Speaking to the Global Warming Policy Foundation in an interview about his new report for the Prosperity Institute, Good Money After Bad, David Turver challenged the widely repeated claim that renewable energy is cheap. His central argument is that comparisons based solely on the cost of generating a megawatt-hour from wind or solar ignore the substantial costs imposed on the wider electricity system. “Renewables are not cheap. In fact they are amongst the most expensive sources of electricity that we have.”

You can see the complete interview here.

Turver argues that official comparisons between gas and offshore wind can be misleading because they do not compare like with like. Gas-fired generation may be assigned a relatively high cost because calculations assume a low capacity factor and add substantial carbon charges. Offshore wind, by contrast, is commonly compared using its strike price or levelized cost without fully accounting for the additional infrastructure required to integrate intermittent generation into the electricity system.

25 Billion

Those additional costs include balancing, backup capacity and transmission. Turver says these costs are becoming increasingly important as Britain adds more intermittent wind generation. Grid-integration costs, according to the figures discussed in the interview, are expected to rise from approximately £8 billion in 2024–25 to more than £25 billion by 2030–31. Transmission alone is forecast to reach around £13.5 billion, while capacity-market costs could rise to approximately £4.4 billion. Renewable subsidies are also expected to increase, from around £12 billion to more than £15 billion over the same period.

The implication, Turver argues, is that the economics of Britain’s energy transition are changing. Subsidies have traditionally represented the most visible cost of renewable energy policy, but grid-integration costs are now becoming even larger. Much of this expenditure is embedded in network charges rather than appearing directly as a renewable subsidy, making it less visible to consumers.

This helps to explain why electricity bills can remain high even when wholesale energy prices fall. The wholesale component is only one part of the final bill, while network costs, subsidies and policy-driven charges continue to rise. Turver is particularly critical of government claims that renewable expansion will bring bills down.

He points to the government’s decision to shift some Renewable Obligation Certificate costs from electricity bills to general taxation as an example of what he sees as a cosmetic rather than structural response. Moving the charge from one account to another does not reduce the underlying cost. Turver would instead abolish the legacy Renewable Obligation mechanism altogether. He estimates that doing so could remove around £8.5 billion of cost from the electricity system and the tax system.

He also proposes a more radical approach to older Contracts for Difference, particularly those supporting offshore wind. According to Turver, some of the older projects may soon have received more in subsidies than their original construction costs. He believes this could create an opportunity for renegotiation, with generators offered reduced strike prices in exchange for continued participation in a reformed electricity system.

Such a proposal would inevitably raise questions about contracts, investor confidence and the rule of law. Turver acknowledges that concern but argues that the economic damage caused by high energy prices has itself become a threat to business confidence. Companies are already shutting down or moving production overseas, he says, because British energy costs are too high. In his view, demonstrating a credible commitment to cheaper electricity could ultimately strengthen rather than weaken investor confidence.

Removing carbon taxes

His preferred reform would go beyond renegotiating existing contracts. Turver argues for removing carbon taxes and renewable subsidies while requiring intermittent renewable generators to pay the full cost they impose on the system. “Let’s take off carbon taxes, let’s take off renewable subsidies and let’s make intermittent renewables pay for their own integration cost.”

That would mean wind and solar paying for their own backup, balancing and transmission requirements. Turver believes that exposing generators to the full system costs would provide a genuine market test. He predicts that relatively little new grid-connected intermittent wind and solar would be built under such conditions, although existing projects might continue operating if their cash operating costs remained below the market price.

The broader problem, in Turver’s view, is that Britain’s electricity market has become unnecessarily complicated. He argues that the market worked reasonably well before successive subsidies and regulatory interventions altered the incentives facing generators. Renewable generators were effectively allowed to compete on their wholesale costs while other costs were shifted elsewhere in the system.

The result, he says, is a “Gordian knot” of subsidies, capacity payments, balancing mechanisms and other interventions. Conventional gas generation has been particularly affected because subsidised intermittent generation reduces the number of hours in which gas plants can operate economically. Yet gas plants remain valuable precisely because they can provide dispatchable power when wind and solar output falls.

Gas

Turver therefore sees gas as an important part of Britain’s electricity system for the foreseeable future. He argues that the existing gas fleet is ageing and that new gas capacity may be required to ensure security of supply. Carbon taxes, he says, substantially increase the cost of gas-fired electricity, while the intermittency of renewables creates additional demand for flexible conventional generation.

