From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
The Office for Budget Responsibility has published its latest Economic & Fiscal Outlook, following the Chancellor’s Spring Statement this week. The Outlook contains details on the Government’s tax and spending plans for the next five years.
It offers a stark reminder of how much we are already spending on Net Zero and how much this will increase in coming years.
Starting with Ed Miliband’s Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) itself, RDEL, day-to-day spending, is running at £2 billion a year. On top of that, CDEL or capital spending adds up to £53 billion for the five years to 2029/30:
https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-march-2026/
A total of £60.7 billion, pretty much all of which could be saved if the Department was shut down, as it should be.
The OBR also include in their figures what are called “Environmental Levies”. These are levies added to energy bills because of government policy. They are all directly or indirectly subsidies for renewable energy. (Note that the Renewable Heat Incentive, which pays subsidies to households to fit renewable heat systems, such as biomass boilers, is funded out of taxation.)
These various subsidy schemes are expected to cost £15.2 billion, rising to £19.8 billion in five years’ time.
Levies are paid via our energy bills, while DESNZ costs are funded through taxation. But one way or another, we will be paying more than £150 billion in the next five years for the obsession with Net Zero.
We can add to these costs the climate change levy, an environmental tax introduced in April 2001. It applies to the non-domestic use of certain forms of energy, including electricity and gas, with the primary aim of encouraging businesses to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This raises £1.8 billion a year currently and impacts the rest of us through higher prices.
Similarly with the Emission Trading Scheme, which raises over £3 billion a year. This penalises electricity producers and heavy industry for using fossil fuels. This tax directly impacts the price we pay for electricity. It has been estimated that the ETS alone is adding 10% to electricity bills, as it increases the cost of gas generation, which in turn tends to set the wholesale price.
Both the CCL and ETS are damaging the competitiveness of UK industry.
These costs are only the tip of the iceberg, as far as Net Zero is concerned. They are only the items that appear on the government’s balance sheet.
They do not include, for instance, the £80 billion OFGEM have said needs to be spent in the next five years on the electricity grid, specifically to make it Net Zero ready. Or the £200 billion which has been estimated to upgrade the electricity distribution network, the low-voltage system which brings power into our towns and homes, and which will be needed to cater for the extra electricity we will need for electric cars and heat pumps.
Nor does it include the costs imposed on households and businesses, forced to pay for unaffordable heat pumps, electric cars and decarbonisation nonsense.
