Reform Our Energy Policies

Let’s use the energy treasure under our feet.

We are all concerned about the environment and we all want cleaner air. But honesty is vital. We face the gravest energy crisis since WW2. We are in a global energy war. Terrorists are blowing up gas pipelines and power plants.

Westminster’s obsession with Net Zero is making us all net poorer every year. It is creating more emissions, not less, as it forces us to buy our energy from overseas. It is thus sending our jobs and money overseas, making it “net stupid”.

The Conservatives, encouraged by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, over the last 12 years have been grossly negligent. They have turned the UK from being a net exporter of energy into a large net importer of energy. They have foolishly left us strategically exposed to overseas state actors.

The energy crisis is long lasting and splits into 2 parts: a price crisis and a supply crisis. Please check out at our detailed emergency energy plan —”Global Energy War” — on our website. This is despite the fact that the UK sits on vast energy reserves of coal, oil, natural gas, shale gas and lithium. We should be using our own British energy treasure, creating wealth and jobs to remain here in the UK, not disappear overseas. New technologies mean we can extract these commodities safely in a cleaner, cheaper way.  Cheap energy is the foundation stone to allow manufacturing to thrive and grow. It is essential for our remaining steel industry to remain competitive. Without it we are doomed to see more jobs and money go abroad.

Let’s have £1 trillion plus of levelling up by drilling down.

 

 

The Price Crisis:

We had a major problem even before the Ukraine war.

The growth in heavily subsidised renewable energy has led to over £10 billion of inflation-linked subsidies every year with an extra £5 billion of annual related network operating and balancing costs. This totals £15 billion every year, approximately £500 per household directly or indirectly. Much of the renewable industry is overseas owned, meaning they are making vast profits at British consumers’ expense. Renewables are unreliable when the wind does not blow, so they need the insurance backup of gas generating capacity, which adds significantly to costs due to duplication.

In wartime situations the Government must control the price of critical production like energy. This happened in WW2. The Reform UK plan works as follows:

• Require all UK energy producers to sell to UK suppliers only at the average 2021 price.
• Domestic cap set to average £2,000 per year.
• Business cap set at maximum 35 pence per kwh.
• Extra help still needed for the most vulnerable .
• The above will exist until normal conditions return and the supply crisis is fixed.
• This transforms the Government finances as it puts the cost on the producer not the taxpayer, which is what unsettled markets so much in September 2022. The windfall tax would be scrapped as the producers are no longer making windfall profits under this plan.

 

The supply crisis: more supply = lower prices

Energy security is of strategic national importance and we must be self reliant. We are blessed with vast different energy resources under our feet that can look after us for at least 50 years or more.

We need a National Planning with Local Compensation scheme to accelerate new energy sources:

• Accelerate gas and oil exploration in the North Sea.
• Build High Efficiency Combined Cycle gas turbines.
• Accelerate the commission of the latest nuclear reactors including small modular ones.
• Unlock the vast reserves of shale gas using the latest safest techniques.
• Restart opencast coal mines using the latest cleanest techniques.
• Accelerate lithium mining in UK to help with electric battery production, instead of relying on less environmentally sound mines overseas.
• No more expensive subsidies for renewables — they must stand on their own merit.

 

 

The Reform UK Plan Will:

• Save huge amounts of emissions by using our own energy treasure compared with the extra CO2 created when importing energy from overseas.
• Save and create many thousands of British jobs in the regions.
• Save households and businesses money.

This is the best and easiest way to unlock vast wealth in the ground for the benefit of us all.  We should establish a Sovereign Wealth fund from this, as Norway did so successfully. Reform UK will create a new win-win model of UK ownership of critical national infrastructure. Certain key utilities including parts of the energy market should be 50% in public ownership, to reduce consumer costs and stop overseas ownership of our critical national infrastructure. The other 50% would be owned by UK pension funds. This will enable a win-win situation, with consumers benefiting from lower prices, the taxpayer benefitting during good years and all benefiting from better management of private sector expertise brought in by the pension funds.

The Government’s current Net Zero plans are destroying British jobs — sending them overseas, especially to China — and are leading to huge increases in domestic bills every year to pay to overseas-owned energy firms. This is both unacceptable and unnecessary.

Be under no doubt, Westminster’s Net Zero makes us Net Poorer.