Ofgem urged to draw up ‘crisis plan' for July 1 RTS energy meter switch off
Energy campaigners have urged Ofgem to draw up a 'crisis plan' for July 1 when the Radio Teleswitching System (RTS) is switched off, saying hundreds of thousands of households remain likely to face considerable disruption.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Calls for Drax to be forced to fully disclose its biomass sourcing
The owner of the Drax wood-burning power station should be forced to disclose full details of its tree consumption, campaigners have argued, as MPs review the billions in renewables subsidies the North Yorkshire plant receives. A delegated legislation committee will decide on Monday whether to pass the government's plans to extend billpayer-funded subsidies to the country's biomass power generators, of which Drax is by far the biggest. Green campaigners said a condition of any extension should be that Drax published a key report by KPMG into its operations and sourcing. Reports by the auditor have been provided to the government and the energy regulator Ofgem but not the public. Ofgem has said KPMG shows Drax has not breached rules on sourcing trees for burning from environmentally sustainable forests. However, in separate incidents, Drax had been found to have supplied inaccurate data for subsidies in the past, leading to a £25m fine. Media investigations also found Drax using wood from old-growth forests in the US. Drax is expected to receive more than £10bn in renewable energy subsidies between 2012 and 2027, the current regime period, according to the thinktank Ember. Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist at Ember, said: 'Burning trees for electricity is extremely inefficient and expensive, and is not effective at mitigating climate change. 'The collapse in the price of solar, wind and batteries in the last five years means that burning trees for electricity is now an obsolete technology. Before we pour any more subsidy into Drax, MPs need to see the KMPG report on where the wood has been coming from.' The government plans to halve the subsidies available for biomass power generation under a revised regime from 2027. MPs on the delegated legislation committee are expected to vote on Monday on the statutory instrument enabling this. Almuth Ernsting, the co-director of the campaign group Biofuelwatch, said: 'If those subsidies are approved, it would result in more carbon emissions, more destructive logging of wildlife-rich forests in the south-eastern US and elsewhere, and more pollution suffered by communities living next to pellet plants in that region – pollution which community activists have denounced as 'environmental racism'.' Mark Campanale, the founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, added: 'At a time when renewables powered by wind, solar with back up batteries are growing exponentially around the world, it seems remarkable that the UK still needs to rely on dirty combustion like Drax to reach its climate targets. Instead of importing and burning wood, with all its associated emissions, the UK should be doubling down on natural sources of energy available to us, wind and solar.' A spokesperson for Drax said: 'In their investigation Ofgem found no evidence that our biomass failed to meet the sustainability criteria of the RO [renewable obligation] scheme, nor that the ROCs [renewable obligation certificates] we received for the renewable power we produced had been provided incorrectly. 'Their new statement on the reports we commissioned from KPMG, as well as the prior comments in a public accounts committee hearing by Ofgem's director of audit and compliance, confirm that they reviewed these documents as part of their investigation and found no evidence within them that we were in breach of our sustainability obligations and therefore wrong to receive RO funding.' The spokesperson added: 'Drax provides secure renewable power to millions of homes and businesses when they need it, not just when the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining. The science underpinning biomass generation is supported by the world's leading climate experts, including the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK's Climate Change Committee.' A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: 'We are halving the amount of support for Drax, saving money on people's energy bills and contributing to our energy security. Drax will operate for less of the time under a clean power system and will need to use 100% sustainably sourced biomass, with not a penny of subsidy paid for anything less.' The Guardian understands there would be substantial penalties for any breach of the sustainability criteria.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Telegraph
Miliband plots 15% net zero tax on gas bills
