Rubbish Rita. The subsidies are creating a viable industry and jobs, increasing our energy security and decreasing reliance on fossil fuel imports. As grid parity approaches there will be no looking back 🙂

Fuel poverty is due to high cost of oil, low incomes and a shit housing stock which successive governments have failed to address except largely for social housing through CESP and CERTS.

The worst off are the tenants of the scrounging private landlords who have scooped up the council houses and do not maintain and improve their energy efficiency because they put their profits first.

That said subsidies should be paid for using Exchequer funding, not through the fuel bill, though the total green levy on the fuel bill will be on average compensated by energy efficiency measures by 2020. This will only help the fuel poor if there is better targetting and a compulsion on private landlords to meet energy efficiency targets.

For the costs of energy per megawatt hour (MW/h) of electricity generated:
onshore wind €105 per MW/h, compared to gas and coal
Gas €164
Coal €233
Nuclear power, offshore wind and solar energy €125

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/13/wind-power-is-cheapest-energy-unpublished-eu-analysis-finds

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now

I have cut my energy bills substantially by not turning on the central heating since 2011, which is both gas and electric to run the boiler.

I have purely on demand hot water, with no reservoir constantly being heated up.

And not having a bath, only showers, and doing the ancient way of life of only having a shower once a week.

Washing machine once a fortnight. No dishwasher.

Smart meters are nowhere near according to British Gas.

The poorest are lumbered with pre-payment meters, the most expensive way to pay energy bills.

With 1 million benefit sanctions there is no cash to put in the meter,
so cannot heat and cannot cook food. Especially hard with babies, children, disabled, chronic sick and grannies in house.

In Europe, there are free cafes providing (without any referrals needs) hot cooked meals and hot drinks each and every day, that is, yes, 7 days a week to the working poor, unemployed and poor pensioners (in UK this is 2.6 million pensioners far, far below the breadline).

Time to ban special tarrifs for them, and for people on them to be on standard tariffs, with a surcharge based purely on actual costs for the meters. Which, I note, would be near-zero with “smart” meters.

You’re confusing the cack-handed way we handle it with the ways we should be doing it.