Britain unplugged: energy bills spark cross-channel gap

Following Ofgem’s price cap announcement, data shows UK households face significantly higher electricity bills than their European counterparts. 

British households pay around 40% more for electricity than those in France, according to the Adam Smith Institute’s (ASI) latest electricity tracker. The gap adds around £193 to a typical quarterly bill. 

Figures come after Ofgem announced in February that its energy price cap would fall to £1,641 a year from April 2026. 

Although the reduction has been presented as a sign energy costs are easing, the think tank says electricity prices in the UK remain far higher than those paid by households across the Channel. 

Researchers at the ASI link the difference to Britain’s relatively low nuclear capacity compared with France. Since 1980, the UK has proposed 21 nuclear reactors, but only one – Sizewell B – has been completed. 

Plans from the 2010 ‘nuclear renaissance’ alone could have delivered around 18 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, the report says. Britain’s current nuclear capacity stands at about 6GW.

According to the institute, the UK’s planning and regulatory framework has made nuclear projects slower and more expensive to deliver than in other countries. 

One example cited is the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. The report outlines around 7,000 design changes were required during construction under the UK’s regulatory system.

In countries such as France and Finland, similar reactor designs have been built at significantly lower cost, partly because projects rely on more standardised construction processes. 

‘British households are being sacrificed on the altar of a broken energy policy,’ Mitchell Palmer economist at the ASI, said. ‘Paying 40% more than the French is a Nuclear Tax resulting from decades of regulatory gold-plating.

‘While Whitehall mandated 7,000 design changes for a single plant, our neighbours built a standardised fleet and reaped the rewards of energy sanity.’

He added: ‘We have effectively regulated ourselves into de-industrialisation. Ministers need to scrap the ‘ALARP’ principle and make it easier to build nuclear. Otherwise, we are guaranteeing that heating a home remains a luxury that ordinary working Brits can no longer afford.’

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the lowest-income fifth of households spend around twice as much of their income on energy as the highest-income fifth. 

Wider analysis from the ASI estimates changes to the UK’s energy system could boost GDP by around 4.25%. 

The research can be read in full here. 

Image: Lukáš Lehotský/UnSplash 

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