Labour needs to get real on the costs of clean energy and ignore its artificial deadline

"I know my job is to get bills down by £300," said Ed Miliband, the energy security secretary, at the weekend, acknowledging that the government is on the hook for its pre-election promise to reduce energy bills by 2030.

- Nils Pratley

The problem is that the bill-cutting task seems to be falling by default to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor. It is beginning to look as if the only sure way to make energy bills fall by £300 by 2030 is to shuffle a chunk of the expense into general taxation. Miliband hinted the 5% VAT charge on bills could be removed in next month's budget, which would cost £2.5bn. Reeves is unlikely to be delighted by this prospect but she will have heard the high-powered crew of retail energy bosses set out the arithmetic on bills in stark terms last week.

Many of us have been pointing out for ages that clean energy is not a free lunch (certainly not by 2030), but the experts' numbers were revealing in their precision. "If we continue on the path we are on, in all likelihood electricity prices are going to be 20% higher even if wholesale prices halve," said Rachel Fletcher of Octopus Energy. "Non-commodity costs are adding about £300 [a year] of pressure," she added, referring to everything from the costs of maintaining and upgrading the gas and electricity transmission networks to funding the rollout of renewable and nuclear generating capacity.

Chris Norbury, the chief executive of E.ON UK, and Simone Rossi, the head of EDF UK's energy business, said much the same.