Net Zero Crumbling Slowly At First, Then Suddenly

5e3f80af-650c-400f-a065-fffc677c16e5_1600x926-picsay-01

Net Zero collapsing faster the coal-fired power stations blown up by Alok Sharma

DAVID TURVER

A decade ago, the leaders of the three main parties, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband signed their pledge that effectively took climate and energy policy out of the democratic process.

Cameron Clegg and Miliband Climate Pledge

Although it was not yet enshrined in law, this agreement effectively paved the way for Theresa May to set the Net Zero target in 2019. By 2021, our envoy to COP26, Alok Sharma was gleefully blowing up coal-fired power stations and Rishi Sunak was boasting of aligning £130 trillion of the world’s financial assets with the Paris Agreement climate goals, or what we might now see as western economic suicide.

Alok Sharma Blowing Up Coal Power Station

The only opposition to the Net Zero juggernaut was the tiny think tank GWPF/NZW alongside a few dissident bloggers and journalists like Ben Pile, Andrew Orlowski and Ross Clarke. Later they were joined by the likes of yours truly and Kathryn Porter. The Net Zero citadel was virtually impregnable.

Fast forward a few years and last year Reform. ran on a platform of ditching Net Stupid Zero and earlier this year, Kemi Badenoch signalled that the Tories no longer believed Net Zero was achievable by 2050. The number of journalists writing about the follies of Net Zero and UK energy policy had also grown. Net Zero no longer looked impregnable, cracks were beginning to appear but progress was slow.

However, on Thursday, Kemi announced that the Conservative Party plans to repeal the Climate Change Act, which underpins all the Net Zero nonsense. They have also committed to abolish the Climate Change Committee. Their full announcement can be found on the link below.

2025 10 01 Climate Change Act [special Brief]

292KB ∙ PDF file Download

This new policy signals the sudden collapse stage of the Net Zero folly. The change is already heralding a change in the world of policymaking wonks and thinktanks. In the run up to the Tories’ announcement, the priesthood of Net Zero has been queuing up to endorse the Net Zero Reformation.

First, we had “chairman” Michael Liebreich calling for a “Pragmatic Climate Reset” suggesting that historical over-reaches should be wound back and for the legitimate concerns of voters to be addressed. Sam Richards, CEO of Britain Remade has postedan astonishing mea culpa. He advised Boris Johnson to expand offshore wind but is now saying that development of renewables should be paused and the Clean Power 2030 plan be scrapped. Even Octopus Energy is thinking out loud that the focus should be on electrification, not renewables. This about turn from the commentariat and wider blob comes against the background of a string of profit warnings from renewables operators and investment funds and the mammoth rights issue from Orsted. The Net Zero agenda is collapsing.

It is interesting that the this change of heart has come from people who have largely never had to wonder about the engineering marvels that had to occur behind the scenes to ensure the lights stayed on when they turned on their cookers. Perhaps the blackout in Spain and Portugal earlier this year has focused minds on the dangers of too many intermittent renewables on the grid.

We can now see that the empty rhetoric of the “Saudi Arabia of Wind” and “Green Energy Superpower” was the triumph of narrative over numbers and optics over substance. These people in wonk-land never had to worry about choosing between heating or eating; were not concerned about increasing energy debt and were totally at ease as heavy industry collapsed. They are ignorant of maths, the closest they have ever come to imaginary numbers is the increasingly implausible cost estimates from the CCC. They are also ignorant of economics as they clapped like seals at the “nine times cheaper than gas” mantra. We should welcome their Damascene conversion but be cautious that their new message might be just as fickle as the old.

Kemi’s announcement came the day after Ed Miliband’s speech at Labour Conference where he claimed Nigel Farage and Reform are “investment crushing, job destroying, bill raising, poverty driving, science denying, Putin appeasing, young people betraying bunch of ideological extremists.”

I think this is what psychologists call projection. Miliband is accusing his opponents of wanting to do the very same things he is already doing himself. Jim Ratcliff’s INEOS has ended all UK investment because of Net Zero policies pushing up taxes on North Sea oil and gas and expensive energy prices. This of course destroys jobs too. Miliband is pushing up bills by pressing ahead with Allocation Round 7, extending contracts to 20 years and offering prices that are much more expensive than gas-fired generation and of course high bills drive poverty. Miliband denies the physics of intermittent renewables and seems totally unaware of the Laws of Thermodynamics. If Miliband (and the EU) really wanted to damage Putin, they would have all got behind “drill, baby drill” because increased supply of hydrocarbons would reduce prices so cutting revenues to the Russian regime. Pursuing expensive and intermittent energy sources as an ideological goal, coupled with the associated economic destruction does far more to betray the younger generation than almost any other policy.

