Alternative energy companies run by Just Stop Oil and Labour Party paymaster Dale Vince have collected taxpayer subsidies of around £110 million over the last 20 years. Vince’s company Ecotricity claims it is a “not for dividend” company with its money – “all of it” – going into our mission “to green-up Britain”. But every labourer is worthy of his hire. In Vince’s case, over £43 million (pre-tax) from the company in the form of salary, share buybacks, loans and receipts from the sale of a subsidiary. Some of these payments, it seems, are more tax efficient than paying dividends.
These financial details, and a comprehensive debunking of many of the wild environmental claims Vince has been airing in public media of late, are contained in a recent substack article written by the investigative Net Zero writer David Turver. Over the last 10 years, Vince has given the Labour Party about £1.5 million. Recently the Labour Party said it would ban all new oil and gas drilling, causing widespread concern among its dwindling working class supporters. Vince has also given many hundreds of thousands of pounds to the disruptive Just Stop Oil protesters, whose loutish tactics have led to costly delays on British roads and irritation at major sporting events. Recently, Vince justified his financial largesse by telling the Guardian that “I do want to influence policy doing the things that I do”.
Turver takes a different view on Just Stop Oil, noting that it is “trying to bully us into accepting their worldview without having to bother with minor inconveniences like the ballot box”.
Certainly Vince has a political interest in keeping the renewable subsidy gravy train rolling. Despite constant claims that green energy is getting cheaper by the day, British electricity buyers are forced to pay £12 billion in subsidy every year for renewable energy that provides barely 5% of total U.K. energy consumption. In Vince’s case, Turver asks if it could be possible that he is dependent upon a never-ending stream of subsidies from hard-pressed bill payers to keep his empire afloat?
There are a number of ways wind and solar suppliers can collect subsidies for producing energy. Investigative journalist Ben Pile has calculated that Ecotricity has collected £89 million from the Renewables Obligations Certificate scheme since 2002, with £53 million of that since 2014-15. In addition, Turver found another £9 million of subsidies within subsidiary companies. Ecotricity has also declared over £16 million in “other income” for administering feed-in tariff schemes, another form of subsidy for electricity production.
Dale Vince has been every busy of late pushing his green dream and the prospects of Ecotricity on a number of radio and TV channels. Turver suggests a possible economic explanation for all this activity. Despite all the subsidies and the high prices it charges its customers, money seems a little tight. A new holding company has benefited from a loan from Vince, but at the end of April 2022 it had £70.8 million in cash. However, £29 million of this was restricted by banking covenants. Set against this, notes Turver, there is over £182m of debt due within one year, including money repaid to Vince. There is also £44.2 million of eco-bonds outstanding. With interest rates currently rising, Vince would have been “trying to burnish his green credentials to persuade investors to keep his bonds”.
The company has been stress testing various scenarios, and details are given below.
Due to its “strong green credentials”, Ecotricity can raise prices, while asset sales and alternative sources of funding are possibilities. Happily, the company can forecast that in all individual scenarios, it has enough cash to meet its commitments.
As noted, Vince is a regular media presence but not all recent interviews have been of the “why are you so very virtuous and wonderful?” kind. Last month he met his match on Ian Collins’s Talk TV lunchtime show when he faced Ben Pile. The amused, self-satisfied, old hippy persona rapidly fell away under Pile’s relentless demolition of his eco-claims, to be replaced by scowls, insults and frequent interruptions.
During the interview, Vince made a number of ludicrous claims including the statements that the UN’s IPCC says global temperatures will rise by 3°C within five years, and four million people have died from climate change over the last 30 years. The first statement is flat out wrong, and there is no evidence for the second. Indeed, total deaths from natural disasters continue to fall according to all reliable statistical evidence. He also claimed that if we switched from fossil fuels to renewable energy, “we can bring bills down to the lowest place they have ever been” and eradicate fuel poverty. Turver looks at this claim in more detail and made the obvious point that since Ecotricity offers “100% green electricity” we might expect it to offer the cheapest energy to customers.
Alas, a comparison with Octopus, another supplier burnishing its green credentials, along with Eon Next and British Gas shows that Ecotricity has “by far” the most expensive unit rates for electricity and gas. And if times get tough, as we have seen from the company’s stress testing, its “strong green credentials” can jack the prices up even higher.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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So we feed them our tax money so they can implement our destruction?
