An excoriating report from the Civitas think tank has raised the official estimated cost of Net Zero from the U.K. Government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) by a factor of at least three to £4.5 trillion. The author of the report, the economist Ewen Stewart of Walbrook Economics, puts the figure into context by noting that the resulting £6,000 annual charge per family would enable every family in the U.K. to have free food and £2,800 spending money every year until 2050. It can be additionally noted that removing such a large sum from family budgets might dent the incomes of well-paid liberal elites, but millions of people on or below average wages will find themselves pushed into grinding poverty.
The author charges that the Government has “grossly underestimated” the economic costs of Net Zero. At the same time it has adopted one of the most stringent and legally binding Net Zero frameworks in the world. The U.K. is one of only six countries to have made legally binding Net Zero targets, although it contributes less than 1% of global emissions of carbon dioxide. Despite a modest shifting of some deadlines last week, “the U.K.’s approach remains one of the most legalistic and prescriptive, globally risking both economic prosperity and the U.K.’s competitive position”. Last week’s announcement by the Prime Minister “does not amount to any material change in policy or economic cost”.
The U.K. may wish to maintain an aspiration of Net Zero, states Civitas, “but to drive a potentially four and a half trillion pound project, based on technology that in many cases is unproven, risks the very fabric of the U.K. economy and genuine societal hardship”.
Civitas explains that it has compiled its report “on the most conservative basis possible”. There is evidence to back this up. A programme to insulate Britain’s drafty housing stock produces a figure per house of £5,000, but this compares with Technology Professor Michael Kelly’s recent calculation that installing a heat pump with appropriate insulation would realistically cost £65,000. It would not be unreasonable to note that when Governments, public employees and private profit-seeking operations start with a ‘conservative’ figure, costs tend to double and even treble. Looking at you, HS2.
The Civitas report blows numerous holes in the fantasy economics practised, seemingly without any significant debate and scrutiny, by the green activists running the CCC. The CCC budget was prepared when interest rates were 0.1%, but recent increases to 5.25% have left a £1.6 trillion black hole in official calculations. Among the problems identified, it is said that the CCC largely ignores the capital costs of obsolescence and replacement, underestimates or ignores technological and supply chain challenges, along with the inflationary cost to consumers, ignores the risk of global price inflation as the world crowds into certain commodities such as lithium, does not address the issue of ‘crowding out’ from capital spend on other areas of the economy, takes no account of systemic risks to employment in areas such as the car industry, and alienates historic allies such as Saudi Arabia, risking energy security.
Despite politicians claiming that Britain is somehow leading the world in Net Zero, the effect on employment is very small. It is noted that according to the Office for National Statistics, the low carbon economy employs only 247,000 people, somewhat short of the two million green jobs the Government forecasts for 2030. Nor does the country appear to be a world leader in green technology innovation. The number of patents in the U.K. is low in comparison to those of China, U.S. and Germany.
The small number of jobs created by green technologies is starting to be noticed. Interviewed recently by Kate Andrews in the Spectator, Gary Smith, the leader of the GMB union, said the green household levies might be tolerated if there was any sign of the green jobs promised by every Government since Tony Blair. “Communities up and down the east coast can see wind farms,” continued Smith, “but they can’t point to the jobs.” Much of the green work seems to be either London-based lobbying or clearing away the animal casualties of wind farm blades. “It’s usually a man in a rowing boat, sweeping up the dead birds,” he observed.
One of the more obvious people who should be held to account for a decade of misleading statements about of the true cost of Net Zero is Lord Deben, formerly the Conservative MP John Selwyn Gummer and chair of the CCC for 11 years. Despite recently retiring, he advanced the opinion that Rishi Sunak’s minor can-kicking Net Zero exercise was “unconservative”. The investigative climate journalist Paul Homewood has followed Deben’s green career for many years and was disinclined to be charitable. It is not conservative to ban things, wreck the car industry and endanger the electricity grid, he noted, adding: “Above all it is not conservative to bypass the public and effectively hand control of public policy to a tiny, unelected clique of extreme climate activists and the renewable lobby.”
