PAUL HOMEWOOD
Is Kemi Badenoch’s pledge to abolish Net Zero all it seems?
The strategy seems to be focussed around the fact that the Climate Change Act has increased our energy bills, and will carry on making them even higher.
Their plan then is to replace binding emissions targets with an energy policy designed to bring down costs.
But there is little of real substance in their programme itself:
Indeed there remains an intention to reduce emissions and remain in the Paris Agreement.
So is this merely window dressing, intended to fool the public? Will we just carry on as before, but just at a slightly slower pace?
What we need now is some meat putting on the bones. While details will remain to be sorted out, there are some fundamental questions that the public deserve answers to:
1) Will the 2030 ban on petrol/diesel cars be abolished, not just delayed? Will the Zero Emission Vehicle mandates be dropped?
2) Will the Tories promise never to ban gas boilers?
3) What action will be taken to cut existing subsidies for renewables?
4) Will subsidies be ended for all future renewable schemes?
5) What action will be taken to provide a reserve of dispatchable power capacity, vital if we are to avoid blackouts?
6) Will DESNZ be shut? Will Ed Miliband’s spending plans be cancelled?
7) Will all government spending on Net Zero be ended?
8) Will the UK Emissions Trading Scheme be abolished?
If Kemi Badenoch cannot commit to these perfectly reasonable requests, it is hard to see how we will be any better off.
The biggest problem that will face any new government in 2029 is that by then much of the damage done by Miliband will be nigh irreversible.
CfDs signed up in the next four years will add billions more to the subsidy bill. Grid upgrades costing £80 billion will be in progress or completed, all of which we will have to foot the bill for.
The motor industry will be wrecked by EV targets and Miliband’s crazy plan to spend £22 billion on carbon capture may well be cast in stone by then.
That is why there now needs top be a full accounting by the Conservatives of just how much we are paying for Net Zero. The figures are already out there, officially calculated by the OBR and OFGEM, so there is no need for any lengthy study.
As I and others, such as John Constable and Kathryn Porter, have shown, the cost is of the order of £20 billion a year or more. And this is just the cost added to our electricity bills because of Net Zero. There are other substantial costs coming our way via EVs, heat pumps, the deindustrialisation of the economy and hundreds of billions of government expenditure.
And as NESO have stated publicly, Labour’s 2030 Clean Power Plan will significantly increase the cost of electricity yet further.
These costs have been deliberately kept hidden from voters for years. But they are essential if we are to have a rational debate about climate policy.
These revelations will be hugely embarrassing for the Tories, as most of them are the direct consequence Conservative Government policy since the Cameron era.
SOURCE: Not a Lot of People Know That
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