Net Zero has been crumbling for over a year and beginning the sudden collapse stage. Now the only people backing Net Zero are the reality denying zealots of DESNZ and the CCC. We can imagine Miliband, his head of Mission Control Chris Stark and the new chair of the CCC Nigel Topping barricaded in their ivory tower with their fingers in their ears saying la-la-la as Emma Pinchbeck crouches in a corner rocking on her haunches humming kumbaya. If Starmer wants to survive and to get the country growing again, he has got to fire Miliband and follow Farage and Badenoch by abandoning Net Zero. Then the collapse will be complete.

This article (Net Zero Crumbling Slowly At First, Then Suddenly) was created and published by David Turver and is republished here under “Fair Use”

See Related Article Below

The Case Against Net Zero – a Twelfth Update

Unachievable Disastrous Pointless

ROBIN GUENIER

In October 2008, Parliament passed the Climate Change Act requiring the Government to ensure that by 2050 ‘the net UK carbon account’ was reduced to a level at least 80% lower than that of 1990; ‘carbon account’ refers to CO₂ and ‘other targeted greenhouse gas emissions’. Only five MPs voted against it. Then in 2019, by secondary legislation and without serious debate, Parliament increased the 80% to 100%ⁱ, creating the Net Zero policy (i.e. any remaining emissions must be offset by equivalent removals from the atmosphere).

Unfortunately, it’s a policy that’s unachievable, potentially disastrous and pointless. And that’s true whether or not Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to increased global temperatures.

1. It’s unachievable.

1.1 A modern economy depends on fossil fuels; something that’s unlikely to change globally until well after 2050.ⁱⁱ Examples fall into two categories: (i) vehicles and machines such as those used in agriculture, mining and quarrying, mineral processing, building, the transportation of heavy goods, commercial shipping, commercial aviation, the military and emergency services and (ii) products such as nitrogen fertilisers, cement and concrete, primary steel, plastics, insecticides, pharmaceuticals, anaesthetics, lubricants, solvents, paints, adhesives, insulation, tyres and asphalt. All the above require either the combustion of fossil fuels or are made from oil derivatives; easily deployable, commercially viable alternatives have yet to be developed.ⁱⁱⁱ

1.2 Wind is Britain’s most effective source of renewable electricity – because of our latitude solar makes only a small contribution. But wind power also has significant problems: (i) the substantial costs of subsidising, building, operating, maintaining and replacing (when worn-out) the turbines needed for Net Zero – all exacerbated by high interest rates; (ii) the complex engineering and cost challenges of establishing, as required for renewables, an expanded, stable and reliable high voltage grid by 2030 as planned by the Government; (iii) the vast scale of what’s involved (a multitude of enormous wind turbines, immense amounts of space ^iv and substantial quantities of increasingly unavailable and expensive raw materials and components ^v); and (iv) the intermittency of renewable energy (see 2 below).^vi This means that the UK may be unable to generate sufficient electricity for current needs by 2030 let alone for the mandated EVs and heat pumps and for the energy requirements of industry and the huge new data centres being developed to support for example the Government’s plans for the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI).^vii

1.3 In any case, we don’t have enough skilled technical managers, electrical, heating and other engineers, electricians, plumbers, welders, mechanics and other skilled tradespeople required to do the multitude of tasks essential to achieve Net Zero; a problem exacerbated by the Government’s plans for a massive programme of house building.^viii

2. It’s potentially disastrous.

2.1 The Government aims for 95% renewable electricity by 2030, but hasn’t published a fully costed engineering plan for the provision of grid-scale back-up and network stability when there’s little or no wind or sun; a problem that’s complicated by the likely retirement of elderly nuclear and gas power plants. The Government has indicated that the problem may be resolved by the provision of new gas-fired power plants ^ix or possibly by ‘green’ hydrogen. But it hasn’t published any detail about its plans for either and anyway gas plants have an eight year lead time. The former is obviously not a ‘clean’ solution and it seems the Government’s answer is to fit the gas plants with carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) systems. But both green hydrogen and CCS are very expensive, controversial and commercially unproven at scale.^x This issue is desperately important: without a solution, electricity blackouts are likely, potentially ruining many businesses and causing dreadful problems including serious health risks for everyone, particularly the most vulnerable. And note: the blackout in Spain on 28^th April this year (the result it seems of over reliance on solar power and lack of ‘grid inertia’^xi) caused at least 8 deaths.^xii

