British consumers have paid nearly £220 billion more on their energy prices over the past two decades as a result of Westminster’s radical green agenda schemes, a report from a leading energy consultancy firm has found.
The UK public has been “seduced by narratives that renewables are cheap,” however, according to a study conducted by Watt-Logic’s Kathryn Porter presented by Lord Offord, the Shadow Energy Minister in the House of Lords, has found that the opposite is true, with the green agenda not only siphoning off taxpayer cash subsidies but also driving up energy costs for consumers.
“That renewables are not cheap should be clear, based both on the evidence that after 35 years of subsidies, we are yet to see any benefits through lower bills,” the report found.
According to Porter’s calculations, if the British government had not embarked upon its so-called green energy transition programme, British households would have saved £218 billion since 2006.
The report found that the direct cost of net zero policies in 2023-24 accounted for £17 billion in additional costs on consumer energy bills, and it predicted that this would continue to rise to more than £20 billion in 2029-30.
Porter acknowledged that gas prices were impacted by the Ukraine War and broader Western conflict with Russia, however, she noted that this would not explain why energy prices have steadily risen for the two decades prior to the 2021-23 gas crisis in Europe.
“While ‘international gas prices’ may explain periods of higher energy prices in the UK, they do not explain why the UK has relatively expensive energy compared with other countries. This additional expense undermines the UK’s international competitiveness and is driving de-industrialisation,” she said.
Although Britain has cast itself as a global leader on the issue of the so-called climate crisis, Procter pointed out that the resulting high domestic energy costs have resulted in Britain’s manufacturing base moving abroad to “countries with cheaper (and dirtier) energy.”
In addition, the offshoring of high-ticket items has also meant that they need to be shipped back to the UK, thereby mitigating any of the supposed environmental benefits claimed by the government.
“Ideally, such items should be produced as locally as possible. But the UK’s comparatively high energy prices make this uneconomic. And since the UK accounts for just 0.8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, little is gained from the economic self-harm these punitive energy policies are creating,” she said.
Adding insult to injury, the British consumer is often on the hook to pay for wind farms to not operate, as turbines are constructed “outside of grid constraints,” meaning that the grid cannot handle the amount of electricity produced and therefore must be shut down. According to the report, Britons shell out £1 billion per year to protect grids from overages.
While the green agenda has often been pitched as an ultimately cheaper alternative to traditional forms of power, even the government’s Climate Change Committee has admitted that any savings will not even be felt until at least 2038 or 2043 at the earliest.
The report concluded: “Sooner or later the public will understand the full extent of the requirement, and it is by no means clear that it will be willing to go along with it. Voters in both the US and Europe have begun to turn away from the net zero project – voters in the UK may well do the same. They should be provided with the full information on which to make their choices: continuing to gaslight the public about the costs of net zero is unacceptable.”
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