The Real Energy Scandal The Media Won’t Tell You About

Many British people will be completely unaware of the fact that the UK’s national electricity grid was privatised by the Conservatives back in 1990.

Nor are they aware of the scandalous fact that, just like the water industry, the privatised industry has pocketed huge profits, while failing to fulfil its core mission – to build a national grid fit for purpose.

More importantly, they will have no idea how much this is adding to their energy bills.

Last week I was able to highlight this scandal when asked to do so during a combative interview on Talk TV with Ian Collins, about an article in the Telegraph wrongly blaming wind-energy for the high cost of UK electricity, along with the energy analyst Andy Meyer from the Tufton Street-based think-tank, the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) who produced the research the article was based on.

To the casual viewer, I was on a British TV station, discussing an article in a British newspaper, about a report by a British think-tank about the cost impacts of Britain’s wind industry on Britain’s national grid.

The reality was somewhat different, however.

In truth I was being interviewed on a US-Australian billionaire owned TALK TV station. whose owner, Rupert Murdoch, has been accused of using his global media empire to oppose climate action.

The news report itself was in The Telegraph, which is set to be soon jointly owned by US billionaire hedge funds and the Abu-Dhabi petro-dictatorship. It too is also notorious for endlessly attacking every aspect of climate and nature protection.

The IEA “think tank” under discussion has also previously been exposed as having received donations from multi-billion-dollar global oil corporations, while constantly producing “reports” attacking climate action.

Meanwhile, the National Grid itself is a privatised corporation partly-owned also by the Abu Dhabi petro-dictatorship and US billionaire owned hedge funds.

Thus while it may have looked like I was doing a simple interview, I was in reality wading through layer upon layer of a billionaire owned industrial-media complex whose own interests align with sabotaging Britain’s transition to the clean energy economy.

However, despite this, I was still able to highlight the above-mentioned national grid scandal.

In 2025 the annual Underlying Operating Profit for the National Grid plc was £5.36 billion. This was paid for by consumers energy bills, costing each household £187.

It could therefore add up to a staggering £53.6 billion over a decade. Yet despite pocketing these huge profits, it has failed in its core mission: building and maintaining a fully functioning grid.

In 2023 the BBC estimated that there was about £200 billion in clean energy projects awaiting connection to the national grid, with the longest waiting times in Europe to be connected.

Some projects were listed as taking up to 15 years to get connected, as the grid did not have the capacity for them.

And in addition to lack of capacity for new projects, the national grid also cannot cope with current levels of cheap green energy output when it is abundant on especially windy days.

These failures by the national grid add another two layers of costs onto bills.

As new renewables have for a number of years now, been far cheaper than fossil fuels, it means that the grid had to pay out billions of pounds more for expensive gas electricity, when it could have been taking advantage of the cheaper green electricity projects waiting for connection.

Secondly, consumers are having to pay for constraint payments to wind-energy providers to turn their turbines off on especially good windy days, as the national grid had failed to install the necessary grid capacity and energy storage to take advantage of those positive days of abundant cheap wind and solar energy production.

The estimated cost for upgrading the grid to maximise cheap green energy benefits, is about £50 billion or 10 years of current operating profits.

These blocked projects would provide huge numbers of well-paid jobs, reduce our imports of expensive gas and help reduce future bills for households.

Whilst Ed Miliband has taken some actions to try and speed up the process, the available funding after the huge profits remain being siphoned off, will still not build the grid capacity necessary fast enough.

In the interview I was also able to highlight the second huge electricity scandal, which is that the UK electricity price is the most expensive in the world, due to electricity prices being set 99% of the time by the marginal cost of the most expensive electricity other than nuclear, which is fossil gas electricity.

This is happening despite fossil fuels making up only 30% of the electricity supply over the last year.

This enables yet another rip off of consumers by the privatised utilities. 

Yet billionaire-owned media outlets instead endlessly blame these extra costs borne by consumers on clean green wind and solar.

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A Media Revolution

So what should be done to stop this industrial-media complex from further ripping off Britain and ensuring that our national grid enables cheaper bills and a green grid as fast as possible?

Firstly the failed privatisation of the National Grid should be terminated and a not-for-profit agency owned by consumers or employees should take it over.

Secondly, the £5 billion in saved annual profits should instead be invested in ramping up the national grid’s capacity to connect cheap renewables and increase storage to the level needed to remove requirement for expensive marginal gas back-up.

Thirdly, the UK’s opaquely-funded ‘think tanks’ should be required by law to reveal all of their donations in real time.

And finally the offshore and onshore billionaire ownership of our media should be banned.

In order to do this we need a British Fourth Estate Sovereignty Restoration Act or as I call it a Media Ownership Revolution.

It’s only then that we can see the sort of changes that will help finally stop British people from being endlessly ripped off by the very same interests still trying to block the solutions.