Conservative response to Labour's electricity announcement

Claire Coutinho MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, said:

“Ed Miliband promised to cut energy bills by £300, but instead as I warned, bills are going up and it's increasingly obvious that this promise was a fantasy.

“The truth is that wind developers have Ed over a barrel because he set himself impossible wind targets, that means we'll be paying them billions of pounds extra, roughly £100 on bills by 2030, not to produce energy, but simply to turn off.

“Even Downing St are waking up to the fact that Ed's Net Zero zeal is going to impose huge costs on bills and jobs as we lose businesses to more polluting countries with cheaper energy. That's bad for households, our economy and emissions.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

• Following the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA), energy bills will rise by £100 by 2030. The National Energy Systems Operator (NESO) has outlined that balancing costs will reach £8 billion by 2030. There are 28.4 million households in the UK using approximately a third of energy. Therefore, the forecast cost to households us is approximately £94 (NESO, 2025 Annual Balancing Costs Report, June 2025, link; International Energy Agency, United Kingdom, accessed 10 July 2025, link; ONS, Families and households in the UK: 2023, 8 May 2024, link).