19-07-2025
Reform is right to target Miliband's outrageously expensive wind subsidies
The green lobby is in uproar. Apparently investors may never trust the UK government ever again. Democracy itself is under threat.
So what has prompted this hysteria?
It is a letter sent this week by Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, to the chief executives of major renewables developers to inform them that any new contracts they sign for subsidies may be cancelled by a future government.
Tice's intention is simple: to deter these companies and their investors from participating in the upcoming seventh auction for contracts for difference (CfD), which offer green energy generators a guaranteed minimum price for their power.
The timing of his letter coincides with a flurry of government announcements suggesting the next auction will impose billions in additional costs on energy bills.
The length of subsidies are to be extended from 15 to 20 years – likely in a bid to lower the headline cost levels – and various other amendments have been made that prioritise volume over value by incentivising maximum deployment, rather than lowest cost.
Tice is rightly worried about the cost impacts both on heavy industry, which is already struggling with the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world, and households, more of which risk being pushed into fuel poverty.
