MSE News: Energy bills being pushed up by green policies, Npower claims

Former_MSE_Helen

"Household energy bills will rise £240 a year by 2020 largely due to the cost of government green policies, says Npower..."

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Energy bills being pushed up by green policies, Npower claims



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Richie-from-the-Boro

We are all paying through the nose for little windy-mills and other garbage initiatives, I wonder why ?

Little windy-mills, wiggly worms in the waves and silly bits of silicone pointing at the sun.

Committee on Climate Change chief, Lord Deben, the ex-hamburger man of mad~cow~fame John Selwyn Gummer claimed in a report around xmas that generating power from natural gas would in the long run prove much more expensive than wind farms – despite the multi-billion pound subsidies wind receives from consumers and taxpayers. Tim Yeo, the Select Committee chairman, is a director of several renewable energy firms and lists just over £139,450 in payments linked to green companies in the latest MPs’ register of interests. Professor Bernie Bulkin is chairman of the DECC’s Office of Renewable Energy Development is also paid an undisclosed sum by a giant renewable energy investment fund. Prof Bulkin is a ‘senior adviser’ to Vantage Point Capital Partners, whose £3 billion holdings include large stakes in some of the world’s biggest wind, solar and biomass firms.

Our problem in this country is we have no energy because we generate none and we generate none because we relied on carbon and continue to rely on carbon, and will always [fracking next stop] rely on carbon and £100 Bi££ion spent on little windy mills, that's £112 a year for everyone in the UK added to their leccy bills, for these redundant windy mill graveyard & scrapyards on sea and land in 15 or so [2,000 turbines rotting in the Californian desert] years. That's in addition to the cost of substantial 'back up' plant on the grid. Stupid little 'kettle' lakes are called kettle lakes for a reason, they only gave a couple of minutes generating power. We as a nation backed the wrong cheap energy horse when the tree huggers and sandal wearers took over the agenda. Doomsday sayers back in the days of Copernicus at the same time as the inquisition a bloke called Galileo forced the consensus that the earth was the centre of the universe just because the political consensus now says we have global warming does not mean the world will end- it won't. 250 years ago we had 4 trillion tons of carbon underground, we've burnt a 1/2 trillion tons or so in 250 years, gimme a break .............

Nobody likes the truth, and I mean nobody. As long as this country avoids the inevitable and fails to build nuclear we will forever be at the mercy of primary resources of which we have none. Building toy windmills, pointing little bits of silicon at the sun and putting wiggly worms in the waves won't hack it .. .. if we covered the entire island and its shoreline in them it still would not provide power for the nation. Temperature stopped rising 15 years ago, the scientists knew it and said so. The politicians however continue to trott out global warming to frighten the nation into paying for stupid windy mills as a way of generating employment and reducing the need for carbon purchase costs [coal & oil] but its not to reduce global warming. Globally the earth has warmed 0.8% since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide has been on holiday since 1997 its still at 400ppm. Don't you find its a curious fact that all political traction - not scientific traction that drives these initiatives ? Put the whole worthless 'green' scenario in the long grass till about 2050 then have a~n~other look at the efficacy of UK 'green' energy, it might have improved .. .. but I doubt it. Do I want a nuke power station next to me, aye go on - I've got one 16 miles from here [1969- 1984], I suppose another won't hurt, I mean its been there for nearly 30 years and done me no harm. I haven't turned green don't glow in the dark and all my kids have the same amount of toes I have.

All options are cost-dis-benefit and need megga taxpayer subsidy, regardless of green / nuclear / gas / coal:

- nuclear can / will provide for base & peak demand
- coal & gas could if built provide for base & peak demand
- coal is the most polluting, and is unlikely ever to make a comeback for that reason
- green can not now and never ever will ever provide for base & peak demand
- gas is the most state security risky, one twist of Putin's megalomaniac tap, the lights go out, the heating goes off
- off the graph's, gas is the decade on decade inexorably rising cost and is the single biggest generator of electricity
- nuclear, when invented, was supposed to be so cheap that metering it was a pointless and unnecessary cost - yeh right !

