Healey Will Veto Offshore Wind Projects That Do Not Cut Bills
Chancellor John Healey has said he will veto new offshore wind projects if they will not lower energy bills. The announcement adds to concerns that the government is moving away from its pro-renewables agenda.
Projects that bid for subsidy contracts in the next renewables auction will be approved only if ministers believe Britain's electricity grid can take all the power they generate without pushing up costs for consumers. Healey set out the approach in the Times.
"There's no sense building power that can't connect and then paying to switch it off," he wrote. The government will buy only projects "that can lower bills while strengthening our energy security", he said.
Paying turbines to switch off
The concern is about wasted wind. The National Energy System Operator, which is funded through energy bills, has to pay turbines to switch off when there is not enough cabling to carry their power to consumers. A National Audit Office report in September warned that homes and businesses could face a potential annual bill of £7.8bn by 2030 to deal with the problem.
Healey said clean power is "how we break the grip of international gas prices on our bills". He added that the shift has to come "at the right pace, in the right places, with the grid to carry it".
He also answered critics in advance. "This is not a retreat from clean power. It is the credible route to it," he said. Without the renewable generation added in recent years, he argued, this year's gas price shock "would have hit families and firms even harder".
Budget cuts to the energy department
The move appears to be a further shift away from Labour's target of clean power by 2030. In the budget, Healey revealed more than £3bn of cuts to the energy department, much of which will pay for higher defence spending. Renewables experts were alarmed and warned that Britain was unlikely to hit its green heating targets.
The cuts include £741m from the boiler upgrade scheme, which helps people swap gas boilers for heat pumps. A typical household can claim £7,500 under the scheme, and about 60,000 pumps a year are fitted in existing homes. The target is 250,000 a year by 2030. The plan had been to raise funding from £400m this year to just over £700m by 2029-30.
Some see the cuts as a dismantling of the green agenda pushed by former energy secretary Ed Miliband and his successor, Miatta Fahnbulleh. Their allies insist the agenda remains as strong as ever. They point out that Healey also announced a long-term move to shift green costs from bills to taxpayers, which both energy secretaries had championed.
Source: the Guardian