He is equally sceptical about carbon capture and storage (CCS). In his interpretation, CCS is essentially an attempt to reconcile the government’s need for flexible gas generation with its Net Zero objectives. The technology would capture CO2 from gas-fired power stations and transport it for underground storage.

Turver considers the economics highly unattractive. He argues that capturing carbon reduces the efficiency of gas generators by roughly 20%, thereby increasing their costs, while requiring substantial government support. He estimates that the government could spend around £25 billion on CCS over 15–20 years. He also questions whether the technology has yet demonstrated sufficient technical and economic viability at scale. Direct air capture receives an even more sceptical assessment.

Another concern is the physical stability of the electricity grid. Turver discusses the investigation into an incident in which Britain’s grid frequency fell significantly below its normal operating range. The episode occurred on 23 June and, according to his account, frequency fell below 49.7 Hz and remained outside the normal range for an unusually long period. Grid operators ultimately had to reduce electricity exports to the Netherlands and France in order to protect Britain’s own system stability.

Inertia

Turver links this issue to declining grid inertia. Traditional thermal power stations contain large rotating machines whose physical inertia helps stabilise the grid following disturbances. As these generators are displaced by inverter-connected wind and solar, this stabilising effect diminishes.

He also raises concerns about missing grid-inertia data and about the independence of the investigation. A number of days in June reportedly lacked the normal quantity of published inertia data. Turver argues that investigators need to examine not merely whether procedures were followed but whether the increasingly renewable-heavy structure of the electricity system itself is creating new reliability risks.

The debate over climate policy itself also enters the conversation. Turver rejects the idea that opposing Net Zero necessarily means rejecting concern about climate change. He says he accepts that higher atmospheric CO2 is likely to increase temperatures, while stressing that other factors influence the climate as well. His preferred policy response is adaptation rather than attempting to eliminate Britain’s emissions through increasingly expensive domestic policies. “My contention for some time has been that actually net zero policies are having a more negative impact on us than climate change itself.”

Turver argues that Britain accounts for less than 1% of global territorial emissions, while emissions in major developing economies continue to rise. In his view, Britain would therefore have to bear the economic costs of Net Zero without being able to determine the global trajectory of emissions. Adaptation, by contrast, would provide benefits regardless of how other countries behave.

He does not, however, argue that the political right should simply ignore climate concerns. Turver says the recent debate within conservative circles about climate change has been useful because it has forced different positions into the open. Net Zero scepticism, he stresses, should not automatically be equated with climate-change scepticism. The more important question is what alternative policies can deliver reliable energy, economic growth and resilience at lower cost.

Nuclear

On nuclear power, Turver is considerably more positive. He regards nuclear as an obvious candidate for reliable, low-carbon baseload generation. The problem, in Britain, is not necessarily the technology itself but the cost and length of construction. Excessive regulation and high financing costs have made British nuclear projects much more expensive than projects in countries such as China and South Korea, where construction times can be considerably shorter.

His broader criticism is directed at the way energy policy is governed. Britain has accumulated a large number of regulators, advisory bodies and quasi-governmental organisations, each with particular objectives. Turver argues that there is insufficient institutional capacity to weigh those objectives against one another. Environmental protection, emissions reduction, energy affordability, industrial competitiveness and security of supply can conflict, yet there is no sufficiently powerful body responsible for making the necessary trade-offs.

In his view, the result has been a steadily more complicated regulatory system that raises costs while making accountability harder to establish.

Pessimistic

Turver’s assessment of the political outlook is correspondingly pessimistic, although he sees potential openings for change. He is highly critical of the government’s energy leadership and doubts that current policy will produce cheaper electricity. At the same time, he points to growing concern within the Labour movement about high energy prices and their consequences for industry and employment. He suggests that political pressure could eventually force a more pragmatic approach.

Ultimately, Turver’s prescription is straightforward: reduce government intervention, remove policy-induced distortions and allow the market to determine which technologies can provide electricity economically. That means eliminating carbon taxes and renewable subsidies, making generators bear the full costs they impose on the system, simplifying the electricity market and maintaining sufficient dispatchable capacity.

His conclusion is deliberately optimistic. If electricity became substantially cheaper, he argues, the benefits would extend beyond household bills to industrial investment, economic growth and business confidence. “Cut carbon taxes, get rid of renewable subsidies, and tackle the grid integration costs.”

For Turver, the central issue is therefore not whether Britain can build more renewable capacity. It is whether it can build an electricity system that is affordable, reliable and economically sustainable. His answer is that the present policy framework is failing that test—and that reversing course would require confronting costs and trade-offs that successive governments have so far preferred to conceal or postpone.