Will it be prohibited to sell electricity (that needs levies attached to sell) via an inter-connector to continental Europe?

No under the current plans set out by DECC.

Will UK consumers still have to pay the large levies on new nuclear at any cost and off-shore wind farms at any cost when the electricity is exported abroad?

Yes under the current plans set out by DECC.

I have already shown that as we try to reduce our electricity demand through efficiency savings, that the levies charged on our bills may increase as a proportion of our bills; this will be true if the energy intensive industries, with exemption from the levies, do not reduce their usage at the same rate as the non-exempt bill payers.

The other issue is that if we reduce our electricity usage here in the UK, such that UK generators need to continually export net surplus electricity to the continent, then a similar upward gearing effect on our bills will occur.

Under current plans the continental Europeans are exempt from our levies so if we reduce our electricity usage too much because of the high costs, we just may well just end up paying more for the continental europeans to use our electricity, than they are paying at the "market rate" to use our electricity!

If we have to pay the strike price levy and the government continues to maintain that these Strike Price levies are not a subsidy, then surely following this twisted and inverted logic, Europe must rule that we cannot "dump" subsidised electricity (without the Levy being applied) to continental European energy consumers via an inter-connector.

The government will obviously try to have it both ways (that is that our electricity is unsubsidised in both contexts at the same time (with and without a levy applied).

However the European Commission has a duty to make sure that the energy bill payers of one European country do not end up paying for the electricity that should be legitimately being paid for by the electricity consumers in another European country.

What's the point of being in Europe if there are no internationally agreed common market rules governing trade in this or other major commodities?

James Arathoon



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James Arathoon

The international grid inter-connector issue is made immediately worse if Scotland votes for independence in 2014 and thereafter wants to have its own independent energy policy.

When the Scots want to buy electricity from England and Wales, they won't necessarily want to pay the levies on English and Welsh Nuclear Energy built at any cost (if other countries in the European Union don't have to pay), just as the English and Welsh won't want to pay for levies on Scottish Off-shore wind farms built at any cost.

Indeed the Scottish Nationalists and the Scottish Labour Party may want to nationalise their energy generation infrastructure.

Nationalisation of infrastucture has lead to problems in the past. However Nationalisation is much much much better that the extreme masochistic forms of crony capitalism outlined in the Energy Bill; with vast false profits from energy generation being to be continually and unsustainably exported abroad.

Which other democratic country in the world would choose to inflict such incompetent governance on its population, and at the same time be brazenly extolling its virtues as if it were some form of sick policy joke, where nothing could be argued for unless it involved a lie!

After all haven't all the major political parties vowed not to build nuclear power stations if they needed to be subsidised. And now don't all the major political parties want to build new nuclear at any cost.

If the government is really really really determined to build third generation nuclear now, at any cost, then they should be honest about the level of subsidy needed and build them as government owned and run power stations.

This way we can choose later (as competing technologies develop) what proportion of the subsidy is paid through general taxation and what proportion is paid in the form of a levy.

To sign 40 year gold plated and inflation proofed contracts for energy at what might end up as country bankrupting costs is sheer madness and stupidity.

James Arathoon


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James Arathoon