The University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment entered Britain’s North Sea policy debate last week with its latest ‘rapid analysis’ entitled ‘Impact of Oil and Gas Exploitation in the North Sea on UK Household Energy Bills‘. Yahoo Finance UK was the first UK media outlet to publish a full article on the study, headlined ‘”Sheer fantasy” to claim draining North Sea oil would cut bills – experts’. A day later, GB News published its piece: ‘North Sea oil would barely cut UK energy bills claim Oxford experts.’
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Given that the Smith School is explicitly committed to “the green transition to achieve Net Zero emissions and sustainable development”, the study’s conclusions are no surprise. According to the analysis, even a maximalist ‘drill baby drill’ strategy in the North Sea would save households a paltry £16 to £82 per year — and then only under the heroic assumption that every penny of tax revenue is redistributed directly as bill rebates. Absent such redistribution, consumers would see “no discernible benefit” because oil and gas prices are set on international markets.
In contrast, the study asserts that a fully renewable-powered UK could slash household bills by £105 to £441 annually, depending on the pace of electrification. Anupama Sen, Head of Policy Engagement at the Smith School, was unequivocal: “The idea that draining the North Sea would make the UK more energy secure or significantly save on household bills is sheer fantasy.” The report concludes that “regardless of the remaining lifetime of North Sea oil and gas, a ‘drill baby drill’ approach would actually cost households more money versus continuing on our path to clean energy”. These findings sit comfortably with the school’s self-declared mission.
The lay reader – with a common-sense grasp of high school economics and without the privilege of an advanced Oxbridge degree in PPE – may be forgiven if he asks some elementary questions: won’t an increase in oil and gas production in the North Sea add to the nation’s GDP, improve Great Britain’s balance of payments as a net oil and gas importer, increase government tax revenues and provide oil and gas jobs and ancillary benefits in cities like Aberdeen which serve the offshore oil and gas industry? How do these compare in their impacts to the general standard of living, quite apart from the specific impact on household power bills which the Oxford analysis is focused on? And, curiously, how does the fact that oil and gas prices are set in global or regional markets mean that British citizens will derive “no discernible benefit” by an increase in the country’s energy exports?
The model world versus the real world
Scratch beneath the polished veneer of modelling and scenario-building employed in the ‘rapid analysis’ and one finds something rather more troubling: a stylised exercise in assumption-driven advocacy, where conclusions are preordained and empirical realities are inconveniently side-lined. The study’s research results should surprise no one acquainted with Oxford’s role in the climate culture wars. The methodological template is familiar: scenario-based modelling resting on selective assumptions that systematically favour renewables while downplaying or externalising their full costs. Empirical observation of actual energy system performance gives way to stylised projections whose conclusions are baked in from the start.
The study draws on January 2026 wholesale price levels — a period of relative calm before subsequent market disruptions — and projects savings from full electrification, including heat pumps replacing gas boilers. Yet the claimed superiority of renewables rests on several assumptions that collapse under rigorous economic scrutiny.
First is the treatment of remaining North Sea reserves. The analysis treats recoverable volumes as effectively known and limited in duration, disregarding further exploration and development. This ignores the fundamental uncertainty surrounding ultimate recoverable resources in mature basins. Without renewed exploration and appraisal — activities rendered uneconomic by the UK’s combination of elevated corporation tax rates and repeated windfall levies — any estimate of reserves remains inherently speculative. The fiscal regime itself suppresses the very investment required to delineate the resource base, creating a self-reinforcing loop in which depressed activity levels are then cited to justify further restraint. This circular reasoning is a hallmark of ideologically driven modelling.
Second, the core claim that renewables have become cheaper than natural gas-fired generation misrepresents electricity market fundamentals and cost accounting. The report implicitly relies on Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) or analogous plant-level metrics to assert price-setting advantages via Contracts for Difference (CfDs). Yet LCOE systematically excludes the system-wide burdens imposed by variable renewable energy (VRE). Real-world deployment of wind and solar requires overbuilding by factors of three to five times nominal capacity to compensate for low-capacity factors (typically 15-40 % for wind and 10-25 % for solar, versus 80-90% for conventional thermal plants). Reliable supply demands dispatchable backup — often gas turbines operating inefficiently at part load — together with grid reinforcement, transmission upgrades and ancillary services for frequency control and inertia. These integration costs are not marginal; they escalate non-linearly with penetration.
Full Cost of Electricity (FCOE) metrics, which internalise balancing, adequacy and network expenses, routinely show renewables imposing higher total system burdens than dispatchable alternatives once reliability is assured. The Smith School study’s assertion that renewables would decouple bills from international gas prices overlooks the merit-order dynamics in wholesale markets: during periods of low VRE output, the marginal (typically gas) plant continues to set the clearing price paid across the entire generation fleet.
This is not unique to the UK but is common to all modern grids. CfD subsidies provide revenue certainty to developers. The resulting risk and financial levies are shifted onto consumer bills. Claims of inherent cheapness dissolve when these full integration costs — backup supply, grid upgrades and overbuild — are properly accounted for. Detailed analysis by Kathryn Porter and David Turver among others gives the lie to the argument that it is the marginal cost of gas-fuelled power generation that explains UK electricity prices which are the highest in the developed world.
The sleight of hand on renewables
Third, the intermittency challenge receives inadequate attention. Weather-dependent generation is not merely variable but often not correlated with demand, particularly during prolonged low-wind, low-sun events. The modelling appears to assume seamless accommodation through unspecified flexibility measures. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed a parallel narrative on March 16th 2026, arguing that “the real problem is access for RE to an upgraded grid” and that “inadequate grids” prevent “cost-effective renewable capacity” from reaching consumers. She urged acceleration of the Grids Package to speed permitting and flexibility.