Ed Miliband is considering plans to overhaul green levies, which experts have warned would push up the average gas bill by £120 a year. The Energy Secretary is looking at removing the taxes that are applied to electricity as part of his plans to encourage more people to buy heat pumps. But he has admitted Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, would not cover the £4.8 billion-a-year cost, meaning the charges would likely have to be shifted on to gas bills. Ministers and Ofgem, the industry regulator, have spoken positively about the plans, which experts calculate would add 15 per cent to the cost of gas. Mr Miliband's department insisted that no final decision had been taken and dismissed the projections of how much bills would rise as 'speculation'. Under the proposals, subsidies for pensioners and households on benefits would be increased to cushion them from the impact of higher bills. Officials are likely to argue that the average household, which uses a mix of gas and electricity, would face no increase in overall bills as a result. That is because the levies would simply be shifted from their electric bill to their gas bill, with the cost balancing itself out overall. Homes with heat pumps would benefit most, saving £420 a year, but families who are heavily reliant on gas boilers and cookers could end up worse off. The plans emerged in a report drawn up by the Commons net zero committee, which is chaired by Bill Esterson, a Labour MP and former shadow minister. Backbenchers asked Mr Miliband and Miatta Fahnbulleh, his deputy, about calls from some campaigners to 'rebalance' the cost of gas and electricity. In transcripts released by the committee, the Energy Secretary said that there was a 'principled case' for removing levies from electricity. But he warned that the Treasury was unlikely to agree to picking up the cost of doing so, which has been projected at some £4.8 billion a year. 'There is a world where you transfer all the levies to public expenditure. No doubt all of us in our fantasy world would like that to happen,' he told MPs. 'It is billions of pounds of costs. I do not think it will surprise the Committee if I say that is unlikely to happen in the short term, given the fiscal situation that we face.' 'We need to proceed cautiously' Mr Miliband acknowledged that he was looking at proposals to transfer the levies to gas instead and that doing so would push up bills. He said that officials at his department were 'working through' where the costs would fall and how to mitigate them for the poorest households. 'You have 100 per cent of people, more or less, on electricity, and about 80 per cent of people on gas, so if you are transferring the 100 per cent to the 80 per cent, you then have a potential bills effect,' he said. 'I think the principled case for these levies not falling on electricity is clear. The practical solution to make it happen is more complicated, and in a world where we need to protect fairness. We need to proceed cautiously.' Ms Fahnbulleh, the Minister for Energy Consumers, said that the high price of electricity was pushing up the cost of running heat pumps. 'That is a problem for us because we need the running cost to be as cheap as, if not cheaper than, the cost of a gas boiler,' she told the committee. 'No doubt, when you speak to experts, they will all say that rebalancing needs to happen.' Jonathan Brearley, chief executive of the energy watchdog Ofgem, said there was a 'rationality' for shifting levies away from electricity. He said that it was 'the right thing to do from the perspective of getting to net zero' but that inevitably it would result in 'a lot of people losing out'. The revelations come after the climate change committee, which oversees net zero targets, told Mr Miliband to remove green levies from electricity bills. According to Nesta, a charity which promotes the uptake of heat pumps, the taxes make up 16 per cent of the cost of electricity and 5.5 per cent for gas. That means they add £140 to the typical electricity bill and £50 to the average gas bill. Mike Foster, chief executive of the Energy and Utilities Alliance, said Mr Miliband should be 'cautious' about adopting the proposals. 'We have seen in the debate around the Winter Fuel Allowance that changing household energy bills is politically risky,' he said. 'The political optics of seeing your gas bill increase by 15 per cent, for the 25 million households that use gas, to make using a heat pump that costs £13,000 to fit, £120 a year cheaper to run, may be a bridge too far at this time.' A spokesman for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero said: 'This is speculation – no decisions have been made. 'We will repair our retail energy market and deliver real change, to ensure people have the best possible support to choose more affordable, smarter, clean energy that is right for them.' 'As long as Britain remains exposed to the roller-coaster of global fossil fuel markets, we will be vulnerable to energy price spikes beyond our control. 'That's why our clean energy mission is the best route to protect consumers and bring down bills for good. We will set out further details in due course.'
