UKIP Energy Spokesman Roger Helmer MEP says that both our eye-watering green taxes and subsidies, and our dependence on the most expensive fossil fuels, are driven by the EU’s climate policies which are increasingly open to question. Even EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger has said that “Europe can’t afford a unilateral climate policy”.
Mr Helmer said: "Nick Clegg is plain nuts. Cutting subsidies for expensive and inefficient wind turbines will cuts energy bills – drastically.
"Our green taxes and subsidies are directly driven by Brussels, although our UK government has chosen to gold-plate them and go even further than the EU demands, adding 10% to household bills today and an estimated 30% by 2020.
"Meantime ministers blame increases on global prices of fuel, especially gas. They choose to ignore coal, which is abundant and cheap, because they’ve been intimidated by the green lobby. Yet Germany is building or refurbishing dozens of coal-fired power stations.
"The UK continues to rely on expensive imported gas from Russia and elsewhere, with a huge penalty in cost, balance of payments, and security of supply. Our Prime Minister talks positively about shale gas, and yet has failed to take decisive action to promote exploratory drilling in the UK."
UKIP proposes an urgent four-point plan to deliver affordable prices and energy security, and to promote economic recovery:
1 Immediately abandon green taxes, and all subsidies on new renewables projects (regrettably we cannot withdraw from current contractual obligations on green subsidies)
2 Start an urgent programme of new-build coal-fired power stations, ideally setting aside Brussels’ draconian environmental rules
3 Give the highest priority to shale gas exploration and development in the UK
4 Continue to press ahead urgently with new nuclear capacity
Mr Helmer said: "We must also move to end the current regulatory uncertainty which stands in the way of energy investment, by committing ourselves to end the constant interference by government in pricing and tax policies which have created huge regulatory uncertainty in the industry.
"Even in Brussels, realisation is dawning that we cannot go on with the EU’s irrational and damaging green policies, which are driving up costs and undermining energy security. EU industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani has said that energy prices in the EU threaten “an industrial massacre”. UKIP says it’s time for common sense and a practical approach to our energy crisis."
There can be no growth without abolishing huge regulation, huge taxation, and huge political corruption. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com
The entire switch to renewable energy has derailed. The difficulties connecting offshore wind farms to the power grid reduces their profitability and renders the original investment calculations of utilities invalid. The connection setbacks are problematic for baseload power capacity and can lead to the failure or delay of the energy switch.
EON, Germany’s biggest utility plans to lower clean-energy investments to less than 1 billion euros in 2015 from 1.79 billion euros last year. RWE will cut annual renewables spending in half to about 500 million euros in the next two years.
Both utilities are under pressure to reduce costs after Japan’s nuclear meltdowns two years ago prompted Merkel to close eight reactors. That wiped a combined 24.9 billion euros off their market value in the nine months following the disaster in Fukushima.
Germany undertakes an energy revolution. Under Energiewende, the economy is being re-engineered to cope with the closing of all its nuclear power stations and the ramping up of wind and solar power to fill the gap. At the moment, renewable sources provide about a quarter of Germany's electricity supply but the aim is to raise it to 80% by 2050 - truly a green revolution.
Electricity bills for ordinary households have jumped. Governments agreed that the switch to a green-source economy would be paid for by a surcharge on household electricity bills. Now, consumers are indicating they don't like paying, particularly as the surcharge has risen steeply.
There are no clean electrons and dirty electrons, and there are no clean photons and dirty photons. But that's exactly what Graecokleptocrats are selling, clean energy! The Greek government vowed to accelerate a 20-billion euro solar-power project that would help Greece become an exporter of clean energy. But so far, Greece only exports Trojan horses and Greeks themselves!
The global recession has hit the solar energy industry hard, decreasing demand that in turn has lowered prices for solar products. While the bankruptcy of California-based solar panel maker Solyndra has dominated headlines, the global difficulties of the industry have not gotten as much attention. Chinese solar panel makers have been protected by the Chinese government to keep the industry there afloat.
China is dumping solar products in Occident. Costs of solar panels will continue to drop over the coming decade. If they decline by a factor of four, the panels will become competitive with energy produced by all other fuels. Dumping is very good, a reverse Marshall plan! Let the Chinese subsidize Occidental imports all the way, until they go broke!
China has Henry-Forded USA with respect to solar panels. With the automobile and internal combustion engine, Ford took others’ inventions and perfected a way to make the automobile plentiful and affordable through his assembly lines. China today is taking advances made elsewhere in solar cell technology and becoming a world leader in solar panel production. In USA, investment into clean energy as a percentage of overall sales is far below that in other industries, 0.3 percent compared with 18 percent for the pharmaceutical industry, for example.
Like Ford, some American entrepreneurs are innovators in clean energy, not through new technology but through their business models. One such company is Arizona-based Simply Solar. Realizing that solar-panel financing and purchase is dizzyingly complex, with not only different types of panels that can be installed, but also with an array of government tax credits, Simply Solar offers to rent homeowners panels at a guaranteed cost below their current electricity rates, leaving all the installation and financing headaches to the company. After adopting that model, the company saw monthly sales rise to what they previously were in a year.
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