UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Net Zero policies are driving up energy bills by £10 billion a year and hitting the poor hardest, according to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
The government is clearly not unaware of the problem because Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng recently published a policy document — Sustainable Warmth: Protecting Vulnerable Households in England — offering a range of subsidies including a ‘£140 warm home discount’ for those living in ‘vulnerable fuel poor homes.’
But as the GWPF’s energy editor Dr John Constable points out, this is just tinkering at the margins. The real problem is the government’s relentless pursuit of a Net Zero policy the country cannot afford.
The fuel poverty problem as it affects electrically heated low-income households is largely the creation of government policies and in particular the £10 billion a year subsidy cost of renewables, one-third of which hits households through their electricity bills and the remainder through the general cost of living as businesses pass on their costs.
Mr Kwarteng’s measures are wholly inadequate, barely scratching the surface of the electricity bill issue, and leaving the cost of living problem caused by his climate policies quite untouched. As the UK shifts towards electric heating to reduce emissions this problem, already serious, will only get worse.