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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Will the cost of electricity and gas ever come back down again.

138 replies

1457bloom · 22/11/2025 14:52

Pre Covid, I wouldn’t think twice about putting the heating on, now it seems like a luxury.

OP posts:
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SerendipityJane · 24/11/2025 13:51

I never agreed or understood why people who were acclaimed as "clever" thought that aping the US in the UK made sense. Anyone who knows anything (which sometimes seems to be just me) would know that where we are is a function of where we came from - history. And that history is very much contingent on geography.

The US energy marker makes sense in a country where you have 50 individual countries spanning a continent. It makes fuck all sense in a country which would fit many times over into most US states. Ditto: gas, telecoms and water.

Blindly aping the US is like the Rolling Stones going out and buying suits to be like the Beatles.

1dayatatime · 24/11/2025 14:08

If you want to know why the UK has the highest electricity prices in Europe (if not the world) then here is the breakdown:

Basically we are paying for all the renewable subsidies and the expansion of the grid needed to connect all the new renewables plus subsidies to keep gas fired plants on standby to cover the hours / days of low wind / low solar.
Ironically the wholesale cost of electricity has gone down. As for the energy companies on a £1750 average electricity bill the energy companies only make a £44 profit. If you think households are suffering then energy intensive industries are even worse off and pulling out of the UK.

No economy has managed economic growth with high energy prices

It seems that the public like the idea of net zero but not the cost of it.

Will the cost of electricity and gas ever come back down again.
SerendipityJane · 25/11/2025 10:05

If people were in any doubt about where they are in the pecking order ..

Not enough energy for people to stay warm ? Oh dear, how sad.
Not enough energy to run "AI" data centres ? Quick build fucktonnes of nukes.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/uk_nuclear_power_reform/

Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges

: Taskforce calls UK the priciest place on Earth to build nuclear projects and urges radical regulatory reset

https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/uk_nuclear_power_reform

Woollyguru · 25/11/2025 10:12

SumUp · 22/11/2025 15:34

National Grid is a private company that prioritises payouts to its shareholders, which include foreign governments. It has announced billions worth of upgrades, but domestic and commercial users in the UK will be footing the bill. And because it is a monopoly, we can’t switch to an alternative to avoid paying.

If you can afford to get solar panels on your roof, or invest in a community energy scheme, the payoff period is short these days, do it.

I looked into solar panels and for us the payoff period looks to be around 9 years depending on number of panels and battery etc.

It's not worth it for us as we'll be selling up in about 10 years time.

I also worked out that if I invested the money instead at 5%pa I would get pretty much the same return as the saving made through buying solar in 10 years and over time the return would be greater due to compounding.

1dayatatime · 25/11/2025 12:57

SerendipityJane · 25/11/2025 10:05

If people were in any doubt about where they are in the pecking order ..

Not enough energy for people to stay warm ? Oh dear, how sad.
Not enough energy to run "AI" data centres ? Quick build fucktonnes of nukes.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/uk_nuclear_power_reform/

Data centres eat shit loads of electricity- the average data centre consumes about the same amount of power as 300,000 homes.

Given that the UK has the highest electricity prices in the Western world then why would any data centre developer want to build such a centre in the UK? Personally I don't think this forecasted growth in data centres in the UK will ever happen at current electricity prices.

GasPanic · 25/11/2025 14:19

1dayatatime · 24/11/2025 14:08

If you want to know why the UK has the highest electricity prices in Europe (if not the world) then here is the breakdown:

Basically we are paying for all the renewable subsidies and the expansion of the grid needed to connect all the new renewables plus subsidies to keep gas fired plants on standby to cover the hours / days of low wind / low solar.
Ironically the wholesale cost of electricity has gone down. As for the energy companies on a £1750 average electricity bill the energy companies only make a £44 profit. If you think households are suffering then energy intensive industries are even worse off and pulling out of the UK.

No economy has managed economic growth with high energy prices

It seems that the public like the idea of net zero but not the cost of it.

There isn't much good news on energy prices but it is not all bad.

Nuclear.

It's going to cost £100 billion to decommission Sellafield and after 50 years we still can't come to a conclusion what to do with the waste from previous operations, let alone current ones. Meanwhile we are probably going to inefficiently fund another 3.2GW monster that we really need for baseload.

Wind.

This is kind of going OK. The real issue at the moment is distribution and to improve that we're going to need a lot of investment to move the energy from where it is generated to where it is needed. Current projects are going slowly for a number of reasons and Dogger Bank is behind schedule. I don't think the public in general has any clue about the scale of the operation that is going on in the North Sea to install wind power.