Statism. This is what they do. Massive government and corruption. They use our money and future taxation streams (debt) to hang us. Good Christ. Another reason to loathe Greentards and Government.
Dale Vince is the owner of Forest Green football club. Some years ago he built them a new stadium, but subsequently decided he wanted another stadium elsewhere. The place he chose was on farm land adjacent to the M5 not far from Stroud. There was massive local opposition, but as you can imagine, plans were passed and building has commenced. However, this is not just a stadium, but an industrial estate as well, so a huge acreage (full of wildlife, wild flowers, hedgerows etc) is going to disappear under concrete. The old stadium will eventually be demolished (before the end of it’s lifetime) and the land will be used for housing – well, there’s a surprise. Champagne all round to a ‘green’ campaigner who displays as much care for the environment as the next greedy developer.
Mogul greenies like Vince are working the same scam as the pre-Reformation bishops: there’s no hypocrisy, no degree of sordid corruption they can’t get away with, because it’s all trivial compared to the great issue of salvation that they have the adopted monopoly on.
I don’t know the man but from what I’ve read, he seems to be another chancer who made good by jumping on the renewable energy bandwagon early on – before the advent of the internet in fact -, made a lot of dosh and continues to make a lot of dosh and is earning OBEs, honorary PhDs, and other plaudits, no doubt a knighthood at some point, and who is also, so it seems, completely and utterly ignorant. I doubt he will be looking into alternative views/science about climate change because he’s either incredibly dense when it comes to getting the whole picture, only cherrypicking the fabricated modelled data that supports his own mindset, or he’s a greedy f**ker who couldn’t care less whether he’s right or wrong but is out for himself.
In the early 90’s my brother was a ‘traveller’, if you remember those – huge bands of unwashed crusties roaming the countryside in buses and lorries, a great many of them in the Cotswolds. He knew Dale Vince then as a fellow traveller. My brother was always amazed at his rise to riches!
I have just watched the interview and
“he’s a greedy f**ker who couldn’t care less whether he’s right or wrong but is out for himself.”
pretty much sums this POS up.
Stroud. That doesn’t surprise me..
Dale Vince cares so much about the future and children he ditched his wife and child leaving them with no money. He’s the sort of feral money-grubber who should be called out at every opportunity.
Vince is a rent seeker supreme.
Here are Anti Nets Zero leaflets print
Here are Anti Net Zero leaflets print
link to the PDF t.me/MillionLightPaperAndLeaflet/138
Ben Pile missed the opportunity to explain to the listening public that so-called renewable energy requires gas/oil/coal/nuclear provision to back it up when the wind doesn’t blow or blows too hard and when the sun doesn’t shine or gets too hot.
So they get to pay twice: for the unreliable, intermittent, expensive to install “green” generators. And for the reliable, constant alternatives – which already have the infrastructure in place.
This needs hammering home in every interview.
Indeed – IMO the most powerful and simplest argument. Until you have viable storage, which might be never, wind doesn’t really make much sense. The only way it would make sense is if it were cheaper or greener than hydrocarbons, and hydrocarbons might run out one day – then you could look at it as a way to save your hydrocarbon reserves. Those things probably aren’t the case though. If your preferred backup is nuclear, wind doesn’t make any sense at all because you might as well go 100% nuclear as I doubt nuclear power stations are any cheaper to run when they are NOT generating electricity.
And the other method of production that is not often mentioned by the Greenies is tidal flow generation, like the Severn Barrage project and so on. Tide levels are predictable and reliable – but they don’t like the potential effect on wildlife. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/6-severn-tidal-power-impact-assessment
There is a lot of capital outlay in many things. At present, some methods of generation are not used as “backuo”, but they like to supply “base load”, to maximise cash flow. In particular, the nuclear stations, partly for that reason, and because they tend to be slow to adjust. If you look at the graphs in https://grid.iamkate.com/ you can see that their output is virtually a flat line – and a bit lower than it used to be, due to closure of older stations while investment has slumped.
Tidal makes more sense to me than wind.
Currently getting 13.4% of demand from mainly-nuclear France. I wouldn’t want to rely on them.
Tidal energy will slow the moon down and eventually it will plunge inrto the earth. Now that would be a global catastrophe!
