Net zero is no longer mere policy. It has mutated into a religious cult, and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is its High Priest.

All of us are being forced to bow down at its altar, obedient to the cosmic law of decarbonisation. And as a report by the National Energy System Operator [NESO] confirmed yesterday, a huge price will be extracted to enforce our obedience.

That price is likely to include swingeing financial penalties for ordinary households that dare to consume electricity at peak times. Heating your home, running a dishwasher or washing machine, watching TV or simply boiling a kettle will become far more expensive.

Spiralling bills, combined with punitive policies such as the scrapping of the winter fuel allowance for pensioners, will drive many consumers into debt and fuel poverty. Inevitably, this will cost lives, as people – especially the elderly – succumb to winter illnesses from cold and damp.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Miliband, the Labour party leader who was defeated at a General Election in 2015, is a fanatic. He is determined to impose net zero on Britain, despite the fact that its costs will be so colossal that the country has scant hope of meeting them.

If he is allowed to pursue his monomania – and there is no one in parliament with the will or the power to prevent him – electricity could become a luxury for the poorest in the UK, including many pensioners, who would be forced, by cruel design, to ration their consumption.

NESO’s report suggests that the investment cost of decarbonising our National Grid by 2030 is £40 billion a year. That works out at £1,300 per household. Given that last week Chancellor Rachel Reeves raised taxes more dramatically than in any other Budget in living memory in order to plug what she called a £22billion ‘black hole’, it is simply impossible that Britain can afford to pay for Miliband’s delusions.

And the harder you look at the figures, the worse they get. As the director of Net Zero Watch, scrutinising data on government responses to climate change science, I have been repeatedly horrified at what will be expected of the British public.

NESO, a nationalised public corporation answerable to the Government, warns that to achieve a carbon-neutral power grid within five or six years, the UK will have to make ‘a Herculean effort’.

This pompous euphemism disguises the reality: ordinary British families will bear the brunt of the cost. That expense, according to our figures, is in reality going to be several times higher, because NESO is only looking at the costs of decarbonising the grid, not the rest of the economy.

Those costs massively outweigh the benefits, to Britain and even globally. There can be no justification for pursuing this ridiculous plan, but plainly Miliband and Labour are going to insist that we do it anyway out of dogma and vanity.

The co-operation of millions of families will be demanded. NESO says the country will have to quadruple its ‘flexibility’, which means cutting consumption – not just at peak times, but whenever the National Grid runs low on eco-sources of energy.

No one knows exactly how this will work, because Miliband is unwilling to spell out the worst of his plans, but it can only mean rationing, not least through higher prices.

Is that really the society we want, where people have to defy government guidance and pay through the nose to put the oven on for a roast lunch?

As our electricity supply relies ever more heavily on wind and solar generators, the grid becomes less dependable. This week, though autumn gales might normally be expected, the wind is hardly blowing – not just across the UK but all over Europe. This unseasonal calm is expected to continue into next week.

That’s bad news for consumers on so-called ‘agile’ tariffs, who signed up believing their power would come from ‘eco-friendly’ sources. The reality is that at times they might be paying up to three times as much per kilowatt-hour as the rest of us, because sustainable electricity is in short supply.

As consumers’ need for electricity increases, everybody’s prices will rise steeply. That’s basic economics, something that almost everyone except Ed Miliband can understand.

Something else that seems obvious to all except the energy minister is the appalling effect on the British countryside of outsourcing our electricity generators to windmills in the North Sea.

Bringing that power to shore means building a network of pylons across the east coast, blighting the beautiful landscapes of East Anglia and Yorkshire.

Imagine the sheer stupidity of despoiling our remaining havens, for the sake of ‘saving the environment’.

It’s an impending national disaster. And it’s just one aspect of the net-zero lunacy. All this chaos will arise solely from reconfiguring the National Grid. Miliband completely fails to take into account the impact of Labour’s other policies, such as the banning of new petrol and diesel cars, currently set to be done by 2035 – though this date is expected to be brought forward to 2030.

When people buying new cars have no choice but to go electric, they will naturally expect to charge their vehicles. That’s going to mean that we will need an even bigger electricity system.

And where is that going to come from? Building more windfarms is hardly going to help us deal with wind lulls like the one we are seeing this week.

Imports are risky too. We have already seen the threat to national security of over-reliance on foreign fuel sources, with Russian gas supplies cut off following the invasion of Ukraine.

Even if Britain succeeds in implementing a net zero grid, the global effect will be negligible, especially if we’re simply buying more electricity from abroad. This country is responsible for a mere 1 per cent of international emissions. We could go back to the Stone Age tomorrow and the effect on climate change would be completely insignificant.

Meanwhile, booming economies such as those of the U.S. and India will keep consuming and producing more fossil fuels. Miliband claims that it’s up to Britain to set an example. But what use is that, if we’re simply showing the world how to do it wrong – a warning to our competitors not to copy us?

Electricity in the UK is already more expensive than just about everywhere in Europe. Miliband’s obsession risks pushing our electricity bills sky high, and leaving millions unable to keep the lights on.

And yet he genuinely believes, with the unquestioning confidence of the true zealot, that he is saving us. He’s a mad prophet, a doom-monger in a sandwich board who has inexplicably been given control of Britain’s energy policy.

Unless he is stopped, Ed Miliband will ruin us all.

Andrew Montford is the director of Net Zero Watch.