From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Ed Davey has promised that the Lib Dems will cut energy bills by £870 a year, bringing the “benefits of cheap renewable power”. He naturally blamed the Tories and labour for high electricity prices.
But Davey himself is personally responsible for one of the worst and costliest decisions made concerning energy policy.
As Energy Secretary, Davey signed up a batch of Investment Contracts as part of the Final Investment Decision Enabling for Renewables (FIDeR) process. These contracts for wind farms and biomass generators were part of the bridging arrangements introduced in the Energy Act 2013, also pushed through Parliament by Davey and designed to support certain renewable projects before the full competitive CfD auction regime began in 2014/2015.
At the time of signing, the guaranteed, index linked strike prices for offshore wind that Davey agreed to were triple the market price at the time. They have since continued to increase with inflation. Some like Dudgeon and Walney are now paid £214.50/MWh. The average market price last year was £77/MWh.
To date, Davey’s subsidies have cost bill payers an astonishing £11.2 billion. This figure will probably triple by the time the contracts expire after 15 years. The cost last year alone was £2.1 billion.
Bear in mind, energy policy during the Coalition was solely under the control of the Lib Dems – neither David Cameron nor his party had any real say whatever, as this allocation of responsibilities was built into the coalition agreement at the start.
It is therefore a bit rich for Ed Davey to complain about energy bills now, when it was his decision to saddle bill payers with the cost of his obsession with climate change.
