Move all energy policy costs onto gas says ESNZ Committee

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

The crackpots really are in charge of the asylum:

Government must maintain unwavering focus on costs as central issue in energy transition.

Government should now move all remaining energy transition policy costs off the price of electricity and onto the price of gas on UK energy bills, the Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee says in a report today – a key step to making the transition away from fossil fuels economical for consumers.

There will need to be special support for those gas customers least able to take advantage of the benefits the transition. Future policy costs must not be placed on billpayers.

The Committee says:

  • Relying on consumers to bear all of the costs of the energy transition is potentially the biggest barrier to achieving the Clean Power 2030 target:  the energy system should be adapted so the whole sector contributes to the cost of necessary electricity infrastructure.
  • Allowances for consumer debt are still a growing part of bills under the energy price cap: the Government should identify where windfall profits are made in the energy system and use excess to reduce bills.
  • Consumers are in the dark about what exactly they are paying for on their energy bills, which makes decisions about the energy transition more difficult.  Ofgem should be able to require energy operators to produce clearly broken-down bills.  
  • The networks achieved higher than expected profits in RIIO-2: It is time for the Government and Ofgem to match the ambition set out by the Committee in its first Cost of Energy report and secure a contribution from the networks towards reducing the consumer energy debt burden.
  • Government must speed up its work delinking the price of gas from the price of electricity and make better use of its tools to bring down wholesale costs.

Chair comment

Bill Esterson MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

“The simple truth about the UK’s energy transition is that it is about costs and security – not arbitrary targets, not culture wars and division, not political point scoring.

“Our report today has bold, positive, workable solutions to help set the costs and get the support right. That’s all households and businesses across the UK need to adopt the new technologies of the transition and secure the benefits of less-costly, home-grown electricity for us all.”

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/664/energy-security-and-net-zero-committee/news/218348/move-all-energy-policy-costs-onto-gas-and-tap-windfall-profits-to-reduce-uk-energy-bills-says-esnz-committee/

In short, they have finally admitted that the cost of decarbonising the electricity grid is appallingly high, contradicting all the lies we have been fed for years of how renewable energy is cheaper and would reduce our bills.

Because this is making electricity unaffordable, the bright sparks have decided all these costs should be put on to gas bills instead, making it unaffordable for many to heat their homes in winter.

Taxpayers meanwhile will have to fork out to subsidise gas bills for benefit recipients, making it a double whammy for the rest of us.

Would it not be simpler just to cancel this whole Net Zero nonsense and raise a windfall tax instead on the wind farms and other renewable plants, who have been sponging off the public for years?

We expect this sort of nonsense from the Labour and Libs on the Committee. But what about the two Tories?

Why have they put their names to this self serving hatred of ordinary people? Why, when their Party’s official policy is to scrap Net Zero and in particular immediately cancel the Emissions Trading Scheme and all future renewable subsidies?

Have we another pair of Lib Dem wannabes, parading as fake Tories?

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44 Comments
November 4, 2026 2:21 am

This is ridiculous, and in other news, Kellog’s rice krispies are moving away from rice due to climate change according to the bbc, when simple google checks show rice production in asia continues to increase. why is the bbc allowed to print such lies?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqvg0y44ym7vo

Philip Mulholland
Reply to  peteturbo
November 4, 2026 3:09 am

Kellogg’s have just brought out a “new even crispier! same great taste” Rice Crispies. My child, formerly an avid 3 times a day devourer of said Rice Crispies, hates it and has 100% stopped eating them! I tried some and they have a curiously metallic taste, the rest of the box are for the bin. It seems to me that Kellogg’s have just done a Coca-Cola.

MrGrimNasty
Reply to  Philip Mulholland
November 4, 2026 6:21 am

And apparently N.American market keeps the real rice grains. The corporate structure is split, is the explanation. Doesn’t make much sense to me if it’s a global rice market issue.

MrGrimNasty
Reply to  peteturbo
November 4, 2026 5:11 am

The bean counters worked out they could increase their profit margin by a few pence per pack with a reformulation. Nothing to do with a rice shortage. Same reason a lot of companies replaced chocolate (milk and white) on cakes and biscuits and sweets with a veg oil simulant and flavouring. They’re just trying to justify it with the modern day omni-excuse, climate change.

MrGrimNasty
November 4, 2026 2:26 am

Make the old cheapest option the most expensive to force people to use the new temporarily artificially slightly less expensive option. When you’ve killed off the old, all the expense can go back on the new, and the trap is snapped shut.

SxyxS
Reply to  MrGrimNasty
November 4, 2026 3:13 am

“Destroy the (4) olds
and replace then with (4) news.”

