£500 on electricity bills to pay for green energy

Electricity bills will have to rise by up to £500 a year to pay for a new generation of environmentally friendly power stations, it emerged.

Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, will outline government plans today to encourage energy companies to develop low-carbon power plants, including nuclear power stations and wind farms.

Energy analysts say the Coalition's plans will put Britain on course for a "high cost, low carbon" electricity market where consumers pay the price for environmentally friendly generating technology.

Energy companies say that the shift will require them to invest more than £200 billion in new power stations and networks over the next 20 years.

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk...

Brits are forking out more and more quids for green electricity?

What a scam they have fallen for!!!

It surely plays into the hands of the globalist elite and their climate change lackeys.

It was only a matter of time till they blamed us for polluting and making us pay for it lol. The wind turbines are just to save face for the government, they only contribute to 3% of our electricity due to there inefficiency. Why don't we just fill a desert with solar panels, surely this would be more affective!

Not surprised at all. The last Labour Government spent 10 years talking about the urgent need to replace the UK's power station's as many are due to close shortly. The problem is all they ever did was talk.

Now it has become deadly urgent and there is no money to pay for it. Most of our utilities are foreign owned and have not been invested in for the future. At the 11th hour the bill will be placed on the public.

I've got an even better idea...

Freeze and confiscate all energy company accounts and funds & use that to pay for the upgrades.

Take all energy companies back into public ownership, where they used to be before the tories sold them for peanuts to their banker friends. Stop running them for the benefit of shareholders and run them for the benefit of the nation instead

If any more money is needed, pronounce all debts to the bankers paid off, tell them to bugger off, and use some of the money saved to finish paying for the upgrades.

Give the rest back to the taxpayers who bailed the bastiches out in the first place.

Problem solved!

Originally posted by SparkyP
It was only a matter of time till they blamed us for polluting and making us pay for it lol.

No, they're not taxing you directly, they're blaming the utilities owning the coal / gas plants so they're taxing them, the expense is passed onto you. The end result is that coal / gas are less competitive. There's a difference. Taxing you would be pointless as the only thing it would do is increase your efficiency, but wouldn't change the source of the power.

Why don't we just fill a desert with solar panels, surely this would be more affective!

Because the UK doesn't have a desert, and it's not very practical to transmit power all the way from Northern Africa to the UK. Solar is also less reliable than wind, and around three times more expensive.


CC = Combined Cycle
IGCC = Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle
CCS = Carbon Capture and Sequestration
PF = Pulverized fuel
FOAK = First of a kind
CCGT = Combined Cycle Gas Turbine

bravenewclimate.com...

I vote Nuclear because the words "low cost, low carbon" come to mind. Also, to my understanding all of the existing infrastructure has been fully paid for, but needs replacement. Hence the cost of electricity is going to go up to pay for the new infrastructure, whether the UK builds cheap energy sources or not.

When oil went to $150 a barrel they started a "fuel surcharge" over here to get more money. The Fuel Surcharge on the power bill doubled everyone's power bills.

So everyone cut power use dramatically. Which cut revenue and resulted in a runaway need to keep raising the fuel surcharge EVEN THO oil went way below $150 a barrel.

They are proposing a 15% Fuel Surcharge increase here yet again...which will result in less power being consumed by customers....less revenue to pay Bonds/Loans/fuel costs for power production.

We've entered a runaway nightmare that's only going to get worse. It's cheaper now for us to buy gasoline to power a generator to power the house....than buy power from the grid.

Rationalize that dilemna......

Originally posted by Pervius
When oil went to $150 a barrel they started a "fuel surcharge" over here to get more money. The Fuel Surcharge on the power bill doubled everyone's power bills.

So everyone cut power use dramatically. Which cut revenue and resulted in a runaway need to keep raising the fuel surcharge EVEN THO oil went way below $150 a barrel.

They are proposing a 15% Fuel Surcharge increase here yet again...which will result in less power being consumed by customers....less revenue to pay Bonds/Loans/fuel costs for power production.

We've entered a runaway nightmare that's only going to get worse. It's cheaper now for us to buy gasoline to power a generator to power the house....than buy power from the grid.

Rationalize that dilemna......

Outside of oil-rich nations, electricity is usually not generated by burning oil. Worldwide, oil is too expensive to waste on generating electricity, instead the most common sources are coal, gas, nuclear, and hydro. The UK is 33% Coal, 1.5% oil, 45% gas, 2% biomass, 13% nuclear, 2% hydro, 0.004% solar (I lol'd), 1.8% wind. That's energy production, consumption is closer to 20% nuclear (and the others are all lower) because the UK imports a large amount of electricity from nuclear France. Gas did, however, increase in cost during 2008 in a very similar way to oil.

after watching the energy bill being discussed in the house of lords, it was stated that indeed the consumer will be required to pay for better energy efficiency. i am not sure as to the £500 charge but is would seem to be the case. with regards to landlords, they would attach the (loan) to the tenant and the charge would stay with the property when the tenant left. this system is seems would become compulsary if it is found that there is resistance to the bill.
as other posters have stated, with our infrastructure being 40% owned by foreign companies, it seems we should all roll out the barrel and vaseline!
there is conflict and sedition within the coalition with many stating ministers are out of touch with the ordinary folk.
now that cable has had his wings clipped, i see further pandering to external pressures to change policies and further alienate the populus.
the coalition imo cannot sustain themselves for the duration. their energy policies are questionable expecially with regards to the embodied energy,running costs and efficiency.
barges around the coastline carrying solar panels would be more cost effective with no moving parts and minimum maintenance.
regards f

This is necessary, but the fact its come to this really gets my goat.

As mentioned above this was Thatchers doing with her half baked privatisation of power.

Power provision is strategic and should be under control of the government. The companies created all did what you'd expect. They looked at the rules and acted to maximise short term profit without giving a toss as to the long term power requirements, or energy source security of the country.

We went from a balanced grid supply to one dominated by cheap gas stations. Few appreciate how tenuous it is in the UK or how quickly the lights would go out if the gas supply was interrupted. Unlike europe we have little storage to act as a buffer.

Now they have to bribe the same companies with our money to go on a crash building program that wouldn't be necessary if it had remained planned activity in the first place. Maddening.

reply to post by justwokeup


we recently had a power cut that lasted a number of hours. when neighbours began to talk to me they were horrified that their home boilers were rendered useless. i informed them that when you buy into a system that requires two sources of energy to function, you are dependant on both for function. i informed them that if they were worried about this problem a simple solution would be to have a redundant power supply retro fitted to the boiler, a leisure battery and an inverter handy so in the event of an electric outage, one could simply turn on the inverter and supply the power needed for the boiler to function. total cost of materials and labour would be in the region of £350. for peace of mind i think this would be a fair contingency.
regards f