Sunday Times Business section

[Greenday]

Apparently the treasury have focused in on ECO a costly scheme which accounts for £69 of the average energy bill. They then state another scheme that could be removed is the feed in tariff which costs the average household £6.

Announcement to be made on December 4th.

Be prepared for some craziness again!!

 

[Worcester]

Those figures tie up with my earlier posts.

Can't call it ECO then though ECO = Energy Company Obligation, and they were penalised if they didn't spend enough
(Oh that will come from proifts. No - put it on the bill )

ECO was supposed to be spent on energy efficiency measures - primarily new boilers, loft and ETT cavity wall, on households that are on one benefit or another - So if you claim benefits and sit at home you get it, if you go out and work hard, you don't......mmmm...

What about the RO though, that adds about £40, to pay for large scale renewables, far more than FiT - predominantly large scale windfarms, (most of which are owned in one way or another by the big 6...)

 

[Gavin A]

thing with ECO is that they've actually only spent a tiny proportion of the budget so far this year with just 4 months left to run - around 1% only of the solid wall stream, although it looks like around 50% of all installs are still being checked and haven't been paid for yet.

So tbh I reckon they could well be justified to knock 50% off the budget for the scheme for this year at least, resulting in a potential £30 a household saving (if the electricity companies passed it on). Surely better to do that then have a ridiculous scramble to get the budget spent before the end of March, which would be bound to end up with massive amounts of bad installs getting done - Solid wall insulation isn't something that should be rushed or it will leak down the back and cause massive damp problems, and there just aren't enough trained, experienced SWI installers or renderers to possibly meet that target in that timescale in winter (it shouldn't really be installed in winter anyway).

 

[puddy]

Those figures tie up with my earlier posts.

ECO was supposed to be spent on energy efficiency measures - primarily new boilers, loft and ETT cavity wall, on households that are on one benefit or another - So if you claim benefits and sit at home you get it, if you go out and work hard, you don't......mmmm...

Thats me!

I stay at home all day have not worked for over 20 years spend 15 + hour on oxygen have to carry a small cylinder with me

But I didn't choose to be disabled

Please don't treat the disabled under the Daily Mail standards remember the Para Olympics games

 

[Gavin A]

Thats me!

I stay at home all day have not worked for over 20 years spend 15 + hour on oxygen have to carry a small cylinder with me

But I didn't choose to be disabled

Please don't treat the disabled under the Daily Mail standards remember the Para Olympics games

indeed.

But even putting the morality aside, it makes financial good sense to do this as effectively the state ends up picking up the tab one way or another for the energy bills long term anyway, though this lot seem pretty determined to cut all benefits well past the bone to force people into food banks etc so maybe not as true as it should be... point being thought that it's really an investment by the state in minimising long term benefit requirements.

Plus well insulated, homes that are cheap to keep warm have a massive impact in terms of reducing NHS admissions and costs - which is why the NHS in one region has actually contributed to a big insulation program in local social housing as it's cheaper to reduce admissions this way than to have to treat people for preventable diseases / conditions made worse by cold and damp conditions.

 

[Worcester]

@Puddy, I know,

What is different is that in your case you ARE one of the deserving, unfortunately a lot aren't.

Interviewed 2 lads as apprentices last week (and a load of others..), both had completed level 2 'full time' = 2.5 days a week, NVQ's last year. Asked both what they did with the other 4.5 days, one said depended what was on TV that day, the other played Rugby Saturday, coached under 15's Sunday, and worked the other 2.5 days a week for no pay in his dad's property and garden maintenance business, guess which one we didn't offer the placement to.

Back to topic, bet they charged the full budget of eco even though spent over the 12 months (so should have been 1/2 the actual cost..) We've seen tomes of eco / social housing work going on around here, I reckon they'll be back in 12 - 18 months to fix it all. (Just after their 12 months warranty runs out...) Quality of workmanship leaves a lot to be desired...

 

[Greenday]

My point of the original post is the Feed In Tariff could be immediate danger of being cut completely and I worry that the Renewable Heat Incentive might never happen. They are easy targets and may satisfy the growing demand generated by the media that something has been done about green taxes. I expect the windmills will continue to be planted.

 

[puddy]

@Puddy, I know,

What is different is that in your case you ARE one of the deserving, unfortunately a lot aren't.

