Guest essay by Eric Worrall

The Telegraph, a major UK Newspaper, has investigated a scandalous waste of British taxpayer’s money on expensive renewables projects which deliver very little return for the money invested.

Hundreds of millions of British aid ‘wasted’ on overseas climate change projects

Robert Mendick, chief reporter
12 MARCH 2017 • 10:00PM

Serious questions are raised today over hundreds of millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money being ‘wasted’ on climate change projects such as an Ethiopian wind farm and Kenyan solar power plant.

A Telegraph investigation shows little benefit so far from a £2 billion foreign aid programme to tackle climate change that was established eight years ago.

One scheme, costing £260m of UK taxpayers’ money, has produced only enough renewable electricity to power the equivalent of just 100 British households – about the size of a typical street.

Projects including solar parks in Kenya and Mali, a rubbish-burning power plant in the Maldives and wind farmer project in Ethiopia are all earmarked for funding from the scheme.

The Telegraph investigation raises major concerns over the use of international aid money to fund complex renewable energy schemes in some of the world’s poorest countries.

It will also reignite the row over the Government’s commitment, championed by David Cameron, to ring fence the £12 billion annual foreign aid budget, which is fixed at 0.7 per cent of national income.

Critics have accused the Government of “scandalously wasting” taxpayers’ money on the schemes.

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The Government defended the funds’ performance.

A spokesman said: “The Climate Investment Fund is helping provide the world’s poorest people with stronger defences to extreme weather which can cause life-threatening crises such as floods, droughts and famine.

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Read more: http://ift.tt/2ntAwen

Britain passed a law committing 0.7% of British GDP to foreign aid in 2015, but the scheme has been misconceived from the start. Instead of having to justify expenditure, British bureaucrats are now required by law to find ways to spend enormous sums of money. The inevitable outcome of this government idiocy has been a tremendous perverse incentive for inefficiency and corruption.

Since British conservatives are much greener than US counterparts, a significant slice of this budget is directed to green energy schemes in the third world, a string of white elephant projects across Africa, dumped in locations which neither need or want them.

It is good at least some of the British Press are finally taking notice of this scandalous waste of money.

Britain has huge domestic problems which could really use some of that wasted money.

The single payer British government healthcare system is so bad in places, Médecins du Monde, which normally offers free medical services in third world war zones and the like has opened clinics in Britain, to treat people who are not receiving proper care from government health outlets.

Waste and poor treatment of British war veterans is an ongoing scandal.

Pensioners and poor people shiver away in policy created fuel poverty, starving themselves to save enough money to pay exorbitant green energy inflated heating bills.

British Government debt is out of control.

Yet despite all this disastrous waste and suffering, the British government still find extra borrowed cash to splurge on worthless renewable schemes in other countries.

The sooner this sorry chapter of British government waste is brought to a close, the better.