On Wednesday, the Reform Party held a press conference where it unveiled its policies on Net Zero. “Reform UK puts the renewables industry on notice,” explained its tweet. Central to this intervention is a “windfall tax on renewable generated power”, to “claw back” the vast subsidies that the sector has received – now amounting to roughly £10 billion per year. But despite this being the first policy statement from a Westminster political party to depart from the climate consensus this century, not all Net Zero sceptics are happy with it.
They may have cause to complain. Windfall taxes are far from the letting-the-market-decide policies that one might expect Reform leader Nigel Farage and deputy leader Richard Tice to offer. Tice’s introduction, for example, highlighted his impressive business experience. And it has long been a major criticism of the green agenda that subsidy regimes seemingly ‘picked winners’. Surely the free-market centre Right stalwarts couldn’t be proposing punitive taxes? Along these lines, the Telegraph’s Andrew Lilico tweeted, “This is very silly” and that “If you don’t want to subsidise something, remove the subsidy; don’t tax the subsidy”. The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Harry Wilkinson was concerned with the chaos that the tax could create, telling Talk TV’s Ian Collins that it could increase bills.
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Too wishy-washy by far. Too much pandering to The Enemy.
Repeal the 2008 Climate Claptrap Act, Disband the Climate Claptrap Committee, Scrap Net Zero.
No half measures. Get the job done.
My views entirely.
The announcement from Reform certainly alienated me. The suggestion that the threat of taxing the green blob will secure votes is a fair stretch. The majority of people want black and white proposals not mind games politics. On the face of it the article is a decent attempt at excusing a cock-up but I am not convinced. Why not do a Trump and simply announce that when Reform accede to government ALL Nut Zero projects will be cancelled, all unreliables subsidies will be cancelled and oil, gas and fracking, backed up by nuclear, will be the bedrock of our re-industrialisation strategy. The general public want simple solutions not cod psychology.
All of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030 need to be scrapped, not just Net Zero.
Can’t afford to frighten all of the horses so far from a general election. In my view too manyt sympathisers are too ready to jump on Reform if a comma or full stop is misplaced or if policies and statements are not, exactly, as they themselves would have drafted it.
So what if they are jumped on though? – they need to own their stance / position and defend it if they truly believe in it… do they truly believe in it?
Seek damage payments from the culprits.
Scrapping net zero is already Reform policy
By taxing it?
i’m not sure quite why “Net Zero sceptics” aren’t happy with ending energy subsidies for wind and solar projects. The article doesn’t really say.
As someone who is not a sceptic but rather a full throated enemy of Net Zero stupidity, I think ending subsidies is great, I do also think that creating political uncertainty around subsidies will make companies more hesitant and reluctant to embark on new projects, because the profitability of those projects depend entirely on political support for them.
My main doubt in all this is whether the Net Zero and broader climate change industrial complex can be stopped and dismantled without challenging the fundamental premises of the climate change story, which are all completely made up and unproven but nonetheless are still to this day sold relentlessly to the public.
Sold is too soft. Rammed down the public’s throat is probably more accurate.
“Rammed down the public’s throat is probably more accurate.”
Seconded.
Some would enjoy that!
If a Reform candidate wanted to tax existing Feed in Tariff customers, they wouldn’t vote for that Party. At present, FiT revenue for a house owner is not regarded as income, from an income tax perspective, so it is not declared to HMRC, unlike interest from cash accounts.
I would question how many actual or potential Reform voters are existing Feed in Tariff customers, but I would also hope that most of them would vote Reform anyway, on the issue of immigration – if they want their race and civilisation to survive.
I am subsidising existing Feed in Tariff customers, and people with EVs, and heat pumps. Some people have batteries attached to their panels, they can always use those instead of feeding in.
I’m one.
One what?
We are also paying an ever increasing Standing Charge to deal with the instability on the grid that rooftop solar brings.
What Ben says about Spain with regard to solar applies just as well to Germany where unfettered rooftop solar is flooding the grid with power it does not need and is bleeding the government dry of tax revenue to pay their constraint payments. April will see the German grid coming under increasing pressure and may well fail. It would be useful for everyone – except Germans – if they are forced into a black start so we can all find out bad it will be.
I am puzzled. Surely the crucial point is that the subsidies cannot be removed without the state breaking the terms of the contracts with the providers. I have zero sympathy for the providers but equally I do believe that sticking to contract terms is important and it’s not a good idea generally for governments to break them. I kind of assume that this is the reason for the slightly weird approach of taxing the providers to claw the money back. But Reform haven’t really made that clear, at least not from what I have seen, and this article only alludes to it rather than stating it explicitly. Maybe I am missing the point.
