Britain’s Energy Future — A Practical Path to Power

By Daniel Dabin, Party Leader, GB Freedom Party

I didn’t set out to write a political piece. I set out to understand why my energy bills keep going up while politicians keep promising they’ll come down. Three months of research later, the Kent Local News investigations team and I have produced what you’ve been reading in Parts 1, 2, and 3.

The short version: Britain pays too much for energy. Going fully green makes it worse and hands China a monopoly. Going fully fossil ignores reality and stores up environmental problems. Neither extreme works. Both are being pushed by people with vested interests. And nobody in mainstream politics is offering a credible alternative.

So here’s one.

The Crisis Coming That Nobody’s Talking About

Before I lay out a plan, you need to understand the scale of what’s heading our way. Artificial intelligence is about to transform energy demand in ways that current policy doesn’t even acknowledge, let alone prepare for.

A single large AI data centre already needs 300 to 500 megawatts running continuously. That’s a small city’s worth of electricity, twenty-four hours a day, every day. By 2040, the biggest facilities will want over a gigawatt each. You cannot run that on wind that stops blowing at random intervals or solar panels that switch off when the sun goes down. You need dense, reliable, always-on power. The kind only nuclear and fossil fuels can actually deliver.

Every major tech company already knows this. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta — they’re all investing in nuclear for their data centres. The private sector has answered the question that our politicians refuse to ask. The Fourth Industrial Revolution runs on baseload power. Period.

Five Things Britain Must Do

I’m not interested in what’s politically fashionable. I’m interested in what works. Here are five concrete steps that would secure Britain’s energy future, cut costs for consumers, and rebuild industrial capacity. None of them require picking a side in the green-versus-fossil shouting match.

1. Make Nuclear Our Backbone

Not another Hinkley Point C — one enormous project decades late and billions over budget. A fleet of Small Modular Reactors built in factories and shipped to sites across the country. Rolls-Royce, a British company, is developing exactly this technology right now. We should be their first customer, their biggest customer, and we should be building at pace.

The target: 20 GW of new nuclear by 2040. That means finishing Sizewell C, greenlighting two more large sites, and rolling out 15 to 20 SMR installations. That gives us the always-on baseload that AI data centres, revived industry, and 67 million people actually need.

Why this works: Nuclear fuel comes from Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, Namibia — friendly or neutral countries with diversified supply. We still have processing capability at Springfields in Lancashire. No Chinese dependency whatsoever.

2. Keep Our Own Gas Flowing

Britain needs to stop pretending North Sea oil and gas don’t exist. Resume licensing. Extend field life. Approve shale gas exploration where the geology is suitable, with proper environmental safeguards that satisfy local communities. Keep gas-fired power stations running as flexible backup — because a nuclear-and-wind grid still needs something to fill the gaps.

And for God’s sake, rebuild our gas storage. Six per cent of annual demand is not strategic reserves. It’s an empty cupboard with a post-it note saying “hope for the best.” Germany stores 27 per cent. We should aim for at least 15.

Why this works: Domestic gas cuts import bills, supports North Sea jobs, generates tax revenue, and provides the flexible backup every grid needs. And fossil fuel markets are competitive — dozens of countries sell the stuff. Nobody gets a stranglehold.

3. Use What We’ve Built, But Stop Digging the Hole Deeper

We’ve already spent billions on wind and solar. That money’s gone and the infrastructure is there. Use it. Maintain it. Run it to the end of its design life. But stop building more until we have supply chains that don’t run through Beijing.

The rule: No more than 40 per cent of any critical component — panels, turbines, magnets, batteries — should come from a single country. Once British or allied-nation supply chains meet that threshold, start building again. Until then, replace retiring wind and solar capacity with nuclear or gas.

In the meantime, invest in building those alternative supply chains domestically. The Americans have shown it can be done — their Inflation Reduction Act is pouring money into domestic clean energy manufacturing and it’s working. We should copy the approach, not the ideology.

4. Make Britain the Place to Build AI Data Centres

Whoever provides cheap, reliable power for AI infrastructure captures the industries, the jobs, and the tax revenues of the next industrial revolution. Right now, Britain is losing this race badly.

Here’s what we should do. Designate AI Energy Zones near nuclear sites with fast-track planning and reduced business rates. Offer data centre operators 15-year fixed-price power deals if they build in Britain. Pair every new SMR with a data centre campus. Get the energy ministry, the planning ministry, and the digital infrastructure people in the same room and make them work together.

Microsoft alone plans to spend over 80 billion dollars on AI data centres by 2026. That money is going somewhere. It should come here — but only if we can guarantee the baseload power that renewables simply cannot provide.

5. Start Making Things Again

We shipped our factories to China. It’s time to start building new ones. Not the same ones — better ones. Targeted at the technologies that will matter for the next fifty years:

• Nuclear fuel: Expand Springfields. Invest in advanced fuel manufacturing. Keep the expertise in Lancashire, not Lanzhou
• SMR assembly: Rolls-Royce factories in the North of England. Thousands of skilled jobs in places that desperately need them
• Batteries: Back the Faraday Institution. Build gigafactories with non-Chinese supply chains. We’re an island surrounded by potential offshore wind — we should be making the batteries to store it, not importing them
• Rare earths: Fund allied-nation projects in Australia, Canada, Greenland. Build domestic processing capability so we’re not sending raw materials to China and buying finished products back at ten times the price
• Grid technology: Transformers, cables, smart grid systems — made in Britain, for Britain

This isn’t protectionism. It’s what every serious country does. China did it. America is doing it. The only nations not doing it are the ones being left behind.

The Energy Mix That Actually Works

This mix does four things at once. Energy independence — no single-country dependency above 20 per cent for any component. Lower costs — nuclear baseload at scale brings system costs down for everyone. Reliability — 24/7 power for AI, industry, and homes. And yes, lower emissions too — nuclear is zero-carbon in operation, and cutting gas from 38 to 20 per cent delivers a meaningful reduction without the fantasy of eliminating it overnight.

Why This Matters Right Now

Britain is at a fork in the road and most people don’t even know it. The decisions made in the next five years will determine whether this country enters the AI age as a competitive, independent economy — or as a consumer of Chinese technology paying premium prices for the privilege.

The green agenda, pushed hardest by the EU and UK, has been sold as environmental responsibility. This investigation has shown it to be, in practice, a strategic gift to Beijing. It shifts our energy dependency from diversified fossil markets to a single manufacturing monopoly. It raises our costs. It kills our competitiveness. And it leaves us unable to power the data centres, the factories, and the infrastructure that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will demand.

The answer isn’t to abandon environmental goals. It’s to pursue energy independence through the one technology that delivers zero-carbon baseload without Chinese dependency: nuclear. Backed up by domestic gas as insurance, maintained renewables where supply chains are secure, and an aggressive programme to start making things in Britain again.

This isn’t a left-wing position or a right-wing position. It’s a British position. The only question is whether our political leaders have the spine to pursue it — or whether they’ll keep sleepwalking us into dependency because the alternative requires actual courage.

Part 4 of 4 | The Green Energy Question: Who Really Benefits? | By Daniel Dabin, GB Freedom Party

Daniel Dabin, Party Leader for GB Freedom Party. Read the full investigation: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3