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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Net zero of what? There is no science to support any of it. But plenty of $cientism, fraud. corruption and power mongering. All part of Agenda 21 and its decadal plans 2030, 2040 etc.
1 Trillion tonnes of Co2 exists in the atmosphere. Total human emissions of the oxygen creator is 50 billion tonnes per year – and most of this is recycled in natural patterns. A rounding error impact. Total Co2 is 4 parts per million in total, a rounding error. We emit 0.2 parts per million most of it recycled. It is endothermic, exothermic – heats and cools. Not A Space Agency has admitted Co2 cools the upper atmosphere.
So net zero of what? Co2 ? That would mean killing all of Gaia’s climate cycles, flora and volcanoes. Carbon? That means killing you.
Your bank balance, quite likely.
Ferdlll, I agree, except total CO2 is 416 ppm. (4%).
I note some genius down voted a fact!
There is no point in arguing about the “science”. It isn’t about “science”. It is about politics or “Official science”
Actually Varmint this is all about control, as you know.
It’s about an obsession that has merged with the politics of power, control, profit.
Currently 96% of CO2 is in the oceans, whence it comes AFTER the oceans get warm, where it returns when the oceans cool.
The oceans have warmed and cooled as the Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled over the billions of years quite independently of CO2 atmospheric concentrations.
Net Zero means grinding poverty
And no meat means no pets.
Well, at least the workers wouldn’t get bitten by these two! https://www.gbnews.com/news/us/joe-biden-dog-bite-secret-service-agent
Can you imagine how many rats and mice we’d have to contend with if there were no cats to keep them away from us.
I’ve got a Patterdale!
Grinding poverty and zero positive impact on the climate.
Brilliant expose.
And now, repeat after me …
‘% of atmosphere of CO2 is 0.04’
‘% of that produced by man is 3%’
‘% of that produced by the UK is 1’.
Do the maths.
Tell someone today.
0.000016% of the atmosphere (or thereabouts depending on which numbers you use. I have used 0.04% and 4% and 1%.
This reminds me of the figure I calculated for how much I would reduce my risk of dying with Covid if I got vaccinated, compared with remaining unvaccinated, based on the UKHSA official figures in December 2021.
Most people had some notion in their heads about “90% effective” which they clearly did not understand, but just blindly “followed the science” and got the vaccine, instead of being fully informed.
Based on the official figures in table 11 in the link below, I calculated that I would reduce by risk of death by less than 0.01% if I got vaccinated.
For people under 40 the risk reduction was less than 0.001%, before the effectiveness of the vaccine began to wane!
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1039677/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_49.pdf
The absolute risk of having a symptomatic infection – according to the Pfizer trial – was 0.88%.
Those who believed the 95% effective bilge (relative risk reduction in fact) believed that if vaccinated they had only a 5% risk of getting it, which is of course five times higher than actual.
But… prescient perhaps because it now is evident that Jab-Junkies are 3 to 5 times more likely to be infected, and have a serious episode or die.
And then half it because apparently if we were producing only half everything would be OK. The fraction is so small it is a rounding error.
Perhaps the real winner is the legal trade.
Who forces themselves in law to spend 4 trillion doing something that will make no difference to anything? ———Squirming Eco Socialist parasites that govern this country and the western world is the answer. Our homegrown parasites waved Net Zero through parliament with not a single question asked as to cost/benefit. (I think only one labour MP did) They don’t even know if the technologies required for this green utopia that will remove all prosperity and freedoms can even be invented. So they didn’t discuss the cost or even if was possible. ———–This is f…ing INSANE. ——I hear all the time we must “lead the world” —-WHY.—- Lead the world in WHAT? ——-Lowering living standards and life expectancy? Even Tony Blair whose government gave us the Climate Change Act in 2008 says Net Zero will make no difference to global climate. So why are we doing something that will “make no difference”? ——-The answer is incredibly simple. It IS NOT ABOUT THE CLIMATE, and it never has been. ————-The whole idea behind this eco socialism called “Sustainable Development” is that the western world has used up more than it’s fair share of the fossil fuels in the ground and that we must STOP. The excuse for stopping is the “climate crisis”, which is the biggest pseudo scientific fraud ever perpetrated. So our own squirming parasites are fully onboard with all of this and they are prepared to ration our energy use via smart meters , rip out our gas central heating and fob us off with crap heat pumps, get rid of all our petrol and diesel cars, try to stop us flying and eating stuff they say releases carbon etc etc etc . Basically every human activity causes the release of some CO2 and what better way to control all human activity than by controlling that CO2 and that is what this is all about. It has NOTHING to do with the f..ing climate.
