The UK government has given £20bn more in support to fossil fuel producers than those of renewables since 2015, the Guardian can reveal.
The research, commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, found that while renewable energy was given £60bn in support over that time, fossil fuel companies were given close to £80bn.
There will be some ghastly and incorrect definition of “support” at the heart of this. Of course, no one has published the report as yet so it’s impossible to check. Gotta get the headline before allowing anyone to check the details, right?
Meanwhile, fossil fuels delivered at the pump have probably contributed twice that in excise duty.
Are they including all those diesel gensets that maintain the illusion of viability for unusables as subsidy to “fossil” fuels?
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they were.
For some ignorant people, depreciation in company accounts is seen as a “tax break”. The reduction in tax paid is therefore a subsidy from the taxpayer.
My guess is the allowance of decommissioning costs….
The Lib Dems (aka the Conservative Party) truly do believe that the main problem with our failing energy grid is not enough renewables.
Obviously the cost of renewables will drive most of us into poverty, but that’s OK because our unelected foreign rulers will still be fabulously rich.
I think it’s probably that old reduced VAT canard they trot out every now and then. ( Waddle, not sure that canards can trot )
If it’s that then it’s lying. For of course all renewables gain the same VAT alleviation…..
How do you know if a policy is good?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/09/europes-far-right-praise-uks-migration-bill
Windmills provider some 50% of our electricity on a good day, nothing on a bad day. Perhaps 20% overall (assuming someone is paying for all those gas & coal power stations kept idle for non-windy days).
Solar provides nothing worth counting, ‘cos you want the lights on when it’s dark.
But good for your central heating needs at noon in August.
The electricity grid is some 6% of our energy consumption: both gas grid and transport fuels some 7x the National Grid. So windmills supply some 1.2% of total, at most (20% grid contribution to the 6% the grid is of the total).
So even if you take those quoted figures at face value, 99% of our energy generation gets a £80bn subsidy (£0.80bn per 1% supply), while 1.2% gets £60bn (£60bn per 1% supply).
So renewables are grossly oversubsidised by some 75x.
We need to greatly increase fossil fuel subsidies!!!!!
And that’s before you allow for the excise duty tax tax tax on road transport fuel.
Almost certainly well decommissioning costs where we took the revenue decades earlier.
Plus a bit for tax breaks on new capital.
I don’t give a damn if they did paid get more – at least they provide a reliable, controllable output…
It will be that old chestnut, running costs deducted from revenue equals calculate profit, and profit is wot is taxed. Petrol production has umpty billion in running costs, windmills have iddly million, bingo! evul petrol subsidised more than saintly wind. Morrisons have greater overheads than I do in my little shop, HOW DARE MORRISONS BE SUBSIDISED BY THE GOVERNMENT!!11!!!!”
Electrifying all the heating and transport is going to require an awful lot more copper, for the cabling. Currently miners are not opening new mines at anything like the required rate.
So we’ll have to subsidise the miners. What fun for the Lib Dems.
It’ll be something on the lines of ‘Fossil fuels should be taxed at X [according to us], they are actually taxed at Y less than X, ergo the taxpayer is subsidising them by Y’.
And a subsidy report in Canada a few years back, included the time spent idling in traffic and the cost of traffic accidents as a subsidy to the oil patch
If anyone believes that the UK government subsidises the producers of oil and gas from the North Sea then I am sure there are a hundred people willing to sell him/her/them a bridge in Brooklyn. Last thing I saw was a report that Harbour Energy was paying a tax rate of about 99% on its profits.
Oh, just in case you wondered, we don’t have any working coal mines in the UK. There is a relatively trivial amount of production from (?two, ?half-a-dozen – the wikipedia page is out-of-date so I don’t know whether the sites scheduled to close in 2020/1/2 have actually done so, nd whether propsed new site has been put into production) open-cast workings. Anyway, we’re talking about total value of coal produced in the UK at less than half a £billion p.a. so £11bn pa is a YMBJ.
I agree with various other posters that it’s “not paying as much tax as we think they should”. Do they want rates higher than 99%?
Isn’t it just wonderful to see governments spaffing unimaginable quantities of money at everything and anything?
BiFR, you are wrong. Governments are spaffing unimanigeable quantities of OUR FUCKING MONEY at everything and anything.
And unfortunately, there are useful idiots out there who are trying to convince us that because these fucking retards are certain of their delusion we need to adopt the least worst option to cope with the eye-watering costs of their delusion.
This empowers them: ‘Hey, we must be right because smart people are suggesting solutions’.
They are wrong. Tell them their fucking wrong. Don’t indulge them.
The UK government has given £20bn more in support to fossil fuel producers than those of renewables since 2015
“Commissioned by the Liberal Democrats”
Nope, never saw that one coming. First question for any consultant charged with producing such a report: “What would you like the answer to be?” (But given it’s the Limp-Dumbs, you hardly even need to ask.)
I just (involuntarily – loud annoying bastards) heard people talking in a pub who are aiming to be in charge of that money stolen (sorry – unlocked) from dead people’s unclaimed bank accounts. It sounds like it’s all going to be spaffed on Nut Zero “investment”.