Sunday, December 6, 2009

The true price of Green energy

Statistics revealed recently that the excess winter death rate in the UK was 25,300 last year, a 49 per cent rise from the year before. Fuel costs have soared in the last 10 years, gas prices from 1.7p per kilowatt to 4p and electricity 8p per kilowatt hour to 13.9p. This is in spite of the fact that energy prices came down this year from 99p a therm in July 2008 for gas and £92 per megawatt hour for electricity in September 2008 to 42p a therm and £39 per megawatt hour respectively now.

Telegraph.
The average price domestic consumers pay for a unit of gas has more than doubled between 1999 and 2009, while the cost of electricity to households has gone up by more than 70 per cent in the same period, the data shows.
This is despite a drop in wholesale prices over the last year.
Last year the number of households in fuel poverty rose from four million to 5.4 million, with one in five homes affected. And figures from the National Office of Statistics revealed recently that the excess winter death rate was 25,300 last year, a 49 per cent rise from the year before.
One of the main reasons for the price remaining high though is Green taxation.

Telegraph.
Britons are paying more than £10 billion extra a year in green taxes than is required to cover the cost of Britain's "carbon footprint", research claims.
Using previous research into climate change, the report for the TaxPayers' Alliance estimated that covering the social cost of Britain's carbon emissions would have cost £11.7 billion in 2005.
But receipts from "green" taxes such as fuel duty, road tax and the climate change levy in the same year totalled £21.9 billion, according to the study.

This means that Britons paid £10.2 billion too much in green taxes that year - or £400 for each household in Britain.
It gets worse (probably)

Telegraph.
Plans put forward by the Green Fiscal Commission (GFC), a Government-supported think tank, would see the tax on gas and electricity rise every year.
By 2020, the new levy would amount to 80 per cent of the cost of the average gas bill and 30 per cent of the average electricity bill.
The price of an average annual gas bill is £808 while the price of an average annual electricity bill is £445, according to the price comparison website uSwitch.com.
It means the tax on gas and electricity bills could reach £779.90 a year, more than 60 per cent of the current £1,239 annual dual fuel bill.
 They are taxing us into penury, if you're on a low income as a lot of pensioners are, if you're ill or sick and on benefits, this government might just have signed your death warrant! 25,300 people died because of the winter last year a 49% increase on the year before. The winters are getting colder and our idiot politicians are still playing the global warming climate change hand telling us it's going to get warmer.
The Tories will be no better, "Call me Dave" is sticking to his green plans too with his buy your own wind turbine scheme.

This is evil! This is government policy UK, brought to you by our wonderful troughing politicians, safe and secure in the knowledge that the energy crunch wont even touch them.

25,300 reasons not to vote for the big 3 or anyone in favour of the EU and its enviroloon tax grabbing carbon emission controls!

5 annotations:

Anonymous said...

Getting off the grid is becoming an attractive proposition. But I guess the 'health and safety' gestapo would be miffed, as would the taxman.

Would it be feasible in Cameron's world, or does he just pretend to want to give us choice?

Quiet_Man said...

Buy a woodburning stove and an axe, couple this with a small calor gas heater and hope the powers that be don't find a way to stop you.

Cameron isn't about choice, it's his way or no way, hence his stance on the EU.

Anonymous said...

What with greedy power companies, greedy oil companies and a stupid uncaring incompetent greedy government, we're all pretty much stuffed.

I'm not in the least bit green. I don't know whether there is global warming. If there is I don't now who, or what is causing it adn I don't much care.

To be honest I try not to use too much fuel because it is so expensive, but the truth is I'm not putting myself about to save on my carbon footprint when the likes of the government fly about all over the world, and that dipstick Brown even has a private plane to take him places, like he was the President of America or the Duke of Rothsay.

Nah... to be honest, I don't give a stuff.

James Higham said...

As if we need all of that, eh?

Fat Hen said...

Alas, you are assuming that the govt. cares about the 25k oldies who freeze to death. Well, they do, but in an unfriendly way...

Those 25k oldies not only occupy dwellings, which are needed to house labour voters (or bring in some money due to inheritance tax or fall outright into HMRC's hands if there are no heirs...) but also, they collect 25k pensions (probably state ones if they cannot afford to heat) and so, the savings and profit that can be made is quite considerable.

Say each oldie popsicle gets £90.70 a week in statepension, say 1/3/rd of them owns their home and that is worth (say) 50k to the state in tax, we have an instant profit of 400million, plus a saving over the year of 117 million.

Say that each oldtimer would have lived another 5 years (on average) with a warm home and enough to eat, that's 585m overall, so, nearly a cool 1bn for Mr. Darling's coffers every winter.

The main problem the west has is the insane pension entitlements of the boomers and I can only point you sadly into the direction of Russia and what happened to the babushkas and their statepensions when the USSR ceased to exist.

Life in Soviet Britain for many will be a lonely gulag in the discomfort of their own homes... no cattle trucks needed, hearses just have more style and no-one can really accuse you of genocide, since it's only the elderly who are bumped off.