Folks we have an endless water supply and an island of 'clarts' we can survive indefinitely as an island nation, we can feed and clothe our people but we aint got king-coal and can no longer function without energy. The 59 nuclear reactors in France mean they make about 75% of their needs and have economic and energy security, indeed they sell us their surplus leccy. They own our power companies and water companies, their nuclear strategy remains essentially unchanged from day one, why would they change it, they're laughing all the way to the bank and their nation has security. I'm not denying Fukushima, and Chernobyl and the risks with nuclear I just hold a different view - nuclear was the best of a bad set of options even when Scargill ruled the carbon fields, it continued to be the best in the last 30 [10% of American electricity comes from former Russian warheads] years but we invested in more carbon. We should face the truth and build a zero-carbon small factor nuclear that works for mankind.

At some point it will be nuclear power or going to war at one level or another, the fact of the matter is, if anyone turns off America's tap, war - unlike toy wars such as Afghanistan & Iraq will be instant and final against those with this precious resource. Face the future - its a truth no one wants to face - I'd just rather do it now than later.

You are being conned - little windy-mills, wiggly worms in the waves and silly bits of silicone pointing at the sun are about (1) profit generation and (2) employment generation.

[Deleted User]

Not surprising the money grabbing utility companies are blaming the government.

They think it is far too much to ask of them to use their 5% profits to fund the green initiatives.

5% although a small % is a MASSIVE £££ amount and I'm sure they could take a small reduction in this and be well in the black still.

SnowMan

MSE News: Energy bills being pushed up by green policies, Npower claims

Meanwhile in other news, Which find the longest waiting time to get hold of your energy company was Npower taking almost 3 times as long as the next worst supplier

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2013/07/energy-companies-putting-customer-service-on-hold-325177/

Pincher

Only £240 more in seven years?
Or £240 additional EACH YEAR?


1.03 ^ 7 = 1.23

So, if my energy bill is £1,250 today, at 3% inflation per year, it will be £1,537.5.

£1,537.5 - £1,250 = £287

We don't need any conspiracy theory to add £240 to the bill in 7 years, inflation will.

Richie-from-the-Boro

I make 'will rise £240 a year' to mean - '£240 a year'

nPower & others are an embedded generator, the both generate & sell to us for a profit all the costings are behind the closed doors of the wholesale market. This is a primary cause of no competition which is in turn a primary cause of price inflation. The casino banks and high street banks are the same type of situation. In this case the generating arm of nPower and others should be split off from the retail arm, that would go some way to levelling the playing field.

The GOV should never have allowed it to happen in the first place, but they did and continue to support the arrangement because as I have said before they're all drinking from the same trough. The GOV hide their involvement and nudge their green and de carbonising through, the energy market is allowed to make a fortune from renewable while it provides employment.

Nudge here

[Deleted User]

I am not sure which planet NPower is on with this article. How does this relatively small percentage relate to the over 10% increase in fuel prices the energy companies have inflicted on their customers just this year?

We have no choice with 'greener' energy production/saving drives. Unless we want to be buying all our energy from Russian sources?

Just a shame that the Green Deal is working out to be a total failure (I speak as someone with a broken old boiler whose just been looking into this fiasco).

jamesd

deanatrois, the UK's natural gas comes from the North Sea (via UK, Norway and Netherlands) and LNG imports. In the future it's likely that much will come from fracking and that natural gas will be the cheapest fuel for power generation in the UK.

Nuclear is possibly the most viable green technology around but it has high initial costs, even if they are low compared to wind and the related subsidies and standby power needs that source brings.

Money-Saving-King

[Deleted User] wrote:

They think it is far too much to ask of them to use their 5% profits to fund the green initiatives.

Do you really think investors/share holders are going to want a company to make 0% profit!

MillicentBystander

Aren't npower the ones who didn't pay any corp. tax due to their investment in green energy? Nice work if you can get it; spend on green energy initiatives, pay no tax because of this then get the customer to pay for the investment.

undaunted

I don't think too many people care more about green than they do about rising bills personally so perhaps Govt should change its policy before it gets booted out again.

Still it won't matter to them - not when they get their 10% pay rises!

That said, rises are obviously nothing at all to do with energy co. & shareholder greed of course! (did you see that flying pig just then)

All in it together they say? More like we are in "it" whilst they are all happily rolling around like pigs in muck. Never trust a politician or an energy supplier!