From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Doug Brodie

The Climate Change Committee has finally admitted that their Net Zero policies have made electricity unaffordable.

The Telegraph report:

Ed Miliband must consider raising taxes or gas bills if the UK is to have any hope of hitting net zero, the Government’s climate change quango has warned.

To ensure his flagship policy succeeds, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) said the Energy Secretary needs to remove green levies from household power costs.

However, to pay for this, it said the levies should be shifted onto gas bills or covered by general taxation. The quango stopped short of saying which one it preferred.

The quango said it was concerned that high electricity prices were preventing households from buying heat pumps and electric cars, which in turn was holding back the green energy transition

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/05/heat-pumps-cost-british-households-more-than-europeans

Fat chance of moving these costs to general taxation!

As for switching them to gas, there would be a number of issues, none pleasant for any government to accept.

For a start, would this switch cover just residential customers or all users? Households use 30% of all electricity, but 60% of gas; consequently they would be worse off if industry’s electricity bills were also subsidised in this way.

Then there is the issue that not all customers would be affected in the same way. It is not a zero sum game where cuts in power bills perfectly offset rises in gas bills. Some households, for example, don’t use gas.

And as people naturally switch to EVs and heat pumps, the unfairness for some becomes more acute. As gas consumption declines, the same £18 billion surcharge will have to be spread over fewer customers, while the richer households who can afford EVs and heat pumps get more subsidised electricity.

The whole idea is ludicrous anyway, and shows how far the CCC have lost the plot. They still talk of “policy costs” and “making electricity cheaper”, ignoring the fact that the current prices actually reflect the true cost of generation, notwithstanding some of the market pricing mechanisms which get in the way.

Putting renewable subsidies onto general taxation does not alter that fact. If the CCC want to make electricity cheaper, they can do it by sidelining expensive renewable energy and abolishing the carbon tax.

The CCC seem to believe that people are desperate to buy EVs and heat pumps, and it is only the price of power which is stopping them!

EV owners are already heavily subsidised by avoiding fuel duties, yet this has not made EVs more popular. In time, they will inevitably have to pay an equivalent tax, so saving a hundred quid on electricity charges will be irrelevant to uptake.

Similarly with heat pumps. It is not the cost of electricity that is putting people off, but the cost of installation, insulation and the rest. As with EVs, even an unsustainable £7500 subsidy has not shifted the needle, so I don’t see how saving a couple of hundred quid on running costs will.

The CCC in their little dream world now appear to have come face to face with hard reality. Their policies are already impacting the public financially, and will exact yet further penalties in future.

No amount of rearranging the deckchairs will alter that fact.