There has been discussion in the media recently concerning claims Net Zero will only cost the UK £6 billion a year.
The claim originates from John Rentoul of the far-Left Independent, in response to Nigel Farage’s estimate of £40 billion. Needless to say, the claim is fake.
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Who in his right mind would believe numbers and figures concocted by various government funded agencies like the CCC?
They only produce the numbers the government wants them to produce.
When the borders were opened, government agencies predicted that immigration from Eastern Europe would amount to a few tens of thousand. In the end several millions came.
Likewise, Covid was going to kill millions unless we locked down for a few weeks “to flatten the curve”.
It’s all – for the lack of a better word – utter bollox. Just fodder for MSM, softening the ground ideologically for unpleasant measures that will ultimately make us poorer.
People can be easily persuaded with well produced graphics and the better the graphics the more people think the data is true. In contrast please see Nelson’s plan for Trafalgar that was drawn on the back of a menu, or similar. You can see he has drawn twice, probably because his guests were not understanding what he was suggesting, with the 2nd sketch (top) showing the ships as well as their paths. This type of graphic would fail in the modern corporate world.
Both the Conservatives and Labour, no doubt all the other parties as well, know very well how expensive nut zero is and will continue to be.
‘Mr Jones was asked about Labour’s green investment plan during a meeting held in a cinema on March 14, the month after Sir Keir dropped his proposal for a £28 billion-a-year green industrial revolution.
He told the meeting that the £28 billion figure “became a distraction against the mission of decarbonising the power system by 2030” and that “it wasn’t really defined well enough in the first place, so we probably shouldn’t have announced it in the way we did”.
Mr Jones told an audience member who spoke to him at the end of the meeting that decarbonising the power system “is still one of the top five priorities and it is going to be a huge amount of effort to get there because we’ll have to move quite quickly.
“But a lot of the coverage in the news was about that specific 28 [billion pounds], which because journalists saw conflict made it sound as if we basically junked the whole thing but we definitely haven’t.”
When an audience member said some people would say that £28 billion a year was not enough to decarbonise the economy, Mr Jones replied: “No, it’s tiny. Hundreds of billions of pounds we need.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/26/labour-net-zero-plans-hundreds-billions-darren-jones-audio/
That is part of the systemic reform that this country badly needs.
The deeply patronising Westminster/Whitehall culture is that the British public are too stupid to be told the truth.
The great British public are now telling the ‘legacy’ parties that it is in fact those parties that are too stupid and, unless they promise (and convince, really convince, that they will deliver) systemic reform, then their time is up.
‘Electoral Calculus has calculated that Mr Farage would win 362 seats if a general election were held tomorrow. Labour would fall from winning 412 seats at the last general election to second place on 136, while the beleaguered Conservatives would be almost wiped out, winning just 22 seats.’
Enough!
EVs will could well achieve price parity with petrol and diesel cars next year – by jacking up the price of petrol and diesel cars. The price of ICE cars has been rising at over twice the rate of inflation in the last few years, I would guess so as to cover the losses manufacturers are making on EVs and to make EVs appear more attractive. This is until you start looking at residuals an depreciation…
All due to manipulation of the market, funded by tax payer money. Without subsidies and the coercion of manufacturers where do we think EV sales would be today.?
Same with heat pumps. ‘You can get a £7,500 discount on your new heat pump’. No. Some other poor taxpayer is being robbed to pay for yours, as you are being robbed to pay for someone elses.
Exactly – remove all the market bending manipulation and let physics prevail, we’ll soon confirm the best solution for right now
Not just here but also in Germany, private buyers of battery cars are thin on the ground. The falling value of second hand battery cars is going to hit the fleet market and lease companies very hard given that their model relies on selling on the 3 year old cars. If you can’t buy a normal car then a hybrid where the engine drives it is the least worse option although you have the extra weight of the battery but you can avoid the ecofascist ULEZ and parking charges. Of course hybrids are due to be banned as well.
