How consumers lose out in the race to go green

SIR – As an act of public-spiritedness, I installed a solar thermal system to heat my water. The firm that installed it has since decided that, as there is more money in government contracts, it will not maintain the systems it installed. No one else will take it on as they did not install it.

This highlights the dangers of backing new technology when the industry has not got its act together. Philip Wilson-sharp

Canterbury, Kent

SIR – Writing in the Financial Times, Chris Skidmore, the former energy minister, accused Ofgem of delays in providing connections to renewables, thereby impeding the transition to renewable energy. This is unfair.

It is the mission of Ofgem “to protect energy consumers, especially vulnerable people, by ensuring they are treated fairly and benefit from a cleaner, greener environment”. It is therefore right for Ofgem not to ignore how the large, regressive burden of supporting renewable energy affects consumers.

Although wholesale energy prices rose last year because of the war in Ukraine and have now fallen, the non-wholesale cost component of electricity bills has more than doubled in the past decade. The distributed and intermittent nature of renewable energy generation imposes huge costs on the system. It demands subsidies and imposes balancing costs. It also needs a lot more wires.

Mr Skidmore is happy, it appears, for those costs to be borne by consumers. At a time of tightened budgets and concern over the cost of living, it seems the former energy minister puts the financial interests of renewable investors and developers ahead of the British taxpayer. How can this be right or fair?

Dr Lawrence Haar

Senior lecturer in finance and editor of ‘Energy Policy’

School of Business and Law University of Brighton