“…I do believe that sticking to contract terms is important and it’s not a good idea generally for governments to break them.”
Except tof, this is the modus operandi of this government.
I do agree however that as the comments here and elsewhere prove Reform have made a complete dog’s dinner of announcing how they will deal with the madness of Nut Zero.
I think the message was fairly clear, but I agree it could have been done better. For once, I am not the least optimistic person.
I see it the same way. If a government breaks a contract, it’s liable to be taken to court. It happens all the time.
That said, I’m pretty sure the threat of removal of subsidies, even if it represents a breach of contract, works to discourage corporations from embarking on big new renewables projects. These corporations are sensitive to which way the political wind is blowing especially when the business model relies completely on state subsidies.
I don’t think the decisions makers in these corporations think: “let’s go for it even if we know the next government is going to remove the subsidies illegally; we’ll just take them to court, win and it’ll all be fine.” The potential costs, uncertainty, disruption of maybe having to face a hostile government in the future and fight it in court even with high chances of success will weigh heavily.
So in that sense, even the bluster helps. That, at least, is my take away from the article.
Those Judges will have to be delt with…..Enemies of the People!
Either way yes it will make firms and their investors think twice.
When you get into power, create a ‘National Interest Act’, whereby if a contract signed by a previous government can be shown to be to the detriment of the nation, or large parts thereof, that contract can be terminated without notice and without penalty.
Surely that is somewhere in Common Law.
I’m a member, signed up when they had less than 20,000.
18 months ago I was walking with the family along Tintagel Head, amazed to see Farage strolling briskly towards my family along the path. ‘Nigel!’ I called, just a friendly greeting. He utterly blanked me. No recognition, no nod, wave or word. No cameras around, presumably.
I learned something that day.
Reform isn’t perfect.
It is the least worst alternative.
All it takes is a courtesy wave, didn’t know he was like that and that is not the impression he gives with his ‘Talking Pints’ show; bloke on the Clapham Omnibus.
Unlike him. I always found him totally courteous even to people he had no reason to empathise with. Was he on the phone? Maybe he was thinking – a rare activity for politicians, but for Reform not so rare.
Phone? I’d have said so. No.
Just bad manners.
I interpreted the Reform announcement as a warning to those tempted to invest in the Net Zero SCAM that their investment would be very risky … and therefore a deterrent that will start applying NOW, not in a few year’s when Reform may be elected.
It was made very clear to Nat Grid’s shareholders/potential shareholders that if they pursue with the blight of our landscape with massive pylons, they will be forced to remove and bury the cables with no dividends payable until the work has been completed. That alone could act as a “snooker” for Red Ed’s environmentally destructive electrification plans.
Exactly!
Is Reform the solution? We had to wait for Vance to go on the front foot and attack Europe for its totalitarianism. There’s your answer.
I think Reform have been saying many similar things. However, Vance achieved huge publicity because of who he was and the high profile nature of the forum. I have no doubt that Reform are learning many lessons from Trump and the MAGA movement.
With Ben Habab gone i’m not sure. Nigel is luke warm in his support for the AFD just because of a few bad eggs…..Musk gets it, there is too much at stake to be as petty as Nigel Farage. Lucky it wasn’t me walking past Nigel because I would have a few things to say, like asking about Mark Steyn and why he was asking to see his medical report when he was in Hospital.
You think there is a better option with any real prospect of political power? Please give us the name of this miraculous party and its leader.
I can name a few with no real prospect.
Farage twice dismantled powerful populist movements allowing the treachery of the establishment to flourish to such a point that some consider that since that time (2016 putting UKIP to bed and 2019 standing down 317 candidates) by the next election in 2029 it may be too late anyway to save our great country from tipping over the edge. There is nobody else around at the moment better than Farage but he sure needs his toes holding to the fire to make sure he doesn’t make the same mistake again.
The underlying issue is that “Reform” is a new organisation, which is making it up as it goes along. Weather it ever contributes to the real world, we’ll see. But it is quite likely that many ideas will have to change when they grow up.
Unlike all the established political parties that never make it up as they go along, always deliver on promises and never mislead, like the Labour Party that I think you said you voted for.
What “ideas” of theirs will have to change, how and when, and what do you mean by “grow up”? I hadn’t noticed grownups in charge for the last few decades.
“and, as a result, cause the skyrocketing of energy prices in the post lockdown era”
And also the physical, in your face, blowing up of coal fired power stations, like a retreating army leaving a pile of rubble behind them to slow the enemy.
All courtesy of the Enemy Within. Someone please advise on location of nearest lampost to swing from.
