The zealots for net zero tell us renewable electricity will be cheaper. So far, the more renewables they put in, the dearer our power becomes.
The UK has gone much further than China, the US and Germany in closing down coal and gas and has ended up with far dearer energy. Just look at your latest fuel bill to see the results of bad policy.
Enter Tony Blair. He has warned his old party that their plan to get rid of all fossil fuels is impractical and wrong. It will take massive investment and new technology to store enough power when the wind blows and the sun shines to see us through long, dark, windless winter evenings without gas-fired power stations coming to our rescue.
It will need a much bigger grid to get more wind power from Scotland and the North Sea to where we use it. It will require many more huge pylons across the lovely countryside.
It will mean more risks of power cuts as the system wrestles with renewable power sources that can suddenly fall away as the weather changes by the minute.
The trouble is Tony Blair then backs a government idea to make our power even dearer. Adding the big costs of carbon capture and storage to gas powers stations on stand by will be another huge expense our competitors do not incur. Another set of big bills for taxpayers or a further levy on home energy payments.
My home fuel bill tells me electricity for my lights is four times the price of the gas I use for heating per unit of energy. It is difficult to accept the government spin line that it is the price of gas that is causing dear energy for us residential consumers. Do these people read their bills or remember how they fixed these high prices with electricity so much dearer?
China is the clear winner of Britain's net zero doom loop - and Tony Blair just made it worse - John RedwoodGetty Images
They try to say they mean sometimes the electricity generators have to buy in dear gas-fired power in large quantities at crisis prices when it is dark and the wind does not blow. That surely is an additional cost of wind power. Of course, gas-generated electricity will be dearer if you only want to buy it in an emergency, as the gas power station has to sit idle with all its costs and no revenue until you need it.
It is the government that decides to give the same price as they pay for emergency gas to all the other generators. They could change the system.
The truth about "cheap" wind power is more complex. The government has offered some wind farms high prices for their power to secure the investment. They pay wind farms to switch off when they are producing too much energy, when there is lots of wind. They offered subsidies to investors.
We all pay a renewable levy on our bills. Worse still, they have made gas a lot dearer with windfall taxes and carbon taxes to try to get people to switch away from it. Now they tell us the artificially high gas price they have created is the cause of dear energy!
The government needs to come clean. It is government policy that deliberately gives us the dearest energy in the advanced world. They tax it too much. They ban getting out new UK oil and gas. They subsidise renewables and allow some of them to benefit from high prices. They have replaced a good competitive market with thousands of complex regulations, many additional taxes and a feast of subsidies for wind turbines and solar panels.
The Chinese are the winners. They sell us the renewable equipment and undercut us on energy costs. The government is bankrupting our energy-using industries, squeezing domestic consumers and forcing us to rely on imports. The truth is simple. The government fixes the energy prices. They are to blame for the prices being so high.
