Households’ energy costs will reach £1,823 a year after price cap rises by £85 in April

Britain’s push towards net zero will temporarily push energy bills higher, Ed Miliband’s officials have admitted in an apparent contradiction of the Energy Secretary’s own claims.

The cost of rolling out wind farms, solar farms and other renewable power schemes will inflate prices in the “short to medium term”, making British businesses less competitive internationally, an obscure page on the Government’s website states. The Telegraph has the story.

It has emerged as Mr Miliband faces scrutiny over how he will meet Labour’s pledge to bring down bills for millions of consumers, amid predictions that households face a surge in bills this spring.

Cornwall Insight, an energy consultancy, on Tuesday forecast that the energy price cap was on course to rise by £85 in April, taking a typical household’s bill to the equivalent of £1,823 per year.

A separate forecast by government officials has put the coming increase at closer to £100, The Guardian reported.

On Tuesday, Mr Miliband blamed the rise on surging gas prices, which have doubled in Europe over the past year.

However, industry sources pointed out that an information page about business energy costs, prepared by his own officials at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, blames spending on renewable energy projects as well.

The web page, which has been online for a number of years, says bills have been pushed higher by costs related to subsidies for wind and solar farms, including the renewables obligation, feed-in tariffs and Contracts for Difference. These are funded through levies on bills paid by households and businesses.

The webpage, which remains live, says: “A number of policies have been developed to increase the share of electricity generated from renewable sources.

“The costs of funding these schemes are recovered through levies on suppliers and ultimately passed on to domestic and industrial consumers’ bills.

“The Government recognises that, in the short to medium term, the resulting increase in retail electricity prices risks reducing the competitiveness of the UK’s most electricity-intensive businesses where they are operating in internationally competitive markets.”

The electricity price paid by British industrial companies is the highest in the developed world, according to official data, with domestic power prices also among the highest.

Mr Miliband has repeatedly claimed that the Government’s goal of reaching a clean power system by 2030 will ultimately bring bills down by making the electricity grid less reliant on gas-fired power stations.

Instead, the system will be dominated by wind farms, solar farms and energy storage systems such as batteries, with many guaranteed fixed prices through contracts for difference.

Gas plants will still be kept as a backup, but only to supply power up to 5pc of the time when wind and solar output is low.

Last month, Mr Miliband told MPs on the energy select committee that it was “the roller coaster of fossil fuel markets” that had triggered the cost of living crisis for millions of households in 2022.

He added: “There is an answer to this, in our view, which is clean home-grown power that we control. That is the right thing for energy security, for bringing down bills for good, for creating good jobs and for tackling the climate crisis.”

But Sir Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at Oxford University and a former energy adviser to the Government, warned this month that “the sprint to net zero is increasing the relative cost of UK electricity”.

Read the full story here.