2.2 Another major Net Zero problem is its overall cost and the impact of that on the economy. Because there’s no comprehensive plan for the project’s delivery, it’s impossible to produce an accurate estimate of overall cost; but, with several trillion pounds a likely estimate, it could well be unaffordable.^xiii The borrowing and taxes required for costs at this scale would put a huge burden on millions of households and businesses and, particularly in view of the economy’s many current problems^xiv, could further jeopardise Britain’s increasingly vulnerable international credit standing and threaten its economic viability.

2.3 But Net Zero is already contributing to a serious economic concern: essentially because of the massive system costs of renewables (e.g. subsidies, grid balancing, grid expansion, ‘constraint’ payments (compensation for having to switch off) and the cost of back-up to cope with intermittency), the UK has the highest industrial and amongst the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world.^xv The additional costs referred to elsewhere – for example updating the grid, the costs of fitting CCS systems to gas-fired power plants used as back-up and investment in ‘green’ hydrogen – can only make this worse. And high energy costs are making household energy bills unaffordable and are undermining the Government’s principal mission of increased economic growth.

2.4 Net Zero’s pursuit increases our dangerous reliance on other countries. For example the refusal to grant licences for further North Sea oil and gas means more uncertain imports of natural gas and of European generated electricity; likewise, our already risky dependence on China’s goodwill is exacerbated by its effective control of the supply of key materials (e.g. lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, copper and so-called rare earths) essential for the manufacture of renewables. There’s also concern about communication devices (so-called ‘kill switches’) found in Chinese-built power inverters.^xvi

2.5 The UK is also becoming increasingly vulnerable to sabotage of or attack on its growing numbers of offshore wind turbines and numerous undersea cables – and offshore wind turbines can interfere with vital air defences.^xvii

2.6 Renewables are particularly mineral intensive and the vast mining and mineral processing operations they require are already causing horrific environmental damage and dreadful human suffering throughout the world, affecting in particular fragile, unspoilt ecosystems and many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.^xviii The continued and growing pursuit of Net Zero will make all this far worse. However an important consequence of that growth is that renewables’ increasing demand for key minerals for which demand exceeds likely supply may threaten their future viability.^xix

3. It’s pointless.

3.1 It’s absurd to regard the closure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting activities here and their ‘export’ mainly to South East Asia (especially China), to plants commonly with poor environmental regulation and powered by coal-fired electricity – thereby increasing global emissions – as a positive step towards Net Zero. Yet, because of efforts to ‘decarbonise’ the UK, that’s what’s happening; it’s why our chemical and fertiliser industries face extinction^xx and why the closure of our remaining blast furnaces would end our ability to produce commercially viable primary steel (see end note 3). These concerns apply also to most of the machines and other products listed in the first paragraph of item 1 above.^xxi It means that Britain, instead of manufacturing or extracting key products and materials itself, is increasingly importing them in CO₂ emitting ships from around the world. A related absurdity is our importing vast amounts of wood for the Drax power plant, the UK’s biggest emitter of CO₂ – burning a fuel that emits more CO₂ than coal.^xxii

3.2 The USA^xxiii plus most non-Western countries – together the source of over 80% of global GHG emissions and home to about 85% of humanity – don’t regard emission reduction as a priority and, either exempt (by international agreement) from or ignoring any obligation to reduce their emissions, are focused instead on economic and social development, poverty eradication and energy security.^xxiv As a result, global emissions are increasing (by 62% since 1990) and are set to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. As the UK is the source of only 0.7% of global emissions any further emission reduction it makes (even to zero) would make no discernible difference to the global position.^xxv

In other words, Net Zero means that Britain is legally obliged to pursue an unachievable, potentially disastrous and pointless policy – a policy that could result in its economic destruction.

