Green levies helping to support supposed cheap wind and solar power have soared in Labour’s Budget and will quickly add many hundreds of pounds to household electricity bills. This shock news is to be found in the details released by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Needless to say, no mention was made of the sudden subsidy spike in the Chancellor’s Budget Statement to Parliament. But the detailed figures reveal that the levies are set to confiscate £16 billion a year from consumers from next year. This is equivalent to nearly £600 a household, but the situation is only likely to get much worse with the Mad Miliband committed to a 95% renewable grid within six years.
The problems don’t stop there. A renewable grid based on breezes and sun beams needs back-up when Mother Nature fails to co-operate. Earlier this week, the wind stopped blowing for a couple of days and minimal power was obtained from this source. The pretence that there is any realistic back up other than a secondary gas-based system is fading fast. Fintan Slye, the head of the operation controlling electricity supply into the grid, recently noted: “There will continue to be a significant amount of power plants in reserve for the cold, dull, windless weeks of winter, but they will run for limited periods.” To date we have yet to have sight of an official estimate of what all this might cost.
In the meantime, and it seems just for starters, British consumers have £16 billion to find every year, as the graph below compiled by Andrew Montford from Net Zero Watch shows.
Montford shows that the estimated cost of green levies (mostly renewables) has shot up in the last 18 months with estimates rising between 20% and 120%. In its report, the OBR blames the jump on the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme that compensates suppliers for low electricity prices but claws back money when rates rise above a certain level. Loosely-worded contracts seem to mean that money only flows one way into the pockets of the subsidy-hunting turbine owners. Montford notes that the OBR is “no longer pretending” that CfD contracts will be paying back to consumers “in the foreseeable future”.
The figures involved are staggering. Montford explains that 18 months ago the OBR was predicting that CfDs would save consumers nearly £10 billion between 2023-24 and 2028-29. However, six months ago, “they decided it would actually ‘cost’ us £9 billion. And today they have announced that it will cost us £12 billion”, he added. Faced with these figures, the general public may recall that one of the first actions of the incoming Labour Government was to abolish an annual winter fuel allowance for older people, saving just £1.5 billion. Some might observe that such a sum is little more than a rounding error in the fantasy world of green economics and subsidies.
The environmental levies cover a variety of green rackets from paying suppliers to produce uneconomic and environmentally unfriendly energy, to persuading consumers to buy inferior technologies. The investigative journalist Paul Homewood has been digging into the subsidy figures for years amid promises from politicians that “rapidly falling” wind power costs would bring bills tumbling down. “Now we know that was always a lie,” observed Homewood last year.
In fact, Homewood suggests, an even greater burden is being placed on U.K. electricity consumers. The feed-in tariff scheme that pays consumers for electricity generated from solar panels has been excluded by the OBR. Although the scheme is no longer open to new applicants, it is yet another subsidy and still costs almost £2 billion a year. The renewable heat incentive is another £1 billion plus boondoggle ignored by the OBR, while the climate change levy, added to business costs, chips in another £2 billion.
All in all, Homewood estimated last year that Net Zero taxes and levies were set to cost the British consumers almost £100 billion over the next six years. The Labour Budget just put that up by at least £25 billion. The Net Zero black hole gets bigger by the day.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environmental Editor.
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Foreign aid is a luxury that Britain can no longer afford
‘During Sling Stone, a Standard Missile-3 Block IIA launched from Andersen Air Force Base successfully intercepted a Medium Range Ballistic Missile target more than 200 nautical miles northeast of Guam.’
An anti ballistic missile air defence system is expensive, missiles $5m/shot plus expensive command and control, target acquisition, tracking and launcher equipment.
We don’t have any except those fitted to Type 45 destroyers and they are designed to protect our aircraft carriers.
It seems unlikely that Putin will fire nuclear missiles at Britain. But he has fired non nuclear ballistic missiles at Ukraine and he has already killed and wounded British citizens on British soil.
Defence must come first, a given in the period after WW2.
This country has forgotten what an unmitigated disaster war is.
We must be able to deter aggression to prevent war.
Deterrence is the most cost effective form of defence….but you cannot do it on the cheap…..
I wonder how many civilians British missiles have killed and injured in the southern border regions of Russia?
Not as many as the Russian missiles have killed in Ukraine.
Many Ukrainians have been killed by their own missiles, and that doesn’t include the thousands of casualties from the Ukrainian shelling of Donbas towns.
Equipped with advanced navigation and guidance systems, the Storm Shadow is designed to minimize collateral damage while achieving high mission success rates.
‘Italian Tornado IDS aircraft also fired between 20 and 30 Storm Shadows during this campaign. This was the first time Italy fired the missile operationally, and it had a 97 percent success rate.’
Which must mean that they were deliberately targeting Russian civilians.
According to the Daily Sceptic, correctly:
“An alleged rapist who identified as a woman has died before he was due to appear in court charged with raping a young girl, reports the Mail.”
And according to the judge, correctly:
“His Honour Judge Nicholas Rowland said: ‘I haven’t had any sight of correspondence concerning Mr Wilson.'”
Yet according to the Daily Mail, insanely:
“An alleged rapist who identified as a woman has died before she was due to appear at court charged with raping a young girl with ‘your penis’.”
“she”!
The Daily Mail refers to the alleged rapist as “she” throughout the article, despite the references to his penis, and reporting that the judge referred to the man as “Mr Wilson”.
Why is the Daily Mail choosing to be so insane?
