Claim: Legendary WW2 Leader Winston Churchill Would have been a “Climate Leader”

It’s not enough they use computerized crystal balls to predict the future, now they hold seances to tell us dead folks were on board with global warming. Will science ever even enter the discussion?

British energy bosses rake in millions as they raise bills and abuse their monopoly

National Grid, Scottish Power and SSE have a monopoly on the pipes and cables that bring gas and electricity to homes – earning profits of almost £8 billion.

National Grid is the biggest firm and paid its 13 board members a total of £19.5m in 2016. The firm’s finance chief Andrew Bonfield was paid £5.9m. Chief executive John Pettigrew got £4.6m and a £500,000 bonus when the company moved offices as a relocation allowance. More than a quarter of the current average annual bill of £290 goes to these firms.

MPS and the Citizens Advice Bureau said the profits made by the 10 gas and electricity transmission and distribution network firms are excessive for businesses. They claim if the companies made a 5% profit the average household bill would fall by almost £60 a year.

Tory MP Neil Parish, chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said ‘The amount of money these network companies make is astronomical. They are monopoly businesses and the profits they make end up on customers’ bills. It’s time for Government and Ofgem to rein in the network companies, make them cut bills and get a fair deal for all consumers.’

In Britain, the energy companies monopoly position means they never have to worry about losing customers. There are seven companies who transmit and distribute electricity and four for gas. Each has sole rights for the region they cover meaning there is no competition or incentive to control prices. Profits for the network firms has risen by 15% in the last four years, a rise of £1 billion. They do not charge families directly, but they bill energy suppliers – such as British Gas or EDF – who pass the cost on.

There are two types of network firms, those dealing with transmission and distribution. There is only one transmission operator for gas, National Grid, which moves gas in high-pressure pipes from coastal terminals to local distribution centres. There are four distribution firms take it from there into people’s homes; SGN, Wales and West Utilities, Northern Gas Networks and Cadent Gas.

For the electricity distribution companies, the profit margin varies from 25% to 39%, which is an average of 32%. The typical profit margin at a supermarket is 5%.

British Consumers Foot The Bill For Failed Climate Policy

“Government has got into the business of ‘picking winners’. Unfortunately, losers are good at picking governments.”

Subsidies to renewable electricity cost £5 billion a year at present and will rise to more than £8 billion a year by 2020 — all drawn from the bills of domestic and business consumers. One third of this hits households directly through their electricity bills — 20% of their bills — while the other two thirds, paid in the first instance by businesses, will be passed on to households in the general cost of living.

The Tory Government has obfuscated these facts, and, since 2014, has published no price impacts. When costs could not be hidden, the Tory government has claimed that climate policy made them unavoidable.

Now, in an authoritative and excoriating report commissioned by the Tory government, Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, has torn away the fig leaf covering the Tory government’s nakedness. Policy interventions, he tells us, are so numerous and badly designed that they have resulted in costs well in excess of what is needed to meet emissions targets. These subsidies will cost £100 billion by 2030.

Much of this wasteful policy cannot be cancelled, due to contractual and other legal commitments. The Tory government has given the rent-seekers firm entitlements that the courts must defend. Did the civil servants explain these liabilities to the responsible ministers, and if so why was the consumer interest neglected, and why were such bad deals struck, again and again and again? Professor Helm does not hesitate to tell us “Government has got into the business of ‘picking winners.’ Unfortunately, losers are good at picking governments, and inevitably — as in most such picking-winners strategies — the results end up being vulnerable to lobbying, to the general detriment of household and industrial customers.”

Professor Helm’s diagnoses and remedies are sweeping and brilliant. The present policies are counterproductive and erode public support. They must be replaced by firm capacity auctions, so renewables pay for their own intermittency. The “legacy” burden of the failed policies should be bundled into a “bad bank” with the costs charged to domestic consumers directly (rather than hidden in the cost of living), and stated separately on the bill as a lingering souvenir of 20 years of negligence and folly in energy policy.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchhill