The April 2026 energy price cap fell by 6.7%, and Ofgem briefed it as good news. The truth: a typical household now pays £1,641 a year, which is still 35% above pre-crisis levels. Analysts already expect a significant rise from July driven by the Middle East conflict and rising wholesale costs. And quietly, in the background, the bill is being prepared to absorb the multi-billion-pound cost of Sizewell C, the expanded Warm Home Discount, and the Government's new Debt Relief Scheme. Net zero is not making your bills cheaper. It is making them permanently dearer.
The Hidden Surcharges Ed Miliband Won't Talk About
Look closely at the cost stack of an electricity bill in 2026. Wholesale costs are one piece — and yes, those have eased a little since the worst of 2023. But the policy costs and network costs that fund Britain's energy transition are climbing fast and locked in for decades. The Sizewell C nuclear station is funded via a regulated asset base model that charges every household for construction risk before a single megawatt-hour has been generated. The expanded Warm Home Discount and the Debt Relief Scheme are funded by levies on bills. The grid upgrades required to deliver net zero — pylons, sub-stations, offshore interconnectors — are all paid for through network charges that appear on your statement under innocuous line items.
Britain's hidden energy debt has now hit a record £4.5 billion. Standing charges have risen to the point where households who barely use any energy are still hit with eye-watering monthly fees. This is what "decarbonisation" actually costs once you stop looking at the wholesale line.
The Iran War Has Exposed Our Energy Insecurity
The Middle East crisis has done what years of policy debate could not: it has shown ordinary households that an electricity system dependent on intermittent renewables and imported gas is a national security risk. The Bank of England has now formally warned that the Iran war is feeding through into UK inflation expectations. OPEC output adjustments have pushed petrol and diesel prices higher. And our European interconnector dependency means we are price-takers in a market we cannot influence.
Labour's answer? An "Energy Independence Bill" that will continue the transition away from fossil fuels, double down on Sizewell C, and expand renewables — all funded by you. There is no plan to build domestic gas. No plan to restart North Sea licensing properly. No plan to bring the cost of energy down. Just more transition, more cost, more bills.
Net Zero by Treasury
The real cost of net zero is now being hidden inside general taxation. Miliband's own department has been caught suppressing internal cost estimates for the transition. The National Energy System Operator put the price tag at £4.5 trillion across the next generation. Every renewable subsidy not paid via your bill is being paid via your income tax. And every job lost in energy-intensive manufacturing — steel, chemicals, ceramics — is a job exported to a country with cheaper, dirtier power.
That is the trade Labour will not admit to making: British industrial capacity for a moral position on global emissions that countries the size of India and China simply ignore.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would scrap the Net Zero by 2050 target as currently constructed, abolish the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and bring energy policy back into the Department for Business. We would restart North Sea licensing properly to give Britain domestic gas at British prices. We would end the regulated asset base model that loads nuclear construction risk onto household bills and rewrite the Sizewell C financing structure. We would slash the standing charge regime and require Ofgem to prioritise affordability, not "transition signalling".
The British public has never voted for an energy system that is permanently 35% more expensive than the one it replaced. They were promised the opposite. Reform UK will deliver the opposite. The rest is excuses.