Of course, the BBC refers to the alleged rapist as “she” too, but we expect no better from the BBC:
“News of the death of Maddison Wilson, who was born male but identified as a woman, was given in Southampton Crown Court ahead of a plea hearing she was due to attend on Wednesday.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y920n0zj4o
“Her death has been listed at the Portsmouth Coroner’s Court, which said she died in Southsea two days after she appeared at Southampton Magistrates’ Court.”
Did the Portsmouth Coroner’s Court actually say “she” died in Southsea…, or is this the BBC deliberately misreporting?
The Telegraph manages to avoid referring to him as either ‘he’ or ‘she’, apart from quoting an inquest stating “…she has suffered with mental health challenges for a number of years.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/26/trans-woman-dies-facing-trial-for-raping-young-girl/
They should all just report such men as “trans-identified man” and use the appropriate “he” pronoun. I note the writers of these articles are all men, but could just be coincidence given how many women are also on-board with this woke bollocks. Misogyny is rife but with regards to the Trans agenda and Islam, both of these camps also hide and enable sexual predators and paedophiles. These creeps are then protected and enabled to carry out their degenerate behaviour due to the useful woketard idiots, as we well know by now. Reality and biological fact, that has served us perfectly well since the year dot, take a back seat.
So many mentally ill narcissists in the Transtifa cult. You know they’re narcissists because their ‘transness’ is their entire identity and consumes them and they live their lives online, seeking continuous validation. Just one of countless examples. The self-obsession is off the scale;
https://x.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1894875559164866677
Ho dear, how sad, never mind!
Well, he doesn’t identify as anything any more, thank goodness.
“Wind turbines to be painted black to stop bird strikes” Also reported by the “World Service” in the small hours. Perhaps the wind will keep them cool – but what about calm, bright days? Spot the potential snag.
How to make an eyesore more visible against the skyline? In the words of the Stones – paint it black.
Having just got a quote for painting the outside of my house (scaffolding now mandatory) I’m guessing the cost of painting wind turbines would be eye watering.
It’s probably more likely that they could be made in that colour in the factory, rather than actually “painting” them. After all, almost any paint would wear off out at sea; you’d get black & white spots all over then – perhaps easier to spot, especially given that bird eyesight is a lot better than ours!
“‘I will never be truly English: here is why’” – We have allowed what once made England distinctive to be diluted, denigrated and demonised, says Suella Braverman…
“…To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots,” said Solzenyhtsin decades ago.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/27/europe-left-behind-trump-grabs-ukraines-mineral-wealth/
This is one of the ways in which the defence budget used to pay for itself.
Britain’s armoured formations deterred an invasion of Kuwait in 1961.
The first gulf war in 1990/91 cost upwards of £100 billion.
And Britain’s military presence in the region until 1971 gave this country preferential access to the natural resources of the gulf nations.
Harold Wilson gave all that up, withdrawing British influence from the fastest growing regions of the world east of Suez.
Wilson was a civil servant before entering politics.
Britain requires businessmen at the helm, and, realistically, only one party is offering that…..
I understood he was an Oxford academic. I have always wondered how he could afford homes in Hutton, Westminster and on Scilly Isles. Also a farm, I heard.
He certainly had a house in the Hampstead Garden suburb. I am not sure he owned anything in Westminster apart from living rent free in Downing Street.
“Counting the dead” – Laura Dodsworth exposes how the UK’s chaotic Covid death toll counting fuelled fear, buried the truth and left a trail of bad policy in its wake…
…Died of, died with and murdered by the State.
“Wind turbines to be painted black to stop bird strikes”
That’ll be a windfall for the petrochemical industry.
There is a excruciating advert on the radio at the moment, in which members of the “public” talk about how amazing their heat pumps are, apparently even the cats love it. I don’t know about you but I’m convinced.
Every other advert now seems to be some sort of nudging or government infomercial.
I don’t know about you but I’m convinced.
I must rush out and get one!! These nudge adverts piss me off.
Pisses me off even more knowing we are probably indirectly paying for it in some form or another…
Yes, the very cheek of them thinking I’m gullible enough to rush out and buy something just because some actors on the radio are telling me how great it is.
“‘I will never be truly English: here is why’” –says Suella Braverman in the Telegraph.”
She will never be truly English, because English people all around the world are descended from their Ethnic European = White ancestors, who have lived in these islands for more than a thousand years, and built England into a great nation. Just as their descendants built other lands into great nations, wherever they went on the planet.
“English” is an ETHNIC IDENTITY, a Tribal Identity, a Shared Genetic Kinship among White People, not a mere nationality or birthplace.
Just as she and her parents are Ethnic Indian Subcontinentals, regardless of their specific tribe, nationality or birthplace.
Both of her Ethnic Indian parents had used African countries as stepping-stones to the West, as Ethnic Africans in Africa have often said of Indian Subcontinentals in Africa.
Neither in her mother’s country of Mauritius, nor her father’s country of Kenya, were they considered by Ethnic African people to be Ethnic African.
Nor do Ethnic Indians in Africa consider themselves to be Ethnic Africans, regardless of birthplace.
Nor do Ethnic Africans in India consider themselves to be Ethnic Indians, regardless of birthplace.
Only in the West do Third World Ethnic immigrants demand to be falsely considered as Ethnic Europeans.
Good video by Jenrick. Proving that Starmer and his chums are not only traitors, but are the zealot’s zealot.