The Subsidy Clock

What UK energy subsidies cost

Methodology & sources

Every figure on the counter traces to an official source. This page sets out, scheme by scheme, where the data comes from, how the numbers are computed, how often they update, and what the known limitations are.

Contracts for Difference (CfD)

Source: LCCC, Actual CfD Generation and Avoided GHG Emissions · cadence: daily · shown as two entries: CfD – renewables, and CfD – nuclear & biomass

Formula in words: the Low Carbon Contracts Company publishes the daily payment made under each individual CfD contract. We sum these per-contract daily payments. When the market reference price exceeds a contract’s strike price the daily payment is negative — the generator pays back — and these negative payments are netted against positive ones. Both figures are computed: the gross total (positive payments only) and the net total (after paybacks). The counter and all headline figures use the net total, which is the lower of the two.

Technology and per-unit (recipient) splits shown on the dashboard cover the CfD schemes only, because the per-generator detail published by LCCC is at this level; the other schemes are held as totals in version 1.

Constraint payments (paid to switch off)

Source: Elexon BMRS, balancing settlement bid stacks · cadence: daily · history: REF published annual totals

Formula in words: for each settlement period, the accepted balancing-mechanism bids of wind units are summed: the cost is the bid volume multiplied by the bid price, and the curtailed volume is the energy the unit was instructed not to generate.

All accepted bids from wind BM units are counted, regardless of soFlag, consistent with REF’s published curtailment methodology. The soFlag governs imbalance-price tagging, not whether the unit is paid.

History before the bottom-up settlement window comes from the Renewable Energy Foundation’s published annual constraint totals. Bilateral trades agreed outside the balancing mechanism are excluded, so the constraint figures are a lower bound on what is actually paid for curtailment.

Renewables Obligation (RO)

Formula in words: annual official scheme values from Ofgem’s Renewables Obligation annual reports — the number of ROCs presented multiplied by the worth of a ROC, or the headline scheme value where Ofgem states it directly. These are official annual totals pending per-generator reconstruction.

Feed-in Tariffs (FIT)

Formula in words: annual official scheme values from Ofgem’s Feed-in Tariffs annual reports. These are official annual totals pending per-generator reconstruction.

Perspectives: renewables only, and all low-carbon

The dashboard's headline counts renewable generators only — the most conservative reading. The same schemes also pay nuclear and biomass generators under the CfD: counting those, the all-low-carbon total is against the renewables-only — a difference of , almost all of it CfD payments to nuclear and biomass. Indirect costs (network, balancing, carbon pricing, capacity) are tracked separately and always marked estimated; they are never folded into the headline.

Indirect subsidies (estimated)

Beyond the direct schemes above, renewable generation imposes costs that reach bill-payers and taxpayers through network charges, balancing costs, carbon pricing and the capacity levy. The dashboard shows these as “the indirect bill”, always marked estimated: each component’s amount is measured from an official source (amount confidence: high for all five), but the share attributable to renewables is a stated judgement. The attribution rule for each component is quoted verbatim below.

Capacity Market

Availability payments procure firm backup capacity for a system with a growing share of intermittent generation. The full levy is counted; attribution confidence is medium because some capacity would be procured in any system. This component was previously shown in the dashboard’s “All levy” total, which has been removed.

Climate Change Levy and Carbon Price Support

Conservative direction: only electricity’s share of main-rate CCL declarations is counted — gas and solid-fuel CCL is excluded — plus Carbon Price Support, which falls wholly on electricity generation. The figure errs low.

Emissions trading (UK and EU ETS)

Conservative direction: only auctioned allowance revenue is counted, scaled by the power sector’s share of verified covered emissions. Power generation receives no free allocation, so it buys a larger share of auctioned allowances than its emissions share — the figure is a lower bound.

Transmission charges (TNUoS)

Conservative direction: only the growth in transmission revenue above the inflation-indexed pre-renewables baseline is attributed, and the uplift is floored at zero in any year where revenue falls below the baseline.

Balancing costs (BSUoS)

Conservative direction: as for TNUoS, only the uplift above the inflation-indexed baseline is attributed, floored at zero.

The double-counting guard

Constraint payments to wind farms are counted in the direct layer (“paid to switch off”). Those same payments are recovered from bill-payers through BSUoS, so the BSUoS series is netted of direct constraint payments before attribution — the same pound is never counted twice across the direct and indirect layers.

Indirect costs not counted

Cross-check against REF

Note: our component figures are calendar-year 2023 values, while REF's are fiscal-year 2023/24; small divergences partly reflect that basis difference.

ComponentOursREF’sDivergenceNote

Share of the electricity bill

The "Subsidy as a share of the electricity bill" chart expresses the renewable-energy subsidy as a fraction of total UK electricity consumer expenditure. The denominator is DUKES 1.3, Sales of electricity and gas by sector (annual, calendar-year).

The numerator is this site's own subsidy total, which is a deliberately conservative lower bound, so the share is a lower bound too — lower than REF's reported 35–40%. The 2022–23 energy-price spike raised total electricity expenditure and so lowers the subsidy share in those years even though the subsidy itself kept rising. The chart shows complete years only (2002–2024).

Real terms (2024 £)

Reconciliation against official totals

The bottom-up CfD series (per-contract daily payments) is checked against the LCCC’s official In-period Tracking daily totals, summed over settlement dates present in both series. The most recent days are excluded to allow for the settlement lag.

MonthDays comparedBottom-upOfficialDivergence%

What is not included

The totals deliberately exclude several support mechanisms, so they are conservative:

Run-rate semantics

The per-second rates that drive the live counter are derived from each scheme’s recent run-rate: the trailing 365 days for daily schemes (CfD and constraints), the last 12 months for the Capacity Market, and the latest completed scheme year for RO and FIT. Values shown between official data updates are therefore estimates, and are replaced by official figures as they are published.

Nominal pounds, and 2024 prices

The dashboard counts nominal pounds: money summed as it was actually paid, the debt-clock convention. The objection that 2002 pounds are not 2026 pounds is fair, so the same annual series is shown here deflated to 2024 prices (HMT GDP deflator). The real-terms total is larger than the nominal one — early-years subsidy was worth more in today's money — which is why nominal is the conservative choice for the headline.

YearNominal2024 prices

Data freshness

Each scheme on the dashboard carries a badge showing its update cadence and the latest date its data covers. Every source publishes in arrears — LCCC releases daily CfD data weekly, NESO publishes daily balancing costs with a few days’ lag, and Capacity Market monthly data follows the settlement calendar — so a publication lag is normal and is not flagged. A scheme is marked stale only when its latest data is older than that scheme’s normal publication lag: 21 days for CfD, 3 days for constraints, 7 days for BSUoS, 75 days after the end of the latest data month for the Capacity Market, and 2 years for RO and FIT annual reports.

Restatements

Source datasets are revised by their publishers. When a source revises history, the change is logged as a restatement; figures are never silently overwritten.

Figures computed . Questions about the data should start with the source links above.