It’s Not About Climate Denial — It’s About Solutions That Actually Work

The Guardian wants every criticism of UK energy policy to be dismissed as “denial.”But this debate has nothing to do with denying climate impacts — it’s about rejecting solutions that don’t work.

Response to Monbiot’s Argum

It is not about denying climate impacts .It is about rejecting solutions that simply do not work. The Guardian repeatedly frames any criticism of Net Zero policies as “denial,” yet this avoids the central reality: the UK cannot run a modern industrial economy on an energy system built around intermittency, skyrocketing system costs, and a grid that is already past breaking point.

What the country needs is reliable, affordable power before ideology, because the current strategy has increased prices, destabilised infrastructure, and made life harder for millions. While intermittent renewables now account for more than half of installed generation capacity in the UK, they still provide less than 30% of firm contribution during winter, when energy demand is at its highest and when wind output frequently falls below 10% of nameplate capacity during cold, still spells, with solar effectively zero[1]. As a result, the UK remains dependent not on coal,which has been almost entirely phased out, but on gas and emergency backup reserves to prevent blackouts during winter peak periods.

This is not because gas is ideologically preferred, but because the grid physically cannot rely on intermittent sources to meet demand when the country actually needs power.

The consequences of this system are stark. Curtailment costs, payments made to renewable operators when the grid cannot absorb their output,have exceeded £1.4 billion since 2021, representing money paid not to produce electricity, but to shut down wind and solar so the grid can remain stable[2]. These costs are then passed directly onto households and businesses through energy bills. At the same time, National Grid ESO confirms that over 37 GW of new renewable schemes are stuck in the connection queue until the late 2020s and 2030s, largely because the grid lacks the required transmission lines, substations, transformers, and Super Grid Transformers (SGTs) needed to move intermittent power from remote locations to where it is used[3].

The UK has built gigawatts of weather-dependent generation without building the infrastructure to support it. This is not climate strategy ,this is systemic planning failure.

Since the Climate Change Act was implemented in 2008, household electricity prices have risen by over 300%, the steepest increase in modern UK history, driven not by fossil fuel costs but by system changes: the cost of balancing a grid overloaded with intermittent supply, the cost of subsidies, the cost of curtailment, the cost of transmission reinforcements, and the cost of back-up capacity required to stabilise the system[4].

These rising bills have real human consequences. The UK consistently records more than 50,000 excess winter deaths, with Public Health England repeatedly identifying cold homes, heating unaffordability, and energy poverty as significant contributing factors[5].

It is not enough to build more generation , the power system must reliably deliver electricity at a price that ordinary people can afford. The Guardian rarely engages with these realities, preferring to dismiss them as scepticism rather than confronting the engineering and economic truths beneath them.

A responsible climate policy recognises that nuclear must provide the backbone of a future grid, as the only zero-carbon technology capable of delivering stable, predictable, weather-independent electricity at scale. New nuclear capacity and SMRs offer a solution the UK has ignored for too long: dependable baseload power that functions in December as well as June, at night as well as during the day. Alongside this, the UK must reinforce its grid before adding more intermittent load, addressing critical bottlenecks at substations, upgrading end-of-life transmission assets, and resolving the national shortage of SGTs, a crisis openly acknowledged by National Grid ESO and Northern Powergrid.

Solar development must shift away from productive farmland and archaeological landscapes toward rooftops, industrial estates, car parks, and brownfield land, where it does not compete with food security or drive costly new transmission corridors. All of this forms an energy strategy rooted in engineering reality rather than ideology.

None of these arguments constitute climate denial. They are grounded in evidence, lived experience, and the failures of the current policy framework.

They recognise the importance of decarbonisation, but insist it must be done in a way that protects the public, stabilises the grid, and strengthens national resilience. When media outlets frame every criticism as “denial,” they shut down essential debate and obscure the true causes of the UK’s energy instability.

The facts are clear: until the UK prioritises nuclear baseload, grid reinforcement, energy affordability, and technologies that work in winter, climate policy will continue to fail both the British people and the power system upon which the entire nation depends.

Footnotes

1. Firm winter output: National Grid ESO Winter Outlook 2023/24; during “Dunkelflaute” conditions, wind output can fall below 10% of nameplate, solar ~0%, resulting in <30% firm contribution toward peak winter demand.

2. Curtailment >£1.4bn since 2021: National Grid ESO Constraint and Balancing Services Data (2021–2024); figures reported through BMRS and ESO Transparency Platform.

3. 37 GW queue: National Grid ESO “Connections Reform: Gate 2 Review” (June 2025), highlighting multi-year delays caused by transmission bottlenecks, transformer shortages, and insufficient reinforcement capacity.

4. Electricity prices +300% since 2008: ONS Retail Energy Price Series; DESNZ/BEIS electricity price data show domestic prices rising from ~10p/kWh in 2008 to 30–33p/kWh by 2023–2024.

5. Excess winter deaths >50,000: ONS Excess Winter Mortality Reports; Public Health England identifies energy affordability and cold homes as major contributing factors.