When Parliament launched its inquiry into “Building support for the energy transition”, the central question was framed around public understanding and communication.
Could Government explain the transition better?
Could it build greater public support?
Could trusted voices, clearer language and better information bring people with it?
Months later, the Committee has published its final report.And buried within its conclusions is a finding that goes much further than communications.
The problem is cost.
The report states that affordability remains the main factor influencing household and business decisions. It records evidence that communication alone will not be enough and acknowledges that the investment required for the energy transition is currently increasing electricity costs for consumers.
That matters, because it changes the nature of the debate.
The issue is no longer simply whether Government has failed to explain Net Zero properly.
The Committee itself is now acknowledging that households are being asked to carry real costs before many of the promised benefits are being felt.
The Committee’s conclusion is unusually clear
The report says policy costs recovered through electricity bills are regressive because they take a larger share of income from poorer households.
It says those living in poorly insulated or privately rented homes are often least able to take advantage of technologies such as heat pumps and electric vehicles, while remaining highly exposed to energy prices.
And it reaches one of the strongest conclusions in the entire document:
“A transition whose upfront costs fall on those least able to pay, while its benefits accrue first to those who can afford a heat pump or an electric vehicle, will not command public support and does not deserve to.
”That is not criticism from an outside campaign organisation.It is the conclusion of the House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee “.
The Committee goes further still.
It recommends that Government adopt an explicit fairness principle under which no household in or at risk of fuel poverty should be made worse off by the costs of decarbonisation.
It also wants an annual assessment showing how energy-policy costs are distributed across society.
These are significant admissions.
The media noticed immediately
Within hours of publication, The Telegraph led on exactly this aspect of the report.
Its headline focused on the Committee’s warning that an unfair transition cannot expect public support and highlighted the recommendation that lower-income households should be protected from decarbonisation costs.
That is a reasonable reading of the report.But it also exposes the deeper question that concerned several of us who took part in Parliament’s public engagement exercise.
The debate has gradually shifted.
The original inquiry asked how to build support for the energy transition.
The emerging conclusion is increasingly:
How can the existing transition be made affordable enough and communicated effectively enough for people to accept it?
Those are not quite the same question.
What some participants were asking was more fundamental
When 21 members of the public attended Parliament’s engagement event in December 2025, the discussions were not confined to communications.
The official record shows concerns about electricity costs, grid capacity, renewable infrastructure in rural areas, agricultural land, North Sea gas, energy security, imported renewable technology, dependence on China, nuclear power, electric vehicles, heat pumps and adaptation.
The record says overall support for the energy transition was mixed.
Some participants said they felt that the transition was happening regardless of their opinion and that they were effectively being forced into it.
There was even disagreement about whether Net Zero by 2050 was itself a useful goal.
That is important because those are not merely questions about messaging.They are questions about policy design.They are questions about cost.They are questions about engineering.They are questions about security.And in some cases they are questions about whether particular elements of the policy should be pursued at all.
Participants challenged the first summary
After the event, Parliament sent participants a draft summary and asked whether it accurately reflected the discussion.
Several participants objected.My own response argued that the exercise had not felt entirely open-ended and that issues such as grid constraints, deliverability, system risk, costs and infrastructure timescales had effectively been treated as implementation problems within an assumed strategy rather than questions capable of challenging the strategy itself.
That criticism was eventually published in the report.So was the warning that public consultation risks becoming “policy-based evidence making” rather than evidence-based policymaking if the underlying assumptions are never genuinely open to challenge.
Other participants disagreed with me and believed sceptical views had received too much prominence.That is exactly what genuine public engagement should reveal: disagreement.
There was no single public view.
Parliament did change the summary
Following the objections, the background section was expanded.The revised version explicitly acknowledged that the event was intended to discuss the fundamentals of the policy and examine whether views changed after participants were presented with information.It also acknowledged that the discussions revealed deep divisions between those taking part.
So the consultation was not entirely without effect.
The documentary trail shows that participant criticism produced changes.But it also shows something else.Participants reviewed a summary of what happened in the room.
We did not review or approve the Committee’s eventual interpretation of what that event meant.The final interpretation is different
The Committee’s eventual report concludes that providing people with more information did not bring participants towards consensus and appeared instead to polarise opinions.It then moves into questions about trusted messengers, public communications and misinformation. Committee’s official publication notice says one of its main findings is that delivering cost benefits to consumers and businesses is the single biggest step Government can take to build support for the transition.
That conclusion is understandable from the evidence.
But it remains an interpretation of the evidence.And that distinction matters.
Some participants were not merely saying:“Explain the transition better.”They were asking:“Is every part of this transition affordable, deliverable and justified in the form currently proposed?”
The report partly vindicates that concern
Perhaps the most interesting outcome is that the Committee’s own conclusions now acknowledge several issues that participants were raising.It accepts that communication alone will not solve the problem.It accepts that electricity is too expensive.It accepts that current investment costs are feeding through to consumers.It accepts that the distribution of those costs is unfair.And it accepts that people who can afford technologies such as EVs and heat pumps may receive benefits before households least able to afford them.
That is a much more substantial problem than a communications failure.
This is why public trust matters
Parliament’s own summary says Government is increasingly distrusted and argues that more trusted institutions and intermediaries should be used to communicate information about the transition.
But trust cannot simply be rebuilt by finding different messengers.
If people believe the underlying policy is expensive, unfair or inadequately tested, changing the person delivering the message will not necessarily change their view.
Trust depends on whether people believe difficult questions can actually change policy.
Can evidence about affordability change the scale or pace of a programme?
Can grid constraints change deployment priorities?
Can evidence about agricultural land alter planning policy?
Can concerns about security alter the generation mix?
Can public disagreement lead decision-makers to reconsider assumptions rather than merely reconsider the wording used to explain them?
Those are much harder questions.
The title changed. The deeper issue did not.
The inquiry remains officially listed by Parliament as Building support for the energy transition.
But the final report was published under the title:“Zero sum game: How the UK can reframe the energy transition.”Parliament’s own website clearly links the new report title to the original inquiry.
That word reframe is revealing.
Reframing may be useful.
Fairer funding may be necessary.
Better information may help.
But none of those things removes the need to test whether the underlying policy choices themselves are affordable, technically deliverable and in the public interest.
That is what some participants were trying to say from the beginning.And now, in one important respect, the Committee’s own report appears to have reached part of the same conclusion:
communication alone is not enough.
If government wants public trust, the answer cannot simply be to find a better way of explaining existing policy.
It must also demonstrate that evidence, cost, engineering reality and public experience are capable of changing that policy when the facts demand it.
SAY NO TO THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR LAND 
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