The UK is decisively moving towards an electricity system powered by renewable energy. In 2025, sources like wind and solar generated almost 50 per cent of all electricity in Great Britain on average. Gas provided just 28 per cent, and coal provided none of our electricity last year, for the first time in over 140 years.
But if you follow the news closely, you would get the impression that there is a raging debate about whether this is a good idea. It is not much of a public debate: twice as many British people think renewables are the ticket to energy security than those who favour oil and gas. But there is no shortage of articles claiming that renewables will cause rolling blackouts and more drilling in the North Sea is needed to keep the lights on.
So what source of energy is more secure? Last year, renewables met 97.7 per cent of electricity demand at their highest point. The lights stayed on. While the UK’s reserves of oil and gas are dwindling, and increasingly expensive to extract, the government signed contracts for record amounts of offshore wind and solar this year.
Security also means protecting the UK from climate change, and renewables are making a critical contribution to this. Emissions from the electricity system were 82 per cent lower in 2024 than in 2008, accounting for 49 per cent of all UK domestic emissions reductions in that period. It also means untangling ourselves from volatile international energy markets controlled by hostile countries.
Is secure renewable energy also cheaper? This is an essential question when household energy bills remain stubbornly high. And the answer is yes. The wholesale cost of electricity on day ahead markets was almost a third lower in 2025 than it would have been if gas had been used to generate electricity rather than windfarms.
We are successfully building more and more renewable energy, which is reliably powering the electricity system more of the time, at less cost. So why do we see repeated claims that we are heading down the wrong path and that more oil and gas is the answer?
Who is doing the analysis
Modelling the electricity system requires some assumptions about what will happen in the future. The conclusions an analyst draws about what will happen rest on the assumptions made and what is included or excluded from the calculations.
Who is doing the analysis matters. The independent National Energy System Operator (NESO) is set up to plan and run the electricity system. The government, having promised to deliver a clean energy system by 2030 in its manifesto, asked NESO if this is feasible. It said this system could be built, and it would be reliable. In its view, it will “cut the link between electricity bills and volatile international gas prices, without increasing costs to consumers”. It published its research in full and set out its assumptions for scrutiny.
Contradicting this independent advice in the media is David Turver, a retired IT consultant who “decided to start writing” about energy policy. He claimed that NESO’s estimate of the cost of building renewables was far lower than what the government secured in the latest auction, but was swiftly called out for comparing apples with oranges. He is joined by Kathryn Porter, a consultant with a career history in energy firms EDF and Centrica which included “negotiating a route-to-market” for gas plants. She argues that pressures on the UK’s power grid could lead to rationing or blackouts, even without increases in electricity demand.
Yet the real world evidence shows that renewables are holding down the wholesale cost of electricity today. It shows that the system can already run with very high levels of zero carbon generation. So when we think about the future, we need to think carefully about who we listen to.
That is not to say that simply building renewables is the answer to cheaper bills. Years after Russia invaded Ukraine and sent the price of gas spiralling, household energy bills are still hundreds of pounds higher than they would have been. Fuel poverty rates have stayed high and people are still building up energy debt.
The government is taking action on this, and we are starting to see the results. Last week the energy regulator Ofgem published its price cap, the maximum amount energy companies can charge per unit if you are on a standard variable tariff, which includes three in five families. Energy bills will drop by £117 in the coming months, reflecting changes the chancellor announced in the Budget.
But with energy bills costing £1,641 per year for a typical household, there is more work to do, especially when the escalating conflict in the Middle East threatens to send bills skywards once again. The government is signing contracts for lots of renewable power projects, but these need to connect to the grid on time, which means completing 80 transmission infrastructure projects by 2030. This will ensure electricity from renewable sources flows to where it is needed. It will lower the costs of turning off renewables and firing up gas power stations closer to where there is demand for electricity.
The government needs to pull every lever available to reduce the cost of electricity and we have set out some further options. It should take more of the charges that pay for policy choices, like the Renewables Obligation and feed-in tariff, off bills and into government spending. We also call for ministers to review removing the carbon price support and lowering voltage on the low voltage network.
But we do not need to rethink a clean power plan that is working, especially when building more renewables is starting to pay off and can help curb reliance on gas imports that are soaring in cost. We should be sceptical when commentators play fast and loose with models of what will happen in the future to argue for a change of course. But there is plenty of work to do to make sure people see the benefit of clean, secure, renewable energy.
This blog was originally posted in BusinessGreen. Photo by Zhang Fengsheng on Unsplash
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