Freeze or Feed: How Pension Funds Became Enforcers of Ideology—and Drove Your Energy Bills Up

For years, we were told the energy transition would be “cheap” and “inevitable.” Yet pensioners across Britain face an ugly winter choice:

freeze or feed. This isn’t just the result of global markets or bad luck. It’s the predictable outcome of a financial system pension funds included that’s been nudged, mandated, and morally browbeaten into prioritising climate ideology over affordable, reliable power.

The Quiet Revolution Inside Your Pension

Most local government and public-sector pensions delegate decisions to pooled managers and “responsible investment” committees. On paper, their duty is simple: secure members’ pensions through prudent, diversified investment.

In practice, a parallel mandate has taken hold:

align capital with Net Zero.That shift sounds harmless,who hates cleaner air

until you follow the money into:

Speculative climate funds with long lock-ups and opaque fees;

Nature-based finance and offsets that monetise land while producing no electricity;

Transition vehicles dependent on subsidies, complex regulation, and rosy modelling;

Overseas renewables private equity, far removed from British energy security.

These aren’t minor tilts; they’re strategic re-weightings that signal to markets and ministers:

price-insensitive capital is available for anything with a green label.

How That Pushes Your Bills Up

1. Grid costs explode before power arrives

Huge sums are poured into new pylons, substations, and fancy converters to chase intermittent supply.

The bill lands on consumers via standing charges and network tariffs.

You pay,even when the promised power isn’t there.

2. Curtailment and constraint waste

When wind or solar show up at the wrong time or wrong place, system operators pay to switch them off.

Consumers still pay generators for not generating, and then pay again for backup power.

That cost feeds straight through to bills.

3. Backup you can’t see, but do pay for

Intermittent generation needs firm backup,gas plants, interconnectors, or batteries with short duration. Capacity payments, constraint management, and balancing costs keep the lights on, and keep your bill rising.

4. Policy risk disguised as returns

A lot of “green” yields rely on subsidies, certificates, fixed offtakes, or regulatory privileges. It works,until it doesn’t.

When policy shifts or rates rise, valuations wobble. Members bear that risk indirectly, while still facing higher energy costs directly.

5. Capital diverted from real security

Every pound pushed into fashionable climate vehicles is a pound not building the reliable, domestic supply Britain actually needs-nuclear new build and SMRs, modernised gas, and grid upgrades designed around firm power first.

Fiduciary Duty Isn’t a Slogan,it’s the Law

The first duty of a pension fund is to pay pensions, not to solve climate politics. Investing must be prudent, evidence-led, and free of political coercion. If a “green” allocation genuinely beats other options on risk-adjusted returns, fine.

But that’s not the same as chasing Net Zero badges, or treating carbon accounting as a proxy for financial discipline.

When fiduciary duty is blurred, three things happen:

Fees rise, because private climate vehicles aren’t cheap.Liquidity falls, because lock-ups are long.Transparency shrinks, because complex structures hide real risk.

That’s bad for members. And it’s bad for Britain when the same ideological finance raises system costs that land on household bills.

The Moral Inversion

We’ve reached a perverse moment where pensioners fund the very strategies that make heating their homes more expensive. The rhetoric says “sustainable.” The lived reality says “unaffordable.

”There’s nothing compassionate about policies that force older people to choose between warmth and food.

There’s nothing progressive about shipping capital overseas while Britain imports energy and loses industry. And there’s nothing “sustainable” about a grid stretched to breaking every cold, still evening.

What Councillors and Members Can Ask,Today

Show the papers. Minutes, approval memos, fee schedules, and performance for every climate/impact mandate.Quantify the pass-through.

How do these investments affect total system costs and retail bills?

Stress test reality.

Model low-wind weeks in winter, gas price spikes, policy reversals, and higher discount rates.

Offer alternatives. Compare those outcomes to a portfolio tilted to UK-security assets: nuclear, reliable generation, targeted grid resilience.

A Smarter Path:

Security First, Ideology Last

We should demand a return to common sense:

Fiduciary duty first. Every investment must clear a simple hurdle: does it improve the odds of paying pensions—without inflating members’ energy bills?

UK energy security over green theatrics. Prioritise domestic nuclear (including SMRs), modern gas capacity, and grid upgrades that support firm, dispatchable power.

Full transparency. Publish the line-by-line climate/impact allocations, fees, and performance. No more hiding behind pooled structures and buzzwords.

Measure what matters. Real-world reliability, total system cost, and consumer impact-not just carbon metrics and glossy stewardship reports.Stop subsidising scarcity. End the loop where curtailment, constraint, and capacity payments become a permanent business model.

This Isn’t Anti-Environment.

It’s Pro-Pensioner and Pro-Britain.

Clean air matters. So does a warm home. We can have both-if we stop confusing moral posturing with engineering, and stop letting other people’s slogans spend pensioners’ money.

The energy transition must be honest about cost, humble about physics, and anchored in Britain’s security and prosperity.

Until pension funds rediscover that order of priorities, the “green” premium will keep showing up on your bill,and too many of our neighbours will keep facing the winter choice no modern country should tolerate: freeze or feed.

Shane Oxer Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy