Electricity Productivity Data Shows we are Falling Down the Energy Cliff
Electricity generation productivity has halved since electricity generation peaked in 2005
Introduction
Back in January the government released the results of the first part of the seventh Allocation Round (AR7) renewables auction and claimed they would unlock “7,000 good, skilled jobs in every corner of the country”. Earlier this month, they claimed the AR7a results would support “up to 10,000 jobs”.
On the face of it, more jobs sounds like a good thing. But creating more jobs by digging holes and filling them in again creates activity but destroys value. We are falling into the same trap with the electricity generation sector and in danger of falling down the energy cliff.
Electricity Sector Productivity GVA per Hour
We can shed some light on this using the productivity statistics for division level industries published by the ONS. SIC division 35 covers electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply so is not perfect for looking at just the electricity sector but is the closest we can get.
Figure 1 shows what has happened to hours worked, gross value added (GVA) and productivity measured as £GVA per hour since domestic UK electricity generation peaked in 2005.
GVA rose from just under £15bn in 2005 to £29.2bn in 2009 before fluctuating in a £20-31bn range until 2023 when there was a sharp jump to over £50bn in 2023 and 2024, probably reflecting the sharp increase in energy prices. Total hours worked has risen from 170m hours in 2005 to a peak of 287m hours in 2018 and then fluctuated in a range of 245-275m hours. Productivity measured in GVA per hour worked has followed a similar path GVA, fluctuating in a range £87-£133 per hour up to 2023 before rising sharply to over £200 per hour in 2023 and 2024.
Some might argue that increasing GVA per hour in the electricity is a good thing. However, this measure is really tracking high energy prices, so we need to find a better measure.
Electricity Sector Productivity MWh per Hour
A better measure is to look at the amount of electricity generated per hour worked. Helpfully, Our World in Data produce data that shows UK electricity generated by source. Figure 2 compares total electricity generated to productivity measured in MWh per hour worked.
Here we see that total electricity generated has fallen 28.7% from 398TWh in 2005 to 284TWh in 2024. Productivity has more than halved from 2.34MWh/h in 2005 to just 1.13MWh/hr in 2025. Looked at in this light, we can see that the productivity of the sector is falling rapidly, quite the opposite of the ONS results.
Interestingly, this reduction in the productivity in the electricity sector coincides with the increase in electricity generation from intermittent renewables as shown in Figure 3 (note the left hand y-axis for the percentage of intermittent renewables generation is inverted).
As the percentage of electricity generation from wind and solar has risen from 0.7% in 2005 to 34.5% in 2024 (36.1% in 2025 but not shown because we do not yet have productivity data for that year) the productivity of the sector has fallen from 2.34MWh/hr to 1.13MWh/hr (R2 = 63.6%)
The increase in intermittent renewables means we are literally getting less output despite higher labour input. This is the opposite of progress.
Falling Down the Energy Cliff
We have discussed the Energy Cliff in earlier articles (see Figure 4).
The Net Energy Cliff was first described by Euan Mearns and describes what happens when we use technologies with low energy return on energy invested (EROEI) like wind and solar power. Net Energy is the surplus energy available to society after deducting the energy used in energy gathering activities. If we have EROEI = 1, then net energy is zero. We are using as much energy to gather energy as the useful energy produced. Figure 4 shows net energy as a percentage of total energy is plotted against EROEI. The blue area on the chart shows how the energy left for society varies with EROEI. When EROEI starts to get into single figures the energy available for society starts to plummet rapidly as we spend more time and energy gathering energy and we have much less net energy available and society starts to degrade.
Starting with the industrial revolution, society moved up the EROEI scale as we made the transition from wood to coal, then coal to oil and gas and then on to nuclear resulting in lots of surplus energy. This meant we could move from a largely agrarian society to one where we could invest in infrastructure such as better buildings, roads, bridges, railways, ships, cars, aeroplanes and even spacecraft. We could invest time and effort into scientific research that produced new inventions that used more of that energy such as steam engines, internal combustion engines, electric motors, computers, rockets and so on. Surplus energy also allows more time and effort to be devoted to education and high culture such as art, theatre and music.
We can clearly see that the move to low EROEI intermittent renewables is moving us back down the EROEI scale and we run the risk of falling down the net energy cliff. The productivity data discussed above shows this happening in real time.
Net Zero using intermittent renewables is the energy equivalent of digging holes and filling them in again. Net Zero is destroying value and causing society to regress. The sooner it is stopped the better.
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The 1977 establishment policy of deliberate deindustrialisation
David, please indulge this longish comment I prepared earlier. It is very relevant to the deindustrialisation being wrought by the delusional Net Zero agenda and exposes an even older policy of deliberate deindustrialisation imposed on the West through establishment chicanery 50 years ago.
The Promethean Action political economy website has made some astonishing revelations over recent weeks (never mentioned by the captured MSM) and this week has been no exception. Their latest relates to the recent Munich Security Conference where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a conciliatory but uncompromising speech to the assembled European/globalist leadership. The official transcript of his speech is here: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/02/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-at-the-munich-security-conference.
Few seem to have picked up on the full import of what Rubio said on deindustrialisation:
“Deindustrialization was not inevitable. It was a conscious policy choice, a decades-long economic undertaking that stripped our nations of their wealth, of their productive capacity, and of their independence. And the loss of our supply chain sovereignty was not a function of a prosperous and healthy system of global trade. It was foolish. It was a foolish but voluntary transformation of our economy that left us dependent on others for our needs and dangerously vulnerable to crisis.”
