The Telegraph reports:
The Government’s plans to increase the proportion of Britain’s energy generated by “green” sources is set to cost between 11 and 17 times what the change brings in economic benefits.
The figures are buried deep in the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy paper produced last month.
According to the document, while the expected cost will total around £4bn a year over the next 20 years, amounting to £57bn to £70bn, the eventual benefit in terms of the reduced carbon dioxide emissions will be only £4bn to £5bn over that entire period.
…
The White Paper has also calculated that household gas and electricity bills will have to rise by up to £249 a year, although Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband has insisted that new measures to improve consumers’ energy efficiency would reduce the extra cost to an average of £92 a year per home.
And that is from Britain’s liberal government. Here in the States, the Center for Data Analysis paints a just as bleak, if not more so, picture for what Waxman-Markey will do to the American economy. From the report:
- A family of four can expect its per-year energy costs to rise by $1,241;
- Including taxes, a family of four will pay an additional $4,609 per year;
- Aggregate GDP losses will be $9.4 trillion;
- Aggregate cap-and-trade energy taxes will be $5.7 trillion; and
- Job losses will be nearly 2.5 million;
Human impact on the environment? If you stood all 6.6 billion people on the earth shoulder to shoulder, front to back, alloting each one a square foot of space, they would take up an area of only 210 square miles….about 1/2 the size of the area of Houston,Texas. Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn't it?
The two largest parties in the UK have developed a great ability to distort statistics about the likely costs of their legisaltion by factoring unproven and generally unspecified 'savings' into their press releases and statements. The idea that these new measures by government might help reduce costs through energy savings are fatuous, but are reported with an apparently straight face even by right-of-centre newspapers like the Daily Telegraph. Sadly, the British Conservative Party has the same approach in this type of area – at one point suggesting it would, for example, ration the flights of the British people (but not, of course, the flights of British politicians!).