Richard Lyon

Reliable Britain

What Britain’s electricity would have cost on gas

Report No. 1 · October 2026 · Richard Lyon

Net zero added £140.3bn to Britain’s electricity bills between 2002 and 2024. That is £2,286 for the average household; businesses and public bodies bore the rest. Different reasonable assumptions put the total between £120.8bn and £152.7bn.

All figures are modelled, for 2002–24, in 2024 prices.

For every year from 2002 to 2024, we set the bill Britain actually paid beside what the same electricity would have cost on the gas-led alternative, without climate policies. Both bills are for the same electricity: the amount Britain actually used. The bill on the gas-led alternative is an estimate, because the gas-led alternative never happened.

Versions and corrections

  1. Report No. 1 · correction

    1.0.2, 26 October 2026. Corrected one sentence on p.17 that left out how the gas-led alternative’s own gas burn moves the price it pays, and the p.18 heading, which went beyond changing one assumption at a time. No figures changed.

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  2. Technical paper · correction

    1.0.2, 26 October 2026. Corrected the title page, which said the note had not been peer reviewed; it is being peer reviewed. No figures changed.

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  3. Report No. 1 · correction

    1.0.1, 26 October 2026. Corrected one sentence on p.17 that had the effect of gas prices the wrong way round. Clarified the VAT basis of figures on pp.9 and 16, and the years carbon pricing led on p.16. No figures changed.

    This version on ZenodoWhat changed, sentence by sentence

Full list of changes, and 3 earlier versions

Errors may be sent to corrections@richardlyon.net. Each is logged here, dated and credited.

How to cite

Technical paper

Lyon, R. (2026). Reliable Britain: what Britain’s electricity would have cost on gas. Technical note to Report No. 1. Version 1.0.2. richardlyon.net. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23652964

Report

Lyon, R. (2026). Reliable Britain: Report No. 1. What Britain’s electricity would have cost on gas. Version 1.0.2. richardlyon.net. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23652966

Model

Lyon, R. (2026). gas-counterfactual v4-s43 [software]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23652961

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