‘Net zero’ Has added £140.3 Billion to UK electricity bills
TODAY I AM starting a series of reports called Affordable Energy. Each takes one question about Britain’s energy and answers it with open numbers
The first, Reliable Britain, asks a plain question. What has the drive to ‘net zero’ added to the cost of Britain’s electricity since 2002?
My answer: ‘net zero’ added £140.3bn to Britain’s electricity bills between 2002 and 2024. That figure is modelled, in 2024 prices. It comes to £2,286 for the average household.
Businesses and public bodies bore the rest, because they buy most of the electricity sold.
How sure can I be about a bill that was never paid? I changed each main assumption one at a time. The total stayed between £120.8bn and £152.7bn, modelled, in 2024 prices.
When bills rose, the usual answer was that it was gas, not policy. So I priced the same electricity twice.
Once as Britain actually bought it. Once on a gas-led alternative: Britain’s 2002 power system carried forward to 2024, without the climate policies. Both start from the real price of gas in every month.
When gas gets dearer, both bills rise. The gas-led bill rises more, because it burns more gas. So dearer gas makes the extra cost smaller, not larger. But even in 2022, at the height of the gas crisis, climate policies still cost £2.9bn more that year.
My model already assumes the gas-led alternative’s extra burning would have pushed its gas price up by 17.7 percent; to wipe out the extra cost in 2024, it would have had to pay 95.7 percent more for gas than Britain did.
So where did the money go? ‘Carbon’ pricing and the cost of ‘renewables’ make up most of it.
‘Carbon’ pricing is a charge on the carbon dioxide that power stations emit. It accounts for £82.9bn. Only £23.7bn of that was collected as tax; the rest stayed in the price of power.
The Climate Change Committee sees ‘carbon’ pricing as making the ‘polluter’ pay. So I show it on its own, for anyone who would take it out.
The strongest case for ‘renewables’ is that they save fuel. When they run, they push dearer plant off the system and lower the wholesale price, the price generators are paid for power. So I put them to a break-even test: did what they saved on the wholesale price cover their subsidies and extra grid costs?
Over 2002–24 as a whole, no.
‘Renewables’ cost £147.4bn in subsidies and grid costs. They saved £100.7bn, even with credit for the whole fall in the wholesale price. That is a net cost of £46.7bn before VAT. They paid for themselves only in 2012 and in the gas crisis of 2021–23.
Now the point of the series. If £140.3bn can go on bills with nobody official counting it, someone should be made to count it.
No official figure today says what climate policies have cost, scheme by scheme. The Government last made a comparison of this kind in 2014.
The Climate Change Act 2008 already makes the Government tell Parliament what Britain emits, every year. I propose a matching duty: a short new section 16A. Each year the Government would tell Parliament what each climate policy added to electricity bills, with the VAT.
It would also estimate the extra balancing, grid and backup that wind and solar cause. And it would publish the data and workings, so that anyone can check them. One duty to count the emissions; one to count what Britain pays to cut them.
The main objection is that this would be a costly burden, and drawn into politics. The answer is that the Department of Energy and Climate Change made such estimates for years, and with the data published, any argument would happen in the open.
There is a route. The King’s Speech in May promised an Energy Independence Bill. The Government says it will come “as soon as parliamentary time allows”. Section 16A could be added to it as a new clause. Failing that, an MP or peer could bring it as a private member’s bill.
The report is open for review. Send errors to co*********@*********on.net; I will log each correction in public. Find a real error of fact or method and I’ll send you a signed copy of my book, The Energy Trap.
And why not consider joining The UK Energy Forum, where we’re building a community that understands the serious problems with our energy system and demands the one we need.
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