“Cutting the Green Crap” added £15 billion to household energy bills over a 10 year period.

A startling new report commissioned by the Green Britain Foundation entitled  “The Real Cost of Cutting the Green Crap” reveals that cutting back on green measures added £15 billion to household energy bills over a 10-year period.  

In 2023 the worst affected homes paid £1500 more that year for their energy than they would have. The total additional cost on the nation’s energy bills for that year was a whopping £5 billion. From ‘cutting the green crap’. People in new build homes (built in the last decade) typically paid £700 more for their energy than they would have.

Typical energy bills in 2023 were £2,750. And so the worst affected households saw their energy bills more than double, compared to what they would have been. While those living in new build homes saw a one third increase.

Ten years ago Conservative Prime minister David Cameron infamously declared he was going to ‘cut the green crap’ as he set out a series of anti green measures. He did so making the argument that green policies were expensive and needed to be reined in. Ten years later Conservative Prime minister Rishi Sunak is repeating history. – Last autumn he set out a series of green policy reversals and a renewed anti green rhetoric. At its heart is the argument that we need to slow down the transition to green energy and to net zero, we need to do this to save people money and ease the cost-of-living crisis.

Dale Vince said: “The numbers are shocking, providing clear proof that the cost-of-living crisis has been made worse by the Tory obsession with what they call “cutting the green crap”.

“Tory decisions to hold back green energy have cost households dearly. Last year the worst affected homes paid £1500 more for their energy than they would have if Cameron had not made those cuts. Over the whole decade our energy bills have been a whopping £15 billion higher than they would otherwise have been. 

“It’s clear to me that at the general election a vote for Labour is a vote to nail our energy bills to the floor and keep them there. Because Labour sees the economic opportunity in the green economy, while the Tories have their heads in ideological sand.  And we all pay the bill for that.”

The four ‘green crap’ cuts that Cameron made were; 

• The banning of onshore wind 

• The removal of financial support for domestic solar 

• Scrapping home insulation support schemes 

• Scrapping the Zero Carbon standard for newbuild homes 

All four measures are still in place, ten years later.

Read the full report here.