Britain’s transition to renewable power has left households and businesses paying among the highest prices in the developed world, a leading academic has warned.
Professor Dieter Helm, an energy economist at the University of Oxford, said successive governments had promised that moving away from coal, gas and oil would usher in an era of cheap electricity.
In a new blog, Helm said domestic consumers had seen little relief.
Despite subsidies and price caps, he argued that bills remain high because the true costs of renewables are masked rather than reduced.
“The miracle of cheap renewables has not arrived,” he writes.
Helm said the central issue was the gap between the marginal cost of wind and solar power and the wider “system costs” required to integrate them.
These include back-up gas generation, battery storage and major new transmission infrastructure. Without factoring in these costs, he argued, claims about cheap renewable energy are misleading.
He also challenged the government’s narrative that gas prices were solely to blame for high bills. While the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a sharp spike, he said prices were already rising after the pandemic.
Britain’s decision to close coal and nuclear plants early, combined with reliance on spot markets and minimal storage, had left the system highly exposed to volatility.
Renewables, he added, are not as cheap as headline prices suggest once balancing and transmission are included.
Helm concluded that meeting net zero by 2030 would be “expensive”, requiring double the current generating capacity along with extensive new networks, storage and reserve power.
“It is time to be honest about the costs." he said.