Haha.. bloody brilliant.. I’m avin that one.. cheers roubles
Tidal is expensive and a Severn barrage would be damaging to wildlife. Its output is predictable, but not necessarily coincident with demand. And the potential capacity is not all that significant compared to what we will need if we electrify society
No, they’d only let the water through when power was needed. That’s why you build a barrage. If you want to generate just on tidal flow you can put the generators on the sea bed and most of the ecological damage (and cost) is eliminated.
There is a reason tidal isn’t used – Cost. To build a Seven barrage would require billions of tonnes of concrete over a ten mile length and the positioning and siting of it would be one of the largest civil engineering projects in British history. Then you have the problem of silt, the severn bore, what to do when flooding occurs upstream etc when you are holding back the water to use at peak times.
None of this is necessary, there is no AGW and we can build nuclear and clean coal plants which will give us safe, cheap and reliable energy production for the necessary 100 years max .
The main point you make in your last paragraph is the important one.. there is no AGW.. Just lots of hot air from vested interests to make it so. Its a pack of lies..
Jam tomorrow is always their answer.
Jam for themselves is the answer, while you eat plain, stale bread.
Single use energy…no impact on the green technology apart from its 10 year life and then manufacture and buy again. Snake oil salesman
Dale Vince is a liar. Not one thing he says in that interview is true. He denied Pile the chance to prove it by shouting over him. The presenter should have told him to shut up. All that these creatures have is lies and noise. They never allow anyone to put the opposite case and nor, for that matter, do most Governments. The Science is far from settled, Government has settled for the lie. Truth means nothing any more.
Government hasn’t settled for a lie.. they are an integral part of the lie along with their masters in Davos.. tossers..
SO the Government is Behind it all & fuelling it ?
Correct.
One thing you learn in the City is you can make untold money IF you know what’s going to happen in the future. What has happened is the mega rich, corporations and politicians have decided on this insane plan and are busy milking us of all our wealth.
Carney gave the game away on that a year or so back.. he openly declared that anyone who didn’t agree with the green net zero nonsense would be bankrupted.. Its a stitch up!
The only environmental crisis here is the tonnes of oily greenwash oozing from this slimy grifting spiv.
From a lovely Aussie friend of mine, this is how he deals with the Net Zero Climate Emergency hogwash without triggering the brainwashed.
It is clear there is no climate crisis.
I have found a way to discuss the topic more effectively with the sheeple.
I use this process in every one of my TNT Radio Shows.
I use this process in every one on one discussion.
I use it in every public presentation.
I say:
This avoids the emotional, fear-based response of sheeple who try to accuse anyone who questions the climate crisis of “not caring about our planet or the future”.
See if it works for you
It’s just more rhetoric. And you will just getting them saying “Of course I agree with the other points but 96% of climate experts say….” and you’re off again on the propaganda.
We always hear about “Big Oil” and “Greedy Energy Companies”. But NEVER about “Big Wind” that gets 100% subsidy because otherwise none would be built because they are totally uneconomical. Or we never hear about “Big Green”, even although everything green is worse and costs more, usually all paid for by us on our energy bills. ————–Oil and gas are the devil incarnate but wind and sun, smart meters that will charge you more depending if the wind is blowing or not and electric cars are all sweetness and light. ————–mmmmmmmmm . In no other industry will you get paid in full when your product sits idle, but wind DOES.
The thing that came across to me regarding the strike price of wind energy is that the companies are forcing the customers to pay a higher price and hence are making massively more profit from us poor saps.
I have yet to hear an answer to where the electricity is coming from on still. cold nights from the deranged green zealots, other than pie in the sky storage. Is this going to be viable even, let alone having capacity by 2050.
And as for his dismissal of lack of cars, yes, of course there will be old cars on the road but will the government allow the infrastructure to support them at reasonable cost?
Full article here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/demolishing-dale-vince-ecotricity-disinformation?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
It also covers Dale lending £19.9m of his proceeds from the sale of The Electric Highway Company back to his company which is quite a lot for someone who claims to have only a few thousand in his current account and no other savings or investments. He bought his 49% stake the Electric Highway Company for £49 in 2016 and it was sold for £74m in 2021. He also used his Directors loan account as a massive ATM, taking out £7m from it after selling some of his shares back to the Group in a buyback.
