Why There Is a Better Way

Save the Countryside, Save the Consumer, Save the United Kingdom

Britain has been told for years that there is only one credible direction for energy policy: rapidly expand wind and solar, build the transmission network needed to connect them, add batteries and other forms of flexibility to manage intermittency, electrify transport and heating, and force the whole system towards a sequence of carbon targets culminating in Net Zero by 2050. The debate has been presented as though the only alternative is to abandon cleaner energy altogether and return to unrestricted fossil-fuel dependence.

That is a false choice. There is a better way, and the evidence is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

The real argument is not between clean energy and dirty energy. It is between two different methods of designing an electricity system. The current Government pathway begins with carbon targets and then asks engineers, network companies, developers, consumers and communities to build whatever infrastructure is necessary to meet them. A common-sense alternative would begin with what the country actually needs: dependable electricity, affordable electricity, security of supply and sufficient capacity for homes, industry and the wider economy. It would then reduce emissions as quickly as technology, engineering and economics reasonably allow.

That distinction matters because the order in which the problem is approached changes the physical system Britain ultimately builds.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Clean Power 2030 programme is explicit about the scale of the transformation being pursued. DESNZ’s published ranges envisage 43–50GW of offshore wind, 27–29GW of onshore wind and 45–47GW of solar by 2030, supported by 23–27GW of batteries, additional long-duration storage, greater interconnection, consumer flexibility and dispatchable generation. Government analysis suggests delivering the programme could require roughly £40 billion of investment every year between 2025 and 2030, including around £30 billion annually in generation and £10 billion in transmission. (“DESNZ — Clean Power 2030 Action Plan” (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-power-2030-action-plan/clean-power-2030-action-plan-a-new-era-of-clean-electricity-main-report))

These figures show why this is no longer simply an argument about the merits of individual wind farms or solar farms. Britain is undertaking the reconstruction of an electricity system.

The policy framework is also becoming increasingly directive. Grid connection reform is being aligned with Government technology ranges and regional capacity allocations, meaning that decisions over which projects gain priority are no longer purely commercial or engineering decisions. (“DESNZ — Clean Power 2030 Connections Reform Annex” (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-power-2030-action-plan/clean-power-2030-action-plan-a-new-era-of-clean-electricity-connections-reform-annex)) At the same time, the National Energy System Operator is developing the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan, or SSEP, which is intended to determine the broad types, quantities, locations and timing of future electricity and hydrogen generation and storage. The final SSEP is not expected until autumn 2027. (“NESO — Strategic Spatial Energy Planning” (https://www.neso.energy/what-we-do/strategic-planning/strategic-spatial-energy-planning-ssep))

That sequence should concern anyone interested in responsible national planning. The carbon destination was established first. The generation pathway followed. The grid is then redesigned around that pathway. Only afterwards do the cumulative consequences arrive on the land, through planning applications, compulsory rights, substations, cable routes, overhead lines and development consent orders.

This is why the countryside question cannot be treated separately from energy policy.

England’s new Land Use Framework illustrates just how many national ambitions are now competing for the same finite land base. By 2050 it identifies approximately 788,000 hectares where climate and nature become the primary land function, around 155,000 hectares associated with projected solar and wind land use, and 168,000 hectares associated with urban expansion and development. (“Defra — Land Use Framework for England” (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-use-framework/the-land-use-framework-for-england-accessible))

Those figures need careful treatment. They do not represent one simple block of permanently lost farmland, and there are overlaps between categories. Our own Britain Replanned research has repeatedly warned against simply adding headline hectare figures from different policies. The defensible approach is a Unique-Hectare Account in which each physical hectare is counted once and every competing policy claim upon it is recorded separately.

But caution about accounting should not obscure the bigger point. England has one land base. The same countryside is being asked to provide food, housing, renewable generation, transmission infrastructure, reservoirs, woodland, peat restoration, biodiversity improvement, carbon sequestration, flood management and economic development. Government policy often discusses these objectives separately, yet they meet on the same farms and in the same communities.

The Land Use Framework itself acknowledges that energy requirements beyond 2035 could exceed the amount of land currently assumed for renewables and that further detail depends upon the SSEP. That means large-scale projects are already progressing through the planning and development system before the national spatial energy blueprint is complete. The country is therefore making substantial local land commitments while the national map intended to rationalise those commitments is still being prepared.

There is another question that should therefore be asked before more countryside is committed: would Britain require the same amount of dispersed generation, transmission infrastructure, storage and associated land if it chose a different electricity architecture?

That is where the recent Firm Foundations report becomes important.

Published by Onward and supported by modelling undertaken by Transira Energy, the paper tests a pathway in which greater weight is placed upon firm generation, particularly nuclear and gas, rather than continuing to expand weather-dependent generation at the same rate. It does not provide a perfect blueprint, and its assumptions should be scrutinised like any other model. Its real importance lies in the question it asks: how much does the electricity system change when cheap and reliable power becomes the primary organising objective rather than compliance with the existing carbon pathway?

