Climate-change policies are expected to cost Britain more than £80 billion by the end of the decade, as critics warn that the global-warming industry is spiralling out of control.
Vast sums are being spent on initiatives ranging from climate-change officers in local councils to the funding of “low carbon” agriculture in Colombia at a cost of £15 million alone. Billions of pounds are also being added to fuel bills to pay for green policies.
The full cost is contained in a study published on Monday by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank founded by Lord Lawson, the former chancellor.
Its analysis puts the cost to the British public of climate- change policies at £85 billion in the 10 years to 2021. More than half — about £47.6 billion — will have gone on funding green levies, such as subsidies for wind farms, added to consumer fuel bills.
A further £17 billion will have been spent by government departments and quangos, according to the study.
The rest — about £20 billion — will have gone to the European Union for global-warming initiatives.
Last month, the EU’s commissioner for climate action said that a fifth of the EU’s £805 billion budget from 2014 to 2020 would go on “climate-related spending”. Britain contributes about an eighth of the total EU budget.
Benny Peiser, the foundation’s director, who compiled the report, said: “The public has absolutely no idea how staggeringly costly and excessive the Government’s climate initiatives are. Even we were shocked when we discovered the astronomical funding streams and added them up.
“Britain’s climate policies combine to a mind-boggling amount of subsidies and departmental spending, which will drastically increase in the next few years.”
Dr Peiser said Britain needed urgently to rethink its climate policies. “Major economies such as Canada, Australia and Japan have now begun to curtail and abandon their unilateral climate policies and targets,” he said. “It does not make any sense that the UK alone is accelerating its exorbitant spending.”
Although the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) sets policies on green levies, much direct spending comes from other departments and quangos, such as the Department for International Development (DfID), which the foundation estimates spends £610 million a year on climate initiatives overseas.
The study also found more than £2 billion is being spent by the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs on climate-change policies over a decade; £1.5 billion by the Department for Transport; and £1.3 billion by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Quangos spending millions include the Committee on Climate Change and the Carbon Trust, the study says. Ofgem, the energy regulator, is investing nearly £100 million over three years in “contributing to the achievement of a low-carbon sector” and delivering of government programmes “for a sustainable energy section”.
An EU database of UK schemes details 185 payments totalling £1.5 billion to overseas projects.
By contrast, France’s spending totals £275 million.
British spending includes:
Þ about £135,000 a year by local authorities on climate-change officers;
Þ a £15 million grant over four years in Colombia to “reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, improve the livelihood of farmers, protect local forests and increase biodiversity”;
Þ £323,000 on a pilot programme for “climate resilience in Tajikistan”;
Þ £7 million on a “Carbon Markets Readiness Fund”, to give grants to “middle-income” countries, such as China, to develop policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions;
Þ £35,000 on a report on how climate changes might affect the Caribbean tourism sector.
A DECC spokesman said: “The evidence for climate change is clear, and we need to act now. Alongside this, the Government needs to ensure security of energy supply, whilst ensuring consumers get the best deal.
“Our long-term economic and climate security depends on developing countries being more low-carbon and adapting to the impact of climate change. Climate investments in developing countries represent about 0.05 per cent of UK gross national income.”