• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

The Official True Cost of Net Zero is the Same as Spending £1 a Second for the Next 31,000 Years

by Will Jones
19 October 2023 6:00 PM

The truth is out, writes Matt Ridley in the Mail. An official report has admitted for the first time the scale of the cost of reaching Net Zero by 2050 – the same as spending £1 a second for the next 31,000 years.

A study by the National Infrastructure Commission, released on Tuesday, concluded that hitting the 2050 target will roughly double the amount of money we would have spent anyway on infrastructure over the next 27 years to £2 trillion: an additional £1 trillion spent on the green agenda.

For a word that skips off the tongue so easily, a trillion is mighty big. Imagine you were to spend a pound a second: how long would it take you to spend £1 trillion? The answer is more than 31,000 years.

So to have spent a trillion pounds by today at the rate of £1 a second, you would have to have started when woolly mammoths roamed free.

Most of that trillion will go on replacing petrol cars with electric ones and gas boilers with electric heat pumps, and on generating, transmitting and distributing the extra electricity needed for these two uses. It also includes a host of other capital projects, including better household insulation. With all that electric demand, we would need extra power stations, extra pylons and upgrades of household electrical circuits. And we would need subsidies for installing the heat pumps and buying electric vehicles.

Oh, and £74 billion would be spent on closing down the gas grid: the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), which was set up to promote economic growth, has been so captured by the green lobby that it is now a National Dismantling Commission.

With the exception of home insulation, very little of that £1 trillion would actually improve your lifestyle in any practical way. It does not promise to give you cheaper or more reliable electricity. It would not save you any money or give you any more spare time — or make you more productive.

It would generally replace smaller things with bigger things — more pylons, heavier cars, bigger radiators, wind farms instead of gas turbines — so it would actually clutter the world more.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Climate AlarmismElectric VehiclesFossil fuelsGasHeat PumpNational Infrastructure CommissionNet Zero

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Just Stop Oil Blocks Coach Carrying Migrants to Bibby Stockholm Barge Claiming They Are Victims of Climate Change

Next Post

News Round-Up

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

17 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
stewart
stewart
1 year ago

I’m afraid facts and arguments aren’t going to change the minds of Net Zero advocates.

What will change their minds is the sense that those who don’t want it are getting angry and might start going for Net Zero zealots in ways they might not like.

They need to feel the need to change position at an emotional level. And we all know fear works best.

Personally I make a point of ensuring that anyone who defends climate change policy perceives my anger and a certain sense of menace that I’m not standing for it.

That’s the sort of emotional response that gets people re-thinking, in my view.

158
-1
JaneDoeNL
JaneDoeNL
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

Indeed. Righteous anger coupled with a couple of winters freezing in one’s home and – heaven forbid – being deprived of the internet and one’s dumb-down-the-owner ‘smart’ phone (due to power blackouts) and we will probably see some change in direction. Recent history shows how quickly zealots can change sides – 2 years ago there were millions standing in line for untested poison, now they can’t give it away. Reality bites big.

97
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  JaneDoeNL

Yep everyone wants to “save the planet” till the penny eventually drops that the planet is fine and it was never about the planet in the first place.

5
0
iconoclast
iconoclast
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

We see the same tactics used against those who put rational arguments and science up against the loony climate change protagonists.

The loonies are not loony and those with rational arguments and science are the loonies.

All achieved using the same approach to so many other issues that are destroying our social values and structures and done using useful idiots whatever activists they can fund to implement this madness.

The end justifies the means for those behind all this crap who see the destruction of social values and structures as the ends which justify the means.

DS is invaluable as a source of information and a forum to read what sensible people have to say against this backdrop of madness.

28
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  iconoclast

Or “never let a good crisis go to waste”, and parasite governments of both parties are certainly putting the manufactured climate crisis to good use to implement all the progressive policies they have long craved

15
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

No facts and reason……Just faith and emotion. Climate activists and those who glue themselves to things decided long ago what is true and there is no budging them. But we need to remember it is government and their phony climate models masquerading as science that brainwashed them all. —–Thos governments can hardly come down hard on their own useful idiots that do all their dirty work for them now can they?

15
0
CHRIS
CHRIS
1 year ago

Until the liberal mainstream media, and especially the BBC, do honest reporting over the utter folly of spending trillions on completely worthless and highly dangerous Net Zero madness nothing will change.