The result is striking. Transira estimates that its alternative pathway could reduce cumulative electricity-system costs by around £320 billion between 2030 and 2050 compared with its Business-as-Usual scenario. Around £137 billion of that difference is attributed to lower network expenditure and approximately £67 billion to reduced balancing and ancillary-service costs. The model also concludes that around 78GW less generation, storage and interconnector capacity would need to be connected by 2050. (“Onward — Firm Foundations” (https://ukonward.com/reports/firm-foundations/))

The £320 billion headline must be handled carefully. Part of the wholesale-price saving in the alternative pathway results from removing carbon pricing, and the pathway also produces higher emissions. It would therefore be wrong to portray the entire amount as a renewable-integration cost.

The network finding, however, goes directly to the heart of the argument. If a different generation system requires substantially less capacity to be connected and substantially less transmission investment, then the enormous grid expansion Britain is currently pursuing is not simply an unavoidable consequence of electricity demand. At least part of it is the consequence of the generation architecture selected to meet the current policy targets.

That is a critical distinction. A new transmission line is not inherently necessary simply because electricity demand exists. It becomes necessary because generation and demand are separated geographically. A new battery system is not automatically necessary simply because society uses electricity. Its value depends upon the variability and timing of the generation around it. Substations, interconnectors, reserve services and constraint management all depend upon the system architecture chosen.

The correct question is therefore not whether Britain needs a grid. Obviously it does. The question is which grid Britain needs, for which generation system, at what cost and with what consequences for the land.

The same distinction applies to consumer bills.

Critics of Firm Foundations responded quickly. Jess Ralston of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit argued that there was no guarantee gas or nuclear would produce cheaper electricity and pointed to ECIU analysis estimating that wind power reduced British wholesale electricity prices by almost one third during 2025. (“ECIU — response to Firm Foundations” (https://eciu.net/media/press-releases/conservatives-say-ditch-net-zero-for-cheap-power-comment))

That analysis deserves to be taken seriously. ECIU estimated that the average day-ahead wholesale electricity price during 2025 was approximately £83/MWh and modelled that it could have been approximately £121/MWh without British wind generation. Wind generation can unquestionably suppress the wholesale price when it displaces higher marginal-cost gas generation. (“ECIU — wind farms and wholesale electricity prices” (https://eciu.net/media/press-releases/wind-farms-cut-power-prices-by-almost-a-third-in-2025))

But this does not settle the argument, because the wholesale electricity price is not the same thing as the cost of the electricity system.

Consumers must ultimately fund generation, transmission, distribution, balancing, reserve capacity, grid stability, storage, constraint management, support contracts, regulated returns and many other services required to keep electricity available every second of every day. A technology can reduce the marginal wholesale price while simultaneously creating additional costs elsewhere in the system. Those two statements are not contradictory.

That is why the public debate becomes misleading when a low LCOE or a lower day-ahead market price is presented as though it proves that a particular generation architecture must also produce the lowest household bill.

Whole-system cost is what matters.

Our Trillion-Pound Question research has been attempting to expose precisely this problem. Britain does not have one simple Net Zero bill. The transition is funded through multiple separate ledgers: historic subsidies, annual levies, balancing expenditure, network revenues, future contractual liabilities, taxpayer-funded programmes, household expenditure, private capital and long-term infrastructure costs. These numbers cannot honestly be added together unless they share the same accounting basis and period.

Our current evidence file reconstructs approximately £110.5 billion of cumulative Renewables Obligation, Feed-in Tariff and Contracts for Difference generation support on the present 2025/26 working basis. A deliberately narrow overlay of selected transmission constraint costs adds approximately £2.926 billion for 2021/22 to 2025/26. That is not presented as the total cost of Net Zero; it is a carefully defined historic support-and-constraint ledger.

Separately, DESNZ’s own accounts recognise very large long-term contractual liabilities associated with Contracts for Difference and low-carbon hydrogen. These are future balance-sheet exposures, not cash already paid. Our research deliberately keeps those liabilities separate from historic expenditure because adding them together would exaggerate the case rather than strengthen it.

The same discipline applies to future investment. Clean Power 2030 is expected to mobilise around £40 billion annually during the second half of this decade, while Government’s Clean Flexibility Roadmap estimates that Britain’s onshore electricity network could require between £100 billion and £240 billion of investment by 2050 under the Net Zero pathway. (“DESNZ — Clean Flexibility Roadmap” (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-flexibility-roadmap/clean-flexibility-roadmap))

Those investments are not free simply because much of the capital comes from private investors. Investors require repayment and returns. Regulated network companies recover allowed revenues. Generators recover investment through market revenues and contracts. Whether the initial capital appears on the public balance sheet or a private balance sheet does not change the fact that the economy ultimately has to finance the assets.

The real question is therefore much more serious than whether Net Zero costs £500 billion, £1 trillion or any other politically convenient headline. Britain still lacks a single consolidated national account showing what has already been spent, what has been contractually committed, what future infrastructure is expected to cost, who will recover the money from consumers or taxpayers, and how those costs compare with credible alternative electricity systems.

That is the Trillion-Pound Question.