If it is going to make electricity so cheap then it won’t need subsidising will it?
Oh wait, it does!
The only reason electricity prices have risen so fast in the UK is because our govt has linked electricity prices to that of gas AND put us in the European energy market, an insane system where sellers bid to supply and everyone gets the highest price that meets total demand
That’s not quite true. Electricity prices rose steadily form 2010 to 2020 while gas prices remained stable. The driver of price increases was renewables.
.https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/exposing-the-hidden-costs-of-renewables?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
We actually had a pretty good energy market in the in the UK until the government interfered.
You can also extrapolate the above into almost any other facet of our society and economy.
Of course people will lose their cars, that is in the Govts own plan, in the UN2030 plan that we signed up to and in the govt backed UK FIRES “Absolute Zero” paper that states 50% of all car journies will have to end, we’ll have to close all but 3 UK airports and end all shipping to and from the UK by 2050 to meet our Net Zero target.
(Useful graphic on Page 5)
https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/75916920-51f6-4f9c-ade5-52cbf55d5e73/content
In this article the author explains about the demise of road networks in the West and East and shows what happens next How to Downsize a Transport Network: The Chinese Wheelbarrow | LOW←TECH MAGAZINE (lowtechmagazine.com)
If the unreliables business was such a good business it wouldn’t need subsidising by taxpayers
Every vote for an establishment party sends more money to Vince and his kind.
I’ve been writing letters of complaints to the Commissioners for Standards of both houses, because there is unquestionable evidence in Companies House that some amongst their Members have been and are committing synthetic identity fraud. Some have registered multiple identities in Companies House, by using a different spelling of their name or address, or even by using a different date of birth. Rishi Sunak (3 identities, verifiably his, with 2 dates of birth) and Akshata Murty (2 identities, verifiably hers, with 2 dates of birth) are prime examples. Registering multiple identities corrupts audits and due diligence for Anti-Money laundering and puts us at risk that they are involved in terrorism financing. Dale Vince is an active director of 46 companies, too many to avoid conflicts of interest, I would challenge. However, he is also a serial synthetic identity fraudster with interests scattered across 31 identities. Unfortunately for us Action Fraud’s reporting system is an effective barrier to getting this investigated. I’ve started a petition which I hope you might sign. I’m off to a slow start as these fraudsters have been taking advantage of a loophole in Companies House’s de-duplication process, unchecked for years. Investigate synthetic identity fraud by MPs | 38 Degrees
Daily Sceptic, can I interest you in doing an article on synthetic identity, which is rampant amongst our political and business leaders? Having more than one identity registered in Companies House corrupts any audits and due diligence for anti-money laundering, focussed on that individual. It is an enabler of corporate crime, money laundering and terrorism financing. We need to let the Commissioners for Standards know that we will not tolerate synthetic identity fraudsters in politics or business. Only then can our democracy function with transparency, integrity and accountability.
Alison I’m absolutely with you on this. We are talking about ‘phoenix’ businesses ‘rogue’ directors and more. The practise of ‘synthetic identity’ fraud has been widespread throughout, for as long as I can remember. I’ve been in the business of exposing these characters (serial rogue directors) to victims and potential victims for 30 odd years now.
It comes as no surprise to me that political leaders are jumping on the same incredibly lucrative bandwagon. Im only surprised that it has become so blatant. A reflection of the world we currently occupy.
Sadly it has been creepng up on us for some time. insidious.
Shocking that these practises, long frowned upon by honest business leaders, accountants and Insolvency Proffesionals, appear to be being taken up by our political leaders as well. I suppose you’d have to wonder, why ever not? The opportunity is glaringly obvious.
Is everything nowadays about grabbing as much as you can?
Honour, proffesionalism and respect appears to have had its day.
No wonder the world is in the state its in, when the examples of our so called leaders are such.
And they get away with it no questions asked.
I’m starting to despair a bit!
Thanks Ian. We urgently need to pull together to stop the corruption. Since synthetic identities corrupt audits, our political and business systems are a House of Cards. Regarding the complaints that are under review by the Commissions for Standards, it would help if they know that more people are aware of this fraud and that we will not tolerate it continuing to go unchecked. I hope you and many others will sign my petition, Investigate synthetic identity fraud by MPs | 38 Degrees. I’d really appreciate help with spreading the word.