Rubio diplomatically declined to say who was the instigator of this “foolish” policy (or what was its ulterior motive) but it is obvious he was referring to “British imperial policy” as explained by Promethean Action in this eye-opening episode (16 minutes, well worth watching), which pinpoints the start of this nefarious deindustrialisation policy to 1977: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrRc1hYMfwo.
See also their follow-up “Fascism with a democratic face” episode, exposing inter alia the dirty deeds of Starmer’s Trilateral Commission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-YUb8BBYvM.
See also their latest episode exposing the “foreign interests” behind the (failed) attempt to disrupt Trump’s economic policy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_FTPDwFoTY.
It’s easy to relate that 1977 timeline to what actually happened here in the UK. In 1978-79, the UK suffered the dire “Winter of Discontent” which led to the Labour government being ousted by Margaret Thatcher. Rapid deindustrialisation then took place through the 1980s for a variety of reasons, e.g. in coal mining, steel production, shipbuilding, textiles and car manufacturing, suggesting that Thatcher was happy to comply with the deindustrialisation policy set from above.
The City of London “Big Bang” took place in 1986 which paved the way for Big Money to make hay. To use the USA idiom, we had “Wall Street versus Main Street” writ large. Banks could make more money through financial wheeling and dealing – “gambling in the City of London casino” and “gouging” the general public – than they could through the mundane endeavour of funding new factories. Skilled workers made redundant were left to find jobs as shelf stackers or whatever.
President Trump and his administration have now called time on this destructive, unpatriotic and insecure system and are reverting to the “American system” (national sovereignty rather than so-called “rules-based” globalisation), as originally promoted by Alexander Hamilton in 1790. By a strange coincidence (historians are baffled), every past USA president who successfully implemented this system ended up being assassinated (Hamilton 1804, Lincoln 1865, McKinley 1901) and Donald Trump dodged the same fate by a hair’s breadth in July 2024 at Butler, Pa.
The 1977 policy of deliberate deindustrialisation was unrelated to today’s global warming scare as it came not long after the 1970s ice age scare which fizzled out because it was nothing more than the transient cold phase of the regular AMO 60-year cycle (AMO cold and GSM “Maunder Minimum” due soon). Now however, the destructive 1977 policy is being amplified to economy-wrecking levels by the sky-high energy prices resulting from the irrational Net Zero policy being unilaterally pursued in Europe to supposedly tackle alleged man-made global warming (as if: pull the other one, it’s got bells on).
If only we on this side of the Atlantic had the good sense of the American people who overwhelmingly voted Trump back into office in 2024 against massive electoral fraud! Anticipating the full repeal of legal constraints on CO2 emissions, the new USA National Security Strategy published last November explicitly rejects pseudoscience-based climate change fantasising: “We reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries”: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf.
The NSS document continues:
“Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP – down from 25% in 1990 to 14% today – partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness.
But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.
Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”
So, it’s not just muppets like Miliband and the other Uniparty climate zealots incoherently pushing the ruinous Net Zero agenda that we realists are fighting against. It’s actually an extremely powerful, deeply entrenched, remorseless, implacable, post-imperialist, deep-state, Europe-wide (with exceptions), USA-infiltrated system of power-mongering and forever war-mongering. It brings to mind The Terminator (this time from the past) and the famous quote “And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead”.
This new insight is the most worrying of my long post-WW2 (almost) lifetime. I only hope President Trump succeeds in his revolution and lights the way for a similar revolution on this side of the pond.
It’s high time some big-name organisations openly challenged “the powers that be” on this “conspiracy theory” and the pseudoscience behind it because campaigners and bloggers like us seem to be getting nowhere in calling for a halt to the relentless wrecking of both our economy and the social fabric of our nation while the establishment continues to get away with murder.
How about the Institute of Economic Affairs under Lord Frost? A few weeks ago, he published David’s paper on “The Cost of Net Zero” and has now published a lengthy report by Kathryn Porter on the wilful sabotaging of our oil and gas industry. Her report serves as a comprehensive energy reference manual with the simple conclusion that “It is easy to say we should ‘just stop oil’ but this is just not realistic and is ultimately not a useful contribution to the debate about sustainability”: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/IEA_DP145_Just-Stop-Oil_V5-Digital-.pdf.
Unfortunately, Kathryn seems to rule out (understandably for a freelancer in these times of cancel-culture) the possibly that there might be a deeper, darker reason why Ed Miliband “just doesn’t listen”, as in this interview warning of power rationing and blackouts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h77C3iYX_bM&t=273s.
As David suggested last week, it’s about time we had some prosecutions for gross malfeasance and dereliction in office, or even just for blatantly lying about almost everything, almost all of the time.
Footnote
Promethean Action have produced a very informative document entitled “The British Empire Briefing” which explains the Trump administration’s fightback (“The Empire that never died”, 34 pages, indexed). I referenced it for the above list of assassinated USA presidents. It isn’t directly accessible on their website but can be downloaded as a PDF from within this webpage: https://www.prometheanaction.com/the-save-act-cleared-the-house-now-the-senate-fight-begins/.
Thank you, David.
It can also be described as moving from low entropy energy sources to high entropy ones. The exact opposite of what is required to sustain a modern economy.