We have the recipe for lower energy bills - it just requires a bit of common sense and courage, writes Dale Vince

November was like a soap opera.

We had a new price cap announced by Ofgem. Right wing headlines screamed about putting our bills up by £3 a year - yes £3 per year - because wholesale prices had actually fallen (only part of the story).

A £1bn a year energy efficiency tax was scrapped in the budget as part of the government’s plan to reduce the cost of living and deliver on a vital manifesto pledge - to cut bills by £300 a year.

That saved us all £150 a year - half the target and a welcome move.

But it was wiped out in the same month by a new tax added to our bills, of exactly the same size, to pay to build the nuclear power station at Sizewell.

One billion pound out followed by £1 billion in. Or was it the other way round? Who cares and what difference does it make - none actually.

And finally, this week Ofgem announces a £28 billion plan to upgrade the grid - that we will all pay for.

Our bills will go up by some £100 a year or more to pay our privatised, foreign owned monopoly network operators to increase their bills again.

These are the companies that own and run the pipes and wires that bring energy to our doorsteps.

They make a 40% annual profit margin - the very highest of any sector in our entire economy, higher even than venture capitalist - yet they take no risk at all.

Worse still in terms of the confusing picture - Ofgem claims that these bill rises will help insulate our energy bills from volatile global gas prices. That is an impossible claim. We’re being gaslit by the gas regulator.

I’ve been building and supplying green energy for nearly 30 years. I’ve seen the grid go from zero to 50% green in that time and we may be just five years away from a 100% green grid.

But we’re not getting lower bills from Green energy and we won’t, no matter how much we build, until and unless we do one fundamental thing - break the link between the global price of gas and the price we pay for our own wind and sun (green energy), reaping the full benefits of wind and solar.

If we want to get off the global rollercoaster of energy prices, bring our bills down and keep them there, we simply have to break the bizarre market mechanism that gives all power station bidders the highest price bid - rather than what they asked for.

It’s not even good capitalism or good market practice to have this system. We have to break the link.

During the recent energy crisis, that link added £43 billion to our bills. It ramped up inflation and choked off growth, it drove one million people into poverty.

One crooked mechanism is causing harm across our entire economy.

If we want lower and stable bills, lower costs of living and economic stability - we have the recipe:

Remove all taxes from our energy bills, the green ones, the social ones, the nuclear ones - and the VAT.

Break the link that makes us pay far more than we need to for our energy, day in and day out.

And properly regulate the networks - make them work in our interests - not their offshore shareholders.

None of this is rocket science. None of this is complicated.

It just requires a bit of common sense — and some courage.

We can end the energy bill Hokey Cokey and all the knock on impacts - once and for all.

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Dale Vince is the Founder of Ecotricity, Chairman of Forest Green Rovers FC and a Labour Party Donor.

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