Any attempt to undo the untold economic and societal damage that will be caused by removing fossil fuels from the energy mix in less than 30 years will require changes in U.K. law. Led by two weak Prime Ministers, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, and backed by large numbers of uninformed, virtue-signalling members of the House of Commons, the U.K. is tied into a tight legalistic path that demands net zero emissions by 2050. Civitas describes the U.K. predicament as “extraordinary granular”. It takes its authority from the Climate Change Acts of 2008 and 2020, but delegates the framework to the CCC, which then produces legally binding carbon budgets. Activists from pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth have the legal right to challenge any decision if they believe any policy is ignoring or endangering Net Zero targets. It might be noted that this carte blanche going forward could lead to a blizzard of lawsuits for almost any building project other than, of course, wind and solar farms.
Civitas observes that the overarching legal requirement to reach Net Zero in a series of legal carbon budgets was set up without any reference to the evolving scientific understanding, nor the economic, financial or societal implications of Net Zero. “The legal obligation is thus ideological, and neither holistic, pragmatic, nor dynamic,” it notes.
The U.K. needs to unpick the legally binding nature of its Net Zero commitments, argues the think tank, and abandon the centralised direction of the economy. Unless it wishes to export employment and undermine an already weak competitive position further, “the U.K. needs to move from the centralised CCC carbon budget approach to a much more organic, bottom-up, market-driven model”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. This article was produced from a pre-publication copy of ‘Net Zero: an analysis of the economic impact’. It is published today and further details can be obtained from Civitas.
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Good article.
But it seems to me that what the relative failure of Brexit showed is that the EU was just one symptom of the globalism that is deeply entrenched in the whole of the West, with its centre not in Europe, but in the USA.
In fact, from many sources it appears that Britain’s Establishment was, and is, the primary European agent of globalism. Hence the concerted opposition to Brexit, the cheerleading of Britain above all the EU nations for a war against Russia and/or China, and of course the lockstep response to COVID.
Even the claim that Britain was the US “mole” in the EU does not seem implausible to me.
None of this alters the message of the article that “we” need to fight for our liberties, but the “we” needs to be carefully defined as the common people of Britain, rather than the political system, which represents them no more than the EU did.
Britain is indeed the primary agent of globalism, and a lot else I may add.. managed through its ‘good offices’ (sarc) in the City of London. Dare I mention the Rottenchilds et al. There’s a very good reason Britain was called Perfidious Albion..
What is missing here is leadership. It’s not leave or remain, it is the ability to take decisive action rather than politically correct action. One of the few politicians I see with it today is Ron DeSantis. Structures can affect ability to deliver but I do not see any conviction other than to how a message is received in the polls.
Ah.! The rise of the focus group.! People who have no clue, trying to find one in what know-nowts think. Its a poor substitute, but I think we saw during Covid that Government policy was pretty much led by public opinion polls…
Yes and when politicians pander to popularity, playing both sides as circumstance dictates, you get this mess.
But they are not pandering to popularity, they are pandering to the margins.
How popular is grooming and sexualisation of our children, Pride flags, parades, reducing the electricity supply and higher electricity prices, inflation, mass immigration… well a long list?
Public opinion was created by government policy: if the government had been honest about the trivial threat posed by the disease there would have been little support for the extreme policies put in place.
Ron DeSantis is most definitely not his own man despite giving the appearance of being one. No, just like so many others, including Robert Kennedy, he’s firmly under the control of the Zionist lobby..
So far Brexit has brought us COVID jabs a month before other EU countries… and nothing else,
So I would say Brexit so far has been a massive con perpetrated by a bunch of salesmen completely incapable of delivering what they sold.
The economic impact of Brexit has been virtually nothing. Despite the IMF, the World Bank & indeed our very own OBR & BofE consistently predicting that we’ll underperform our peer countries we’ve, slightly surprisingly, had the highest or 2nd highest growth over the past couple of years (admittedly, from a lockdown induced low).
