Hammond has taken the very logical step of curtailing the largesse on offer (via our electricity bills) to new green projects. "In order to protect consumers, the government will not introduce new low carbon electricity levies until the burden of [energy] costs are falling. On the basis of the current forecast, this means there will be no new low carbon electricity levies until 2025." In doing so, he's taking the greenies at their word that renewables are now the cheapest form of new power generation - which isn't true, of course, notwithstanding some major cost-reductions recently in solar and wind technologies; but with boasting like that in the air, Hammod's ruling is an appropriate piece of policy ju-jitsu. When you've declared that renewables don't need subsidies anymore, complaints about what he's done are just that little bit more difficult ...
The Renewable Energy Association said it welcomes the move to a subsidy-free future, but the industry needs urgent clarity on how the government is planning to bring new projects forward, especially for less developed technologies like tidal and advanced waste-to-energy. The group also called for clarity around carbon pricing after the government offered little detail on the future of the country's tax on carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector.Ah yes, "clarity", and "bringing forward". We should open a scrapbook on all the different euphemisms these disingenuous gits use for "public subsidy". We can translate "less developed", too - it means "grotesquely uneconomic". It is earnestly to be hoped that the answer to their question about plans to "bring forward" the wretched Swansea Tidal Lagoon is - no such plan.
To round out the picture, it must be noted that Hammond has disappointingly fallen for the Electric Vehicle nonsense. This article (from a green-supporting perspective) gives rather more detail on the mish-mash of Budget announcements, if you can navigate some even-more-subtle euphemisms and sophistry (I particularly like the idea of "subsidy-free CfDs", which needs careful unpicking). It gives a good summary of the EV aspects:
... this budget provided serious support for electric vehicles - £400m more for EV charging networks, £100m for sales incentives, more tax breaks for corporate uses, and more money for R&D. This is a big deal. EVs have an outsized role to play in the low carbon economy. They are a powerful symbol of the cleaner, more attractive infrastructure we have to build. They are extremely popular with the public and can help generate buzz for the wider decarbonisation project. They deliver multiple emission reduction, air quality, and jobs benefits. And they sit at the heart of the smart grids that will enable power sector decarbonisation. Hammond is to be praised for recognising this opportunity and pursuing it.For my money (and it is, after all, our money), Hammond has no business putting that kind of cash behind a "powerful symbol [that] can help generate buzz". And all those supposed benefits can be strongly disputed.
Still, if he's killed the lagoon ...
ND
