Ed Miliband has been accused of pursuing a “reckless” net zero agenda after new figures revealed consumers are being left with record bills to keep wind farms switched off.
The Energy Secretary is leading a major push to build new wind farms, despite local opposition to plans.
However, new figures about the scale of so-called constraint payments have prompted criticism that Mr Miliband’s “obsession” with renewables is set to cost consumers billions and puts “ideology over consumer interest”.
Analysis from the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) charity has found that in 2024, wind farms were paid almost £400 million to turn off their turbines.
The payouts added roughly £13 to household bills last year, a third of which was passed on directly to consumers through their energy bills. According to the REF, the remaining two-thirds was passed on indirectly through higher prices.
This is up from £11 in 2023, and £8 in 2022. The amount of money added to consumer bills owing to constraint payments has risen steadily since 2010 when constraint payments were first introduced and cost bill payers just £0.01.
Dr John Constable, director of the REF, said: “We are recklessly adding more wind capacity to a system which cannot cope with what it already has. This is resulting in extremely high costs to consumers.”
Constraint payments are paid out by the National Grid to incentivise wind farms to reduce output when more energy is generated than can be used locally or exported to consumers elsewhere in the UK, usually as a result of higher wind speeds.
The value of constraint payments to wind farms has increased rapidly in recent years as more of Britain’s power has come from renewable sources and the grid’s capacity.
Dr Constable went on to explain that constraint payments to wind farms are only one aspect of the costs passed on to consumers as part of the “balancing mechanism” which is forecast to run to billions by 2030 if the grid capacity does not expand.
Claire Coutinho, shadow secretary for energy security and net zero, said: “As we’ve been saying, if you ramp up renewables before sorting out the grid then consumers will have to pay out billions of pounds in constraint payments.
“Ed Miliband promised to cut bills but his obsession with wind and solar means we are not building the stable baseload – gas and nuclear power that we need for cheap energy. It’s ideology over consumer interest.”
Lord Frost, a Tory peer, said that constraint payments are “just a small part of the renewables industry’s rip-off of UK customers”.
He said: “It is inevitable the costs will continue to increase further, as the more wind farms we have, the more that need to be turned off and compensated when the grid cannot deliver the power to customers.
“All this underlines why Ed Miliband’s ruinous wind farm-building programme, far from being the solution to our energy supply difficulties, will actually make our problems worse.”
Last month, Mr Miliband unveiled his Clean Power 2030 Action Plan which included a move to classify wind turbines and solar farms as “nationally significant infrastructure projects”.
This would allow them to be treated with the same level of importance as airports and power plants, effectively blocking residents and councils from standing in the way of green energy projects and paving the way for thousands more wind turbines to be built across Britain.
If Mr Miliband’s bill is passed, onshore wind capacity is expected to double from 15 gigawatts (GW) to almost 30GW, equal to around 3,000 turbines. Offshore wind capacity will also increase. The UK currently has about 2,800 offshore wind turbines.
The Government is aiming to get offshore wind capacity up from 15GW to 50GW over the next six years, which would mean installing an extra 3,500 wind turbines by 2030.
Lord McKinlay, chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, said one of the major issues with increasing the supply of renewable energy is that “nobody is addressing the need for a storage system”.
He said: “Much is made that hydrogen might be it or indeed that battery farms can store for periods when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind does not blow. The reality is a truly absurd cost, and in the case of batteries a massive over-reliance on the supply chain now dominated by China.
“Once storage is factored in, the real price of electricity rockets from the already obscenely high prices that we’re seeing today.”
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesman said: “The National Energy System Operator’s independent report shows we can achieve clean power by 2030 with cheaper electricity, even factoring in constraint payments and a more secure energy system for Britain.
“Through our Clean Power Action Plan, we will work with industry to rewire Britain, upgrade our outdated infrastructure to get renewable electricity on the grid, and minimise constraint payments.”