EU peers, such as Germany, are in recession, we’re a nano % above it.
None of it’s made much difference. Of course, we’ve spent far more than the promised £350m a week on the NHS & look where that got us.
Covid was an accelerant, we’ve got to the economic state we’re in 10 years earlier than we would otherwise have done. The vaccines accelerate heart problems & possibly cancers. The authoritarian tendency heralded in by Covid nonsense accelerated the imposition of net zero, CBDC & WHO pandemic treaty & the panoply of global restrictions coming down the line.
Brexit has, so far, been a sideshow.
“we’ve, slightly surprisingly, had the highest or 2nd highest growth over the past couple of years (admittedly, from a lockdown induced low)”
The chart “G7 real GDP % change compared to pre-pandemic level” in the publication linked below shows a different picture. Comparing Q1 2023 with Q4 2019, UK is -0.5%, Eurozone is +2.2% and USA is +5.4%.
I guess it depends on the start and end dates chosen for comparison. And, as you imply, with the massive intervention of the covid policy measures, it is pretty much impossible to identify cause and effect as regards impact on economic performance.
GDP – International Comparisons: Key Economic Indicators – House of Commons Library (parliament.uk)
Its called BRINO Stewart.. Brexit in name only, they’re still all ‘in it together’ against us plebs.
Well that is true, except that does not devalue Brexit.
Brexit has been a massive con because it has not been enacted. End of.
Except we don’t actually have Brexit yet. So all of the squirming leftists blaming every bit of bad news on Brexit are WRONG. (as usual)
What we do have is many of the negative consequences of Brexit, such as lost trading opportunities with the EU due to being outside the single market.
What we don’t have of course is Ursula Von der Liar.. not that that makes a difference, they’re all equal on the corruption stakes..
The EU is a protectionist Customs Union – it is mercantilist by nature.
You confuse free movement of goods with free market trading.
When a central authority fixes the conditions of trade to exclude market disruptive innovation and technology, to stifle competition internally and exclude it externally, forcing consumers to shop only within it, a near autarkical ‘single market’ exists. That carries no benefit for consumers who have to pay more for ‘access’ to this wundermart, have less choice than otherwise if they were able to trade freely outside it.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production. The interest of producers is to be considered only as much as it benefits consumers. – Adam Smith.
The EU is the exact opposite of that truism. Only those who are bonkers can imagine this is desirable.
I don’t understand people who think paying more to consume goods and thus making themselves poorer just in order to be part of an ideological Fascistic club is a benefit to them.
Funny old World.
Absolutely..
That’s not really true.
Selling goods to the EU is now harder as it requires customs procedures and duties that weren’t required before.
Also, British nationals can’t spend more than 3 months every 6 months in an EU country without having to go through some immigration process.
Also, the reverse is true for EU nationals in the UK.
That’s just the ones I’m aware of.
So actually, “Brexit” has happened. I think what you mean is that it has been a gigantic flop, which I would agree with.
We could debate the reasons for that, but I would put somewhere near the top of the list, if not at the very top, is that those that sold us the tale aren’t delivering. I don’t want to hear excuses about the EU not cooperating, or international organisations undermining us, the the globalist elite infiltrating our political system.
They sold us something and they haven’t delivered, They should have had a better plan for delivering. What did they think, that they wouldn’t face some resistance? That everyone would go – oh, ok, off you go then..
It’s been a giant scam by a bunch of stupid, amateurish tossers.
We’ve been governed and administered by remainers since the referendum.
Boris Johnson is not a Remainer. He’s an incompetent twat and a giant bullshitter whose bullshit eventually caught up with him.
Gove is a serpent who stands for nothing but himself as demonstrated by the way he weasels his way into positions with every government, regardless of its policies.
The British public was scammed by those two tossers who in reality couldn’t organise a piss up in a brothel.
