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% to 100%ⁱ, creating the Net Zero policy (i.e. any emissions must be offset by equivalent removals from the atmosphere).

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 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

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 costs of subsidising, building, operating and maintaining the huge numbers of turbines needed for Net Zero – all exacerbated by high interest rates; (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 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 by 2030 for current needs let alone for the mandated EVs and heat pumps and for the energy requirements of industry and of the huge new data centres being developed to support for example the government’s plans for the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI).^vii

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.^viii

2. It would be socially and economically disastrous.

The Government aims for 95% renewable electricity by 2030 but has not yet published 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 likely 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 ^ix and possibly by ‘green’ hydrogen. But it has yet to publish any detail about its plans for either. The former is obviously not a ‘clean’ solution and it seems the Government’s answer is to fit the power 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 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.^xi

Net Zero’s major problem however is its overall cost and the impact of that on the economy. Because there’s no comprehensive 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 seems likely to be unaffordable.^xii 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 the economy’s many current problems, could jeopardise Britain’s international credit standing and threaten the country’s economic viability.

But Net Zero is already contributing to a serious economic problem: essentially because of the costs of renewables (e.g. subsidies and back-up to cope with intermittency), the UK has the highest industrial and amongst the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world.^xiii The additional costs referred to elsewhere in this essay – for example the costs of establishing a comprehensive non-fossil grid and of fitting CCS systems to gas-fired power plants used as back-up – can only make this worse. And high energy costs are incompatible with the government’s principal mission of increased economic growth. 

Net Zero would have two other dire consequences:

(i) As it 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 China, putting its energy and overall national security at most serious risk.^xiv

(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.^xv The continued pursuit of Net Zero would make all this far worse.

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 (especially China), 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 our chemicals industry faces extinction^xvi and why, by closing our few remaining blast furnaces, we will soon be unable to produce commercially viable primary steel (see endnote 3).^xvii

(ii) The USA^xviii plus most major non-Western countries – together the source of over 80% of 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 energy abundance and thus on economic and social development, poverty eradication and energy security.^xix 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 0.72% of global emissions any further emission reduction it makes (even to zero) would make no perceptible difference to the global position.^xx

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 GuenierJanuary 2025

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 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

vhttp://tiny.cc/b9qtzz

vi 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

viihttps://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: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yg1471rwpo

ix 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.

x This report on CCS is useful: https://www.iisd.org/articles/insight/unpacking-carbon-capture-storage-technology And this article is interesting: http://tiny.cc/psp7001 Re hydrogen see this: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-2-14-when-you-crunch-the-numbers-green-hydrogen-is-a-non-starter.

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

xii 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

xiii For current international price comparisons go to p. 22 here: http://tiny.cc/xan6001 Note that industrial electricity prices are well above those of international competition – and that’s not because of gas prices which are about average (p. 23).

xivhttps://www.dw.com/en/the-eus-risky-dependency-on-critical-chinese-metals/a-61462687 and https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/dependency-china-critical-minerals-dangerous

xv See for example http://tiny.cc/3lhezz and http://tiny.cc/gtazzz. 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

xvihttp://tiny.cc/chg5001

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

xviii 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

xix 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.)

xx 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