Lib Dems would halve energy bills by 2035
I speak to so many people who are struggling to make ends meet when I’m out across the country. Families, couples, pensioners, businesses – they’re all cutting back and making sacrifices to deal with rising costs, but it just doesn’t seem to be paying off.
Despite all their efforts, sky-high energy bills remain a massive problem for them. In the UK, a typical family pays £50 more a month than they did five years ago. That’s just to keep the lights on, or to heat their homes in winter. Running a house or a business has never been cheap, but the inherent expense of it does not explain the exponential rise in bills over the last few years.
You might think that electricity bills shouldn’t be so expensive when half of the UK’s electricity comes from renewables, and when generating electricity from renewables is significantly cheaper than gas. But there’s a catch: the wholesale electricity price is set by the price of gas, and gas is the most expensive fuel in the mix. In 2021, the cost of electricity was set by the price of gas 97 per cent of the time. No wonder people aren’t seeing the benefits in their bills.
Liberal Democrats know that we need to break the link between the cost of electricity and the price of gas; it’s central to our plan to cut energy bills in half by 2035. Alongside Ed Davey and our 2026 Scottish parliamentary candidate for Edinburgh Northern, Sanne Dijkstra-Downie, I will be speaking to energy apprentices later today about how Scotland can influence our renewables revolution. Because investing more in renewables isn’t just important for reducing our carbon footprint, it’s vital if we are to break the link between gas and electricity and bring down bills.
Cutting energy bills comes down to the right policies. That’s why it’s so dangerous for Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch to peddle myths that energy bills are the fault of renewable power. They say that we’re investing too much in solar panels and wind turbines and that our bills will magically come down if we rely more on oil and gas. It’s nothing short of utter nonsense. Let’s not forget, the price of oil and gas rose sharply when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and we’ve all felt the impact on our bills since. People deserve better.
Scottish Liberal Democrats would roll out a national insulation scheme to make homes warmer and cheaper to heat, as well as tackling sky-high rates of fuel poverty under the SNP. We would move older renewable projects off expensive Renewable Obligation Certificates and onto cheaper Contracts for Difference – which were introduced by the Liberal Democrats in government. Three major energy sector bodies have already backed these proposals.
More broadly, we would embrace new technologies to help people use energy more flexibly, at times when it’s cheaper, helping them to pay less as a result. We want to strengthen our connections with the EU to trade energy more efficiently, cutting costs and reducing reliance on gas. These policies could halve bills for a typical household: from £1720 today to £850. And it’s just one example of the positive change that Scottish Liberal Democrats are offering: a change with fairness at its heart.
Alex Cole-Hamilton is Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and MSP for Edinburgh Western