ENERGY bills are to go up 10 per cent.

The energy watchdog Ofgem has announced the new price cap means a typical household annual energy bill would be around £1,717.

This is around 10 per cent higher or an extra £149 for an average household.

Of course, that is not the case if you are a pensioner.

Having lost their winter fuel allowance for all but the neediest of pensioners, their effective increase this year is around £350.

Worse still, if you are over 80 it works out at an astonishing hike of £450 annually. £450! For the eldest members of our communities.

Energy secretary Ed Miliband has blamed the “chaos of the former government” for the rise, neglecting to remind everyone that the average price cap has fallen from over £4,000 back in the energy crisis when Russia invaded Ukraine.

That was when the government stepped in to help households with £400 extra payments to everyone and up to £1,600 for the neediest of households.

Labour’s energy policy is challenging, to say the least.

Determined to reach carbon neutral by 2030, a lot of it depends on onshore wind and solar farms with a massive upgrade to the national grid.

Judging by the placards I see across the country saying “no to industrial solar farms” and “no pylons on my countryside”, there may be some push back on this.

In any event, given that wind and solar are non-dispatchable and cannot be treated as base-load (neither can be switched on and off depending on demand), these will not solve our net zero challenges.

Meanwhile, bad news in Scunthorpe.

Because of Mr Miliband’s energy policy, British Steel has apparently decided to close its blast furnaces there.

Mr Miliband wants to put an end to importing coal — essential to the workings of a blast furnace and making steel — so 2,500 people will lose their jobs.

British Steel has been working on new technology to make coal a thing of the past but that won’t be ready for another decade.

I wonder where Mr Miliband plans to buy the steel for the extra grid capacity needed to reach net zero now that we have no steel industry.

Net zero is vital for our planet.

I am 100 per cent behind this ambition but not at any cost whatsoever to our economy.

There is a way forward that achieves this but it takes pragmatism and careful planning — not thoughtless idealism.