They Spend Billions Building What Cannot Produce

How NESO’s Own Documents Prove the UK Is Wasting Money on Undeliverable Power

By Shane Oxer — Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy

The most shocking thing about Britain’s failing energy strategy is this:

The people in charge admit it isn’t working.They admit the grid cannot handle the power being built.They admit billions more must be spent simply to move electricity from A to B.They admit we are generating energy that cannot be used.And they admit all of this openly in their own flagship publication, Beyond 2030.Here is the truth — in their words.

🔥 1. “The current electricity grid is reaching its capacity and is unable to transport much more electricity.

”This is the foundational failure.We are adding vast amounts of wind, solar and offshore generation , but the grid cannot move it.As NESO continues: “energy is being wasted as the grid cannot transport it,we sometimes have to ask wind farms to switch off” So we pay wind farms NOT to generate, while paying gas stations TO generate elsewhere.This is madness disguised as policy.

🔥 2. “Investment in renewable energy generation has exceeded investment in transmission.Resulting in bottlenecks.”This is the polite technical way of saying: We built generation without building the grid needed to use it And the result?>“ energy is being wasted” we have to ask wind farms to switch off…”Billions spent.Millions of panels and turbines installed.And we cannot use the power.

🔥 3. “It is unlikely [storage] can be built out in sufficient quantities to manage long-term fluctuations.”This should be the headline of every national newspaper.

The entire Net Zero rollout depends on the fantasy that batteries and hydrogen will “fill the gaps.”NESO contradicts this myth directly: Storage cannot scale to manage long-term variability.Even after hundreds of billions in investment, we cannot rely on wind and solar to meet winter demand or supply firm, continuous power.

🔥 4. The true cost: “We are recommending an additional £58 billion of direct investment” That is on top of the £60 billion required before 2030: “ over £60 billion of investment, by 2030.”

So:

■ £60 billion → 2030

■ £58 billion → 2035

■ £118 billion → and the lights still flicker

Even after that, NESO admits more will be required.This is not investment.This is runaway infrastructure debt created to compensate for an incoherent system design.

🔥 5. A brutal confession: “Offshore cables only carry around a third of the power and can be up to eight times as expensive.”Net Zero’s obsession with offshore wind comes with staggering hidden costs.

NESO spells it out plainly: “subsea cables only carry around a third of the power offshore solutions can be up to 8 times as expensive” So instead of strong, cheap overhead AC lines, we are replacing the backbone of the country with:

weaker DC links,huge converter stations,and triple-priced infrastructure.This does not create energy security.It creates permanent dependency.

🔥 6. When the grid fails, NESO proposes moving industry , not fixing the system

On page 8, NESO recommends a surreal workaround: “locating up to 5 GW of flexible demand behind bottlenecks, could save consumers £5 billion” Translation: Rather than building a grid that functions, we should relocate industry to wind farms.This is the point at which planning stops being engineering and becomes ideology.

🔥 7. The entire renewable rollout is producing electricity we cannot use

NESO admits:“we sometimes have to ask wind farms to switch off to prevent the grid becoming overloaded , wasting cheap, sustainable home-grown wind power.”This one sentence says it all.The UK builds generation.The generation produces power.The grid cannot carry it.So the generation is paid to stop.That is why the public is paying higher bills.That is why standing charges have increased.That is why the transition has failed.

🔥 Conclusion: NESO proves the system is broken and cannot be fixed.By doing more of the same

In the UK’s most important energy planning document, the engineers responsible for the national grid admit:The system cannot carry the power being built.

Storage will not work at scale.

More generation = more waste,

more constraints, more cost.

Tens of billions more will be required just to connect intermittent power.

Electricity will still need backup gas and nuclear.

Communities will face a tsunami of new pylons, cables, trenches and substations And yet the political class insists we press ahead.

My instinct was right:

” They spend billions producing what cannot produce” And we pay for every failure twice ,once through our bills, and again through our taxes.The evidence is overwhelming.Their own words make the case.