WHEN YOU’RE COLD OR HUNGRY THIS WINTER, REMEMBER WHO CHOSE THE TARGETS

Britain’s energy problem is not simply that prices have risen.

It is that successive governments set the political destination first , then expected the engineering, the grid and the consumer to absorb the consequences.
Instead of beginning with the basic requirement , firm, reliable and affordable power through the worst winter conditions , policy was increasingly organised around carbon budgets, renewable deployment and fixed delivery targets.
The result is an energy system that households are now financing from several directions at once.
£17.7 billion , our conservative minimum for selected energy-support and system costs in 2024/25 alone, including the Renewables Obligation, CfDs, Feed-in Tariffs, balancing and the Capacity Market.

£110.5 billion , our working cumulative total for just the Renewables Obligation, Feed-in Tariffs and Contracts for Difference to March 2026. It excludes most network expenditure, Capacity Market costs, balancing, nuclear RAB, hydrogen and other liabilities.

£28 billion , the initial RIIO-3 regulated network-investment commitment, with the wider programme potentially approaching £90 billion by 2031 as further projects are approved. �

£19.5 billion , approximately the total electricity-balancing expenditure recorded between 2015/16 and 2024/25. Not all balancing costs are caused by renewables, but NESO has explicitly identified network congestion and generation arriving ahead of transmission reinforcement as material drivers of cost.

These figures cover different periods and categories and must not simply be added together. That is precisely the point: the public is paying through multiple mechanisms that are rarely presented together.
And after all of that expenditure, Britain still requires gas when the system needs firm generation.
Solar cannot provide power after sunset and produces far less during winter.
Wind can fall across large areas at the same time.
Batteries can move electricity through time, but short-duration storage cannot replace days of firm generation.
So when weather-dependent output falls, Britain still depends upon gas, nuclear, imports and other dependable capacity to keep the system running.
That is the contradiction at the centre of current policy.
We have paid to support the generation.
We are paying to reinforce and reconstruct the grid around it.
And when the wind falls and the sun disappears on a cold winter evening, we remain exposed to the fuel required to keep the lights and heating on.
This is why the debate must move beyond claims that one technology is “cheap”.
Cheap generation is not the same thing as a cheap electricity system.
The proper comparison is the cost of delivering the same level of reliability after generation, transmission, balancing, storage, backup, financing and security of supply are all included.
Britain should have begun with the question:
What does the country physically need at 6pm on the coldest, darkest, least windy day of the year?
Then we should have built the least-cost system capable of meeting that requirement.
Instead, governments pursued the target first and expected the system to follow.
And this winter, the consequences will not be measured in gigawatts or carbon budgets.
They will be measured by the pensioner deciding whether to turn the heating on.
The family deciding whether another £20 goes on the meter or into the shopping basket.
The household opening a winter energy bill and wondering where the money will come from.
WHEN YOU’RE COLD OR HUNGRY THIS WINTER, REMEMBER WHO CHOSE THE TARGETS.
They chose the targets.
They chose the sequencing.
They chose to transform generation before securing enough firm replacement power and the network needed to support it.

The public should not now be expected to carry the cost without asking whether there was a better way.

Shane Oxer.    Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy