What Britain’s electricity would have cost on gas
The paper will be open for public review for six weeks from publication.
Errors may be sent to corrections@richardlyon.net. Each will be logged on a public corrections page, and version 1.1 will credit every accepted correction.
Extra cost of net zero on electricity bills, 2002–24. Modelled, in 2024 prices.
This paper is a versioned method of record. It has not been peer reviewed. It will be published for six weeks of open review, and every accepted correction will be logged and credited in version 1.1.
Download the paper (PDF, 64 pages)The frozen engine release behind this paper is tag v4-s37, at the commit and with the figures file named on the title page. One command rebuilds every figure in the paper from the code and data at that tag and checks each against the release’s figures file; it does not run the release’s test suite.
Third-party inputs whose licence does not allow republication are not in the public copy: the release lists each with its publisher, and reviewers can have the full set on request.
Model release v4-s37 on GitHubWhat did Britain’s climate-policy programme since 2002 add to the cost of the electricity Britain actually used? This paper answers by setting two full bills side by side for every calendar year from 2002 to 2024. One is the bill Britain actually paid. The other is a modelled bill for the same electricity on the road Britain was on in 2002: the system it then had, carried forward with the same demand and sized to a 7.4% de-rated margin derived from NESO’s 2027/28 recommendation, closing plant only for age or pollution law, building the cheapest new plant where it was needed, and paying actual fuel prices with no carbon price. The actual system’s margin on that basis is not computed. The climate-policy programme is the departure from that road, and the gap is the difference between the two bills.
The answer, modelled. From 2002 to the end of 2024 Britain paid £947.7bn for its electricity, in 2024 prices. The same electricity on the road would have cost £806.6bn. The gap, the extra cost of net zero on electricity bills, paid by bill-payers, is £141.1bn. Its range runs from £123.6bn (kept output at the full actual price) to £152.9bn (gas-price feedback at Krichene's world long-run pair, 0.61): the lowest and highest results among the options ranked to set it, each changed on its own (§15.2). A method check gives £116.7bn, below it: it takes the 2021–23 merit-order uplift from O’Shea, Horne and Maslin’s short-term model (their Table 4), whose results the authors say “do not appear reasonable” (p.24), and it sits outside the range because it changes how one part of the machine is estimated, not what the road is (§8.3, §15.2). The range is neither a combined envelope nor a confidence interval.
Per household. Divided among Great Britain’s households year by year, the gap comes to £5,294 over 2002–24: each household’s average share of a national bill, not any household’s own bill. What an average household paid directly, on its own electricity bills, is smaller: £2,285, the households’ share of the gap, built line by line (§2.7). The rest reached households indirectly, through prices in shops and the cost of public services.
The full summary, key points and method are in the paper (PDF)
| Date | Where | What was wrong | Effect | Found by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| None yet. | ||||