And Farage has just washed his hands of the whole thing, He’s given up.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsscotland/brexit-is-biggest-act-of-self-harm-in-history-of-uk-and-it-will-take-decades-to-recover/ar-AA1cUUv9
Not the COVID response? Not the policies of successive governments?
The main achievement of Brexit was highlighting that a) the public cannot always be nudged and b) there will be an endless push to ‘correct’ the public thinking.
The combination of Net Zero, lockdowns/jabbings and population replacement makes Brexit seem like a paper cut in comparison.
Speaking with my Francophile hat on.. many of my French friends are actually envious of Brexit and want Frexit.They say they were stuffed by Sarkozy and the Lisbon Treaty, and as an aside.. absolutely detest Ursula Von de Liar..
Why keep pushing this wretched ‘covid’ thing, you’re inferring there was actually a pandemic. There wasn’t.. it was a hoax, carried on the back of fake PCR testing. Fake like everything else spewed forth by governments, WEF, WHO, UN, and every other Tom-Dick or Mohammed worldwide..
There was no pandemic. Posted yet again the graph below to prove it..
Is that chart for the UK? Please clarify…
Yes.. compiled by the BMJ – British Medical Journal using ONS statistics, and first published here by our own Will Jones..
thanks
Bang on Will.
Britain is suffering from Long EU.
Symptoms: continued authoritarianism; erosion of the Common Law; protectionism; indentured servitude for its citizens; corrupt Uni-Party State; State direction of the economy to benefit cronies; alliance with global vested interests moving toward global governance.
I think we need a vaccine.
I tried to read this. But I’m tired of Brexels with no clue about the actual workings of the EU flaunting their ignorance. Apparently, they don’t have any other properties. Hence again: The EU is a confederation of states and not a federal state and it doesn’t have a government of its own. EU-wide policy decisions are made by the council of representatives of the elected governments of the EU member states and the EU commission is just the head of the EU administration which is responsible for the implementation of these policy decisions. This EU adminstration is also small enough that one could comfortably loose it in a corner of Whitehall and would need to spend some time searching in order to find it again.
What on earth has Brexit got to do with the covid pantomime?
C1984 was magicked up in order to pave the way for the initial wave of cull injections. With that undertaking out of the way the Davos Deviants could move on to Digital ID’s and CBDC and once those are in place the gates can be banged shut and the real depopulation process can begin.
That’s pretty much all there is to it.
Exactly.. well said Hux..
Thanks Will.
While we’re at that: The other fairy tale.
There are no German ambitions for European unification. The German ruling caste, which was forcibly installed by foreign powers who had fought to more-or-less avoidable world wars solely for being able to do that has ambitions to get rid of Germans as people and Germany as their nation state. This is meant to be accomplised by funneling loads and loads of German money into the EU (among other things) with the goal to reduce Germany to nothing but an EU region predominantly populated by a random selection of outcasts from all over the globe.
From my reading of history, not the stuff we get rammed down our throats from school age in the UK, I’d say you make a very valid point. Maybe one day the truth will out. I for one hope it does, and hope again that I’m still around to witness it..
I think the Brexit vote was a rare occasion on which a large number of voters ignored the advice of the establishment. Sadly that didn’t carry through to Covid. We need to be less trusting and more sceptical of the motives of each and every organisation, public, private, national, global. The larger and more global the less trusting we should be.
tof – I thought you accepted that the C1984 was a Scamdemic and if that is the case why are people rambling on about how the pantomime was run?
Definitely a scam, yes, which I think could have been thwarted if people had been more truculent.
Excellent article but……
”Boris Johnson would undoubtedly point to his vaccination programme as the prime example. He moved swiftly ahead while the EU was mired in internal processes” and no mention that it was in fact one of the most unmitigated disasters inflicted upon the British people since WW2. 2,300 plus deaths thousands upon thousands of adverse reactions causing many many life changing injuries including amputations and no proof anywhere (oh except of “the models”) of any life saved. The elephant is still very much in the room even in TDS.