In October 2008, Parliament passed the Climate Change Act requiring the UK 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% reduction requirement to 100% – thereby creating the Net Zero policy.ⁱ

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

1. It’s unachievable.

A modern, advanced economy depends on fossil fuels; something that’s unlikely to change for a long time.ⁱⁱ Examples fall into two categories: (i) vehicles and machines such as those used in agriculture, mining, mineral processing, building, heavy transportation, 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

Although wind is the most effective source of renewable electricity in the U.K. – because of its latitude, solar power contributes only a small percentage of the UK’s electricity – it has significant problems: (i) the substantial and increasing costs of building, operating and maintaining the huge numbers of turbines needed for Net Zero; (ii) the complex engineering and cost challenges of establishing a stable, reliable, comprehensive non-fossil fuel 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 large quantities of increasingly unavailable and expensive raw materials); and (iv) the intermittency of renewable energy (see 2 below).^v This means that the UK may be unable to generate sufficient electricity by 2030 for current needs let alone for the mandated EVs (electric vehicles) and heat pumps and for the energy requirements of industry and of the huge new data centres being developed to support the rapid growth of AI (artificial intelligence).

In any case, the UK doesn’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 worsened by the Government’s plans for massively increased house building.^vi

2. It would be socially and economically disastrous.

The Government aims for 100% renewable electricity by 2030 but has yet to publish a fully costed engineering plan for the provision of comprehensive grid-scale back-up when there’s little or no wind or sun; a problem that’s complicated by the imminent retirement of elderly nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. The Government has indicated that back-up may be provided by new gas-fired power plants ^vii but it has yet to publish any detail. That of course would not be a ‘clean’ solution and it seems the Government’s answer is to fit them with carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) systems: a ‘solution’ that’s very expensive, controversial and commercially unproven at scale.^viii This issue is desperately important: without full back-up, electricity blackouts would be inevitable – potentially ruining many businesses and causing dreadful problems for millions of people, including serious health consequences threatening everyone and in particular the poor and vulnerable.^ix

Net Zero’s major problem however is its overall cost and the impact of that on the economy. Because there’s no coherent plan for the project’s delivery, little attention has been given to overall cost; but with several trillion pounds seeming likely to be a correct estimate it would almost certainly be unaffordable.^x The borrowing and taxes required for costs at this scale could destroy Britain’s credit standing and put an impossible burden on millions of households and businesses. It could quite possibly mean that the UK would face economic collapse.

But Net Zero is already causing one serious economic problem: because of renewable subsidies, carbon taxes, grid balancing costs and capacity market costs, the UK has the highest industrial and domestic electricity prices in the developed world.^xi The additional costs referred to elsewhere in this essay – for example the costs of establishing a comprehensive non-fossil grid and of providing gas-fired power plants fitted with CCS as back-up – can only make this worse. Unless urgent remedial action is taken, the government is most unlikely to be able to achieve its principal mission of increased economic growth.

Net Zero would have two other dire consequences:

(i) As China essentially controls the supply of key materials (for example, lithium, cobalt, aluminium, processed graphite, nickel, copper and so-called rare earths) without which renewables cannot be manufactured, the UK would greatly increase its already damaging dependence on it, putting its energy and overall national security at most serious risk.^xii It would also mean that, while impoverishing Britain, Net Zero would be enriching China.^xiii

(ii) The vast mining and mineral processing operations required for renewables are already causing appalling 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; the continued pursuit of Net Zero would make all this far worse.^xiv

3. In any case it’s pointless.

For two reasons:

(i) It’s absurd to regard the closure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting plants in the UK and their ‘export’ mainly to SE Asian countries, commonly with poor environmental regulation and often powered by coal-fired electricity – thereby increasing global emissions – as a positive step towards Net Zero. Yet efforts to ‘decarbonise’ the UK mean that’s what’s happening: it’s why we no longer produce many key chemicals and, by closing our few remaining blast furnaces, will soon be unable to produce commercially viable primary steel (see endnote iii).^xv

(ii) Most major non-Western countries – the source of over 70% of GHG emissions and home to 84% 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.^xvi 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 just 0.72% of global emissions any further emission reduction it may achieve would essentially have no impact on the global position.^xvii

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

Robin Guenier October 2024

Guenier is a retired, writer, speaker and business consultant. He has a degree in law from Oxford, is 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 Executive Director of Taskforce 2000, founder chair of the medical online research company MedixGlobal and a regular contributor to TV and radio.

End notes:

ihttp://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: https://time.com/6175734/reliance-on-fossil-fuels/

iii Regarding steel for example see the penultimate paragraph of this article: 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 For a view of wind power’s many problems, see this: https://watt-logic.com/2023/06/14/wind-farm-costs/ This is also relevant: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/debunking-cheap-renewables-myth

vi A detailed Government report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65855506fc07f3000d8d46bd/Employer_skills_survey_2022_research_report.pdf See also pages 10 and 11 of the Royal Academy of Engineering report (Note 6 below).

vii See this report by the Royal Academy of Engineering: https://nepc.raeng.org.uk/media/uoqclnri/electricity-decarbonisation-report.pdf (Go to section 2.4.3 on page 22.) This interesting report contains a lot of valuable information.

viii This International Institute for Sustainable Development report on CCS is informative: https://www.iisd.org/articles/insight/unpacking-carbon-capture-storage-technology And see the second and third paragraphs here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/12/fossil-fuel-companies-environment-greenwashing (the rest of the article is also interesting).

ix This article shows how more renewables could result in blackouts: http://tiny.cc/lnhezz

x The National Grid (now the Energy System Operator (ESO)) 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

xi The facts, an explanation of why Net Zero is responsible and a proposed solution are cogently set out here: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/uk-electricity-prices-highest-in-world.

xiihttps://www.dw.com/en/the-eus-risky-dependency-on-critical-chinese-metals/a-61462687

xiii Discussed here: https://dailysceptic.org/2024/07/24/net-zero-is-impoverishing-the-west-and-enriching-china/

xiv See this for example: http://tiny.cc/3lhezz. Arguably however the most compelling and harrowing evidence is found in Siddharth Kara’s book Cobalt Red – about the horrors of cobalt mining in the Congo: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred

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

xvi This essay shows how developing countries have taken control of climate negotiations: https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/the-west-vs-the-rest-2.1.1.pdf (Nothing that’s happened since 2020 changes the conclusion: for example see the ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 of which item 38 unambiguously confirms developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation.)

xvii This comprehensive analysis, based on an EU Commission database, provides – re global greenhouse gas (GHG) and CO₂ emissions – detailed information by country from 1990 to 2023: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2024?vis=ghgtot#emissions_table