UK Energy Secretary Announces Planning Reforms and Price Decoupling to Boost Renewables

LONDON — Energy Secretary Ed Miliband announced measures on April 20, 2026, to streamline outdated and bureaucratic planning rules, allowing essential grid upgrades to proceed more swiftly, GB News reported. The plans also include breaking the link between electricity and gas prices to shield households and businesses from gas price spikes.

Miliband outlined speeding up the rollout of renewables and electrifying heating and transport to shift homes and businesses off fossil fuels.

Some 640,000 hectares of the public estate, including land linked to the railway and the Ministry of Defence, could be used for green energy schemes such as solar panels and wind turbines, according to GB News. Plans to massively expand renewables across the public estate, using brownfield land, industrial sites and railway land to host solar panels and wind turbines, could unlock up to 10 gigawatts of capacity, powering the equivalent of five million homes.

Measures include expanding renewables on publicly owned land, such as solar panels alongside railway lines. The initiatives also aim to make it easier for people to install green technology, including electric vehicle chargers for those without driveways, through permitted development rights for cross-pavement facilities and easier requests for renters and leaseholders.

” He warned that ignoring two fossil fuel crises in less than five years would be completely irresponsible, GB News reported. Consumers face high prices at the petrol pumps and looming energy bill rises in the next price cap period from July 2026, resulting from disruption to global energy markets caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

This latest energy crisis comes three years after the spike prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2023.

““As we face the second fossil fuel shock in less than five years, the lesson for our country is clear: The era of fossil fuel security is over, and the era of clean energy security must come of age. For Britain and so many other countries, clean energy is now the only route to financial security, energy security and national security. While some have said we have gone too far and too fast, I profoundly disagree. In response to recent events, our action must now be faster, deeper and more wide-ranging.”

Gas sets the wholesale price of power around 60 per cent of the time in Britain, down from around 90 per cent at the beginning of the decade, despite supplying a smaller share of power, GB News reported. This occurs under the marginal pricing system, where the most expensive source sets the price for all generators not on other contracts.

The government is proposing a voluntary move by legacy clean power generators, which supply around a third of Britain’s power, onto fixed-price contracts. The Treasury is expected to provide tax incentives to encourage these generators to switch, with hopes of delivering benefits on consumers’ bills over the next 12 months.

Miliband delivered the speech at a national growth debate event organized by the Good Growth Foundation. He addressed calls from critics, including the Tories and Reform UK, to increase North Sea oil and gas supplies and scrap net-zero measures like renewables and heat pump subsidies.

Miliband stated: “To ignore one fossil fuel crisis and carry on with business as usual, as some wanted to do, was wrong. And it would be even more irresponsible because unlike the twin fossil fuel shocks of the 1970s, there is now a compelling alternative in the form of clean energy.

” Holly Brazier Tope, director of politics at the Green Alliance think tank, said: “The Government’s renewed focus on clean energy is a necessary and welcome response to the hard lessons of the latest fossil fuel crisis. ” The plans include deregulation to facilitate switching to electric vehicles and heat pumps, supporting surging demand boosted by the Iran war, GB News reported.