Interviewed 2 lads as apprentices last week (and a load of others..), both had completed level 2 'full time' = 2.5 days a week, NVQ's last year. Asked both what they did with the other 4.5 days, one said depended what was on TV that day, the other played Rugby Saturday, coached under 15's Sunday, and worked the other 2.5 days a week for no pay in his dad's property and garden maintenance business, guess which one we didn't

When I was training to be a baker I went on my little 50cc moped from Orpington to South Bank university 1.5 day's a week half day study a week the rest time I was at work at 2am worked in Swanley. I passed my c&g. Worked all over the UK

 

[Gavin A]

My point of the original post is the Feed In Tariff could be immediate danger of being cut completely and I worry that the Renewable Heat Incentive might never happen. They are easy targets and may satisfy the growing demand generated by the media that something has been done about green taxes. I expect the windmills will continue to be planted.

RHI has nothing to do with electricity bills, and FIT has already been cut by 75% or so, and has a clear degression mechanism for cost reduction already in place.

Therefore even if they do review it, RHI is never going to be impacted by it, and FIT is very doubtful - there are far easier targets.

Unfortunately they're lashing out to distract from the fact that they are directly to blame for this for implementing a stealth carbon tax on coal generation that led to 3GW of coal plants closing in April this year, which last winter had kept costs down as 20% of generation switched from gas to coal due to the 50% rise in the price they were paying for gas vs 2 year earlier.

This point needs repeating widely and loudly every time this is raised publicly IMO.

 

[puddy]

Do you think the 46.75 fit rate could be cut even after the contract been signed? I really don't trust the government on this issue

 

[Greenday]

If they are planning to take some green levies out of the energy bills and put into taxation I would think consideration would be given to reducing FIT and RHI. As you are aware RHI is due to be paid from taxes so will always be under threat when the next round of tax savings comes around.


The fact that the FIT has been cut radically mirrors the reduction in system cost so I would imagine is still on the strategists radar as ROI is still above what the government was aiming for.


In answer to Pudsy it would be political suicide to remove a FIT that was in place and at this time is not possible. Many have invested there pensions in solar and many influential investors are up to there neck in solar farms.

 

[SibertSolar]

I've been attempting to read into the background of this government's activities into the energy sector and this type of statement from GavinA keeps ringing true to me:

"Unfortunately they're lashing out to distract from fact that they are directly to blame for this for implementing a stealth carbon tax on coal generation that led to 3GW of coal plants closing in April this year, which last winter had kept costs down as 20% of generation switched from gas to coal due to the 50% rise in the price they were paying for gas vs 2 year earlier."

Why isn't this being thrown out in political debates at the moment?? Aren't Davies and Barker highlighting this too?

All this politicking is extremely irritating to those of us inside the industry - not least so because we know that the public do tend to listen to rhetoric and read red-top paranoia....

 

[Gavin A]

Do you think the 46.75 fit rate could be cut even after the contract been signed? I really don't trust the government on this issue

they'd lose in court if they tried it, and they are well aware of this.

A similar case against Ofgem has already gone to the European court of human rights, so the case law is already there, the government wouldn't have a leg to stand on legally.

 

[JD6400]

they'd lose in court if they tried it, and they are well aware of this.

A similar case against Ofgem has already gone to the European court of human rights, so the case law is already there, the government wouldn't have a leg to stand on legally.

Although I agree . That has never seemed to stop them in the past !!!?:30:

 

[jerriais]

The govt here always talk about the fact that the wholesale cost of energy is beyond their control and always going up. We should be shouting that the wholesale cost of solar is zero, and has been for the last 6 billion years.

 

[The Solar King]

There have been statements that subsidies for solar and wind are not up for review.

The irony is cutting the green levies will do exactly the opposite of saving money on energy bills. The only way to reduce costs is to use less. Energy costs more in much of continental Europe but household bills are lower because they have had good building regs on energy efficiency for a long time. We have had shoddy ones at the behest of the shoddy mass builders who want to throw up cheap and nasty boxes at huge profit.

with no incentives to improve energy efficiency, things will get worse despite all the political blustering.

 

[MCS Renewables]

Same issues in Germany

Germany?s ?green energy revolution? costing billions ? RT Business

 

[Gavin A]

meantime the clean up costs for nuclear in the UK just went up by another £5 billion, yet I must have missed the anguished daily mail / torygraph articles calling for an end to this costly nuclear fiasco.

Pretty much the only item of spending that has actually been allowed to increase significantly in this parliament is the clean up budget for nuclear, which now accounts for something like half of DECC's entire budget.