There comes a moment in every national folly when the scale of the mistake becomes impossible to ignore. For Britain’s energy experiment, that moment is now.We are told ,repeatedly, insistently ,that Ed Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 vision is bold, necessary, urgent.
That Britain must build wind turbines and solar panels at a pace unseen in history, reinforced by colossal industrial batteries, to become a “clean energy superpower.”There is only one problem with this vision.It cannot work.
Not in engineering terms.
Not economically.
Not physically.And not without gutting our countryside, farming base, and national resilience.
The numbers ,the government’s own numbers,prove it.
A 738GW Green Energy Queue
For a 60GW Country
Britain’s peak electricity demand on the coldest winter nights is around 60 gigawatts.
But according to the National Energy System Operator, there are over 738 gigawatts of wind, solar, and battery projects waiting to connect to the grid.
Twelve times peak national demand,queued, subsidised, and politically blessed.
It is not planning.It is not strategy.It is a speculative bubble.A feeding frenzy paid for by you, the bill payer.
Why are developers piling in? Because the system rewards building supply whether or not the grid can handle it, whether or not the power can be used, and whether or not Britain needs it.
They are not chasing energy; they are chasing subsidies, strike prices, and curtailment payments.
In short: government policy has turned energy into a rent-seeking racket,Battery Storage:
The £3.8 Trillion Fairy Tale
Batteries have been sold as the silver bullet to intermittent renewables. Yet the arithmetic is devastating.The UK has 379GW of battery projects in the queue.Scaled up to real backup needs, we would require ~15TWh of storage for a long winter lull.Using real-world cost data, that equates to £3.8 trillion.
Trillion.For context, that’s more than the entire UK’s GDP multiple times over.This is not a “transition.”It’s magical thinking with a price tag attached And who pays that price? Not investors. You do.
The Land Grab Nobody Voted For
At four acres per megawatt, the queued solar alone demands over 1,200 square miles, an area larger than Greater London, Leeds, Manchester, and Liverpool combined.
Fields that once grew food will instead be filled with imported glass, metals, and lithium.Wildlife displaced.Villages hemmed in by black glass and battery compounds.
Britain’s countryside sacrificed to a fantasy.This is not environmentalism.
It is industrial colonisation of rural England, dressed in green PR.
When Ideology Replaces Engineering
The grid does not bend to ministerial speeches.Physics does not obey slogans.Reliability is not created by wishful thinking.Yet Britain now plans energy like a student union planning a festival:
big ideas, no grasp of logistics, and someone else footing the bill.
Renewable developers face no responsibility for grid deliverability.
Battery promoters are showered with praise despite impossible economics.
Ministers talk in headlines;
civil servants force through subsidies And communities are bulldozed figuratively and now literally,for a vision no one voted for.
We are not transitioning to a modern system.
We are destroying a functioning one in pursuit of ideological purity.
A Nation Held Hostage by Policy Fantasy
This is what happens when energy becomes a morality play instead of an engineering discipline.Instead of building firm power. British nuclear, British gas, British innovation like thin-film solar on rooftops,we are inflating a speculative bubble of wind farms, solar fields, and battery parks that:
Cannot deliver reliable power
Cannot scale financially
Will devastate landscapes
Will increase bills further
Will fail when the wind does not blow
Britain is not becoming a “clean energy superpower.”We are becoming the world’s first energy-constrained green debt colony.
A country that once led the Industrial Revolution is voluntarily walking into deindustrialisation and dependency,applauded all the way by lobbyists and subsidy-hunters who will leave with their profits long before the lights flicker and the bills explode.
The Moment of Truth
The public is waking up. Communities from Yorkshire to Somerset, from Lincolnshire to Wales, are pushing back. Farmers are speaking out. Residents are realising what “net zero infrastructure” means in practice:
Solar megaprojects devouring farmland
Battery parks next to villages and schools
Endless pylons marching across hills
Skyrocketing bills and forced rationing
Grid delays measured in decades, not yearsAnd for what? To generate power when we don’t need it, and have none when we do.We are not building the future.We are dismantling the present.
A Rational Energy Future Is Still Possible
Britain can have:
✅ Reliable, affordable energy
✅ A functioning food system
✅ Clean air and countryside
✅ Lower bills
✅ True energy sovereignty
But only if we stop substituting emotion for engineering and ideology for infrastructure.
The answer is clear:
Small modular reactors built in the UK
Domestic gas as backup
Rooftop solar and microgrids
Grid reinforcement before megaprojects
End subsidy speculation
Energy planning based on reality, not slogans
A prosperous nation plans, engineers, and builds.A failing one lectures, mandates, and dismantles.We must choose which we want to be.
Britain does not need hundreds of gigawatts of speculative renewables.What it needs is power you can count on And the courage to say no to a political fantasy before it bankrupts us all.
The era of pretending is over.
Now the truth arrives.Physics always wins.We should start acting like it.
Shane Oxer Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy
SAY NO TO THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR LAND 
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