Mao’s strategy is not limited to the cultural realm and it has improved by using a systems money to destroy the system just as they use a countries money(debt) to destro the countrie.

Cloward-Piven strategy.

Lodewijk Vis
November 4, 2026 2:49 am

This has been and will continue to be the policy in the Netherlands: subsidies for electricity, high costs (taxes) for natural gas to pay for these subsidies. This would help the transition, but this is not happening.

strativarius
November 4, 2026 2:55 am

Here is yet another example of the complete lunacy of the British left. The basic rule is quite simple: Throw money everywhere but at the British taxpayer

Plaid Cymru spends thousands on disabled Ugandan beekeepers
A £300,000 aid fund for Africa has been criticised as a ‘waste of money’, with calls for the cash to be used to fix NHS services in Wales

Burnham gives Caribbean £40m and prepares to apologise for Britain’s role in slave trade

UK boosts support to Ukraine with £10 billion package

When Rachel from Accounts was Chancellor she claimed to have inherited a £20 billion black hole in the finances. Thanks to their financial prudence(sic) we can now proudly boast that new Chancellor…

John Healey has left Britain with a £49bn black hole that will require substantial tax increases

Everything Labour is doing is what they used to call in the 1980s, creative accounting – financial sleights of hand. Piling it all onto gas will make gas – they hope – unaffordable in the long run.

Utter scum.

strativarius
Reply to  strativarius
November 4, 2026 3:20 am

Enter Ed Miliband…

Ed Miliband says slavery apology will NOT cost British taxpayers despite Andy Burnham set to hand over £40MILLION

A real master in the art of mental gymnastics.

SxyxS
Reply to  strativarius
November 4, 2026 3:22 am

in terms of Ukraine war Neutrality Studies YT channel just released an interesting Video with Prof. Steven Starr.
Very imformative
while the media ignores the Ukr. torture camps as they did with the biolabs.

strativarius
Reply to  SxyxS
November 4, 2026 3:37 am

It’s a funny old war when Ukraine is told what weapons it can use and where they can strike Russia with them. The promised F-16s etc never materialised. This war is clearly a war of attrition – hard sanctions etc haven’t worked – and it’s our money down the drain.

I suggest people read up on the history – from the Rus to Stalin. Let’s not forget the cruelty and the pogroms, deportations etc in Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s. Why on Earth would they greet the Wehrmacht as liberators? More complications followed with Kruschev

front page of Pravda, on 27 February 1954.

“Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet transferring the Crimea Province from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.
Taking into account the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity and the close economic and cultural ties between the Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet decrees:
To approve the joint presentation of the Presidium of the Russian SFSR Supreme Soviet and the Presidium of the Ukrainian SSR Supreme Soviet on the transfer of the Crimea Province from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.”

And then

U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University

More complications… It ain’t our fight. And we’re broke.

MarkW
Reply to  strativarius
November 4, 2026 7:49 am

Austria wasn’t our fight.
Sudenland wasn’t our fight.
Czechoslovakia wasn’t our fight.
Poland wasn’t …

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  strativarius
November 4, 2026 8:59 am

That “not one inch eastward” was never written into any agreement or treaty.
It was verbal and made by a politician.

November 4, 2026 3:29 am

Since there is no open thread, OT:

Well, obviously, for various reasons, American voters are too ignorant to govern themselves properly.

You are ignorant if you don’t know that electing radical Democrats is a death sentence for the United States. And the Free World.

You voted for this stupidity, and now you are going to get it. Good luck.

I’m glad I live in a solid Republican State. And I’m glad the president has the veto power, and the power to declare Martial Law, if the radical Democrats get close to giving the Mad Mullahs of Iran nuclear weapons. We can’t do that under ANY circumstances. Hear that radical Democrats? Trump might throw you in jail if you try to subvert the national security of the United States in such a way.

Reply to  Tom Abbott
November 4, 2026 6:34 am

Call it prophecy, but it was just keen observational skill:

Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administered;
and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Final Speech at the Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787

Reply to  Tom Abbott
November 4, 2026 6:45 am

Just The News has an article blaming “it’s the economy stupid!”, but I can’t see how letting the Halloween Freak Show in will do anything to improve it.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/democrat-bloodbath-reminder-elections-still-are-about-economy-first-and

MarkW
Reply to  karlomonte
November 4, 2026 7:51 am

The economy is better than it was under Biden.
Unfortunately, the media has a habit of slanting the news to benefit the left.

