Tories call Miliband’s latest offshore wind push ‘a vanity project’
Ed Miliband has reaffirmed the UK’s ambitious 2030 clean power goal with the biggest ever expansion of offshore wind farms that could add as much as £1.8bn a year onto households’ energy bills.
The government unveiled an auction of offshore energy sites with a total capacity of 8.4 gigawatts, far outstripping analyst estimates and enough to power roughly 12m homes.
Miliband, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, hailed the new wind farms as a “monumental step towards clean power by 2030” that will cost significantly less than building new gas plants.
The auction brings the UK a step closer to hitting its goal of generating 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. But in order to push through the vast acceleration, ministers agreed to pay developers considerably more at this auction than last year’s, which itself was higher than 2024’s sale.
The government has made Britain’s push into green energy one of its flagship policies, with its 2030 target among the most ambitious in the world. It says the investment will bring bills down in the long run by extricating the UK’s energy demands from “volatile” international oil and gas markets.
“With these results, Britain is taking back control of our energy sovereignty,” Miliband added. “This is a historic win for those who want Britain to stand on our own two feet, controlling our own energy rather than depending on markets controlled by petrostates and dictators.”
Miliband push jars with oil price hitting five-year low
However, the push comes at a time when years of oversupply on international markets have pushed oil and gas prices to multi-year lows. Despite a succession of potentially market-moving shocks – including Donald Trump’s eye-catching capture of Venezuela’s Nicola Maduro and continued uncertainty in the Middle East – crude is the lowest it has been in nearly five years in nominal terms.
Meanwhile, UK energy bills remain stubbornly high, because the cost of its rapid transition is ultimately borne by households via a levy system that automatically adds the subsidies onto customer bills.
‘Expensive vanity project’
Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, said Miliband’s decision to issue contracts which guarantee a price to developers for 20 years, showed he cared “more about his own clean power vanity project” than customers’ bills.
“He is cementing our uncompetitive electricity prices for even longer at a time when the world is becoming more unstable and we need cheap, reliable energy to compete,” she wrote on X.
“Labour promised to cut your bills by £300. This was how Ed Miliband said he was going to do it.”
The auction – which is the largest in UK history – represents the penultimate realistic chance the government has of ramping up renewable energy supply if it is to hit its 2030 target. Next year’s auction, which may come online before the deadline, will need to sell a further 7 more gigawatts of wind farm capacity.
Enrique Cornejo, energy policy director at Offshore Energies UK said: “While today’s news is a positive step, the UK will still need continued investment in producing homegrown gas and maintaining our gas generation infrastructure, which remains essential for providing the dispatchable power needed to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
“Long‑term success for UK energy policy will rely on a balanced approach that builds on our existing industrial strengths.”
Maurice Cousins, campaign director at Net Zero Watch, said: “Today is yet another hammer blow to the British economy. Ministers and Big Wind are claiming today’s results are ‘cost-neutral’ – but at £95/MWh (2026 prices), this is not a win. It is a confession that the government’s energy plan cannot deliver cheaper power. Moreover, once you factor in the so-called Clean Industry Bonus, prices are closer to £105/MWh.
“Today’s strike price is basically a long-term price tag the country signs up to. It is like renewing your mortgage at an eye-watering fixed rate for 20-years, then boasting you have not made your monthly payments any higher. And by the time network charges, balancing costs and other green levies are added, British businesses and families will still be left paying far more than our international competitors.”