Robin Guenier September 2025

Guenier is a retired, writer, speaker and business consultant. He has a law degree from Oxford, has qualified as a barrister and for twenty years was chief executive of various high-tech companies, including the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency reporting to the UK Cabinet Office. A Freeman of the City of London, he was member of the Court of the IT Livery Company, Executive Director of Taskforce 2000, founder chair of the medical online research company MedixGlobal and a regular contributor to TV and radio.

End notes

i http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/27/part/1/crossheading/the-target-for-2050

ii See Vaclav Smil’s important book, How the World Really Works: http://tiny.cc/xli9001

iii Regarding steel for example see the penultimate paragraph of this article and: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-blast-furnace-800-years-of-technology.

iv See Andrews & Jelley, “Energy Science”, 3rd ed., Oxford, page 16: http://tiny.cc/4jhezz

v http://tiny.cc/b9qtzz Also see paragraph 2.4 above.

vi For a comprehensive view of wind power’s many problems, see this: https://watt-logic.com/2023/06/14/wind-farm-costs/. And re the AI conundrum: http://tiny.cc/2r0r001

vii https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/14/keir-starmer-ai-labour-green-energy-promise

viii A detailed Government report: http://tiny.cc/bgg5001 See also pages 10 and 11 of the Royal Academy of Engineering report (Note 6 below). Also see: http://tiny.cc/0mm9001

ix See this report by the Royal Academy of Engineering: http://tiny.cc/qlm9001 (Go to section 2.4.3 on page 22.) This interesting report contains a lot of valuable information.

x Re CCS: http://tiny.cc/emi9001, and https://heimildin.is/grein/24581/. Re hydrogen: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-2-14-when-you-crunch-the-numbers-green-hydrogen-is-a-non-starter.

xi An energy specialist reviews the facts and risks here: https://watt-logic.com/2025/05/09/the-iberian-blackout-shows-the-dangers-of-operating-power-grids-with-low-inertia/

xii See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout.

xiii 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

xiv A worrying view of the current state of Britain’s economy: http://tiny.cc/nli9001

xv For international price comparisons see Table 5.3.1 here: http://tiny.cc/9kbt001. Note that the UK’s industrial electricity price is well above that of our international competition. Also note, from Table 5.7.1, that the UK gas price is about average and from table 5.5.1, that domestic electricity prices are exceptionally high . And see this comprehensive report: https://watt-logic.com/2025/05/19/new-report-the-true-affordability-of-net-zero/

xvi See http://tiny.cc/6nm9001 and http://tiny.cc/0gvj001. And re unauthorised communication devices found in power inverters in Chinese-built solar panels and batteries see: http://tiny.cc/vgvj001

xvii For examples of vulnerability concerns see these: http://tiny.cc/9ruf001, http://tiny.cc/xau9001 and http://tiny.cc/r73j001. Also this essay by Dieter Helm (Professor of Economic Policy at Oxford) covers vulnerability and much else considered above: http://tiny.cc/dtyf001

xviii See http://tiny.cc/gtazzz and http://tiny.cc/unx8001. And harrowing evidence is found in Siddharth Kara’s book Cobalt Red – about the horrors of cobalt mining in the Congo: http://tiny.cc/nmm9001. And for a more detailed view of minerals’ environmental and economic costs: http://tiny.cc/klz9001.

xix A problem that’s reviewed here: http://tiny.cc/6dzq001

xx As explained here: http://tiny.cc/chg5001

xxi A current example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70zxjldqnxo

xxii See this: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/drax-is-still-the-uks-largest-emitter/. And this Public Accounts Committee report: http://tiny.cc/qpwh001

xxiii Note: Trump’s abandoning plans for renewables is not really such a huge change for the US as, despite his climate policies, the oil and gas industries flourished under Biden: http://tiny.cc/2ww1001

xxiv This essay shows how developing countries have taken control of climate negotiations: http://tiny.cc/xgnq001 (Nothing since 2020 changes the conclusion: for example the ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 of which item 38 unambiguously confirms developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation.)

xxv This comprehensive EU analysis provides detailed information by country re global greenhouse gas (GHG) and CO₂ emissions: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2024?vis=ghgtot#emissions_table

This article (The Case Against Net Zero – a Twelfth Update) was created and published by Climate Scepticism and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Robin Guenier

••••

The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)

••••

Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.

••••

Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.

••••

Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Liberty Beacon Project.