Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband, Ed Davey and Philip Hammond all claimed levies on energy bills to fund renewables would eventually bring down costs for ordinary households. Eight years on from the passage of the Climate Change Act – the world’s toughest decarbonisation law – a damning report from the GWPF reveals the levies are having exactly the opposite effect: the switch to green sources will mean a £319 billion cost to the economy by 2030. That’s over three times the annual NHS England budget and will be passed onto consumers…

Peter Lilley’s Cost Of The Climate Change Act sets the figure in household terms:

“These costs place a cumulative £10,800 burden on each household, between 2014 and 2030. This is money that could be spent on families’ own priorities, and in more efficient sectors of the economy.”

The report also exposes the Act’s demanding emissions targets as unworkable. The law imposed cuts of 35% from the 1990 level by 2020, and 80% by 2050. But these are structurally impossible as total energy output will have to triple in order to meet them, and even then the power for millions of electric cars and green homes will have to come almost entirely from renewable sources. Conclusive evidence the Act was hot air…