ANDREW NEIL: By championing Net Zero above all else, Miliband and Co aren't just guilty of economic folly, they risk blood on their hands

Electricity black- outs are not part of the British summer experience.

Maybe a risk in hotter climes, where the demands of air conditioning, fans and refrigeration are insatiable. Not in temperate old Blighty.

Except that the heatwave of 2026 indicated we have no grounds for complacency –our electricity supply system struggled to cope with the increased demand for power in the warm weather.

Whistleblowers from inside the system claimed we were on the brink of blackouts. This was not confirmed by an independent investigation into their claims by the law firm Eversheds Sutherland published on Monday. But the National Grid which supplies us with electricity was clearly in trouble.

In June, the National Energy System Operator (Neso), the state-owned company which runs the grid, issued something called an ‘electricity margin notice’, a plea for help from generators to send more power because the gap between demand and supply had become worryingly narrow.

Such notices are extremely rare: only one in the last two winters, never before in a summer month. Now they’re commonplace: six this year alone, starting with that first one in June.

This month Neso had to go even further, requesting ‘emergency assistance’ from our European neighbours to send power.

There have been no blackouts – so far. But winter is coming. If Neso is already struggling to keep the lights on during a balmy autumn, what happens come the first prolonged winter cold snap?

Especially if temperatures plummet across Europe, leaving our neighbours with precious little spare electricity to send us. No wonder there is growing concern that blackouts – or, at the very least, rationing – are a real prospect in the months ahead.

Why has it come to this? Two words: Ed Miliband. The ex-Energy secretary is now perambulating the globe posing as our Foreign Secretary, with no concern about his carbon footprint and no idea what a proper foreign policy would look like.

But he has left behind a destructive, potentially deadly, legacy in his zealous pursuit of Net Zero.

The Miliband mission is now being led by Miatta Fahnbulleh, his successor at Energy and devoted protege, who is pursuing the ‘action plan’ he left behind, Clean Power 2030, with renewed vigour. It means that Britain will be lumbered with soaring energy costs, an increasingly unreliable electricity grid and the growing prospect of blackouts or rationing for years to come.

Our national grid was built to carry electricity from big generators using fossil fuels and nuclear.

The power they produced was steady and stable, easily turned up or down as demand dictated. They were close to or even in the main population centres (think Battersea Power Station).

Miliband’s relentless dash for Net Zero has upended all of that. We are increasingly dependent on renewables for our electricity, above all wind power. But renewables are anything but steady or stable. They fluctuate with the strength of the wind and the brightness of the sun.

Moreover, onshore wind farms are usually sited in isolated areas, while electricity generated offshore lands on remote coastlines. The implications for the grid are enormous.

For a start, we have to extend its network of power lines, at huge expense, to pick up energy in locations far away from the existing grid.

Then we have to upgrade the grid to cope with the fact renewable power is intermittent – we have to switch in and out of it. And we have to keep back-up gas-powered stations ticking over, ready to fire up when renewables flag.

The cost is astronomical –and we’re all paying for it in our fuel bills and taxes. In 2011 we spent £3billion a year on grid build-outs and upgrades. By the end of the decade we’ll be paying £25billion a year – and rising.

There’s more. The Miliband-Fahnbulleh cult insists that the more renewables generate our electricity, the cheaper it will be. The truth is the opposite. Operators of renewable generators, especially offshore wind farms, demand massive subsidies to invest. Politicians have rushed to oblige.

In 2011 we spent £500million a year subsidising renewables. A decade later that had soared to £10billion. By 2030 it is forecast to be almost £15billion.

These subsidies usually come in the form of guaranteed above-market prices linked for their lifetime to the inflation rate. In other words high prices for renewables are locked in.

Add the renewable subsidies to the costs of grid upgrades and by 2030-31 we will be paying an eye-watering £40billion a year for the privilege of implementing Miliband’s green obsessions.

He claims we’ll no longer be dependent on expensive gas. But our electricity prices have been rising even when gas prices were stable – to meet the cost of renewables.

Energy bosses recently testified in Parliament that electricity bills would still rise even if the wholesale price of gas fell to zero. That’s the scale of the Miliband penalty.

Sometimes, the absurdities are mind-boggling. Last Wednesday, Neso had to pay Scottish wind farms to switch off their turbines because the wind was blowing so hard the grid’s power lines couldn’t cope with the surge. It also had to pay gas-fired stations on stand-by in England to ramp up electricity to meet the shortfall.

Combined cost? £49million. For one day. Which you will pay through your energy bills. The day before, Neso had spent almost £40million doing the same. We spent £500million on such ‘balancing costs’ last month alone. By 2028 the annual balancing cost will hit £8billion.

At which point, you might think, this a sensible time to halt the Net Zero crusade, take stock of where we are and tread water on further renewables for the next five to ten years. After all, the National Grid is already struggling to cope with renewables. Let’s not put any further strain on it.

But the Net Zero zealots will have none of it. The action plan Miliband left behind doubles down. It calls for the tripling of the UK’s solar and offshore wind capacity by 2030, the doubling of onshore wind and electricity generated by nuclear power to be increased by a third.

None of this, of course, will happen. But tens of billions will be squandered trying to make it so. Billions that could be spent on rebuilding our military, modernising other infrastructure and improving the resilience of our vital supply chains in a dangerous world. Instead we continue to plough good money after bad into Miliband’s Net Zero fantasy land.

Meanwhile, the staff at Neso struggle to keep the show on the road. It’s taking its toll on them. The report of the independent inquiry released on Monday discovered ‘high levels of operational stress’ thanks to the Net Zero imperatives – and a workforce which thinks its bosses don’t listen to them.

The stress is understandable. Blackouts cost lives. Parts of Spain and Portugal suffered a blackout linked to renewables in April, 2025. I was in Lisbon when it happened and can testify first-hand that it was a scary time. It only lasted 16 hours but several deaths were directly attributable to it.

Later studies noted an unusual blip in ‘excess deaths’ in the days surrounding the blackout. The death toll, direct and indirect, has now been put at closer to 160.

So, those who champion Net Zero to the exclusion of all else are not just guilty of a great economic folly.

They also risk having blood on their hands.