Reply to  MarkW
November 4, 2026 7:53 am
abolition man
Reply to  Tom Abbott
November 4, 2026 7:33 am

Once again, the party of the Stupid and Lazies has handed a victory to the party of the Crooks and Crazies! Instead of embracing Trump’s populist policies of a roaring economy and (some day) energy abundance the Repubicans continued to support the Chamber of Commerce and the MIC , not the American people!
The DemonKKKrats embrace the 25% position on nearly every issue, but are able to pull out wins with their control of the media and the education system. What they will accomplish over the next two years will be to slow economic growth and prop up the Climate Hoax for the benefit of their billionaire backers. If they act at all as they did during the Auto-pen Regime, they will be handing the presidency and Congress back to the opposition in 2028, who will then fumble it back to them in 2030! If the Repubicans would simply embrace their populist, laissez faire roots, they could win control for decades, but then they would have to give up being stupid and lazy, a big ask!

Reply to  Tom Abbott
November 4, 2026 8:27 am

‘You voted for this stupidity, and now you are going to get it. Good luck.’

Look at the bright side, Tom:

1) All of the RINOs, at least those up for election in this cycle, are gone – either primaried out or defeated outright. So, no more betrayals from that sector.

2) Looks like the damage in the Senate is limited to 54-ish seats. ‘Cloture’ requires 60 votes, meaning the Dems will need at least some of the supposedly now more stalwart Reps to advance their agenda. [Note, if the Dems do decide to kill the cloture requirement, they’ll have crossed a Rubicon that effectively will end the Reps’ pearl clutching on this procedural issue, meaning that they can easily pass legislation like the ‘Save Act’ the next time they hold the majority.]

3) Trump has a veto, which will limit the damage, while allowing the Dems to go full Bolshevik in full view of the public. Hopefully, the resulting clown show will work to the Reps’ advantage in 2028.

4) We’re back to ‘limited’ government.

The Reps probably could have done a lot better but for a couple of areas where Trump got out over his skis:

First, he arbitrarily implemented tariffs, i.e.,taxes, which Constitutionally is a role reserved to Congress. And second, for some reason he abandoned his former principle of avoiding foreign wars when for some reason he a) decided to continue with the Neo-Con / Dem wet dream of defeating Russia, and b) allowed himself to be used by the Israelis in a preemptive strike against Iran. None of this played well, even in rural areas, so was more than enough to offset the mostly good things Trump and the Reps accomplished in other areas.

November 4, 2026 3:34 am

There is a similar proposal floating around to tax gasoline heavily and use the revenue to subsidize EV refuelling….

Its financial perpetual motion machines marketed as helping with the cost of living.

Its a very odd and interesting characteristic of the current British political and cultural situation that no-one in policy positions ever asks why they are doing all this. Why is the NHS trying to ban the terms ‘breast feeding’ and ‘mother’? Why is the country trying to move everyone to EVs and heat pumps and wind and solar? Why are they proposing to pay large sums to various Commonwealth countries because slavery (which was abolished in all British territories 200 years ago)?

There is no answer on this and many other topics, in fact its probably career terminating in present day Britain to even ask the question.

strativarius
Reply to  michel
November 4, 2026 3:40 am

Any day now, michel, they will be taxing exhalation…

Denis
Reply to  strativarius
November 4, 2026 4:37 am

Taxing exhalation makes perfect sense these days We exhale a lot of CO2. Tax it.

strativarius
Reply to  Denis
November 4, 2026 4:59 am

It’s very tempting.

At ~40,000 ppm per breath and a standard resting range for a healthy adult of 12 to 20 breaths per minute – say 15 – that’s 36 million ppm per day.

So at what rate?

Reply to  strativarius
November 4, 2026 6:39 am

Of course, you could get carbon credits for sequestering it by storing more carbon compounds than the amount exhaled.

Reply to  strativarius
November 4, 2026 9:46 am

I’ve done a rough calculation and come up with about 400 kg of CO2 exhaled in a year. At a UK carbon trading price of £49.41 per ton that works out at just under £20 per year.
With the UK population of 70 million that would come to a total of £1.4 billion.
Maybe I shouldn’t be giving them any ideas.
In addition this is equivalent to the CO2 emissions from driving your car 1300 miles.

Reply to  StephenP
November 4, 2026 12:50 pm

An average human exhales about 1 kg of CO2 everyday. For 8 billion people that is 8 billion kgs everyday. To this should be all the CO2 exhaled by domestic animals ranging from cattle to canaries.
Most CO2 emitted from all sources is absorbed by the oceans so that only a mere 0.84 g remains in cubic meter of air.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Harold Pierce
November 4, 2026 2:10 pm

Please remember to include termites as they emit more CO2 than humans, planet wide.

strativarius
November 4, 2026 3:52 am

The Thursday Amusement – Courtesy Labour Party

Labour Sets Up New Quango to Help Abolish NHS Quango
Yvette Cooper will set up a new quango to help abolish NHS England. It was ‘abolished’ by Wes Streeting in March 2025…

Up until Blair came along Ministers were in control and could do stuff. Now it’s the unelected and the unaccountable who are in charge.

