If only! Trouble was, the original plan got hijacked by hedge fund types, ie the money set aside for Feed in Tariff got hijacked by solar farms. Now, I can understand that this mean't we installed a lot of green energy in a short space of time helping meet CO2 targets, but the original idea was every house (or most) had some energy generation - you can't get more efficient than generating at point of use. Can't quite remember the numbers but I think we use a whole power station to meet transmission losses on the grid. You are also forgetting, the privatised eenrgy companies actually don't get money from the government, it's actually levied across all electricity users (costs about £5 a year for eevry household depending on whose numbers you believe). Now, it was also cheaper than building new grid infrastructure and power stations (nuclear) which would also be on your bills instead, but the result of soalr farms is lots of spending on the grid - they've been running a whole new set of cables down to the South West to cope with all the green energy down here, (and expansion of housing estates). Smart meters have neevr been anything other than a money saving scheme for the leccy providers, the fact they are a hackable item just goes to show what private industry is really like at running infrastucture...****! AS much as the old national firms might have been inefficient, they did seem to be better at sorting problems before paying shareholders and fat cat bosses, not the other way around. South West Water, for example, paid more money in dividends last year than on the water system itself. But oohhh they are spening billions on investment - borrowed money that we will have the pay the interest costs on in my bills :redcard