In the 1989 film Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner’s character is guided by the mantra: “If you build it, he will come.” Britain’s energy policy appears to be founded on much the same logic. [some emphasis, links added]
Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, continues to throw ever larger subsidies at the construction of wind farms, apparently in the belief that the supporting infrastructure, economics, and system stability will somehow materialize afterwards.
But the plan has major flaws.
As The Telegraph has reported, emissions from electricity generation increased last year despite Labour’s aggressive net zero programme and rapid approval of renewable projects.
At the same time, official energy statistics show that gas remained Britain’s single largest source of electricity generation in 2025, ahead of wind.
That should not really surprise anyone who understands how electricity systems work. Britain has not built a secure power system; it has built a weather-dependent one. When wind output is high, gas generation falls sharply, but the reverse is also true.
During prolonged wind lulls, gas generation climbs materially because there is no alternative source capable of filling the gap at scale. In winter, when solar generation is almost nonexistent, this problem worsens.
Miliband has made his clean power 2030 goal a central plank of his political legacy. But the only lever he can pull to deliver it is higher renewables subsidies, which is why we’ve seen longer subsidy contracts and higher prices.
The Energy Secretary has continued down this path despite increasing amounts of wind generation being wasted because of a lack of grid infrastructure. Plus, grid operator NESO says excess solar generation is overwhelming the grid during the summer.
The results are becoming increasingly ridiculous and expensive for consumers. The most egregious example remains the Seagreen wind farm, which opened in October 2023.
In 2024, two-thirds of its potential output was discarded because the grid infrastructure needed to transport this electricity to consumers was lacking. In 2025, that figure rose to around three-quarters.
When the output of wind farms such as Seagreen is curtailed, consumers pay twice: once for the electricity they use, typically supplied by a gas power station downstream of the grid constraint, and again to the wind farm that is required to turn off.
The reason for this bizarre situation lies in a policy known as “connect and manage”, under which wind farms are permitted to connect to the electricity system regardless of whether sufficient infrastructure exists to deliver the electricity they generate to users.
The policy was introduced to prevent renewable projects from being delayed by grid upgrades. Still, if the electricity they generate cannot be transported to consumers, these projects become little more than white elephants.
Ofgem strongly opposed the introduction of connect and manage because of precisely these cost concerns, but was overruled.
With constraint costs now spiralling to around £1.5bn per year, and curtailment reaching extraordinary levels, it’s time for the regulator to renew those objections far more forcefully.
The scandal of wasted wind also belies the faulty logic underpinning Miliband’s clean power plan. He assumes that each additional gigawatt (GW) of renewable capacity added to the UK’s energy system results in one less GW of gas generation.
But this is not the case.
We have around 32GW of wind capacity connected to the grid, yet it is rare for much more than half of that to be in use at any one time.
Periods of low output – below a tenth of capacity – are not uncommon and occur with regularity. As a result, gas continues to be used.
Miliband’s approach assumes that building ever more intermittent generation will ultimately allow him to manage the issue.
Read rest at The Telegraph