There is also an administrative architecture behind the physical one. The transition requires legislation, carbon budgets, modelling, regulatory structures, contract administrators, planners, consultants, lawyers, reporting systems, monitoring and local delivery organisations. DESNZ’s 2025/26 accounts recorded £59.4 million in departmental-group consultancy expenditure and £65 million in temporary staff expenditure. (“DESNZ — Annual Report and Accounts 2025–26” (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/desnz-annual-report-and-accounts-2025-to-2026/accountability-report))

It would be wrong to describe all DESNZ expenditure as a Net Zero cost because the department performs wider energy-security and nuclear functions. Our research makes that distinction explicitly. But it has also established that Government does not publish one consolidated account of the Net Zero-specific staffing, consultancy, legal, modelling, planning, communications and compliance cost spread across DESNZ, Ofgem, NESO, the Climate Change Committee, councils and other delivery structures.

Again, the point is not that administration has no legitimate function. The point is that a transformation of this scale deserves transparent accounting.

The Government’s strongest criticism of the firm-power argument is the danger of gas dependence. That criticism cannot simply be dismissed. The European energy crisis demonstrated the risks of relying upon internationally traded gas, and no serious alternative policy should propose replacing a wind-heavy system with a gas-heavy system indefinitely.

Our own research therefore points towards a stronger alternative than Onward’s gas-led pathway: a demand-led, nuclear-heavy firm-power system in which gas increasingly becomes strategic reserve rather than the foundation of electricity supply.

Our mixed-nuclear work examines a repeatable nuclear capability in the region of 35–45GWe, scaled according to measured demand rather than an inflexible forecast made decades in advance. It retains renewable generation where renewables genuinely reduce whole-system costs, uses storage according to the duration and engineering service required, and gives priority to existing power-station sites and strong grid nodes before new greenfield infrastructure corridors are created.

Just as importantly, we have not claimed that this pathway has already been proven cheaper. A credible alternative must be capable of being disproved. Repeat-build nuclear costs, construction times, supply chains, fuel availability, storage requirements and the actual amount of avoided network expenditure all need proper testing.

That is precisely what Britain should now do.

Government and NESO should be required to model three comparable electricity systems using the same demand assumptions, fuel assumptions, discount rates, financing costs and reliability standards.

The first should be the present DESNZ pathway. The second should be a lowest-whole-system-cost firm-power pathway. The third should be a firm low-carbon pathway required to meet the same carbon constraint as the DESNZ system, but with substantially greater freedom to use nuclear, existing grid sites and different generation locations.

That third comparison is especially important because it removes the easiest political objection. If a more nuclear-heavy electricity system can satisfy the same emissions limit while requiring less transmission, less storage, less countryside and lower whole-system expenditure, then Government cannot dismiss it simply by saying that Britain has climate commitments.

The model should publish the results transparently: generation costs, network costs, balancing costs, storage, reserve capacity, land occupation, transmission kilometres, substation requirements, construction schedules, financing costs and household cost recovery. It should also stress-test gas-price shocks, nuclear overruns, low-wind years, transmission delays and electricity-demand uncertainty.

Only then could Britain honestly say that it had chosen the best pathway rather than simply the pathway most compatible with the targets established in advance.

This is why the argument is ultimately about much more than Net Zero.

Britain needs cleaner energy. It needs lower emissions, modern technology, cleaner air and greater efficiency. But environmental improvement should be an outcome of building a better energy system, not an excuse for building any infrastructure necessary to satisfy an arbitrary date regardless of wider consequences.

Saving the countryside means refusing to treat productive land as the reserve estate for every new energy target. It means prioritising rooftops, brownfield sites, existing generating locations and strong grid nodes before committing more agricultural land. It means measuring cumulative transmission and infrastructure effects, rather than assessing every project in isolation.

Saving the consumer means moving beyond headline generation prices and publishing the whole cost of the system. Consumers deserve to know what they are paying for generation, networks, balancing, storage, subsidies, financing, administration and reserve capacity, and whether a credible alternative could provide the same reliability for less.

Ultimately, this is about saving the United Kingdom’s ability to compete, manufacture, innovate and remain secure.

Cheap and reliable electricity sits underneath steel, chemicals, advanced engineering, artificial intelligence, data centres, defence, transport, food production, hospitals and household living standards. A country cannot rebuild its industrial base if electricity remains structurally uncompetitive. Nor does Britain become secure by replacing dependence upon foreign gas with dependence upon enormous amounts of imported equipment and an increasingly complex infrastructure system that is expensive to finance and difficult to deliver.

Energy policy should serve the country. The country should not be reorganised simply to serve an energy target.

There is a better way: build dependable power first, make nuclear a national engineering priority, retain sufficient gas for resilience until firm alternatives genuinely replace it, use renewables wherever they reduce whole-system costs, protect productive countryside, build only the network that is demonstrably necessary, and allow cleaner technology to reduce emissions without sacrificing affordability or security.

That is not turning Britain’s back on a cleaner future.

It is a more credible route towards one.

Save the countryside. Save the consumer. Use common sense. Ultimately, save the United Kingdom.