The City has now finally digested Ed Miliband’s energy policy, which could cost the supply companies at least £4.5bn over 2015-17. It is clear that the threat of a price freeze will chill investment in new generating capacity, regardless of what some in Westminster may hope. Equity investors have reacted as they ought to have on day one: they have been selling out of the entire UK gas and electricity sector (and not just supply companies) and switching their money into utilities based in safer countries, --Allister Heath,
City A.M., 14 October 2013
Families struggling to cope with rising energy bills face more misery after one of the UK’s leading utilities warned that environmental taxes would trigger even higher prices. The scale of the problem was underlined when the Red Cross announced that it will collect and distribute food aid in Britain this winter for the first time since the second world war. --Guy Chazan, Financial Times, 14 October 2013
Throughout the 1970s, Britain was repeatedly shaken to its core by social mayhem and political chaos caused by disastrous energy crises. The episodic anarchy was not due to a lack of energy – in fact Britain had more coal, oil and gas than any other European country. These traumatic upheavals badly hurt families and UK industries. They also brought down governments and the entire economy. The Tories lost the 1974 Election while its disastrous three-day week was under way. Labour lost the 1979 Election in the aftermath of the even more calamitous Winter of Discontent. I believe Britain’s ruinous green energy policy is now threatening to bring about a comparable and wholly unnecessary energy crisis. --Benny Peiser,
Mail on Sunday, 13 October 2013
It is now a little over two weeks since Mr Ed Milliband, Leader of the Labour Party, announced that a future Labour government would freeze power and prices from May 2015 to January 2017. The Labour party suggests that this would cost the supply companies around £4.5bn over the two years. How have investors reacted? As the charts below show, equity investors have done exactly what we would expect i.e. they have been selling the UK sector (all of it not just the supply companies) and switching into Europe. --Peter Atherton and Mulu Sun, Liberum Capital, 11 October 2013
Europe’s electricity providers face an existential threat. The decline of Europe’s utilities has certainly been startling. At their peak in 2008, the top 20 energy utilities were worth roughly €1 trillion ($1.3 trillion). Now they are worth less than half that. --The Economist, 12 October 2013
Controversial green taxes are to rise sharply over the next few years, slapping nearly £300 on electricity bills, according to official figures. Dr Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation warned that the DECC figures are “very conservative and are likely to be much higher. This is already costing jobs. Energy intensive manufacturing firms are telling the Government they need subsidies or they will not survive. Taxpayers face having to fund not just renewable energy but industry.” --John Ingham, Daily Express, 14 October 2013
Green taxes and subsidies form a substantial and growing component of domestic energy bills. Many people are on the verge of having to choose between heating and eating. Affordability is now the most important factor in the politics of energy and any political party that fails to recognise this is headed for very big trouble indeed. --Editorial,
Daily Express, 14 October 2013
By acting alone, however, the UK risks disadvantaging itself without furthering its environmental objectives. Companies that use a lot of electricity will consider moving elsewhere. The effect on investment will be immediate even if existing plants stay put for now. This could further deplete Britain’s industrial base just as the government tries to rebalance the economy away from financial services. –Editorial, Financial Times, 8 October 2013
Watching the three party leaders arguing shamelessly over energy bills and climate-change policies is, at points, jaw-dropping. While Cameron mocks Miliband’s proposed energy freeze and points out that in the last Labour government he was the energy secretary who piled extra costs on to consumers, the Tory leader backed Miliband’s green policies at the time and has continued in a similar vein in office. That means that successive governments have been very slow to respond to warnings about Britain’s looming energy crisis. --Iain Martin, The Sunday Telegraph, 13 October 2013
We’ve said very clearly in my party — not just words, not just good intentions — but we want to see an increase in green taxes as a proportion of the total, we want to see the climate-change levy turned into a proper carbon levy, we want to see aggressive and far-sighted targets for emissions from cars, because we think that there’s a huge amount that we can do in terms of leadership on that front, and as I’ve said, we want annual targets for carbon emissions… I want the Conservative Party to help lead the green revolution in Britain. --David Cameron at the Green Alliance, December 2006
