There is something very British about a government that takes credit for lowering a bill while quietly raising the tax that funds the same cost. From 1 April, Ofgem cut the energy price cap by £117 for a typical household — on paper, a welcome break. But buried in the small print is a story ministers do not want on the news. The bulk of that saving comes from moving green levies off the energy bill and into the general tax base. The money still has to be raised. It is just being raised somewhere else.
The Shell Game Explained
The government has transferred 75% of the Renewables Obligation from energy bills into general taxation. The Energy Company Obligation charge has gone the same way. Ministers get to brief a price cap cut. Voters get to wave the press release at the school gate. And the Treasury quietly picks up a bill now paid through income tax, VAT, and the frozen allowances we have already written about.
Meanwhile, a new £65 network cost has been added to the price cap to pay for modernising the grid to accommodate more renewables. Those upgrades are real — the grid genuinely does need investment — but the public was told for years that renewables would make energy cheaper. They have not. We are now paying for the generation, the backup, the grid upgrades, and the subsidies all at once, and the political class is still pretending there is no bill.
Net Zero Was Always A Political Choice, Not Physics
When Theresa May committed the country to Net Zero by 2050 in a nearly empty Commons chamber, there was no impact assessment. No honest national conversation. No vote of the public. The cost — tens of billions a year — has been loaded onto every household through a patchwork of charges, obligations, and subsidies.
The result is predictable. Britain has some of the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world. Our steelmakers are folding. Our chemical plants are relocating. Our aluminium smelters are gone. And the jobs that go with them are not coming back while we continue to price our industry out of the market in the name of a deadline nobody was asked to vote for.
Lower Gas Bills Will Not Save Us From Bad Policy
Yes, the fall in global gas prices has helped. Yes, the new price cap is a small relief for households who have been squeezed for four years running. But the structural problem remains. We are a country that sits on substantial reserves of North Sea oil and gas, has world-class nuclear expertise, and yet chooses to rely increasingly on imported LNG while blocking our own production. It is a policy that defies both economics and national security.
Cheap, reliable, domestic energy is the foundation of every successful industrial economy. We are pretending we can have an industrial revival while simultaneously making energy more expensive and less secure. You cannot. Every factory manager in the country will tell you the same thing.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK's policy on energy is straightforward. Scrap the 2050 Net Zero target in its current form. Replace it with a pragmatic transition that prioritises affordable, reliable energy for British homes and businesses. Reopen North Sea licensing. Accelerate small modular reactors. End the subsidy regime that has inflated bills for a decade without delivering energy security. And put the true cost of green levies back on the bill so voters can see, transparently, what they are paying for.
This is not climate denial. It is climate realism. You cannot decarbonise an economy that cannot afford its own heating. Every serious industrial nation is already reassessing its Net Zero timeline. Britain must do the same — not because climate change has gone away, but because crushing British households under hidden costs is not a plan for the future. It is a plan for managed decline dressed up in green ribbons.