The National Grid (now the National Energy System Operator (NESO)) has said net zero will cost £3 trillion: https://www.current-news.co.uk/reaching-net-zero-to-cost-3bn-says-national-grid-eso/. And in this presentation Michael Kelly, Emeritus Professor of Technology at Cambridge, shows how the cost would amount to several trillion pounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkImqOxMqvU.
We know, on sober reflection, that recent governments have lied to us about joining the EC, leaving the EU, the Iraq War, restraining immigration, bailing out the bankers, and the deadliness of COVID. At the very most charitable they were inept at forecasting the consequences.
It would be foolish to accept what the government says about Climate Change and Net Zero without thorough questioning. So every time I hear of someone claiming that the sky will fall if we do not knuckle under to Government wishes I remember that the sky did not fall after Brexit and no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found.
Net Zero was waved through in 2019 without debate and with no vote. The cost was never discussed and the practicality never even considered. The Political Class just waved it on through. Who in their right mind enters into something without knowing how much it costs, whether it is even possible and whether it will make the slightest difference to the climate anyway?—-The answer is UN and WEF lackeys who have abandoned their own citizens in favour of licking the arses of the globalist technocrats who seek to control all of the worlds wealth and resources and who have decided our lifestyles are “unsustainable”. The parasites we vote for totally agree and are determined our living standards will fall to comply with Agenda 2030. They care nothing about the astronomical cost or misery this is causing and try to justify it by claiming we must “save the planet”——-But why must we pretend to save it by 2030? When huge countries like China India the USA and developing countries are not saving it.
We are already subsidising renewables at the rate of £25 billion a year
And contract agreements as part of that figure stretch into the future, so a commitment has been made contractually. It’s why Reform said they’d claw back via taxation, vs tearing up contracts
Net Zero will cost 1.4 Trillion—-Guess who picks up the tab? —-The UK tax and energy bill payers.
Socialists don’t understand economics. If they did they wouldn’t be Socialists . – Prof Thomas Sowell.
GDP isn’t a currency, it’s a very inaccurate, unreliable estimate – always revised subsequently usually down – of value added – including Government spending – to domestic output in a period which may be reported as month, quarter or year.
GDP is not the total output of a Country.
GDP – increase in output – is variable not constant, so to say cost will be X% of GDP is meaningless.
In any case it’s about money spent. That money has to come from somewhere and that means either taxes or borrowing… although the latter is a tax too.
If money is taken from the economy in taxes, it reduces economic activity accordingly which reduces GDP. Claiming that putting money taken from one part of the economy and putting it back into another part increases economic activity is nonsense.
In any case the facts are that Governments have spent/are spending £billions on Net Zero, and the economy is losing £billions because of it. I think Mr Farage’s estimate is, er…. conservative (😊).
And finally. A better metric is GDP per capita as this measures whether people as individuals are getting wealthier or poorer. If X% of GDP is being pizzed away on Net Zero, that reduces GDP per capita = we all get poorer.
I first came across John Rentoul in a 1998 Independent article where he criticized tourism and asserted it was not necessary for people to travel. He also stated the following:
“…Air travel is the most energy-hungry thing most people can do ….. You can drive a car up and down the length of the UK for years…… before you burn up as much petrol as your share of a single plane trip”.
I would hope the example above show’s that Mr Rentoul has a very poor grasp of reality and judging by his response to Nigel Farage he hasn’t learned much in 26 years.
I did write to the Independent criticizing John’s preposterous claims above and his response was as expected but disappointing none the less – a lot of deflection and no engagement with my corrections. It appears impossible to reason with the likes of an environmental zealot, which makes them very dangerous, because we have no defence.
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenceless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
^^^ Needs adding to Millitwat’s wiki page.
Good article but all of these numbers are far too low and they don’t include the full cost on consumers and the economy which makes them, literally, exponentially higher.
I have developed off-shore wind, researched the cost of nuclear power for the US Department of Energy, I own two biomass electricity plants and some solar installations.
I have had the pain that comes from getting your numbers wrong, but in this case, the people making the predictions don’t face the responsibility for when it all goes badly wrong.