Why are Reform opposing government investment into renewables when so many of the top people in Reform are investing into renewables privately ?
Why have Reform suddenly come out against Solar power and other forms of renewables so strongly when many of them are privately investing into renewables including both Richard Tice and Rupert Lowe who've been investing into Solar ? Tice himself wrote in a financial report for his company at the beginning of 2023 that investing into Solar and selling the energy to the grid had been making the shareholders a lot of money.
They're also advocating for an expansion of investment into fossil fuels but this will be costly to the tax payer. With the way solar technology has massively evolved in recent years it has become much cheaper to install and invest into (and much more reliable as battery technology continues to get better meaning electricity can be stored for when the panels aren't producing as long as you have batteries) than natural gas or other fossil fuels. So why are they now seeking to discourage solar and other renewables at a national level when privately they're investing into them ?
The way energy prices are set in the UK is pretty silly. Instead of taking the costs of each individual type of source of the electricity in the grid and averaging them the price of electricity is just set to whichever source of electricity is costing the grid the most - quite often natural gas or another non-renewable source as buying electricity from a renewable source is far cheaper. Are Reform advocating for these non-renewables to keep the price of electricity on the grid higher purposefully ? Investing into privately owned non-renewables such as natural gas will already cost the public purse far more than investing into renewables with how far renewables technology has come and then on top of that it'll keep the cost of electricity on the grid higher. This would be a massive cost to the average tax payer and business in this country who gets their electricity from the grid. Who it won't effect are the Reform MPs/leaders and their businesses who've been investing into solar power year on year for the past few years. In fact it might just be a passive pay day for them given that it'll keep the price they can sell their solar power to the grid for much higher. If we invest into renewables as a country then obviously there'd be more cheap energy on the grid and they'd be able to sell their personal solar power to the grid for less, but no if they just get into government and ensure we don't nationally invest in solar then they'll just keep raking it in ?
I agree with Reform on so much but then they propose this attack against renewables and I can't help but thinking that if this new policy platform on energy seems to be designed to line their own pockets then what of their original policies might also be designed to do so ? Can someone please explain to me why I'm hopefully wrong about this ?