based on Nasa satellite
measurements of temperatures in the lower atmosphere over land – which tend
to show worldwide changes first, because the sea retains heat for longer.
However, now the drop in temperature is also showing up in the
authoritative Met Office ‘Hadcrut4’ surface record, compiled from
measurements from more than 3,000 weather stations located around the world
on both sea and land.
To the end of October, the last month for which figures have been released,
Hadcrut4 had fallen about 0.5C from its peak in the spring.
The reason is the end of El Nino. The natural phenomenon, which takes place
every few years and has a huge impact on world weather, occurs when water
in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America gets up to 3C hotter
than usual.
It has now been replaced by a weak La Nina, when the water becomes colder
than usual. This means temperatures may still have some way to fall.
El Nino is not caused by greenhouse gases and has nothing to do with
climate change. It is true that the massive 2015-16 El Nino – probably the
strongest ever seen – took place against a steady warming trend, most of
which scientists believe has been caused by human emissions.
But when El Nino was triggering new records earlier this year, some
downplayed its effects. For example, the Met Office said it contributed
‘only a few hundredths of a degree’ to the record heat. The size of the
current fall suggests that this minimised its impact. When February
produced a new hot record for that month, at the very peak of El Nino,
newspapers in several countries claimed that this amounted to a ‘global
climate emergency’, and showed the world was ‘hurtling’ towards the point
when global warming would become truly dangerous. Now, apparently, the
immediate threat has passed. It would be just as misleading to say lower
temperatures caused by La Nina meant the world was into a new long-term
cooling.
But the big question is: what will happen when both El Nino and La Nina are
over and the Pacific water returns to its ‘neutral’, average state?
Professor Judith Curry, of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, who is president of the
Climate Forecast Applications Network, said it would take years before it
was clear whether the long-term warming trend was slowing down, staying the
same or accelerating.
‘The bottom line is that we can’t read too much into the temperatures of a
year or two,’ she said. ‘We will need the perspective of another five years
to understand what is going on.’
The Mail on Sunday report two weeks ago, showing that world temperatures
are fast falling from their record peak, triggered outrage from green
lobbyists and rival papers around the world.
There were claims – now exploded by the Met Office data shown here – that
our report was ‘misleading’ and ‘cherry-picked’.
Yet bizarrely, the fiercest criticism was reserved for claims we never made
– that there isn’t a long-term warming trend, mainly caused by human emissions.
This just wasn’t in our report – which presumably, critics hadn’t even read.
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