How Renewables Are Now Under Pressure From All Angles — and Why Betting Everything on One Path Was Always Folly

For more than a decade, the UK has been told that wind and solar would deliver cheap, secure energy. That they would insulate us from global price shocks. That they represented the “inevitable future.”

Yet here we are in late 2025 , and the façade is cracking.

Record copper prices, soaring grid costs, investor fatigue, and political panic are exposing a simple truth:

You cannot build an entire energy system on technologies that depend on fragile supply chains, volatile commodity markets, and billions in subsidies.



The gamble was ideological. The consequences are real.

1. Critical Supply Problems Are Mounting

Renewables are extremely materials-intensive. To build vast, dispersed power networks full of inverters, transformers, cables, batteries, and substations, you need huge volumes of:

Copper

Rare earths

Steel

Fibreglass

Graphite

Lithium

Cobalt


But global copper supplies , the backbone of all electrification , are tightening. Mines are struggling. Costs are rising. Geopolitical risk is increasing. This week, copper hit record highs again as supply disruptions collided with rising global demand.

That means solar farms, wind turbines, transformers, and grid connection equipment all get more expensive at once.

Renewables rely on minerals the UK does not control, sourced from countries we cannot rely on.
We traded domestic coal, gas, and nuclear capacity for dependence on foreign metals.



This isn’t “green independence.”
It’s naïve vulnerability.

2. The Big-Money Backlash Has Begun

For years, investment banks, hedge funds, and sovereign wealth funds poured money into renewables.

Why?
Not because the technology was cheap, but because the subsidies and guaranteed returns were irresistible.

Now investors are facing:

Project cancellations

Delayed grid connections

Spiralling construction costs

Supply chain instability

Public pushback over land use

A collapse in confidence in wind auctions


They’re asking a question activists hate:

> If this model works, why does it still need public subsidy, planning fast-tracks, price guarantees, and political protection?



When financiers start quietly backing away, you know the dream has cracked.

3. Price Exposure – Not Insulation

The public was promised cheap power.
Instead, they got:

Soaring standing charges

Expensive grid reinforcement

Hidden subsidy levies

Volatile wholesale prices

Higher bills every winter


Now rising commodity prices , copper, steel, turbine metals ,are feeding directly into renewable project costs.

Wind and solar are more exposed to global commodity inflation, not less.

The fantasy that renewables would “free us from global energy markets” has been exposed.

We shifted from global gas risk , to global metals risk.
And metals markets are no kinder.

4. One-Track Energy Thinking Was the Original Mistake

A secure nation never bets everything on one technology, one ideology, or one supply chain.

Yet that is exactly what Westminster did.

They built a system where:

✅ gas and coal power were decommissioned
✅ nuclear was delayed and starved of investment
✅ renewables were given priority access and guaranteed revenue
✅ the grid was forced to expand at breakneck speed
✅ land, food production, and countryside were sacrificed

This wasn’t a strategy.
It was a crusade.

And now the cracks are spreading faster than ministers can paper over.

The Rational Alternative

Britain needs:

Secure domestic generation

Baseload nuclear power

Gas as a long-term transition fuel

Local micro-solar (not giant industrial fields)

Real grid planning, not ideological chaos

Energy independence, not supply-chain dependency


Not “net zero at any cost.”
Not half-built megaprojects rotting on farmland.
Not spiralling extraction demand tied to foreign mines and unstable regimes.

Energy must work in the real world, not just in conference speeches and glossy NGO pamphlets.
Conclusion: The Reckoning Has Begun

Renewables will continue to play a role, but they cannot carry the system.

Copper prices, investor flight, rural backlash, grid overload, and cost inflation have combined to reveal what many warned all along:

Net Zero without engineering discipline was never a plan , it was a political slogan.



The bill is arriving.
And Britain deserves better than ideology dressed as progress.

Now we build an energy strategy that is:

Pragmatic

Sovereign

Balanced

Reliable

Affordable

Rooted in engineering, not emotion


The era of magical thinking is over.
Reality has walked back into the room.

Shane Oxer . Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy