The £4,500,000,000,000 Net Zero price tag – is probably an underestimate
The National Energy System Operator’s estimate of Net Zero has hit the headlines
BEN PILE
I was on Jeremy Kyle’s Talk TV show this morning, a little earlier than I would have liked — as my face probably reveals.
NESO were bought from National Grid by the government shortly after the election. They last produced an economic analysis of Net Zero in 2020, with an estimate of £3 trillion. Five years on, and their estimate is 50% larger: £4.5 trillion, over a shorter time frame — 25 years, rather than 30. So clearly, they are acknowledging greater costs.
According to the SDP’s analysis, something equivalent to what I would call the ‘opportunity’ cost of Net Zero — the harm done to the UK economy, compared to where it might plausibly be — has already hit £3 trillion.
The new £4.5 trillion price tag really needs to be taken seriously. It’s equivalent at least to the spend on the NHS. Yet it produces no benefit. And it’s likely an underestimate. It’s roughly equivalent to £160,000 per household. So imagine that: every single household needing to cover a second mortgage, or a second rent. The implication is that there will be that much less disposable income in the rest of the economy. Other businesses will go under. Nobody will eat out, nor even order-in. Cinemas will collapse. People will not take holidays. The car market will stall. Many will simply not bother working. Why would they?
As Jeremy Kyle points out, all this is despite us sitting on very significant energy resources. Were these to be exploited, and were Britain’s industries allowed to prosper, how different would 2050 appear to be, compared to the one that is ahead of us?
That’s a rhetorical question.
Unfortunately, some, who should know better, are not farming it that way. They’re preoccupied with defeating Net Zero with fantasies about geopolitics. They need to get real. We need to defeat Net Zero for us, not so that some Etonite warlords can play Churchill.
Don’t let war in Europe kill Net Zero – let’s kill it ourselves
I remember first using the word “epiphany” in the context of the climate debate in the late 2000s. Certain greens had learned to stop worrying and love nuclear power. Or had they? The claim from these new greens was that environmentalists’ objections to nuclear power had undermined the technology that offered the dense, reliable, affordable, low carbon energy. Sceptics rejoiced and offered the hand of friendship. Common ground at last..
Miliband’s opposite, meanwhile, also channelling the chest-beaters along the way, has published a report authored by Kathryn Porter. It’s interesting in its own right. But as an offering from a party that got us into this mess, it simply isn’t enough. As I have tried to explain here, and to Tories, the problem of Net Zero and the green agenda is not technical. It is political, ideological. Energy production, distribution and retail was mastered in this country, generations ago. But at some point Conservatives decided that affordable and abundant energy is a Bad Thing, that people should be denied. That’s an ideological transformation. It is is for the Tories to explain themselves. Anything else is blame-shifting and prevarication. Ed Miliband didn’t make them do it.
This article (The £4,500,000,000,000 Net Zero price tag – is probably an underestimate) was created and published by Ben Pile and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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