Claire Coutinho has said the government should have calculated the cost of Net Zero policies as she called for ‘more nuclear, a lot less wind and solar.’
Speaking on GB News she said: “This is unfinished business for me. This is exactly why I asked to stay in the energy brief, post election.
“And what happened is, when I went into the department in 2023, I asked what I thought was a simple question. I said to the civil servant, ‘Can you just prove to me that renewables are cheap?’
“People had said that for years. I’d heard it time and time again. But what I found is, when they put those spreadsheets in front of me and I combed through them, that they did not have the evidence. What it’s like is looking at the price of a Ryanair flight.
“The ticket might be cheap, but once you pay for a bag, a sandwich, and everything else, then actually what you’ve got is something which is pretty costly, and that’s exactly the case with renewables as well.
“You’ve got the one thing which is the price of the wind farm or whatever it may be, but then you have to add in all of that extra grid. You have to pay wind farms to turn off when it’s too windy, and you have to pay for backup when it’s not windy enough.
“Now you add up all of those costs, and actually, what you’ve got at the end of it is something which is expensive, and that’s why I started that work in the department and said, ‘Can you do a full systems costing for me?’
“That work was underway, and then we had the election, and Ed Miliband canceled it because he didn’t want to know the truth.
“Kemi Badenoch and I have not shied away from the fact that we think that Conservatives got this wrong in government. I wasn’t in Parliament at the time when Net Zero legislation was passed, but I do know that Kemi was one of two MPs across the whole of Parliament who spoke up in that debate and said, ‘What about the cost of this all?’
“And I think what we should be saying to people is being very clear that we think those were the wrong policies, which we have done. But also, it’s not enough. It’s not enough just to say this was wrong. I’m afraid it’s not enough just to say ‘Net stupid Zero.’
“You’ve also got to do the hard yards and the analysis of working out how you get to that cheaper power system that we all want.
“The entirety of humanity and its prosperity, its growth, and its well-being has been founded on our access to energy; it is such an important thing, and that’s what we’ve done today.
“This is quite literally the most detailed analysis that has ever been done about the cost of our electricity system in the entirety of British politics. It really should have been done by the British government, that’s what I had been pushing towards. But actually, it’s been done by a think tank, in collaboration with us as well.
“And what I think is really, really important is if you don’t do this proper work of working out what the cost of different things are and how you get to that cheaper power system overall, then you’ll end up being just as bad as Ed Miliband who promised us all £300 off our bills and then delivered £300 higher bills instead.
“Energy is a technical area. It does need proper analysis and proper work to get to that golden land of making sure that we can deliver people cheap electricity, which is what we all want to see.
“[Onward] made a series of assumptions. One is that you build a lot more nuclear, a lot less wind and solar, and a bit more gas. And then there are other things. For example, we as a party have said we’d get rid of the carbon tax. We’ve worked out how we’d fund that.
“But the big savings come from having to build much less infrastructure. That’s what your cheaper power system does. When you have the wind and solar system, the problem is wind and solar aren’t reliable; they don’t work all the time. So not only do you need to have that system, you also need to have your gas power backup system.
“You also then need to have some batteries. You also then need to have interconnectors. You also then need to have huge amounts of extra grid, and all of that adds up to a much more expensive system.
“That’s the difference between the two. One is a much more efficient, more productive electricity system. The prize there is twofold. Obviously, that’s better for people; it’s better for quality of life. I’m sure there are lots of families watching this who can’t believe the state of their energy bills right now. Everybody agrees with that.
“But it’s actually better for the environment too because the far bigger prize, if you do care about emissions, is electrification. And our philosophy is simple: we want to make electricity cheap, let the consumer choose what works for them, and we think that’s a much much better path than what Labour are doing, which is making electricity really expensive.
“And then down the line, you’ve got these bans, these taxes, trying to force people into electric products when actually it’s making their lives worse, and it’s higher cost for them overall.
“I think that we can get [nuclear] much cheaper. We put forward some radical amendments last summer to do exactly that. The government actually has done a decent piece of work called the Fingleton Review, which is looking at all of this regulatory stuff around nuclear.
“But at the moment you’ve got Sizewell C. Its environmental assessment report was 30 times longer than the works of Shakespeare. Everything is being done in this sort of first of a kind way.
“At Hinkley Point we’re building this fish disco to deter fish, and actually we need to have a much closer eye on cost for all of these things. And actually, I don’t think that’s just true for nuclear, I think that’s building a lot of things in this country.
“We could do much better if we are focusing on engineering, cost and affordability. I think part of the problem that we’ve got is a mix of regulation, regulators, a lot of different priorities, whether it’s the social value assessment or the environmental assessment, whatever it is.
“And actually, we’ve just got to get on and build the things that we need for the future.”