Sam Hall is Director of the Conservative Environmental Network and a former policy advisor to Michael Gove at Defra.

On occasion, Reform has managed to pull off a reasonable impression of a libertarian, free-market party. But their new socialist energy policies give Ed Miliband a run for his money. Their plan to hike taxes on energy firms, punish farmers with death taxes, ban technologies they don’t like, and tie up infrastructure in red tape would cause household bills to skyrocket and make the UK a hostile place for private investment.

With the policy now downgraded to a ‘direction of travel’, and with Richard Tice resorting to sending angry tweets calling critics of his announcement names (including CEN), it is clear this was a badly misjudged intervention. It shows that, when you scratch the surface, Reform’s policy agenda is a tangled web of contradictions. They are pro-Brexit, but want to reinstate Common Agricultural Policy subsidies for farmers. They are anti-renewables, but pro-tidal energy. And they are pro-free market but want to bring utilities into public ownership.

The Conservatives now have a perfect opportunity to reclaim the true conservative mantle, lay bare the lack of coherence in Reform’s policy platform, and champion a credible plan, rooted in consistent free market principles, to bring down bills and expand homegrown clean energy.

With nuclear and gas power stations retiring, North Sea reserves running low, and an increasingly volatile global trading system, the last thing we should be doing is deterring investment in homegrown energy supplies. Retroactive and punitive windfall taxes would make the UK inhospitable to renewables investors. But even worse, the failure to honour the spirit of the legal contracts underpinning renewable energy investment would send financing costs for all sorts of new infrastructure spiralling.

As conservatives, we should champion the unleashing of all forms of homegrown clean energy that can make us more secure and self-reliant. Renewables and battery storage, alongside nuclear and, albeit in shrinking amounts, gas, should all play a role. We should allow markets and competition to determine the lowest-cost mix of technologies.

There are echoes of Miliband’s statism in Reform’s plan. Reform wants Whitehall to decide which technologies can compete, while Labour will limit competition and centrally plan our energy system to meet their 2030 clean power target. Reform wants to ban certain private investments, while Labour will crowd it out with GB Energy. The conservative way is to let the private sector invest, innovate, and bring forward projects, while giving communities a meaningful say through the local planning system.

If Reform’s goal is to bring down energy bills, the bans on batteries and pylons are particularly hard to fathom. To reduce the costs of integrating intermittent renewables onto the grid and avoid burning expensive gas as backup, appropriately regulated battery storage is essential. Similarly, while there is a case for putting grid infrastructure underground in our most cherished landscapes, banning all new pylons and ripping out existing ones would be extremely expensive, with Britain Remade estimating a price tag of £385 per household.

As well as being anti-energy, their plan is anti-farmer too. Incredibly, the only people in the UK who would pay any inheritance tax under Reform’s incoherent energy policy are farmers who choose to diversify into renewable energy. Smaller-scale solar projects on less productive fields can support food production by diversifying a farmer’s income and making farm businesses more resilient.

There doesn’t seem to be much political logic to the announcement either. Outright opposition to net zero is a niche view among the electorate – just 16 per cent of voters hold it. Renewable energy is the most popular source of energy bar none – including among Reform voters. Reform’s strongholds along the East coast of England, including Rupert Lowe’s seat of Great Yarmouth, overlap strongly with hotspots for renewable energy jobs.

One person who likely would support Reform’s plan is Vladimir Putin, as it would keep the UK exposed to European gas markets which he controls because of Russia’s vast reserves. Once again he would be able to marshall Russian energy dominance to cripple our economy and advance his expansionist geopolitical ends.

Pointing out the flaws in Reform’s new policies does not mean accepting high energy bills, however. We have the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world. High electricity bills are bad news for families struggling with the cost of living and for the competitiveness of our economy, but they are also bad for electrification and decarbonisation. Bills must come down.

But the problem is not net zero. It is partly our reliance on expensive gas, the price of which this week hit a two year high, pushing everyone’s heating and electricity bills up. Gas remains the dominant price setter in the UK wholesale electricity market, which is the largest component of electricity bills. The other challenge is excessive government intervention in energy markets. To bring down costs, we need to roll out more clean energy and deliver a host of pro-market reforms, from strengthening price signals in the wholesale market, to streamlining planning and environmental rules, to removing levies from electricity bills.

Reform’s policy means more state intervention and higher bills. Labour’s policy means more state intervention and higher bills. With diverging views on climate change, they are two sides of the same coin. There is now a huge political space for the Conservative Party to occupy – in favour of decarbonisation, but with a realistic, market-led plan to lower bills – which is where the majority is. They should seize it.

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