I’m with you Brother
( or maybe sister 
)
I believe this is a well thought out and long planned attack on the West with the goal of impoverishment and disempowerment so that its populations might be brought to heel more easily by supranational organisations such as the UN, WEF and the WHO. I think they are seeing it as a moral crusade to equalise the global playing field.
It is all spelt out in Agenda 21.
Their end game is “the theft of the commons” (Iain Davis) which is really what “you will own nothing and be very unhappy is all about.”
I just came by a house from the 50s that was insulated over the last few years.
Its facade has now turned grey/black in most places, full of mould.
And this meme is an apt description of how the state of Lower-Saxony now looks:
All because of a hoax and because of the many corrupted or from a God-complex suffering people pushing it.
One a child with basic calculus skills is able to call.
https://sciencefiles.org/2023/09/27/co2-viel-zu-wenig-um-klimatische-veraenderungen-zu-erklaeren-die-naechste-studie-zerstoert-den-klimawandel-hoax/
https://madhavasetty.substack.com/p/the-dubious-origins-of-the-carbon?publication_id=1279410&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=97oj4
https://sciencefiles.org/2019/10/29/klimawandel-hoax-implodiert-alle-klimawandel-fakten-auf-einen-blick/
My local Horsham District Council has spent £700,000 on their Climate Action Plan (approved on 23 Mar23), had an implementation budget of £1 mlllion in 22/23 and has a £15 million implementation budget for 23/24. Each local authority has been sent guidance on declaring a ‘Climate Emergency’ and how to organise and implement the ‘Sixth Carbon Budget’. You can look up information if you type in the following to a search engine.
‘Local Authorities and the Sixth Carbon Budget’
https://carboncopy.eco/local-climate-action – go to ‘Check Your Area’
‘Climate-related measures in the Budget and Spending Review’
‘Climate Change Risk Assessment 2022’ – go to the link and download the pdf document.
‘The Climate Action Plan Checklist 2023’ – download the document. You can find links to different local authorities’ plans, as well as those in other countries.
There are 317 local authorities in England alone. If they had all allocated budgets the same as HDC, it would amount to £5,293,900,000. Are these action plans being done with public consent?
It seems to me that the climate ’emergency’ is a massive business opportunity for vested interests, also it seems to be common policy worldwide. Have any concerned citizens had any input or voice in any of this?
Wow. Many thanks for this.
Add to that all the money Spunked on Covid & the Jabathon etc etc could have fed & watered the whole World ! W- nkers !!…
Net Zero make everyone poor apart from those at the top pushing it.
King Charles: “We must all change our behaviour, my beloved subject, apart from me.”
Did we need a Civitas report to tell us this?
Prior to the use of fossil fuels we were an impoverished agrarian society reliant on wood, wind power, horse power and solar energy.
Fossil fuels made us rich. Taking them away means back to the fields and poverty.
Pushing us towards Net Zero is like pushing us towards a life shaft before the lift car has been installed with vague promises that anti-gravity devices will be invented before we hit the bottom of the shaft.
I did read it correctly? Only SIX countries have made laws to reach a net zero target?
The UK is one of the six – who are the others – doubt it will be China or India and probaly not the USA.
I always read Chris Morrison’s pieces, and I’m delighted to see
This has been ludicrously hyped by media as a major initiative. Like most Sunak proposals, it is a teeny tiptoe.
“Like most Sunak proposals, it is a teeny tiptoe.”
No:
Like most Sunak proposals, it is a lie or kiddology at best.
It turns out the Civitas report was full of embarrassing fundamental errors and has been widely ridiculed. For example it confuses cost per MW capacity with cost per MW produced and assumes fossil fuels and infrastructure will be effectively free.