Britain’s energy policy is a debacle. It’s been driven by Marxist zealots of the hard-‘green’-left – branded the “Greenblob” by the reasonable and honest folks in politics, like Owen Paterson (see our post here).
The Greenblob have set Britain up for an inevitable economic disaster, by wedding its increasingly bleak future to insanely expensive, intermittent and utterly unreliable wind power (see our post here).
The obvious and inevitable consequence of throwing £billions in subsidies at wind power outfits and setting terms in 20 year contracts that see offshore wind power generators guaranteed obscene returns – being able to charge “three times the current wholesale price ofelectricity and about 60% more than is promised to onshore turbines” – is spiralling power bills (see our post here).
But sending millions into power-price-penury isn’t all that politically palatable, so the Greenblob spends much of its time covering up the true and hidden costs of wind power; and lying like fury when – despite their best efforts – those facts “unhelpfully” pop into view.
The hard numbers are, of course, “inconvenient” and, therefore “unhelpful” to the narrative being spun by Britain’s wind industry spin-masters embedded in Ed Davey’s Department of Energy and ClimateChange (DECC).
Instead of levelling with power punters on the true and ultimate costs of throwing £billions in subsidies at wind power outfits, the spinners at the DECC simply kept the “unhelpful” stuff under wraps. And, if the “Greenblob” operatives at DECC HQ had their way the hard facts would have never seen the light of day.
Well, thanks to some persistent digging by Dr John Constable, director of Renewable Energy Foundation, the truth is out.
Here’s The Telegraph exposing DECC’s determined efforts to see that British power punters are kept in the dark – in more ways than one.
Green policies to add up to 40pc to cost of household electricity
The Telegraph
Robert Mendick
14 December 2014
Official figures – initially withheld by ministers – show steep rises in the price of electricity by the end of the decade to pay for the Government’s policies to tackle climate change
The cost of household electricity will rise by as much as 40 per cent by the end of the decade because of the Government’s green energy policies.
Official figures — initially withheld by ministers — show an alarming increase in the price of electricity caused by generous subsidies to wind farms as well as other policies.
An average household is expected to pay as much as £250 more for electricity – mainly through consumer subsidies – to pay for the Government’s green energy schemes, while an electrically heated house could be as much as £440 a year worse off.
And by 2030, when thousands of planned offshore wind turbines are finally operating, the burden will be even greater, the numbers show. The average household could be paying an extra 60 per cent for electricity – equivalent to £350 more a year.
Medium-sized businesses will be hit very hard, according to the new data. On average such companies will see electricity bills rise by more than £500,000 a year – a cost likely to be passed on to consumers.
The figures were made public last week by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) following a Freedom of Information request by campaigners. The information was initially prepared for an official DECC report – released at the beginning of November – which claimed that the average household fuel bill had fallen by £90 thanks to the “impact of DECC policies”.
But the tables showing the actual cost of green policies on future electricity prices for households and businesses in 2020 and 2030 were kept secret because they were “thought to be confusing”.
Their release now will embarrass ministers, who are accused of presiding over an expensive consumer subsidy system.
The Government’s climate change policies include complex consumer subsidies for wind and solar farms, as well as grants for energy efficiency measures such as loft and wall insulation, available to certain households.
The introduction of smart meters, which it is hoped will encourage lower consumption, also helped contribute to rising electricity prices.
Dr John Constable, director of Renewable Energy Foundation, the think tank whose Freedom of Information request was responsible for forcing DECC to release the price impact tables, said: “The striking scale and increasing trend of the climate policy energy price impacts are bad enough in themselves, but DECC’s attempt to conceal these vitally important figures is breathtaking.”
Dr Constable said he had been told by informed sources that pressure had been put on DECC to withhold the tables.
“This is a very unsatisfactory situation,” he said, “Energy price impact data is so intrinsically important, and policy transparency so crucial to public trust in government, that very firm intervention is needed to clear the air and ensure that it will not happen again. This sounds like a job for the Prime Minister.”
DECC’s initial 88-page report was published on Nov 6, but the raw data on which the findings were based were omitted.
The Renewable Energy Foundation requested the figures and this week they were finally made available.
The supplementary tables show the “average impact of energy and climate change policies on households’ energy prices” will see the cost of electricity rise by as much as 42 per cent by 2020 from £131 per megawatt hour (MWh) to £186.
An average household uses about 4.5 MWh, meaning a rise of as much as £250 in the cost of electricity. By 2030, the price of a megwatt hour will increase by 60 per cent to £206.