Yet this framing inverts causality: it is the pursuit of high shares of dispersed, variable sources of energy that necessitates precisely these expensive upgrades in the first place. The Oxford study’s reliance on partial costing echoes broader deficiencies in activist literature, where system-level realities are subordinated to ideological priors.
Fourth, projected savings from mass heat pump deployment rest on optimistic engineering assumptions detached from UK housing realities. The report highlights that heat pumps produce around three units of heat per unit of electricity consumed, versus less than one for gas boilers, potentially saving households around £330 annually. Yet real-world coefficient of performance degrades sharply in colder conditions and in the poorly insulated building stock that characterises much of Britain’s housing. Upfront capital and retrofit costs remain prohibitive even with subsidies.
Critical literature, including statements from within the renewable sector itself, has repeatedly questioned the economic case for a subsidised rapid rollout at scale. Dale Vince, an eco-millionaire and founder of the green energy company Ecotricity, has publicly criticised heat pumps, labelling them as ineffective, expressing concerns that the Government’s push for heat pumps could result in cold homes and increased energy bills for consumers.
Fifth, recent auction outcomes undermine the narrative of ever-cheaper renewables. The AR7 CfD round for offshore wind delivered strike prices that, as analysed by David Turver, were about two and a half times higher than assumptions embedded in official Climate Change Committee projections. When these elevated support costs feed through to consumer bills via levies and network charges, the headline figures cease to represent genuine affordability.
Junk economics in tandem with junk science
Physicist Norman Rogers opined in an article at the American Thinker that the climate industrial complex is a political movement disguised as a scientific movement. Along with other leading physicists such as John Clauser, William Happer, Steven Koonin and Richard Lindzen, Rogers is of the view that:
The climate models are an exemplary representation of confirmation bias, the psychological tendency to suspend one’s critical facilities in favour of welcoming what one expects or desires. Climate scientists can manipulate numerous adjustable parameters in the models that can be changed to tune a model to give a ‘good’ result. Technically, a good result would be that the climate model output can match past climate history. But that good result competes with another kind of good result. That other good result is a prediction of a climate catastrophe. That sort of ‘good’ result has elevated the social and financial status of climate science into the stratosphere.
A visual illustration of junk climate science is represented by the tendency of the climate models to run ‘too hot’ compared to actual observed temperature data.
Note: Global surface air temperature (Tsfc) trends tracking 34 CMIP6 climate models through 2025. The following plot shows the Tsfc trends, 1979-2025, ranked from the warmest to the coolest. “Observations” is an average of 4 datasets: HadCRUT5, NOAAGlobalTemp Version 6 (now featuring AI, of course), ERA5 (a reanalysis dataset), and the Berkeley 1×1 deg. dataset, which produces a trend identical to HadCRUT5 (+0.205 C/decade).
Source: https://www.drroyspencer.com/2026/01/surface-air-temperature-trends-climate-models-vs-observations-1979-2025/
Economists, alas, are not immune to the pressures of ‘tuning’ models and incorporating assumptions that deliver the preferred conclusion: the ‘climate crisis’ is upon us but, hallelujah, we have renewables to mitigate emissions and avert the apocalypse. In junk economics, central economic concepts — for instance, international price formation for commodities, the role of merit order in modern grid planning, and the distinction between LCOE and full system costs of electricity— are either misunderstood or presented in ways that advance predetermined policy outcomes. The Smith School’s study exemplifies ‘junk economics’ in service of Net Zero ideology: modelling calibrated not to test hypotheses but to reinforce them. Karl Popper, who described the falsifiability criterion that founded modern science, is left spinning in his grave.
So, sack Ed Miliband
On Sunday, Chris O’Shea, the head of British Gas called on the Government to drop its ban on exploiting untapped oil and gas fields in the North Sea, saying the move would help ease spiralling energy costs in the wake of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. He said an increase in drilling would play a role in efforts to bolster energy resilience after the Iran war sent prices surging. Earlier in March, Greg Jackson, founder and CEO of Octopus Energy – UK’s largest renewable-focused energy suppliers and retailer – publicly urged the UK government and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to exploit more North Sea oil and gas resources. He argued that the country should “use what’s available” from domestic reserves to stabilise prices, reduce reliance on volatile imports and avoid an energy shock.
Among others who have called out against Ed Miliband’s effective ban on new North Sea oil and gas development are Tara Singh (CEO, RenewableUK – the UK wind industry trade body); Jürgen Maier (Chairman of Great British Energy – Miliband’s flagship state-backed green energy company); and Kemi Badenoch (Leader of the Conservative Party).
Yet, as we have seen, Oxford University’s Smith School, committed to Net Zero advocacy, finds these widely shared views “sheer fantasy”. Britain’s households, already facing Europe’s highest power costs, deserve scholarly analysis grounded in observed system performance rather than Net Zero predilections.
It is clear that the Labour Government is not capable of implementing even a faintly rational energy policy – a posture it shares with its counterparts in the EU which are largely composed of legacy Left-socialist governments. It is also apparent that without the sacking of Ed Miliband – the virtue signalling energy-illiterate – nothing will change. Until green ideology is exorcised from the Westminster bubble and woke universities, the climate idiocracy will continue to shape policy — and ordinary British families will continue to pay the price.
This article was first published by the Daily Sceptic https://dailysceptic.org/2026/03/27/the-biased-oxford-university-report-that-claims-renewables-are-cheaper-than-gas/
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
