Energy: micturating in the wind

By Richard North - December 14, 2024

As the Guardian proclaimed: “Ed Miliband pledges ‘most ambitious reforms to UK energy system in generations’”, in its online edition yesterday, the odd thing about this development was how slow the other media outlets were to take up the report.

Perhaps it was the sameness of the announcement which would have been very similar to that crawling out of the lips of the Oaf Johnson, a few years back. This is yet another plan “to boost renewable energy supply”, although the Guardian managed to inject some novelty into the proceedings by telling us that this “boost” included such innovations as “building canopies of solar panels on outdoor car parks”.

Among the measures covered by the plan, the paper states, is confirmation that onshore windfarms will be brought back into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project regime in England, which streamlines planning processes for important and large-scale projects. This should make it easier to progress onshore farms larger than 100MW, which in some cases require hundreds of acres of land.

Other measures, we are told, include: reforming the system for connecting new projects to the national grid to prioritise the most viable projects; speeding up decisions on planning permission by empowering planners to prioritise critical energy infrastructure; and expanding the renewable auction process to allow funding to be secured before planning permission in an effort to stop delays and get more projects connected.

There is also to be more widespread use of variable pricing, couched in terms of allowing households to get access to cheaper tariffs at different times of day – but in reality meaning that consumers will actually pay much more for peak periods.

Inevitably, Miliband is quoted, and he is allowed to claim that: “A new era of clean electricity for our country offers a positive vision of Britain’s future with energy security, lower bills, good jobs and climate action”. This, he says, “can only happen with big, bold change and that is why the government is embarking on the most ambitious reforms to our energy system in generations”.

As for the small print, there’s a lot of it, conveyed in four separate documents on the government website, under the generic name of “Clean Power 2030 Action Plan”, with the main report running to 138 pages, offering the grandiose sub-heading of “A new era of clean energy”.

Despite the length of the documents, individually and combined, there is no need to spend too much time on them. The main report starts with a foreword from Miliband which starts with multiple lies in a tract which is peppered with lies, the most egregious of which is that the plan “will provide the foundation for the UK to build an energy system that can bring down bills for households and businesses for good”.

The central lie here is that the plan is based on ramping up offshore and onshore wind generation, augmented by solar power and “kickstarting” carbon capture and hydrogen production. Not only could it never bring down bills, it is a recipe for cementing Britain’s position as the most expensive electricity provider in the world, while almost guaranteeing future blackouts as the system fails to deliver.

But the trouble is that we now have an energy policy based on lies, promulgated by an energy secretary who has no qualms about pouring out an unending diet of mendacity, backed by paid officials, interest groups and fellow travellers who are all party to this extraordinary situation where nothing stated officially about national energy policy is believable.

Through my twenty years or so of writing about this topic – many of them alongside Booker, who shared my views and published robust pieces in his column in the Sunday Telegraph – I have dissected many of the lies, specifically that renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuel.

Many other writers, relying on impeccable sources, have written in excruciating detail, punctuating the lies, and yet the government propaganda continues to pour out, untouched by reality and oblivious to either logic or evidence.

The worst of it, though, is that is this supposedly cynical age where disillusionment with governments is widespread, there are indications that many people from across the political spectrum – far too many people – actually believe government and related “green” propaganda.

The source of this assertion is a series of polls commissioned by the left-wing lobby group, More in Common collated online by the group director via this thread (which matches the original data).

For reasons which are well-known in the polling industry – but rarely discussed – such polls have a tendency to reflect the prejudices of those commissioning them, producing the answers they wish to see, which means that the data may be looked at with a pinch of salt.

Nevertheless, there is a story here which is disturbing in its implications, suggesting that the majority have bought into the lie that investing in renewables will increase our energy independence. Even amongst Reform voters, more believe that renewable energy generation would cut the cost of living as opposed to increasing it – the overall majority (47 percent) being supportive of the thesis (10 percent against).

This would seem to indicate that the wide sweep of critical writers (and broadcasters) has failed to prevail against the torrent of propaganda, which is not terribly encouraging for people like myself, and invites obvious conclusions about the gullibility of the majority.

However, there are some signs that the lies are wearing thin, with The Times heading its report: “Ed Miliband refuses to set target for cutting electricity bills”, its sub-head telling us: “Labour said before the election that bills would come down by £300, but the energy secretary would not commit to a figure at launch of his decarbonisation plans”.

A parallel editorial from the same paper notes that Miliband’s zeal to hit the 2030 net-zero target is clear, but the lack of focus on nuclear power and reducing bills leaves British consumers at risk.

Not mincing its words, it recalls that Miliband has dangled the prospect of lower bills to justify his building plans, having previously promised that this vast increase in renewables would save consumers £300, but he has faltered on this “commitment”.

This week, the paper says, the chief executive of the National Energy System Operator (Neso) said there was no evidence that Miliband’s plans would automatically mean lower costs for consumers.

With some Herculean assumptions – building infrastructure at a pace scarcely seen before, with no delays and gas prices remaining steadfastly high – it may be possible. But any delays, or any drops in gas and carbon prices, will “challenge” the economics, with the paper concluding that Miliband’s “headstrong zeal” is focused on a political target over the interests of consumers.

But, in the here and now, the real world is intruding. As consumer energy prices have inexorably risen, the Telegraph (amongst others) tells us that consumer debt has escalated, having more than doubled since the beginning of 2022, to the record level of £3.8 billion.

Ofgem is on the case, stating that: “The level of debt built up during that period has become unsustainable”. It is thus arguing – no doubt under pressure from the energy suppliers – that the situation “requires a bespoke, one-off solution to tackle it that will drive down the costs of debt in the long term for the benefit of all consumers”.

Bizarrely, though, one of its ideas for benefitting all consumers is to increase the energy price cap to include a “debt cost allowance”, under which suppliers can increase their bills, taking even more from those who actually do pay their bills, in order to raise money to cover the shortfall from the people who are not paying.

This, “it is understood”, could be a key mechanism for raising the money to tackle the debt mountain which, as you can imagine, is not wildly popular with bill payers.

Other ideas are included, but the main flaw is that Ofgem seems to believe that the ballooning debt is a “one-off” which can be resolved by a “reset”. It is suggesting the creation of a debt relief fund which can be used directly to reduce the debt of customers who are in both vulnerable situations and financial difficulty.

The regulator also thinks there is more suppliers can do to prevent customers getting into debt and support them through it, to get them into debt recovery in a “compassionate, sustainable way”. Clearly, it has never dealt with EDF, with its functionally illiterate call-centre staff who are capable only of cycling through a limited range of responses, none of which address the issues at hand.

However, with Miliband set though his mad schemes to hike energy bills even further, Ofgem needs to understand that this “debt mountain” is here to stay and will continue to grow. Suppliers may also encounter stiffening resistance from actual billpayers, who rebel against the additional cost of financing a bankrupt energy policy, making the debt problem even worse.

If Ofgem thinks otherwise, and given their enthusiasm for renewable energy, they might be more usefully employed in a more productive enterprise, such as micturating in the wind – which, along with Miliband, is what they seem to be doing most of the time anyway.