Britain’s soaring reliance on foreign power exposes the great green energy scam

At COP29 Britain is a global case study in what not to do. Miliband is doing the rest of the world a huge favour, irrespective of our pain

News that Britain now has the highest industrial energy prices in the world, has fallen out of the world’s top ten manufacturers, faces power rationing and is spending over £3bn a year to import electricity marks a damning indictment on a generation of flawed and misguided energy policies. 
As the world’s green A-listers gather this week in Azerbaijan for COP29, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is probably right to claim that the world increasingly looks at the British energy model; but I would argue it is more in bewilderment and curiosity rather than any desire to copy or follow it. Energy policies here have wreaked havoc on consumers and firms for a generation and there is no end in sight.
No more stark example of this failure exists than our growing overreliance on buying electricity from Europe. This results in energy jobs, security and expertise being offshored to our competitors; a policy which ultimately relies on spare supplies of electricity being available through interconnector cables.  But will these flows always be there as older power plants on the continent close?
According to new data, net imports of electricity totalled 26.3 terrawatt hours (TWh) from January to September which is a new record for the UK. This easily surpassed the previous high of 24.6TWh reached three years ago, but Britain has closed yet more power plants since then so the hole will likely be filled with yet more foreign supplies.  Last month, the country’s last big coal-fired power station closed and nuclear generation remains in consistent decline.  The bill for these imports is now running at £250m a month and regularly represents 20 per cent of total electricity supply.  Forecasts show imports could soon be supplying up to a third of our needs by 2030 and beyond.
Beware ministers who boast of Britain’s falling emissions from the energy sector; they won’t tell you about the overseas emissions connected with the electricity we now import but don’t appear on UK statistics; they claim they cannot measure it, so they ignore it.  Britain is offshoring its emissions, hiding them and hoping people won’t notice.  
In order to provide a proper understanding and long overdue analysis of energy policy failure it is important to understand and consider how we got here.  The failure of this most important national policy transcends governments since the turn of the century and represents one of the biggest failings in statecraft since World War Two.  The consequences are stark, ranging from the loss of our competitiveness, rising fuel poverty, chronic economic underperformance and becoming dangerously vulnerable to future energy crises.  And for what end? 
Facts are important.  Between 2004 and 2021, before the war in Ukraine the industrial price of energy in Britain tripled in nominal terms (153%) or doubled relative to consumer prices. Electricity prices have doubled since 2019.   This has led to a huge slice of Britain’s manufacturing base already choosing to relocate overseas in search of lower costs.  Since 2010 over 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost;  as a share of GDP, manufacturing has halved since the 1990s.
The writing was on the wall years ago following the Blair, Brown, Cameron and May government’s decision to slavishly follow EU diktat and start closing coal and oil-fired power stations without clear policies to build cleaner equivalent ones;  weather dependent windmills and solar panels could never fill the gap, especially if they are built faster than they can be connected to the grid.  The EU’s various power station directives, first supported by the Blair government forced the UK to start shutting key plants from 2012 before new ones were ready.  Coupled with this is the derisory ninety minutes Commons debate to enact the Net Zero 2050 law, arguably the most complex, far reaching and costly piece of legislation in post war history.
Britain’s ability to generate its electricity needs has been in decline since the 1990s, when it last enjoyed a power surplus.  Per capita electricity generation in the UK is now just two thirds of what it is in France and barely over a third of the US.  We now mirror developing countries like South Africa (which endures rolling blackouts) more than key competitors like Germany.   British businesses pay almost four times as much as American firms for each unit of power and households pay three times as much.
Primarily we must wean Britain off interconnectors and instead prioritise reliable home grown generation. This means turbo charging new nuclear stations which are already fifteen years late.  Britain’s last nuclear power plant at Sizewell B was completed nearly thirty years ago in 1995.  Thirty five years will have passed before the next one starts generating at Hinkley Point C.  Sixty years ago Britain had 21 nuclear reactors, compared to 19 in the rest of the world combined.  Global leadership in this sector was picked up by France which now generates 70 per cent of its power from its nuclear stations and is decarbonising whilst retaining competitive power prices.  France built no less than 40 nuclear plants between 1965 and 1985 and is now refurbishing and replacing older ones.  Today, British firms pay on average sixty per cent more for electricity than French ones.
Whitehall’s mountain of environmental red tape has added layer after layer of bureaucracy, thus deterring the most determined developer of new power plants, particularly new small modular reactors (SMRs).  Put simply, it is becoming harder and harder to build things in Britain particularly if you aren’t lucky enough to be a government owned or a subsidised company like HS2 Ltd.
A failing energy policy inflicts huge pain on households, industry and the wider economy.  It restricts energy investment and stunts job creation. We need to learn, understand and address how and why a generation of political leaders and civil servants have failed and continue to do so in this most critical area of policy.
This winter will see Britain import vast amounts of power to keep the lights on at a record cost. The platitudes around energy security are cruelly exposed by this growing insecurity and panicked short termism.  Crucially, ministers are never able to answer the key question, “When will bills begin to fall?” because they can’t.  But credible economic growth and productivity hangs on this key fact; without lower energy costs Britain will continue to stagnate and fall behind, meaning there is less money for key investment and public services.
At COP29 Britain is a global case study in what not to do. Consequently, Ed Miliband is undoubtedly doing the rest of the world a huge favour, irrespective of the pain and costs he continues to pile on business, industry and households at home.
Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies