AMID Rachel Reeves’s showering of the public sector with taxpayer money as if it was confetti in last week’s Spending Review, the biggest winner in percentage terms was Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
Miliband’s budget has been increased by 15.6 per cent for the Review period. Much more significant are the actual spending limits set, which add up to an obscene £45.1billion for the four years 2025/26 to 2029/30. That works out at more than £1,600 for every household in the country. And this does not even include the £14.2billion bung for Sizewell C discussed in last week’s column.
Remember that this is just money that will be spent by Miliband’s department. The costs don’t include all the subsidies for renewable energy that we all pay for on our energy bills, estimated to exceed £20billion a year, a figure that will carry on rising in years to come.
Moreover other government departments are also spending billions every year in the pursuit of Net Zero. For instance, Reeves’s Spending Review specifically allocated £5billion a year for schemes for decarbonising transport, local government green schemes, subsidies for renewable heat and sustainable farming.
On top of that is the £3billion a year given away for international climate aid.
In addition there are billions more hidden away in departmental budgets – everything from heat pumps to electric ambulances, decarbonisation of defence and public buildings.
To these enormous costs must be added the loss of revenue created by the refusal to make electric car drivers pay their fair share of vehicle taxes. With EVs currently accounting for about 5 per cent of cars on the road, the Treasury is already losing more than a billion a year in reduced income from fuel duties. This loss of income is likely to hit £5billion by 2030, as EVs start to dominate the roads.
It is no exaggeration to say that Net Zero is already costing central government well over £20billion a year.
DESNZ could be shut down tomorrow and nobody would notice. Its administrative work could easily be taken back into the Department for Business, as it was a few years ago, without the need for extra staff.
The most incredible fact about all of this is the total lack of media interest in what is truly a national scandal.
This really is an open goal for the Reform Party to attack. Cancelling Net Zero, shutting the DESNZ and immediately putting a stop to all government expenditure on decarbonisation is a message they should be hammering home day in, day out.
On The (Electric) Buses
SPENDING on Net Zero is now so endemic in government that it would be impossible to track it all down. Waste in government is, of course, rampant, but when it comes to climate change it seems a case of anything goes, with no apparent budgetary control imposed.
Just one comparatively minor example gives us a clue that the bill is much bigger than anybody could imagine.
Last year, Warrington Borough Council announced it was replacing its fleet of 105 buses with shiny new electric ones, courtesy of a £20million government grant.
Small beer, you might say. But across the country there are something like 40,000 buses used for public transport services. Multiply that, and it would cost over £7billion if the government chose to subsidise them all.
They might not do that, of course. In that event, it would be the local councils who would end up footing the bill. Either way, the public end up paying.
Electric buses are reckoned to cost about £200,000 more than diesel. Although they are cheaper to run, much of that saving is offset by reduced availability due to long charging times and the cost of building charging infrastructure. Warrington, for instance, has had to build a new bus depot, at a cost of £10million, because the old depot had no charging facilities; in addition, the chargers themselves and associated electrical infrastructure will have cost millions more.
In short, if it made financial sense to buy electric buses, local councils would be buying them anyway, without the need for massive subsidies.
