By Juliet Davenport
I woke up this morning to a really scary headline in The Telegraph: “£500 on electricity bills to pay for green energy”. Their trailer for today’s announcement of the Government’s consultation on Electricity Market Reform – the investment the UK desperately needs to make to ensure we have a secure, stable, low-carbon electricity system for the future.
We did a bit of digging, and found that the number quoted by The Telegraph came from a U-switch press release issued more than 18-months ago! So we did some calculations of our own – and came up with a much more palatable (and realistic) number of £176 on energy bills to pay for the investments needed. This would mean the investments were repaid after just nine years, after which consumers would start to see prices falling.
Not only does The Telegraph vastly overstate the cost to consumers of the reforms we urgently need to make, but it appears to be laying the blame for this entirely at the feet of the green energy sector. The truth, however, is that consumers are all having to pay for an antiquated energy system that has had no investment over the past 10 years.
In fact, if we don’t invest in our energy structure now, the costs to consumers will be far higher in the future. According to Energy and Climate Change secretary Chris Huhne, with the proposed investment consumers can expect to pay an extra 2% on energy bills until 2020 – and then see their bills fall by 5% a year, indefinitely. Without the investment bills would be expected to continue to rise indefinitely.
The UK currently imports around 60% of our energy (from fossil fuels and nuclear) so by reducing our dependence on imported energy we will insulate the UK against further price rises.
And that's not to mention the other benefits of generating clean, green, carbon-free energy and setting the UK on the pathway to a 100% renewable future. So here’s to investing in our future!