I thought the windfall tax was just to claw back some of the subsidies. I didn’t think it meant a permanent tax since subsidies would no longer be offered!
Yes that would make sense
But won’t energy prices will rise to the consumer to cover the windfall tax?
Possibly, but would the same not be true if subsidies were removed?
Essentially the problem is that we’ve prevented investment in cheap and/or reliable generation and it will take decades to sort that out.
“But by signalling that no company engaged in such an extraction of wealth from the public will be allowed to be profitable, and with polling making Reform’s threat credible, the party’s policy even in opposition has the effect of turning investors away from the current Government’s absurd profligacy.”
After initially being unimpressed with the policy, after consideration I too came to that conclusion – it might be to put off further investment in this madness, ratter than an actual plan when in Government.
As a Reform member, I am entirely happy with the announcements. If they were to do a Trump and tear up all the Net Zero contracts that the useless uniparty have put in place, the courts will be overwhelmed with cases, that will all be found in the favour of the green lobby, because of the Tory policies and politically active judges. That way there will be no change in the cost of energy but the tax payer will have to fund the massive legal bill. By saying to the energy companies, you can keep your contract however badly in your favour it was framed, but if you make more than a certain profit, we will tax it, there is no chance for judicial meddling.
Taxing subsidies is a totally insane idea because it means money is ultimately circling back to where it came from minus the amount lost due to inevitable administrative friction. Sort of like pumping water from a reservoir through a leaky pipe back into the reservoir. In the end, this process will have had a cost and the outcome is less water in the reservoir than before.
Milijunk will of course seek to stop future governments from changing his energy policy via so-called “long term contracts.” The solution to that is to void them via parliamentary vote. And that’s what Reform should be announcing: We will not honour agreements negotiated between corrupt Labour politicians and the people who paid them as part of a conspiracy against the best interest of the populace.
No government can bind its successor!
Twenty year index linked subsidies have allowed many renewable projects to achieve an IRR of well over 15%. I’ve even seen some as high as 40%, using tax leverage. Because the subsidies can’t be revoked (legally binding), a windfall tax is a great way to shut the scam down. Expect a rush of existing renewable assets to come on the market soon. Sounds like it’s time to get out, party is over. Perhaps Miliband’s dumb ‘British Energy’ or whatever it’s called will overpay for the windmills, Chinese panels, and so on, and we’ll get one last layer of icing on the renewables cake….thank you, British consumers, lions led by donkeys
Reform should have just said they will stop all subsidies to renewable generators. If they can’t turn a profit with electricity at todays prices they deserve to fail.
Same with EV’s, no perks, subsidies or tax breaks.
Use the money to accelerate nuclear power, at the same time remove ‘windfall taxes’ from oil and gas and start fracking.
We’d soon see an end to net zero and cheaper energy prices.
Reform simply has to copy our President’s executive orders. Basically do the exact opposite of what Biden/Harris did for 4 yrs. But, most
importantly, reform needs a great leader….that will be the difficult part.
I’m struggling to understand why such a windfall tax would increase prices. The strike prices are already agreed. The windfall tax will come out of the profits of green energy companies.
It might indeed increase the strike prices that the companies demanded for future auctions. But does anyone believe that there would actually be any future auctions considering that Reform are committed to abolishing Net Zero? (It was in their last manifesto, known as “Our Contract with You” and still available on Reform’s website, which said that Reform will “scrap net zero and related subsidies”.)
The commitment to these taxes was in fact in that manifesto as well. It said, “Scrap £10 billion a year of renewable energy subsidies – achieve this through equivalent taxes on them.”
Those who have said that Reform have no clear policies are either lying or mistaken.
I benefited from a solar panel installation on my house roof installed about ten years ago and we had a better feed in tariff deal from the government than is available now. The guy who sold us the installation said as well as helping the government’s green agenda we should recover the cost in about seven years. I was a bit sceptical about that, but in fact the savings exceeded the cost slightly before the seven years was up. I feel it is entirely wrong to despoil our countryside and waste good agricultural land with solar panels when there are massive suitable areas of factory and warehouse roofs not being used. Even so like most sensible people I am against net-zero and in particular Ed Sillibands drive to cripple our country’s finances with his stupid ideas. For example, biomass is not beneficial in any way to the planet’s health, but stupid Ed is using tons of it to power the Drax Power station. I agree that companies or organisations benefitting from millions of pounds in subsidies for ineffective and unreliable green energy projects that are useless when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine should be forced to pay the money that is financially crippling us and making our energy the most expensive in the world back to us and I hope the spivs involved will think twice about ruining our country and its industry.