Leaving the European Union would be ill-advised from an energy standpoint, U.K. Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Amber Rudd said last week. The U.K. will vote on June 23 whether to remain in the EU, a decision that could affect the nation’s energy prices and global standing, Rudd said in a speech. “The U.K.’s membership of the European Union helps keep our energy bills down. If we left the internal market, we’d get a massive electric shock because UK energy costs could rocket by at least half a billion pounds a year – the equivalent of peoples’ bills going up by around one and a half million pounds each and every day,” Rudd said, explaining that the EU energy market makes it cheaper and easier to buy and sell energy.
Rudd also said leaving the EU would cause uncertainty for businesses and could leave the nation sitting on the outside of international trade deals. “The leave campaign cannot tell British businesses how long they would have to wait to renegotiate the existing EU trade deals with over 50 other markets, not to mention missing out on those EU trade negotiations, like with the U.S. and Japan, that are well underway,” Rudd said.
Furthermore, being a member of the EU essentially guarantees the nation a seat at the table of any global negotiations, Rudd asserted, noting the recent climate change talks in Paris that led to the adoption of the world’s first international climate agreement. “The deal was ultimately negotiated between the world’s biggest economic powers: the U.S., China, and the EU. And it was U.K. representatives who were leading negotiations on behalf of the EU,” she said. “If we left the EU, with the U.K. responsible for just 1 percent of global emissions, I doubt we would have even been in the room.”
