Britain’s energy security will be “significantly” at risk due to Labour’s controversial green agenda, with consumer’s bills potentially soaring by as much as £300-a-year.
The former Chief Executive of trade body Energy UK Angela Knight slammed the Prime Minister’s green energy proposals as “very foolish” and “ill thought-out”.
Knight, who warned of the possible hike to household bills, fumed: “The UK will be exposed to the importers of natural gas, which will drive our bills up not down.
“It reduces the country’s ability to be self-sufficient on power, if you haven’t got your own energy and are reliant on the open market that puts your energy security significantly more at risk.”
The warning comes after the Government’s decision to remove the Winter Fuel Allowance from nearly 10 million pensioners, who now face the prospect of not only losing a £300-a-year Winter Fuel Payment but also paying an extra £300-a-year due to Labour’s green energy policies.
Sir John Redwood slammed Labour’s “damaging policies” on energy and warned that those choices will make the country “dangerously dependent” on foreign dictators.
Labour came to power with an election promise to stiffen windfall tax policies put in place by the previous Conservative Government, increasing the energy profits levy by three percentage points to 78 per cent.
A recent OEUK report indicates that increasing taxes on oil and gas profits could lead to a £12billion drop in tax revenue for the Treasury, with a reduction in new investment in the sector even resulting in an overall loss of £13billion.
OEUK said that the drop in investments could put 35,000 jobs at risk and may impact the forecasts for new oil and gas production numbers in the UK by two-thirds.
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Speaking to GB News, Redwood slammed Keir Starmer as “weak” and warned his green energy plans are “undermining” the industrial and energy economy.
“The Prime Minister’s rapid fall from grace and damaging policies will be cheering President Putin up, Russia will be pleased that the UK is closing down what’s left of its oil and gas production more quickly.” he said.
“The aggressive windfall taxes are the last straw for oil companies.”
Labour’s green energy plans will also end the issuing of any new oil and gas licenses for the North Sea as Starmer’s new administration aims to make the UK a clean energy world power.
Trade unions are warning that Labour’s plan to ban new licences would put more than 30,000 jobs under threat.
Reacting to Labour’s potential ban on new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea, American energy expert and Geologist, Dr Scott Tinker told GB News: “A ban on oil and gas production in the North Sea would have very little impact on global CO2 or methane emissions, because the oil and gas would be produced elsewhere in the world.”
Dr Tinker added: “Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Salman and other notable autocrats would love to see Great Britain curtail its own oil and gas production, and further shift the balance of economic power to the east. This is not hypothetical. It is happening.”
Secretary of State for Energy Security & Net Zero, Ed Miliband, has been criticised for using alarmist and hyperbolic language to further Labour’s green agenda, describing climate change as the “biggest threat to nature and food security” and previously warning that the “UK needs to be on a wartime footing” to tackle environmental challenges.
Conservative Peer and Chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, Lord Craig Mackinlay, emphasised the tactics now being used by Starmer’s Labour Government to push their agenda.
“The alarmist language emanating from Ed Miliband and his department is unnecessarily hyperbolic, untruthful and infantile,” he said.
“There is no ‘climate emergency’ that compares to a wartime analogy but plenty of ways to move to a better environment that we’d all support.
“That would be domestically derived gas as we move to mass nuclear; not windmills and Chinese made solar with batteries.
“The daft language we hear is being used to disguise the incoherent net zero measures that are failing to provide energy security or acceptable prices. It is the desperate language of failure.”
Protests against Winter Fuel Payments
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Some in the scientific community are critical of those who have built up hysteria about environmental catastrophes that may happen in the future.
Climatologist Zeke Hausfather said: “Climate change is bad enough, we should not be trying to exaggerate it.”
In response, founding director of climate think tank E3G, Tom Burke, said: “This language is justified. Climate policy failure will transform daily life for people as severely as a war, it is a fundamental threat to our prosperity and security. It is not alarmist.
“The climate is listening to the physics of carbon in the atmosphere not to politicians and editors resistant to change. The public is already scared as every opinion poll on climate change makes clear. It is the direct experience of climate change in their own life that is shaping public opinion not what scientists, politicians or activists think.
“The critics should stop whistling against the wind and start offering their ideas about how to solve the problem. Reality always trumps opinion. The language doesn’t need to be stronger, the narrative about how to solve the problem needs to be clearer and more compelling.”
Donnachadh McCarthy of the Climate Media Coalition added: “There will always be those who wish to ignore crises and pretend that they are not happening, it’s those critics who are funded by the globalist oil billionaires who carry enormous moral responsibility for their deception.”
A Government spokesperson said: “The only solution to protect from future energy shocks is our mission for clean, homegrown power.
“That’s why we’ve already swept away barriers to onshore wind farms, delivered the most successful renewables auction to date and consented nearly 2GW of nationally significant solar.
“We have also set out the biggest potential boost to home energy standards in history, with plans for all private and social rented homes to achieve EPC C or equivalent by 2030, lifting over one million households out of fuel poverty.”
