Shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho has accused the Climate Change Committee (CCC) of attempting to censor her criticism of its estimates for the cost of offshore wind.
The former energy secretary said the independent climate watchdog had lodged a complaint after she wrote in a national newspaper that it was significantly underestimating the cost of the technology.
In a post on LinkedIn, Ms Coutinho said: “The Climate Change Committee tried to censor me.
“When I wrote in a national newspaper that they were significantly underplaying the cost of offshore wind, they lodged a complaint to try to force me to edit it out.
“I refused and was proved right. The CCC had said that the LCOE of offshore wind would be £38/MWh in 2030, when DESNZ's own LCOE was updated to over £100/MWh just a few months later.
“Our public bodies should seek the truth, not seek to silence politicians holding them to account.”
The row centres on the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) assumptions used by the CCC in its Seventh Carbon Budget advice.
The CCC has previously defended its methodology, saying LCOE measures the underlying cost of generating electricity over a project's lifetime and should not be directly compared with Contracts for Difference strike prices.