I would suggest that everyone complain to the BBC via. their Make A Complaint web portal. Find a climate change article on the BBC website, it’ll almost always state that greenhouse gas emissions are the main cause of climate change, something that we all know is complete rubbish. They always make this dumb statement without any dissenting views allowed. That’s complaint-worthy in itself.

64
0
RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago
Reply to  CHRIS

Do you really think complaining to the BBC achieves anything? It is impervious to complaints.

11
0
CHRIS
CHRIS
1 year ago
Reply to  RTSC

Hopefully one low level individual there might start to think for him/her self and light a spark. A long shot, I know.

5
0
MikeAustin
MikeAustin
1 year ago

At a stroke, we could cut the staggering 0.0016% of the atmosphere that is human-caused CO2 by wiping out most of the world’s population by toxic medical interventions, geoengineering, gmo food and electrosmog. Unless some people have already thought of that.

70
0
WyrdWoman
WyrdWoman
1 year ago

Just as a matter of interest – have any of the Net Zero zealots ever clarified what’s the target internal winter temperature people are expected to maintain in this brave new world of theirs, or hasn’t that sort of practical reality crossed their tiny minds? I see the WHO, NHS and others currently recommend 18-21C, and building ‘sperts recommend above 16C to stop condensation and mould. Are those numbers likely to drop, I wonder? (My place regularly drops well below those already; wonder if that means I get extra brownie points?!)

58
0
Jon Smith
Jon Smith
1 year ago

Off topic, but who cares..
So.. 2.30 pm tomorrow Andrew Bridgen after 20 refusals and the pressure of constitutants harassing their MPs there will be a debate (1 hr slot) about excess deaths.
Its the first parliamentary debate in the world… You couldn’t make this up in your widest of dreams..

https://youtu.be/uWP6mGiDveI?si=sYVcJHZC-SLCDsYQ

Last edited 1 year ago by Jon Smith
33
0
Jon Smith
Jon Smith
1 year ago

More off topic…. Was all this about provoking Iran..
Brand talking sense… Yet again (don’t believe the narrative about him, it’s an attempted matrix takedown)

https://youtu.be/jWO-mtt4_lU?si=vUDuZ1TDB4O-iFMW

13
0
Steve-Devon
Steve-Devon
1 year ago

”Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you,”

This is a momentous nightmare social experiment, the current technology cannot deliver, the current resources are inadequate. As this nonsense progresses and it becomes increasingly obvious that our current population cannot go ‘net-zero’ and live at anything like present living standards, what is going to happen? Are people meekly going to accept immiseration and a degeneration of living standards back to medieval times? If we do go down this route the UK will become a weird basket case like the mad uncle you keep in the attic while the rest of the world gets on with life. This is a recipe for huge social upheaval and turmoil, the end result of which is hard to predict?

44
0
NeilParkin
NeilParkin
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve-Devon

Something similar to North Korea, I expect. Only without the abundant luxuries…

Last edited 1 year ago by NeilParkin
16
0
NeilParkin
NeilParkin
1 year ago

‘Saving the planet’ is worth any cost in some eyes. Even if you can’t afford it, and it wouldn’t save the planet anyway, (primarily because it doesn’t need saving from CO2).

Useless people trying to give themselves a sense of destiny.

The NIC should be closed down and sent back to school while we find some adults to carry on the essential work.

23
-1
varmint
varmint
1 year ago

The can will need to be continually kicked down the road because what the parasite political class are trying to do is not just impossible, it is unaffordable, but the pain and suffering inflicted will be a severe blow to hard pressed taxpayers suffering the fallout from the malady infecting all of parliament called PSPS (Pretend to Save the Planet Syndrome)

13
0

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Episode 36 of the Sceptic: Karl Williams on Starmer’s Phoney Immigration Crackdown, Dan Hitchens on the Assisted Suicide Bill and Tom Jones on Reform’s Local Council Challenge

by Richard Eldred
16 May 2025
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

16 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

Chris Packham is the New St Francis of Assisi

15 May 2025
by Sallust

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

27

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

22

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

27

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

18

Chris Packham is the New St Francis of Assisi

39

Trump’s Lesson in Remedial Education

16 May 2025
by Dr James Allan

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

‘Why Can’t We Talk About This?’

15 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

POSTS BY DATE

October 2023
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Sep   Nov »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences