Good news and bad news: Our Breaking the Link campaign is working – but we need to go further
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Britain’s energy market is broken. For years, we’ve been campaigning to “break the link” between the soaring cost of fossil gas and the price of the cheap, green electricity we generate right here in Britain.
Now, the message is finally hitting home in the corridors of Westminster.
There was a flurry of excitement in mid-April 2026 as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced that the government was looking at ways to break the link between electricity and fossil gas prices.
A few days later, the detail was released to a huge sigh of disappointment by everyone apart from the companies who benefit from high gas prices. In the words of our founder, Dale Vince: “It’s hard to imagine how the Government could do less to actually ‘break the link’ than this.”
Why breaking the link matters
We first raised the issue of high gas prices setting the price of cheap renewable energy back in 2022, at the height of the last energy crisis.
The big problem is that the system for setting the price of electricity in Britain is tied directly to the price of the most expensive source on the grid, which is almost always dirty fossil gas.
This means is that even green electricity, which is far cheaper to make, has to be sold at the price of electricity generated by fossil gas. It also means we have no control over the price – it’s all set by international markets that fluctuate wildly in times of crisis.
In practical terms, the ‘link’ added £70 billion to our energy bills in the last energy crisis. Even in a normal year, it adds £5 billion to our bills.
That’s why it’s so important to “break the link”.
The story so far – and why there’s still hope
In mid-April, Rachel Reeves announced that she was working with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to find practical ways to break the link between electricity and fossil gas prices.
Hopes were raised… and then dashed just a few days later as the detail of the proposal became clear.
Instead of actually “breaking the link”, the government intends to invite older green energy projects on to fixed-price contracts within a year. Some analysts believe this may help to stabilise prices during turbulent times but the rest of the energy market will continue to set prices based on the most expensive source on the grid, which is usually fossil gas.
In fact, the government’s own forecasts say that it will reduce the amount of time that gas sets the price of all other generation by just 10 per cent in around five years’ time, so the effect on energy prices will be minimal.
Dale Vince said in response to the announcement: “If this applied to product claims, it would be a breach of the Trade Descriptions Act. This is not breaking the link, and it’s misleading to claim it does. The government recognises the problem – that’s something – but they need to get real.”
There is still hope. The government is now aware that running an energy market based on dirty fossil gas prices is a disaster for the country. We will continue to push and campaign for them to genuinely “break the link”.
Read the full Breaking the Link report here
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