A new report shows that clean power can deliver up to 14 times current UK electricity output—at less than the cost of one fossil fuel crisis.
The paper, by the Foundation for Civilisation Renewal and the Earth4All initiative is published as the UK’s new energy price cap takes effect, with the next cap in July forecast to rise by approximately 9% as the Iran war drives wholesale gas prices to double their pre-conflict level.
The global fossil fuel system is in permanent structural decline, consuming an ever-larger share of its own energy output simply to sustain production—projected to reach approximately 25% by 2030 and approaching 50% by 2050. The era of cheap, abundant fossil fuel energy is over, regardless of when the Iran war ends.
The authors are calling on UK and European governments to adopt a new emergency doctrine of “electrified sovereignty”—accelerating the shift to domestically generated clean power at a scale and speed comparable to wartime industrial mobilisation.
The UK Government spent more than £100 billion supporting households through the 2022–2024 energy crisis. The paper finds that the capital required to build a clean energy system generating eight to 14 times current UK electricity output is less than the cost of that single crisis—and delivers a permanent productive asset rather than temporary fiscal relief.
The paper draws on the IEA Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme Task 16 Firm Power report, published in February 2026 with contributions from more than 25 expert modelling teams, which confirms that fully renewable firm power—guaranteed 24/7 electricity with no fossil fuel backup—is technically achievable and economically competitive.
The paper argues that fossil fuel scarcity is now a permanent condition of the global energy system—and one that will intensify regardless of geopolitical outcomes. The Energy Return on Investment of fossil fuels has roughly halved since the 1960s. The US shale boom that supplied 90% of global oil supply growth since 2015 is ending. Nearly 90% of annual upstream investment now goes merely to preventing existing fields from collapsing. Production is declining or plateauing across the UK, Mexico, Nigeria and Europe simultaneously.
Each successive crisis—2008, 2020, 2022, 2026—is larger and harder to absorb because the system’s underlying capacity to respond is shrinking. The paper concludes that no conventional supply-side response—North Sea expansion, LNG diversification, new nuclear—can deliver within the emergency window.
The authors call for an emergency three-phase response: immediate fast-tracking of shovel-ready renewable and storage projects and formal re-regulation of power markets to decouple electricity prices from gas within three years; structural transition by 2030 including redirecting more than £2.5 trillion of UK pension capital toward domestic clean energy; and by the mid-2030s, completion of a system generating surplus clean electricity that powers new industries in hydrogen, e-fuels, steelmaking and data processing.
The paper frames this as a new war-time national security doctrine: “electrified sovereignty” achieved through domestic clean power generation rather than imported fossil fuels.
Nafeez Ahmed, Executive Director of the Foundation for Civilisation Renewal and member of the Club of Rome:
“In 2008 I identified the exact conditions under which a US administration would strike Iran—declining domestic energy production creating a perceived need to control Persian Gulf reserves. That scenario has now materialised. But the deeper finding of this paper is that even if the war ends tomorrow, the fossil fuel system’s structural decline is irreversible. The energy return on fossil fuels worldwide has roughly halved since the 1960s. Clean energy now returns more net energy per unit invested than oil. The crossover has already happened. The policy question is whether governments build on that reality or continue subsidising a system that is consuming itself.”
Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Executive Chair of Earth4All and Honorary President, Club of Rome:
“This is the third major energy shock in four years. Each time we respond with emergency subsidies and promises to drill more, rather than systemic and transformative solutions. Each time the underlying vulnerability remains untouched. The fossil fuel system is structurally brittle—geologically constrained, geopolitically exposed and thermodynamically declining. We are calling for a wartime-scale mobilisation toward electrified sovereignty because that is what the severity of this crisis demands.”
Gerard Reid, member of World Economic Forum’s Future Energy Council:
“This crisis should be a wake up call for Europe’s policymakers. The answer is not more dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets but accelerating electrification, building modern grids and deploying clean power at scale so that Europe produces far more of its own energy.”
Divyesh Desai, former Director of New Fuels, Asia at Shell:
“Energy security is about ensuring a safety buffer of extra energy and money kept in reserve to prevent both blackouts and massive price spikes, insuring us from volatile downside, when the system is under stress. Fossil fuel dependence locks economies into structurally rising costs and repeated price shocks. In contrast, electrified systems built on renewables and storage convert energy into a predictable cost base. This is a fundamentally superior energy system largely decoupled from global volatility. The real issue for our governments is speed of execution which can be learnt from the developing world governments”