Solar.

This was going great guns around 2015. If we had carried on at that rate we would have installed solar equivalent to HP C by now (about 30GW at 10% capacity factor). But we didn't. Solar is kind of complimentary to wind but we have in no way balanced the two. We should have forced the Chinese to set up panel producing factories here and pushed it harder.

Gas and Fossil Fuels

This is effectively being managed by public opinion, and the public has no clue how the industry works. It takes 10 years to get an oil/gas installation up to speed, it can't be done on a sixpence. Rather than being properly sunsetted, the plug has been pulled and that is going to have some consequences both for energy prices and energy security in the medium term.

Energy Saving

Governments as usual are mismanaging the use of money into things like boiler/heat pump replacement schemes. I doubt whether the use of this money is going to get any more efficient. Of course all these schemes have to be paid for by someone.

I don't think the energy situation is as bad as some people make out, but no it isn't great either. The consequences are going to be that we have to pay more for energy and that means less disposable income. Most people will have less money to spend on pets and tv subscriptions, but energy will remain something that is largely affordable IMO even at the cost of discretionary spending.

Energy security could be a little rough for the next decade but after that a bit easier and we should be more self reliant. I know a few people who have been predicting we would have to ration gas at some point for about the last decade, but it has never happened, despite our relatively limited storage capability and the demise of storage fields like Rough. Maybe if we had December 2010 again it could get a bit dicey.

SerendipityJane · 25/11/2025 16:43

1dayatatime · 25/11/2025 12:57

Data centres eat shit loads of electricity- the average data centre consumes about the same amount of power as 300,000 homes.

Given that the UK has the highest electricity prices in the Western world then why would any data centre developer want to build such a centre in the UK? Personally I don't think this forecasted growth in data centres in the UK will ever happen at current electricity prices.

There are various reasons that data centres have to be fairly close to the action.

What is really burning through the Joules are these "AI" search queries that nobody asked for, nobody needs and that are never right.

For now appending "-ai" to your google query or using "https://www.google.com/?udm=14" as your search URL can turn off the ghastly Gemini. However there will come a time when it will be illegal to use a non-AI search engine, I am sure.

Google

https://www.google.com/?udm=14%22

PoppyRoseBucky · 25/11/2025 17:09

twistyizzy · 22/11/2025 18:54

But Labour promised to bring down the cost by £300 and to "freeze gas and electricity prices immediately to give people breathing space over the
winter"
So any day now bills will go down.........

Any day now.

SerendipityJane · 25/11/2025 17:25

PoppyRoseBucky · 25/11/2025 17:09

Any day now.

Edited

I much preferred the Tories approach. They promised - and delivered - fuck all.

HumanBigFeer · 25/11/2025 17:36

SerendipityJane · 25/11/2025 17:25

I much preferred the Tories approach. They promised - and delivered - fuck all.

Renewables went up massively under them though?

SerendipityJane · 25/11/2025 17:44

HumanBigFeer · 25/11/2025 17:36

Renewables went up massively under them though?

Hang on, aren't we supposed to be bashing Labour ? Did I mess a memo ?

HumanBigFeer · 25/11/2025 17:53

SerendipityJane · 25/11/2025 17:44

Hang on, aren't we supposed to be bashing Labour ? Did I mess a memo ?

I mean to say with the Tories. Renewables went up a lot.

Alexandra2001 · 25/11/2025 18:25

1dayatatime · 24/11/2025 14:08

If you want to know why the UK has the highest electricity prices in Europe (if not the world) then here is the breakdown:

Basically we are paying for all the renewable subsidies and the expansion of the grid needed to connect all the new renewables plus subsidies to keep gas fired plants on standby to cover the hours / days of low wind / low solar.
Ironically the wholesale cost of electricity has gone down. As for the energy companies on a £1750 average electricity bill the energy companies only make a £44 profit. If you think households are suffering then energy intensive industries are even worse off and pulling out of the UK.

No economy has managed economic growth with high energy prices

It seems that the public like the idea of net zero but not the cost of it.

You ve lumped in Connection costs in with the running of the network, how much of that £397 is spent on new connections vs upkeep and upgrades?

I ve still know a few people in NG and the on going upkeep of the network is huge, 7bn on mtce alone each year, 11bn on investment and improvements.

If we didn't have renewables, we'd need to have replaced those 7 Nuclear PS that are due to close by 2030 and built new Gas stations too....

... not cheap at all.

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