Babelfish - Newspaper - Page 4
Babelfish BREAKING THE LINK
BY DALE VINCE OBE
GREEN INDUSTRIALIST
WE need to reform our energy
market, it’s out of date and out of
purpose.
Before privatisation it served the nation,
now it serves a handful of large companies,
mostly foreign owned, too often based in
tax havens.
We need to restore the public service ethos
and with it rebalance the 昀氀ows of money.
We’re paying far more for our energy
than we need to and our analysis shows the
wider economic impact of that – it’s making
us poorer as a nation and making our lives
harder. We need an energy market that
works for the many….
There are three big but simple changes
we could make.
The 昀椀rst is to ‘Break the Link’ – the
pointless link between the price of gas and
the price of electricity made from our own
wind and sun.
This cost us dearly in the recent energy
crisis which wasn’t our 昀椀rst and won’t be
our last – breaking the link will ensure we
never have another one.
In the last 昀椀ve years breaking the link
could have saved us nearly £9 billion a year
and a grand total of £43.5 billion.
Ker-Ching!
The second is to ‘Protect the North Sea’
– using a tried and tested green energy
mechanism to 昀椀x prices and protect jobs
and investments as our North Sea fossil
fuel industry completes its decline (which
started in 1999).
KER-CHING! The k
Networks
Over the last 昀椀ve years this could have
knocked almost £10 billion a year from our
bills on average and a grand total of £48.5
billion. Ker-Ching!
The third is to ‘Control the Networks’ –
the almost completely foreign owned
networks of pipes and cables that deliver
energy from the national grid to our homes
and businesses.
These regulated total monopolies need
to be reined in with proper regulation –
they are all regulated, but still they make
40% pro昀椀t margins and ship tens of billions
abroad and out of our economy every year
– while failing to invest enough in our
networks. And raising bills at every
opportunity.
Over the last 昀椀ve years this could have
knocked approaching £5 billion a year off
our energy bills or £25 billion in total.
Ker-Ching!
That’s three things we can do to reform
our energy market, between them offering
savings of almost £25 billion in a year and
a whopping £120 billion over the last 昀椀ve
years. These are serious sums of money
that we could have – in our pockets and in
our economy.
The wider economic impact we modelled,
just from breaking the link – would be
three times bigger if we do all three things.
And there would be no 昀椀scal ‘black hole’.
Ker-Ching!
4
1
BREAKING
THE LINK
2
BEYOND
ENERGY
BILLS
Budget Day 2025
PUTTING AN A
AROUND NOR
¢
¡
WE wanted to look beyond energy bills – to
understand the bigger picture – what happens if we
昀椀x Britain’s broken energy system?
So, the Green Britain Foundation asked the
National Institute of Economic and Social Research
to model the wider impact of just one of our three
proposed market reforms – which I’ve dubbed
Breaking the Link – the link that makes the price of
green energy the same as the global price of fossil
gas. The results were profound. In 2023 Breaking
the Link would have knocked £43 bill
national energy bill – saving £30
businesses and £13 billion for househo
the starting place.
We asked NIESR to model the knock on
this £43 billion saving – on the wide
What they found was profound:
In昀氀ation would have been 1.5 percen
lower.
C
Interest rates would have been 0.7%
M
Y
K
