U.K. Climate Change Act is Harming the Poor

Press Statement by Global Warming Policy Foundation

The Climate Change Act at Ten: History’s Most Expensive Virtue Signal, written by Rupert Darwall, a leading climate and energy policy analyst, describes the economic and social burden the Act has had in the United Kingdom on the poorest in society:

“Fuel poverty was to have been a thing of the past. Both the Labour and Coalition governments had targets to abolish it. Thanks to the CCA and other anti-fossil-fuel policies, it lives on and is worsening,” Darwall explains.

In 2008, a huge majority of Members of Parliament (MPs) voted to write climate change targets into U.K. law. Only 5 MPs voted against the Bill in the face of Parliamentary group-think.

Reflecting on ten years of the Climate Change Act, Peter Lilley, now Lord Lilley, said:

“I decided to vote against the Climate Change Act when I read the Impact Assessment which showed that the potential cost was twice the prospective benefit. Ten years later the costs are coming home to roost and the benefits remain illusory.”

Ten years on, the Climate Change Act has burdened consumers with extraordinary costs.

According to official figures, the cost of meeting the Act will rise from £327 per household per year in 2014, to £875 in 2030 — a cumulative extra £10,800 burden on each household over the period.

The only groups to have benefitted from the act are renewable energy generators, land owners and subsidy-hungry investors looking for profits guaranteed by government.

Rather than solving climate change, the only detectable effect of the Climate Change Act has been to sustain levels of energy poverty that politicians from all parties had promised to abolish.

The problems caused by the Act have forced politicians to abandon the most vulnerable in society, and to patch policy failure with ever more complex and unworkable interventions.

To find out more about the UK’s Climate Change Act and its many problems, download our new report here or watch our new video about the CCA’s economic and social harm.