The UK's Electricity Crisis is Not Caused by "System Failure"

Oxford energy lecturer Dr Adi Imsirovic's failed attempt to exonerate Net Zero

The Carbon Economist recently published an article innocuously entitled ‘Outlook 2026: UK electricity – Today and tomorrow‘. The Carbon Economist is an offshoot of the Petroleum Economist which has had a long and illustrious publishing history, providing oil and energy market analysis since 1934. It’s the subtitle that is striking:

Net Zero is not the problem for the UK’s power system. The real issue is with an outdated market design in desperate need of modernisation.

The author, Adi Imsirovic, currently is a guest lecturer at the Energy Systems MSc course at the Department of Engineering, Oxford University and is not some Just Stop Oil activist or an over-enthusiastic candidate for the Green Party. Imsirovic, who has 35 years of experience in oil trading, has held a few senior trading positions, including global head of oil at Gazprom Marketing and Trading and regional manager of Texaco Oil Trading for Asia. He was a Fulbright Scholar, having studied at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. Adi has a PhD in economics and a Master’s degree in energy economics. He is also author of well-received books on international oil markets.

The ‘woke’ Oxford view

Dr Imsirovic’s thesis that “Net Zero is not the problem” deserves scrutiny not only because of his credentials and his publisher’s track record. The thesis, radical as it is, needs to be judged in the context of the tumultuous year since President Trump began his second term. In the past year, the Trump administration has exited the Paris Agreement and last week withdrew from the UNFCCC and IPCC among over 60 other UN-related and other organisations that may be working “contrary to the interests of the United States”. Crucially, the US has begun to stop funding all efforts including those by the plethora of environmental NGOs to achieve Net Zero. Last year’s UN annual climate jamboree, COP30 held in Belém, Brazil, ended in disarray without even the usual aspirational closing statement to end use of fossil fuels and hasten the so-called energy transition.

Yet, here is an opinion telling us that Net Zero is not the problem. Dr Imsirovic’s ‘Outlook 2026’ sets out to perform an act of intellectual rescue. Faced with mounting public anger over Britain having among-the-highest electricity prices in the developed world, the article seeks to exonerate Net Zero, renewable subsidies and green levies, and instead indict “poor market and system design” as the true culprit.