Come clean on bill for going green
MPs condemn ‘mad’ energy scheme and say that it’ll hit poorest worst
MINISTERS were urged to ‘ come clean’ about the cost of their latest green strategy yesterday after failing to spell out the price for households.
MPs called the plan ‘completely mad’ and warned the poorest would be hit hardest.
The scheme includes penalising households that do not switch from gas to electricity by making the former more expensive.
One solution includes replacing a gas boiler with a heat pump, which emits no carbon if it is used with a renewable source of electricity.
But MPs said installing a pump is unaffordable for many households. Labour called the strategy a ‘re-hash’ of old announcements.
Energy Secretary Grant Shapps, who helped devise the Powering Up Britain energy security plan, said he does not have a heat pump.
But he claimed he will have workmen conduct a survey on his house within weeks ‘to see about whether heat pumps can work’. Craig Mackinlay, Tory chairman of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of MPs, said: ‘The whole concept of going for electricity and making gas more expensive is completely mad.
‘Gas is responsible for about half of our electricity supply so making that more expensive with extra charges is like robbing Peter to pay Paul.’ He added: ‘These ambitions and reports are big on hyperbole but very little on practicality and costs.
‘Ministers need to come clean about the cost of this both to householders and taxpayers under the various support mechanisms, in the form of grants, and more importantly the practicalities for rolling this out, none of which has been thought through with any clarity.’
Fellow Tory Philip Davies said: ‘ All this net zero stuff is the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich
‘Very little on practicality’
we’ve ever seen. If you’ve got a gas boiler you’re going to be expected to pay [for a heat pump], but if you’re rich you can buy a heat pump and avoid the extra cost [of gas].’
Electricity is seen as a greener option as it can be generated from renewable sources. But gas releases carbon into the atmosphere when burned.
Households subsidise green energy via levies on electricity bills, making electricity more expensive than gas.
But yesterday’s strategy said: ‘The Government will set out plans during 2023/24 to rebalance gas and electricity costs in household bills with the aim of making electricity bills cheaper and speeding up electrification for households and businesses.’
It raises the prospect of bigger gas levies. Levies on typical annual electricity bills are £131 and £34 for gas.
Heat pumps can cost from £8,000 to £18,000 to install, but the Government yesterday extended a scheme of £5,000 grants for their installation to 2028, instead of 2025. Just 42,000 were installed last year. Labour’s climate spokesman Ed Miliband said: ‘What was billed with huge hype as the Government’s green day turns out to be a weak and feeble groundhog day of reannouncements, reheated policy and no new investment.’
Mr Shapps and Rishi Sunak visited a UK Atomic Energy Authority lab in Oxfordshire yesterday. They were shown a 3D printed model of a war machine from Star Wars. Mr Sunak, who is a fan of the films, said: ‘I definitely want one of these to take home’.
DESPITE the UK’s carbon emissions falling again, the Government is still pursuing Net Zero at a foolish and damaging pace.
New petrol and diesel cars will still be banned by 2030, five years before the EU. But ludicrously, spending on charging points is being slashed.
Yes, Energy Secretary Grant Shapps is giving the go-ahead to more North Sea drilling for oil and gas to keep the lights on. Yet energy companies are disincentivised to invest by crippling windfall taxes.
Ministers must come clean, also, about the cost to households and businesses of their green strategy. If it impoverishes people, Net Zero will be dead in the water – and the Tories will too.
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