Government Claims Cost of Electricity is Falling. It’s Not
The new energy price cap is announced. The BBC reports:
Typical household energy bills will fall by 7% in April, regulator Ofgem has announced, following a shake-up in charges by the Government.
Nearly everyone in England, Wales and Scotland will benefit from a cut irrespective of their tariff, although the amounts will vary between households.
For millions of households on variable tariffs governed by the price cap, the drop will be about £10 a month for those using a typical amount of gas and electricity.
However, prices are still about a third higher than before the war in Ukraine, debts have ballooned, and billpayers are being urged to shop around for further savings.
The 7% fall in the price cap is the biggest drop since last summer. While the Government promised a £150 a year reduction in April, the cost of running the energy network is up, leading to a lesser saving of £117 for a household using a typical amount of energy.
The BBC is being particularly dishonest when it says “prices are still about a third higher than before the war in Ukraine”. The clear intention is to portray the Ukraine war as still keeping gas prices elevated. The figures show this to be false.
Firstly, energy prices were extremely low in 2020-21 because the pandemic lockdowns reduced demand.
But if we go back to the first Ofgem price cap, January to March 2019, we see that gas prices have barely risen since in real terms:
Although domestic gas bills have increased from £523 a year to £766 under the new cap for April, nearly all of this explained by general inflation. However, electricity prices have risen 65.4% despite inflation (RPI) only rising by 43.7%.
Clearly gas prices cannot be the reason why electricity prices have far outstripped general inflation.
Electricity prices are high for one reason and one reason only – Net Zero policies. In fact the new cap understates the impact of Net Zero. The new cap takes £130 of renewable subsidies off electricity bills and instead puts the cost onto taxation, or more accurately, Government borrowing to be paid back by future generations.
Without this shuffling costs around onto general taxation, electricity bills would now be £1,005, or 90% higher than in 2019.
First published on Paul’s blog, Not a Lot of People Know That.
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Conventional deceit and mendacity from the Bollox Biased Corporation. The fact that they will never agree to debate the matter openly with the likes of Paul Homewood, Chris Morrison and Ben Pile is proof positive that they haven’t got a leg to stand on and are just pushing the Cult, rather than exercising any intellecual rigour. They are a waste of space and should be DEFUNDED pronto.
It’s all Putins fault. and then he deliberately worsened matters by blowing up Nordstream 1 and 2.
The fact that we were forewarned of huge energy price rises well before even anyone contemplated “Russia’s fullscale military invasion of Ukraine” -copyright Euro MSM/BBC –
seems to have escaped all politicians and their compliant BBC/Guardian, completely.
So no siree, absolutely zero to do with net zero idiocy.
High prices started with the Climate Change Act (Miliband 2008), and this United Nations Parasite is still in charge of energy 18 years later. “The people get the politicians they deserve” is so true. We are getting what we deserve for voting for these phoney planet saving charlatans.
My combined monthly payments remain the same no matter what my meter readings are.
There used to be energy tariffs with zero standing charge, so the bill was governed by usage, which was great for people with solar panels or some other form of generation. But the standing charges are now such a big component of the bill that the effect of usage has been watered down considerably.
If people have their own generation but are still connected to the grid they should face an annual connection fee of say £500 a year to cover the problems they cause to the grid.
A decade’s worth of electricity price gouging, as called out by Net Zero Watch…
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-papers/why-have-electricity-bills-risen
“…Around three quarters of the increase in average bills since 2015 can be attributed to Net Zero.
The most important factors in the £327 real-terms increase are:
– Renewables subsidies (£83)
– Carbon taxes (£39)
– Grid balancing (£26)
– Capacity Market (£26)
– Grid strengthening (£23)
The direct cost – the element that can reasonably be attributed to the cost of gas – only accounts for £45 of the increase.”
Clean power is dirty lies.
It is LIES, and it isn’t even CLEAN
Next time sir queer mentions energy prices going down at PMQs, kemi needs to skewer him with this interesting nugget about the same 130 quid being transferred to general taxation.
And the same for free breakfast clubs.
I reckon she could make a lot of mileage out of pointing out that nothing provided by the government us free. It’s all paid for by higher prices or higher taxes acrossthe rest of the economy.
And because government is so monstrously inefficient most free stuff would be cheaper bought with your own money from private providers.
Sooner or later this argument needs to be made
Absolutely.
Government force everyone into energy poverty with Net Zero then offer a bit of toast and a bowl of flakes (breakfast club) to poor kids pretending they care
Plus claiming “it’s free” Cnuts.
My house is EPC C and has low gas and electricity use. But the fixed daily charges are higher because of the subsidised grid and distribution, smart meters etc go on the bill. These nearly cost as much as the energy use.
The government has gone ahead with the upgrade of the domestic supply cables and this work is being done in many areas. I have asked the subcontractors digging up my road what the cost per house is and was told they are charging £4500. There are 30 million houses. That’s possibly £135 billion more on the bill over say 2 years. And this is on top of the high voltage grid to link the high populated areas to Scotland.
Government are less trusted today than ever before. No one believes a word that comes from their mouths, yet somehow most people fall for the climate change scam that is the reason bills are so high and the seemingly plausible excuse for getting rid of cheap abundant energy and giving us expensive unreliable energy. As Mark Twain joked all those years ago “Politicians are like diapers, they need changed often and for the same reason”
Never has this been so true as today.
Or you could say politicians are like diapers because they are full of shit.
Presumably that’s what twain meant.
On Spiked yesterday there was a wonderful observation in one of the comment threads. Commenting on the total and utter dimness of our politicians it read: “it’s exhaustingly relentless; like a tsunami of stupidity racing across an ocean of inadequacy” I will reread it from time to time – a kind of therapy perhaps?