Households are paying on average £200 a year extra in taxes on their energy bill to help energy companies fund UK wind and solar power.

Dr Benny Peiser of the Renewable Energy Foundation said the Government was hiding the tax in energy bills so that it would be the power companies who become unpopular and not them.

Writing in the Daily Mail yesterday he said: “These direct subsidies are paid for out of general taxation – in other words by every individual or corporate taxpayer – to the current tune of some £1.5 billion a year. But research has shown these subsidies are being paid to some of the wealthiest landowners and biggest businesses in the country.”

This week ScottishPower raised their bills and claimed it was due to rises in the wholesale market.

As members of the House of Lords called UK renewable policy “corrupt and divisive” other critics of government renewable policy said stealth taxes were adding 15-20% to the average domestic power bill.

Dr Peiser said: “It’s staggeringly unfair and, in the growing opinion of many, totally pointless. Not only is much of the science behind the idea of global warming now being disputed but, at a time of such widespread economic hardship, we simply cannot afford to misdirect scare economic resources on such a massive scale. Britain needs jobs, it needs industry: what it doesn’t need is rows and rows of heavily-subsidized windmills.”

Under the Climate Change Act, the Government is legally bound to cut Britain’s C02 emissions by 34% by 2020 and 50% by 2025 and some say that power companies are funding this transition by increasing consumer bills.