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The deputy chief of Reform UK told Green Energy’s bosses that the party “would eliminate” industry subsidies if it won power in the next general elections, in a warning shot that will put energy policy at the forefront of political debate.
Richard Tice said in a letter sent to the main developers of renewable energies, including SSE, Scottish Power and Ørsted, that it “would re -evaluate all the net commitments linked to zero” because of their “intolerable costs” for the economy.
The deputy for Boston and Skegragen warned the companies that plan to bid in the next British government auction for wind and solar grant contracts according to which they risked financial losses because the zero net agenda “no longer benefits from intermediate support”.
The right -wing populist party led by Nigel Farage has increased support since the general elections a year ago. A Yougov survey published on June 26 revealed that if a general election took place the next day, Reform UK would be the largest party of a suspended parliament.
“If you elected – or if we hold the balance of powers – we immediately reassess all the commitments linked to the Zero net,” said Tice in the letter he also published on Wednesday.
“In the first step, we will seek to eliminate all the contracts signed under the AR7 [the upcoming subsidy auction]. If you choose to participate, you must deal with any source of long -term income as politically and commercially dangerous. »»
The letter poses a problem for the government of work because it put its hopes during the sale of this year’s grant contract auction, offering the largest amount of new renewable energy capacities, which allows it to make significant progress to achieve its objective of decarbonization of the British electricity sector by 2030.
Contracts will involve the government guaranteeing developers a fixed price for the electricity that they generate during the first 20 years of a new project, funded by a direct debit on electricity bills.
The developers must reimburse the difference if the wholesale price is higher than the agreed fixed price, which means that contracts can cost consumers do not cost or mean that they pay less for electricity than they do otherwise.
The work, which is also committed to reducing energy bills, argues that the decarbonization of the electrical system will make energy supplies safer because providers count less on imported gas.
The objective of clean power is a step towards the legally binding objective of the United Kingdom of zero net programs in the entire economy in 2050, which was promulgated in 2019 by the then conservative government led by Theresa May.
Kemi Badenoch, the current leader of the Conservative Party, said in May that the objective was “impossible” to reach without a level of living lower or “by going bankrupt”, breaking the consensus of the two main parties on zero net policies.
Farage has described Net Zero as a “madness”, arguing that politics would destroy jobs and could become the “next Brexit” in terms of politicians “disconnected from the country”.
A Labor Party spokesman accused the United Kingdom’s reform of “actively trying to discourage companies from investing in the energy specific to the United Kingdom-leaving higher bills for families, threatening hundreds of thousands of good jobs across the country and putting our energy security”.
The work added that the reform “tried shamefully to undermine the national interest of the United Kingdom”.
Ana Musat, executive director of Policy at Renewable UK, said that New Wind and Solar Farms led “new jobs and investments in places like the Humber, Teesside and Scotland”.
She added: “Each recent opinion poll shows that the vast majority of people support the development of renewable energies.”
James Alexander, director general of the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association, said that the letter “risks putting policy before prosperity” and called on the government to confirm that contracts would be legally enforceable.
“Renewable technologies, such as solar and wind energy, will reduce invoices and support thousands of jobs nationally,” he added.
Additional reports by Anna Gross
