The CCC’s modelling is driving grid failure and countryside destruction

Grid sprawl is not a neutral outcome of decarbonisation.It is the physical manifestation of a policy choice made by the CCC to lock in high energy demand by assumption, rather than explore and test demand reduction and behavioural change.Understanding this link is essential when assessing whether large-scale grid infrastructure is truly necessary — or simply the consequence of a narrow modelling framework.

The current crisis in Britain’s electricity grid, the rapid spread of industrial-scale solar developments, and the loss of productive countryside are not accidental side-effects of decarbonisation. They are the direct and foreseeable consequences of modelling choices made by the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

From its own internal reviews, the CCC has made clear that it deliberately assumes high future energy demand by fixing public behaviour broadly in its current form. Rather than exploring realistic reductions in demand or changes in how energy is used, the CCC has chosen to design pathways in which emissions fall without relying on behavioural change. This is not because alternatives were unavailable, but because the CCC regarded behavioural modelling as complex, uncertain, and politically awkward.

That decision matters. High assumed demand automatically forces the system toward maximum electrification, regardless of cost, land use, or grid feasibility. Once demand is inflated by assumption, the policy response becomes mechanical: more generation, more reinforcement, more substations, more pylons, and more land sacrificed to energy infrastructure.

This is the root cause of solar sprawl. Large-scale solar is not being pursued because it is the most efficient or least damaging option, but because it can be deployed quickly to feed a demand profile that was never properly interrogated. When demand is treated as fixed and rising, countryside becomes the substitute for modelling restraint. Land is used because assumptions were not challenged.

The same logic is now destabilising the grid itself. The CCC’s scenarios presume a pace and scale of electrification that the transmission and distribution networks were never designed to absorb. Rather than questioning those assumptions, the response has been to attempt to rebuild the grid around them, at enormous cost, with escalating delays, bottlenecks, and systemic risk. Grid overload is therefore not a technical accident; it is the predictable outcome of demand being locked in by policy design.

Crucially, the CCC has acknowledged that alternative futures exist. It has accepted that behaviour, technology use, demographics, and consumption patterns are changing. Yet it has chosen not to test demand-reduction pathways properly, and not to place them at the centre of its advice. Where uncertainty exists, the CCC has defaulted to enforcement through infrastructure, assuming regulation and compulsion will align society with its scenarios.

If the modelling were more realistic—if it genuinely explored demand reduction, efficiency, decentralisation, and behavioural adaptation rather than treating them as marginal or risky—the outcomes would be fundamentally different. Energy policy would focus on using less, not just building more. Grid reinforcement would be targeted, not sprawling. Solar would prioritise rooftops and industrial land, not fields. The economy would face lower capital burdens, and the countryside would not be treated as expendable.

In short, Britain’s grid problems and the destruction of rural landscapes are not the price of decarbonisation. They are the price of a narrow modelling framework that elevates assumed demand above realism, and infrastructure enforcement above solutions.

Recognising this is the first step toward an energy strategy that protects both the economy and the countryside—rather than sacrificing both to assumptions that were never properly tested.