Medium-sized businesses, according to DECC’s own figures, will pay as much as 77 per cent more for electricity in 2020 and 114 per cent more in 2030.
Such business on average consume 11,000 MWh – adding as much as £560,000 a year to the electricity bill. A typical bill could rise from £760,000 a year to £1.3 million.
DECC has claimed overall bills will fall because its green policies will lead to a reduction in household energy consumption with measures such as improved insulation and increased efficiency of electrical appliances leading to an overall drop in bills, it says.
A DECC spokeswoman said a decision had been taken to withhold the tables because it was “thought to be confusing”.
She said: “We always said we would publish the data anyway. It is not written anywhere but that is what we were quite clear about.”
She added: “Without the Government’s policies bills would still be higher.”
The Telegraph
George Orwell conjured up his nightmare world of malicious bureaucrats engaged in pernicious mind control in his novel, 1984.
At the time 1984 hit bookshelves in 1949, it was largely taken as a warning; directed at avoiding a future dominated by a malign few, at the expense of a pliant and gullible many. As the Iron Curtin descended across Europe, many took it as an analogue of the “how to” manual used by the Iron-Fisted, Communist regimes that ran the Soviet Bloc.
These days – as the great “Greenblob” (just the latest tribe of Neo-Marxists hell-bent on destroying free-market democracy from within) infects every aspect of political life and society – his prescient insights have taken on the air of a hard-hitting political documentary: from the piece above, it’s clear that Orwell’s future is now.
Orwell’s tongue wasn’t exactly wedged in his cheek when he coined terms such as “newspeak”; “doublespeak”; and “doublethink”: he was in deadly earnest.
“Doublethink” involves ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct; but differs from plain old hypocrisy and neutrality. Somewhat related but almost the opposite is “cognitive dissonance”, where contradictory beliefs cause conflict in one’s mind. Doublethink is notable due to a lack of cognitive dissonance — as brainwashing renders the “doublethinker” completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction.
And, so it’s come to pass that those that purport to govern us, fight tooth-and-nail to bury the facts about the insane costs of wind power; and, when the facts get out, take to lying and obfuscation like ducks to water.
In Orwell’s dystopian vision, the Party spent its every energy to ensure the people knew nothing of what was really going on, ensuring that only a narrative approved by the “Ministry of Truth” saw the light of day.
When it comes to energy policy, Britain’s Big Brother mind control network is under the firm grip of the apparatchiks from the DECC: like the faceless, nameless “double-spokeswoman” who – along with her fellow travellers – decided to conceal the critical data on the true and hidden costs of wind power, because such “unhelpful” facts were “thought to be confusing”.
Heaven forbid! Facts? Confusing?
Sure, there’s always a risk that data spelling out, in unequivocal terms, the unassailable fact that paying wind power outfits 3-4 times the cost of conventional power results in escalating power bills (as night follows day), might end up “confusing” the average power punter. But we doubt it.
In bending over backwards to keep the facts secret – DECC’s real fear was more likely to be “confusion” amongst power punters about the motives of those they pay handsomely to serve and protect them: “confusion” about how that energy policy “giant”, Ed Davey could get it so, so wrong; and why his Department kept a lid on the facts that would reveal the lie?
Ed’s protectors at the DECC know full well that, as The Economist put it:
Offshore wind power is staggeringly expensive. Dieter Helm, an economist at Oxford University, describes it as “among the most expensive ways of marginally reducing carbon emissions known to man”. Under a subsidy system unveiled late in 2013, the government guarantees farms at sea £155 ($250) per megawatt hour for their juice. That is three times the current wholesale price of electricity and about 60% more than is promised to onshore turbines (see our post here).
Which is where DECC’s resort to “doublethink” comes into play. As Orwell defined it, “double think” is:
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”
In a perfect example of Orwell’s “doublethink” in action, the “doublespeak” spinners with DECCs are able to deliberately lie by running the line that power prices will fall – due to its “brilliant” policy of throwing £billions in subsidies at wind power outfits – while simultaneously equipped with hard data that says just the exactly the opposite. Hmmm …
The deceit and high-handed arrogance of these people is, as the Renewable Energy Foundation’s director, Dr John Constable puts it: “breathtaking”. And it’s a phenomenon that’s overrun energy policy around the world.
When it comes to the dismal forecast laid out in 1984, that – if left to their own devices – those in power will inevitably corrupt and destroy the institutions that are meant to benefit society and, ultimately, destroy the society itself, George Orwell was an optimist.
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