Boris Johnson told to tackle rising energy bills to avoid ‘extreme suffering’ this winter

A former government chief scientific adviser has warned that more people will face extreme suffering this winter if Boris Johnson doesn't act quickly to insulate British homes and introduce fiscal policies to cut bills.

It could be the worst time for the leadership of this country to be sitting back. Wait until what? Good leadership is needed as we have an energy crisis. We need leaders that are thinking about this.

Johnson, who has vowed to take no major decisions in his remaining time in office, attended a meeting of energy companies last week that had no conclusive outcome, and is now on a second holiday.

He is the prime minister according to King. He wanted to remain as prime minister. There is no other person who can do that.

He called for higher taxes on energy companies, which he said were riding high energy prices, rather than investing or becoming more efficient. The prices are so high that they are taking larger profits. He said that it means that they are tying their profits to the price.

King, a former government chief scientist and UK climate envoy from 2000 to 2007, and as the government's special representative on climate from 2013 to 2017, said valuable time had been wasted.

He said that waiting several more weeks for a new Conservative leader would only make the problem worse. King said there would be extreme suffering at the lower-paid end of society. There needs to be fiscal policies that help people in the lower-paid brackets.

Home insulation needs to be a priority according to him. nsulating homes is a huge benefit to everyone. The benefits of home insulation programmes are enormous and have been on the back burner for a long time.

He said that starting now would help people across the country with their bills.

According to a report in the Observer on Sunday, Keir Starmer will announce new proposals on Monday for how to deal with the UK's home insulation problem, while calling for the energy bill cap to be retained.

King was not a fan of the idea of tax cuts being used to tackle the cost of living crisis. One of the leadership hopefuls proposed to cut VAT on energy bills. People who can afford higher energy prices are the biggest beneficiaries of low tax.

King criticized the government for turning to increased production of oil and gas in the North Sea to lower energy bills, a move that would lock in high greenhouse gas emissions for decades.

He said it will take 10 or 20 years for new oil and gas projects to come online.

The Climate Crisis Advisory Group, an international coalition of scientists chaired by King, will publish a report this week arguing that governments don't need to return to fossil fuels.

The report states that international cooperation, expanding investment in renewable energy as well as pursuing energy efficiency through home insulation and in industries would be enough to limit the energy crisis. Raising interest rates would cause a damaging recession.

The report says that new fossil fuel expansion can't happen because of the global carbon budget. A fossil-fuel rush is not a good idea.

King believes that changing energy grids and using clean sources of power would solve the problem of intermittent and variable renewable energy.

He said that offshore wind blows a large percentage of the time from the North Sea. When wind was low, some areas could use hydropower to store energy.

Nuclear energy plays a part in the UK and around the world. Nuclear power should be returned to Germany instead of reviving coal-fired power stations.

The UK and other countries have a powerful fossil fuel lobby. King warned that the next prime minister could approve the coalmine on the basis of energy security.

An important climate legislation was passed in the US last week that will provide hundreds of billions of dollars in funding to key technologies, but due to pressure from the fossil fuel lobby it still contains sops to gas and oil production. The US has never been able to play a leading role in negotiations on the climate due to the power of the fossil fuel lobby.