The Herald Scotland
4 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
Our politicians must have the courage to rethink energy policy
Transmission charging is a legitimate issue which has been around for decades. However, nothing has changed since the ScotWind licences were applied for and gobbled up. So why are companies which bought them (cheaply) now sabre-rattling about walking away? Possibly, they feel in an increasingly strong position to do so in the absence of other options for governments which have bet the house on offshore wind. Or maybe it reflects growing nervousness among institutional investors about the sector. Or maybe a bit of both. Read more by Brian Wilson Any way, these threats demonstrate the vulnerability that this one-club approach is leading us into. What if half a dozen ScotWind licensees decided for their own reasons to abandon or put on hold the projects? By their standards, the money paid for licences is small change. Where is Plan B? Yesterday, a study by Bloomberg warned that even as things stand, the UK is likely to fall far short of its offshore wind target for 2030 on which the net zero strategy depends, with only a small number of projects going ahead before that date. Studies come and go, circumstances change … but these doubts being cast on assumptions which underpin the whole net zero enterprise surely need to be taken seriously and become part of the mix which demands a rethink of the current target-led fixation. At present, a lot of things are happening in isolation but nobody seems to be joining them up into a coherent strategy which the public – also known as the electorate – can sign up to. If that void continues to exist, it is likely to be filled by scepticism towards objectives which need not be in dispute. In fairness, part of the problem – which did not exist in the past – is the fragmentation of responsibilities. Both UK and Scottish governments have fingers in the pie, not to mention a regulator, Ofgem, which has far too much power to frustrate the potential for clear-cut policy. The great majority of people subscribe in principle to the idea of a 'just transition' towards renewable power. At the moment, however, they have difficulty seeing anything very 'just' about what is happening as jobs disappear in the North Sea without any clear plan in place to replace them. Vast sums are already being spent on infrastructure but as Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB union, pointed out, neither the skills nor the manufacturing capacity are in place to turn that into jobs. 'We seem to have fired the starting gun without being race ready', as he put it. That is a pretty serious indictment of neglect over the past decade when the transition was much spoken of but little planned for. Far too many politicians who should have been ensuring the reality of a 'just transition' were motivated by a desire to kill off the North Sea as quickly as possible without genuine concern for what happened next. Much is written about Reform UK and its positioning on race and immigration. However, its biggest recruiting sergeant at present, at least in Scotland, is its commitment to scrap what it refers to as 'net stupid zero targets', the virtue of which other parties have pretty much taken for granted. Looking across the Atlantic, it not difficult to see how this polarisation of attitudes translates into votes and the less credible the march towards 'clean power' appears to be, the greater the risk will be of that baby being thrown out with the bathwater of populist politics. That tipping point in public opinion may be closer than governments in either Edinburgh or Whitehall care to admit. There are multiple reasons why it would make sense to recognise that running down the North Sea prematurely, while we will still need oil and gas for decades to come, may be politically unsaleable – as it deserves to be. Any uncertainty which surrounds the delivery of offshore wind developments and the promised jobs that go with them can only add to the belief that an urgent reset is required. Gary Smith, General Secretary of the GMB (Image: Colin Mearns) Setting dates to meet unrealistic targets and clinging to them in the face of unpalatable evidence delivers nothing. The pace of travel is less important than the direction and it has always seemed likely that the transition could be accelerated, rather than inhibited, by maximising synergies with the existing North Sea industry. Politicians need the courage to acknowledge these realities sooner rather than later and for guidance we could look to history. Above a certain age, everyone in Scotland associated hydro electricity with the name of Tom Johnson, the Secretary of State for Scotland who won the blessing of Winston Churchill to launch the great hydro construction boom, while war still raged. Jump forward 20 years and we entered the age of nuclear power. Again there was political leadership and a sense of mission. Anthony Wedgwood-Benn, as he then was, personified the Wilson government's drive to harness 'the white heat of technology' which civil nuclear power epitomised. Each of these energy revolutions has served Scotland exceedingly well but neither would have happened without the clear political will to face down opposition and drive them through. As it happens, each provided us with low-carbon sources of electricity, long before 'net zero' was heard of. Our current energy revolution would be in a lot better place if the same political leadership could exist. Politicians in both Edinburgh and London could surely agree that an energy policy which they expect people to buy into must also be recognisable as common sense and a genuinely 'just transition'. Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003
