This week, Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho endorsed and wrote the foreword for Firm Foundations, a new paper on energy policy developed by the Onward think tank. On the surface, it’s a bold proposal that leads with some striking numbers: the paper sets out a vision for an “alternative policy pathway” that will save the country £320 billion between 2030 and 2050 in reduced electricity costs.
However, on reviewing the paper, it quickly becomes clear that Firm Foundations is a relatively meek exercise in harm reduction.
To understand this, we should zoom out to the overall trend in electricity prices over time. Between 2003 and 2025, the average net selling value of electricity from Britain’s grid rose by 233% in real terms: a kilowatt-hour of electricity rose from 7.7p in 2003 to 25.6p in 2025.
If we look to history, tripling the cost of a universal consumer and industrial input is normally the sort of thing that would delegitimise any regime. But rather than set out a plan to reverse this trend, Firm Foundations only targets a gentle reduction in prices from their current levels over the course of the next quarter-century. Taking the 2025 average net selling value of electricity as our baseline, it looks only to bring real prices down to 17.7p per kWh by 2050. By contrast, current Government policy should stabilise real prices at around 22.4p per kWh by 2050.
