Why are energy bills so expensive in the UK?

Electricity bills in the UK are higher than in any comparable rich country. Some blame the net-zero zealotry of the government for that. What is really to blame for high energy bills?

The website of Britain's energy regulator Ofgem
(Image credit: JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Is UK energy really dearer? It is. Last week saw an “awful April” jump in the price cap on domestic energy bills. That’s bad enough. But the deeper fear is that the UK’s continuing high energy costs are crippling whole sectors of the economy – notably manufacturing – and posing a clear threat to future national prosperity.

In the US in 2023 (the last full year for which reliable figures are available), one kilowatt hour of industrial electricity cost about 6.5p. For Sweden, the figure was 8p. For France, 18p. Here, it was almost 26p.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.