At 47 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour (c/KWh) the U.K. has some of the highest household energy costs in the world. Countries like India (7 c/KWh) and China (8 c/KWh) and South Korea (9 c/KWh) pay around a fifth of U.K. prices. The U.S. at 18 c/KWh, France at 21 c/KWh, Singapore at 22 c/KWh and Japan at 25 c/KWh pay around half of the U.K.’s prices. Only Germany at a massive 52 c/KWh and Denmark at 53 c/KWh pay more than we do.
What effect will Sir Keir Starmer’s ambition to turn Britain into a “clean energy superpower” and ban any further oil and gas exploration have on the price we will pay for our electricity, assuming he becomes our next Prime Minister?
In general (there are some exceptions such as Germany) the more coal a country uses for its energy, the cheaper that energy is (source Our World in Data):
India energy cost 7 c/KWh, 57% of energy from coal
China energy cost 8 c/KWh, 55% of energy from coal
South Korea energy cost 9 cKWh, 24% of energy from coal
USA energy cost 18 c/KWh, 11% of energy from coal
Britain energy cost 47 c/KWh, 3% of energy from coal
Germany energy cost 52 c/KWh, 17% of energy from coal
We have, of course, plenty of energy-rich coal in Britain. But we’re not allowed to use it because the CO2 emissions will supposedly cause a climate catastrophe possibly wiping out the human race. As Prince, now King, Charles warned us in May 2009, “The best scientific projections indicate that we have very little time left – indeed less than 100 months – in which to alter our behaviour drastically.”
There are many other analyses we could do. For example, you could compare how much nuclear energy a country uses with its energy cost. If we take three neighbouring countries – France, Britain and Germany — we see that France with energy costs of 21 c/KWh gets 36% of its power from nuclear, whereas Britain (47 c/KWh) only gets 6% from nuclear and Germany (52 c/KWh) 5% and is closing down the last of its nuclear power stations in the next few years.
However, as Sr Keir plans a massive increase in wind and solar power for Britain, an issue which might worry British households and businesses is that that the more renewables – solar and wind – a country uses, the higher its energy costs seem to be in spite of our politicians claiming that renewables such as solar and wind will give us a glorious green cheap energy future:
India energy cost 7 c/KWh, 3% of energy from solar and wind
China energy cost 8 c/KWh, 6% of energy from solar and wind
South Korea energy cost 9 c/KWh, 2% of energy from solar and wind
USA energy cost 18 c/KWh, 6% from solar and wind
Britain energy cost 47 c/KWh, 10% of energy from solar and wind
Germany energy cost 52 c/KWh, 13% from solar and wind
But the situation with supposed ‘clean energy’ such as solar and wind may be much worse than the above figures suggest. Why? Because we’re not actually paying the full cost of unreliable, intermittent and expensive solar and wind. Instead, our rulers are hiding the full cost from us by giving massive subsidies from general taxation to solar and wind projects. For example, in the five years from 2016 to 2021, the British government was reported as paying £8.7 billion in subsidies to renewable energy companies. That’s £1.74 billion a year – a cost that should have appeared on households’ and companies’ electricity bills were there no subsidies from general taxation.
Moreover, the costs for ‘green energy’ don’t include the cost of keeping gas, oil or even coal plants available to be fired up on days when there is no sun or too little or too much wind.
The United States recently approved a $430 billion new green energy subsidy package labelled the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), offering tax breaks for components used in renewable energy technologies on condition they’re made in North America, again hiding the true cost of ‘green’ energy to homes and businesses.
Looking at the figures, there appear to be two quite distinct energy worlds. There’s the real world in which countries which burn a lot of coal and use very little wind and solar have low energy prices of just a few cents/KWh and staggering growth rates as industry and jobs naturally gravitate towards countries with low energy costs. Then there’s the green energy fantasyland where massive taxpayer subsidies and hiding the true costs of green energy allow politicians to claim that the transition from fossil fuels to supposed ‘clean energy’ like wind and solar will give their countries cheap, reliable energy security.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the prices British households and businesses have to pay for their electricity as the country moves towards our politicians’ nirvana of carbon neutrality.
As for Sir Keir ‘Just Stop Oil’ Starmer’s boast that he’s going to make Britain a ‘clean energy superpower’ – the figures from many countries show this is complete nonsense. All he’s going to do is push up U.K. energy prices, export British jobs, crush the U.K. economy and bankrupt Britain.
David Craig’s latest book There is No Climate Crisis is available as a paperback or ebook from Amazon.
Stop Press: In a strong editorial, the Daily Mail warns that Keir Starmer’s “mad dash to Net Zero” will leave us all poorer.
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