Energy prices: Turning up the political heat
Can the Prime Minister really do anything to lower households’ soaring gas and electricity bills?
But environmental taxes have significantly added to a bill. Green taxes account for around £75 of a £1,000 bill and this is set to double to £150 over the next three years.
So scrap the idiocies and see the price fall.
The important question of course is whether that’s sensible. I would argue that it is: even if you are worried about climate change then a straight and simple carbon tax would be considerably cheaper than this Godawful mess we have presently.
5 responses so far ↓
1 TomJ // Oct 19, 2012 at 9:26 am
Does that 7.5% include the cost of micro-generation feed-in tarrifs or is it just taxes?
2 bilbaoboy // Oct 19, 2012 at 9:32 am
‘Green taxes’ only add 7.5%?
May I suspect that most green expenses do not reach the electricity bill?
3 john77 // Oct 19, 2012 at 7:52 pm
British Gas keep pointing out to their customers that their profit is only 5%. The lefties keep blaming the companies for the price rises.
4 Thomas Gibbon // Oct 19, 2012 at 9:30 pm
He has to do something.
If the predicted harsh winter comes, he’ll have a lot of excess deaths hung around his neck.
Tough to get reelected on.
5 SB // Oct 19, 2012 at 9:56 pm
“even if you are worried about climate change then a straight and simple carbon tax would be considerably cheaper than this Godawful mess we have presently”
How about if you’re not?
I think the taxes should be charged in ‘climate futures’, which are bonds that pay out at an attractive rate if a certain climate outcome does, or does not, come to pass by a set date. For example, a bond that pays out 10%/yr compound on face value on the day sea level rise exceeds 1 metre, voided in 2100. Both the bonds and the liabilities can be traded.
Their value depends on whether you believe, so non-believers won’t mind paying in them because they think they’re worthless, and believers can scarcely refuse them because they believe them to be a dead cert. Then everybody is happy, and the market decides the price.
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