RICHARD TICE: Why ditching Miliband's Net Zero madness could save every family £1,000 a year

Daily Mail​

6 days ago

Labour is facing a make-or-break moment when it comes to its new cult, Net Stupid Zero.
This week, Ed Miliband opens his latest renewable energy auction, which allows green developers to bid for lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts.
The eco lobby says the auction, officially titled Allocation Round 7 (AR7), will be the centrepiece of Labour's plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030, and that this seventh round must be the biggest yet to 'keep the dream alive'.
But it's a dream Britain cannot afford. Inflation is rising. Food prices are once again on the up. And families across the country are cutting back – not just on holidays or takeaways, but on essentials.
According to research consultancy More In Common, 60 per cent of Britons list the cost of living as their top concern – and have done so consistently since January last year.
And one of the biggest contributory factors to this crisis is an issue that almost no one in Westminster wants to talk about: Net Zero and the spiralling cost of Britain's green energy agenda.
Expensive energy is the grenade exploding Britain's economic model. It is not just about switching on the lights and heating homes.
It powers industry, transports goods, and underpins every job and price tag. When energy becomes expensive and unreliable, everything else does too.
When you hear ministers blaming this crisis on Russian president Vladimir Putin and international fossil fuel markets, remember this: UK energy prices were already among the highest in the developed world before Russia invaded Ukraine.
This emergency didn't start in Moscow. It was manufactured in Westminster. We blew up coal plants, messed up nuclear, banned fracking, deterred North Sea investment (which drove up gas imports) and prioritised unreliable green energy.
From the other side of the Atlantic, even Donald Trump can see that, writing on his social media site Truth Social: 'North Sea Oil is a treasure chest for the United Kingdom.
The taxes are so high, however, that it makes no sense... Incentivise the drillers, fast.' He rightly added that wind is 'the worst form of energy' and a con.
When it comes to energy, Westminster has been Putin's most useful idiot. If the US is waking up to that fact, when will Labour?
For nearly two decades, clueless politicians from Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have clung to a fantasy: that we could eliminate all hydrocarbon use, build a national grid dominated by wind and solar power, and suffer no consequences.
The result? At a time of rising demand we are reliant on an unreliable energy supply and lumbered with higher bills. Three-quarters of the rise in electricity bills over the past decade can be attributed to green energy policies and the multi-billion-pound subsidies paid to renewable investors, according to Net Zero Watch.
Yet hundreds of thousands of jobs are being destroyed by high energy prices, while millions more are at risk.
Now suppliers are warning that prices will rise again in 2026. Professor Gordon Hughes, a former energy adviser at the World Bank, has warned they could approach 40p per kilowatt hour by 2030 – up from 25p today, which is a catastrophic increase.
That's why I took action. Last month, I wrote to major windfarm developers, warning them and their investors to stay away from the AR7 auction. I made it clear that if they press ahead, a Reform government will make them regret it.
As Nigel Farage said a few weeks ago about the renegotiation of green subsidy contracts, investors will see 'some haircuts'. Naturally, activists, consultants and subsidy-hunters – the 'Green Blob' – erupted in outrage.
But, if these windfarms go ahead, it will be an act of grave economic self-harm. By putting a spanner in the works of Miliband's mad plan, we can stop the 20-year rise in bills. By 2030, my letter alone might be saving households £1,000 a year.
But this isn't just about price. It's about security. Much of our ageing fleet of gas-fired power stations is nearing retirement. Thanks to subsidised renewables, few developers are willing to invest in replacements.
Why build a power station that often won't run to full capacity, especially when Miliband's plan would make the existing situation even worse?
Meanwhile, demand for new gas-fired electricity generating units is exploding globally as countries race to power the AI boom.
Lead times of gas infrastructure projects are now as long as eight years. Even if we ordered replacements today, they wouldn't arrive until 2033.
That's years after the capacity crunch is expected to bite. If we don't act fast, we'll be forced to ration power.
Renewables may also be making the grid dangerously unstable. That's not just an economic risk, it's a public safety threat.
Look at Spain and Portugal, where a blackout triggered by solar farm switch-offs killed at least eight people in June. Iberian grid operators restored power in a day, but our system is just as vulnerable.
No one knows if the 'smart' gizmos grid managers hope will stabilise the system will actually work when it is under stress. Clearly, they need only fail once – and the whole country goes dark.
Worse still, under political pressure, resources have been poured into connecting new renewables to the grid, rather than maintaining what we already have.
As a result, our electricity grid infrastructure is crumbling. Ageing transformers are already catching fire, most famously the one that routed power to Heathrow Airport, which went up in flames in March causing the airport to close for 16 hours and 1,000 flights to be cancelled.
With demand for replacements sky-high in Europe, those problems will not be fixed any time soon.
This is not a functioning energy system. It's a slow-motion car crash. But Mad Miliband is determined to step on the accelerator.
Labour cannot say they weren't warned. Just after the election, a YouGov poll found more than half of voters expected Labour to deliver real progress on the cost of living within two years.
Twelve months in, and with Reform leading in the polls, we will be there every step of the way holding them to account.
We must end the decline, not manage it. As an immediate first step that means trying to minimise the damage of AR7.
It means cancelling the folly that is Net Stupid Zero. And it means restoring energy policies that prioritise affordability, reliability, and national security.
This isn't just an economic battle. It's a democratic reckoning. The public, rightly, cares about the environment.
But they never voted to be poorer, or to be saddled with unsustainable costs like green levies and hidden network charges that flow from Westminster's Net Zero agenda.
That's why I won't apologise for going to war with the root causes of this crisis: green energy subsidies and their vested interests.
The British people deserve leaders who will fight, not flinch, when livelihoods, families and the national interest are on the line.
Let the battle begin.