The consequences of decades of environmentalist scaremongering over sources of generating electricity are starting to come home to roost now, and the results are not going to be pretty. A report from the independent price comparison group, Uswitch finds that electricity in the UK will become unaffordable for most within 3 years, and so expensive as to be effectively rationed within a mere six years.
The report paints an alarming picture of exactly what under-investment and stalling on building electricity generation capacity now means in the near future for ordinary families living in one of the most advanced economies in the world: unheated and unlit homes as people are reduced to rationing their own electricity use as electricity prices skyrocket:
An annual energy bill of £1,500 is the tipping point at which energy bills will become unaffordable in the UK, says the research. When this point is reached, 77% will be forced to ration their energy use, 59% will go without adequate heating and 36% will be forced to turn their heating off entirely.
If bills then hit £2,000 a year – which the uSwitch.com forecast suggests could happen in 2016 – almost nine in 10 households (88%) will be rationing their energy use, 75% will be going without adequate heating and over half (55%) will turn their heating off entirely
Energy News: Household Energy Bills Will be ‘Unaffordable’ by 2015.
What’s even worse is that this is the result of what’s already happened: of allowing environmental naysayers, cowardly governments, and profiteering utility companies to put off building new generating capacity. As the report stresses, these figures do not even factor in the large increases in costs that government mandated carbon-reduction in electricity generation would mean:
Worryingly, the forecast does not take into account the impact of the government’s ambitious plans to cut carbon and switch to renewable generation, the cost of which will be added to household bills. uSwitch.com says consumers have a right to know by how much the government’s energy policy will increase their bills.
In the ultimate irony, then, the increasingly bitterly cold winters we are experiencing will see more and more families with children, the poor, and the elderly switching off their heating and lighting, as electricity prices skyrocket because of concerns over global warming. And all of this, remember, all of this is entirely unnecessary. If sufficient power stations using reliable fuels had been built, plentiful cheap energy for all would not even be an issue.
hauntingthelibrary 
This alarmist prediction is a result of all the environmentalist scaremongering and global warmists alarmism. As such, I do think that the groundswell of MPs is such that the realisation is sinking in, and hopefully will not be allowed to come to fruition. It will take some guts from MPs though, (i) to admit they were wrong and have followed the CAGW red herring for political gain, and (ii) to defy the party line.
Currently, only UKIP are telling the story as it is, but the recent letter by 100+ Conservative MPs led by Chris Heaton Harris expressing disdain over wind turbines and subsidies is an encouraging start.
Something about the new Energy Bill has infuriated George Monbiot, which got my attention, because generally speaking, whatever infuriates George is good news for the rest of us:
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/05/31/manipulation-merchant/
He writes about some terms and conditions buried in the wording of an annex to the Bill, amounting to a state of affairs which “appears to allow the government to approve any coal plant it chooses, whether or not it will one day be fitted with carbon capture and storage equipment”.
Of course, GM does not like this one bit, calling it deceitful, manipulative and destructive. But what it appears to mean is that there is a get-out clause or two hidden away in the long suicide note of UK energy policy. A narrow ray of hope, perhaps, amid the gathering darkness, and a reason to be (cautiously) cheerful?
He’s great entertainment value isn’t he? I remember watching a clip of a speech he gave to a village hall gathering and it just struck me that if he hadn’t of been a campaigner he would be one of those guys who spent their time writing angry letters to the council about the new bollards on the high street.
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