Thread by @JimDiggle

Thoughts on today’s #energybills announcement. Short 🧵:

Sensing that what will be a genuinely welcome announcement today on much needed support to cover soaring energy bills, will be tainted by supply-side ideas to placate the climate-sceptic right of her party.

If measures to increase fossil fuel extraction are greater than those needed to increase renewables/nuclear and reduce demand (INSULATION) then this will be an opportunity missed, and could make the £££bn support package even more expensive to fund.

It seems there needs to be a constant reminder that this crisis is the result of high/volatile gas prices NOT net zero.

One of Truss’ limited number of policy levers to reduce market prices actually comes from existing renewables/nuclear, which can afford to agree to long-term CfDs because of their low running costs.

Ideally the announcement today will deliver short-term bill relief, and accelerate measures to tackle the root causes of the problem: a reliance on fossil fuel gas for electricity generation and heat, and the UK’s poorly insulated homes. But I’m not convinced it will…

As an aside: if the cost of this support package (£100-150bn) had been deployed as net zero investment in the past, we could have funded the retrofitting the UK’s entire housing stock (£35-65bn) TWICE and still had change to spare for a couple of new nuclear power stations.