Net Zero threatens to cripple British households as costs are dumped onto energy bills
In recent weeks, ministers and officials have announced that UK households and businesses will have to fund many of the government’s Net Zero plans via their energy bills and cost of living.
Currently, UK consumers are funding renewable energy investors to the tune of £12 billion per year, taken from consumer bills as stealth taxes. These subsidies are projected to grow over the coming years, reaching a total of about £13 billion a year in the mid-2020s.
But on top of this huge and rising cost, the government now plans to add a whole catalogue of additional Net Zero subsidies, as the recent news reports below reveal.
The government plans to force consumers to subsidise the installation of charging stations for electric vehicles (EV) by raising electricity bills.
Ministers are in the process of drawing up legislation that will force households to fund the construction of new nuclear power plants through the use of a surcharge on energy bills.
Households face paying an extra £200 per year to fund greenhouse gas removal technology.
The wind energy lobby has warned that consumers will have to subsidise offshore wind farms indefinitely, refuting the often repeated claim that renewables are close to becoming “subsidy-free”, and confirming analysis showing that wind power costs have not fallen.
Energy bills face an additional rise in cost as the power grid operator is increasingly forced to pay wind farms to switch off turbines. ‘System balancing’ costs alone were £2 billion last year and could hit £2.5 billion per year over the next decade as renewable capacity continues to grow.
Industrial and commercial consumers with the option of relocating to countries with cheaper energy will obviously do so.
Households, the other hand, will simply have to cut down on food and other expenditures in order to pay their energy bills and cut their standard of living.
The GWPF's director Benny Peiser said:
It is fairly certain that most households would be unable to keep their heads above water as this torrent of additional Net Zero costs overwhelms their domestic budgets. Neither Boris Johnson nor his government would survive this unwise and unjust imposition on the British people.