November 4, 2026 4:06 am

Future policy costs must not be placed on billpayers.

There is no such thing as “government money”.

The only thing that politicians around the world … this phenomenon isn’t limited to the UK … are distributing with such wild enthusiasm / reckless abandon is “taxpayer money”.

.

NB (1) : Government “bills” are paid with a combination of “this year’s tax take” and “borrowed money”.

Interest payments on the accumulated “money market loans” from previous years (/ decades) are also paid out, on an ongoing basis, from “this year’s tax take”.

See : The national debt for [ Insert your country name here ] historically.

.

NB (2) : Variants of “VAT” and “sales taxes” are entirely paid for directly by a country’s citizens / subjects, and form part of “this year’s tax take”.

Technically this turns all of the “citizens / subjects” of any given country into “taxpayers”.

.

NB (3) : Corporate taxes are taken from the profits made by companies operating in a given country.

“Profits” for each company are a fraction of the “revenues” paid for by that countries citizens / subjects who consume that company’s products and/or services.

The part of “government money” that comes from “corporate taxes” can therefore ultimately be traced back, by accountants at least, to “taxpayer money”.

Complications arise with international companies who seek to minimise their overall “corporate tax” bills. Any such taxes that do eventually get paid out, however, then become a fraction of some “lucky” country’s “government money”.

.

Final note

There is a place for government spending, from national defence down to bin collection and street cleaning, but debt levels are spiralling unsustainably all around the “democratic” world.

Some of this is due to corrupt and/or venal politicians and “the system” that has established itself over the last couple of generations (4 or 5 decades), but a large part of the blame can be placed with the voters who insistently “demand” that :
1) my taxes must be reduced, and
2) my “benefits” must be increased, and
3) the national debt must be reduced.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Mark BLR
November 4, 2026 9:06 am

Spot on.

An added twist is “benefits” to hoards of illegal aliens.

HB
November 4, 2026 4:28 am

Another wave of industry leaving the UK and citizens freezing

Bruce Cobb
November 4, 2026 4:34 am

Creative Accounting is such fun.

strativarius
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
November 4, 2026 5:10 am

Creative Accounting – income smoothing, aggressive accounting, earning
management, cooking the books etc.

In a word, Enron.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  strativarius
November 4, 2026 9:07 am

GAST
GMST

The list is too long to post.

MrGrimNasty
November 4, 2026 5:05 am

The BBC and the train network were eager to blame climate for the Stonehaven train derailment from the outset. Now more conformation, the drain was not correctly built and would have likely coped.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-54099688

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20y0922wg3o

MrGrimNasty
November 4, 2026 8:38 am

The world finally catches up. Years ago I made the point that the roads with the worst air pollution levels (supposedly due to the cars and used to justify emission zone charging and pedestrianisation) all had high concentrations of restaurants burning vast quantities of gas and burning food (tandoor, chargrill etc.)

https://ncas.ac.uk/whats-cooking-kitchen-emissions-now-rival-traffic-as-a-major-source-of-urban-air-pollution

Sparta Nova 4
November 4, 2026 8:53 am

Nonsense.
No matter which line on the ledger it is added, it is still a cost paid by consumers.

Sparta Nova 4
November 4, 2026 9:35 am

Anywhere else, moving money like this is fiscal malfeasance or money laundering.

Bob
November 4, 2026 4:00 pm

One word outrageous. Wind and solar can’t sustain the grid, this proposal is proof of that. Coal, gas and nuclear can easily sustain the grid safely, efficiently, affordably and provide enough energy for all of us. Stop pissing away our time, money and resources on crap that doesn’t work.

observa
Reply to  Bob
November 4, 2026 6:35 pm

Nah heads we get a satisfactory return on investment and tails the taxpayer loses-
Labour shelves net zero contract auctions that subsidise solar and wind projects
We aint greedy for supernormal profits you understand.

observa
Reply to  Bob
November 4, 2026 6:44 pm

PS: That’s communalism unionism feels for you not like those nasty capitalist Musk types 🙂

leefor
November 4, 2026 10:16 pm

“Move all energy policy costs onto gas” Even Especially those of the ruinables. 😉

November 4, 2026 10:22 pm

the Clean Power 2030 target

Gas is clean