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		New EU Climate Package will cost each household an extra £600 per year Tuesday, 14th October 2008 A new report from a leading think-tank says that the EU's new Climate and Energy package will cost the UK a staggering £9 billion a year, resulting on average in an extra energy cost of £600 for every home in the country. The London-based think-tank, Open Europe, looks in detail at the proposal, currently being debated debated in the European parliament, and costs it line-by-line. Full details are available on; www.openeurope.org.uk/research/carep.pdf The package aims to reduce greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020 as well as setting a 20% target for energy from renewables and 10% from bio fuels. This is an enormous 30% of all overall energy to come from renewable sources. East Midlands MEP Roger Helmer comments: "This target is completely unrealistic. The amount of energy currently generated in the UK by renewables is under 5%. To try to increase that by five times in 12 years is ridiculous and cannot be done." He continues: "The government's plan to build many thousands of wind turbines by 2020 is simply unachievable, and even if it were achieved, the grid cannot cope with such a large proportion of randomly variable power. There is now a real threat of power cuts and rolling black-outs -- even a three day week -- by 2015. The real need now is to focus on energy conservation, sustainable renewables like bio-mass, but above all new mainstream baseload generating capacity, and that must mean both coal and nuclear." Current renewables policies are already adding 14% to domestic electricity bills, and this climate package is estimated to cost each household in the East Midlands an extra £600 a year for a family of four, or an extra £150 per week for an individual. Mr Helmer condemns the cost of the climate package, he says: "This is the last thing the UK needs, when the whole of Europe is facing an economic down-turn. We can't afford to spend this amount of money on a package that simply won't work." The package has been approved by the EU's Environment Committee, so it will now have to face the Environment Ministers and the Environment Council. Mr Helmer adds: "The next couple of weeks are an opportunity for the EU to drop this unrealistic policy and concentrate on Europe's real and immediate problems. There is little hope of our Environment Minister Ed Milliband dealing with the problem. But there is a glimmer of hope: several member states take the view that even if the package is passed, it will simply not be possible to implement it."