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 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 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

Wind is our most effective source of renewable electricity – because of our latitude solar makes only a small contribution. Nonetheless wind has significant problems: (i) the substantial costs of subsidising, building, operating and maintaining 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 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 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

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 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, it’s impossible to produce an accurate estimate of overall cost; but, with several trillion pounds a likely estimate, it could well 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 of the economy’s many current problems^xiii, could further jeopardise Britain’s vulnerable international credit standing and threaten its 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.^xiv The additional costs referred to elsewhere in this essay – for example the costs of establishing a 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. 

Continuing to pursue Net Zero would have two other dire consequences:

(i) Our already dangerous reliance on other countries would worsen. For example, the closure of North Sea oil and gas means that the UK, already at risk from the potential sabotage of or attack on offshore wind turbines, is increasingly dependent on similarly vulnerable undersea cables^xv and on uncertain imports of natural gas. Moreover, our current damaging dependence on China is being exacerbated by its effective control of the supply of key materials, such as lithium, cobalt, aluminium, processed graphite, nickel, copper and so-called rare earths, without which renewables cannot be manufactured.^xvi All this is putting our energy and overall national security at most serious risk.

(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.^xvii 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 factories in South East Asia (especially in China), commonly with poor environmental regulation and often powered by coal-fired electricity – thereby increasing global GHG 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 chemicals and fertiliser industries face extinction^xviii and why, the likely closure of our few remaining blast furnaces means that we may soon be unable to produce commercially viable primary steel (see endnote 3). These concerns are true also of most of the machines and other products listed in the first paragraph of item 1 above.^xix It means that Britain, instead of manufacturing key products, is having to import them from around the world. As the purpose of Net Zero is GHG reduction, it’s senseless.

(ii) The USA^xx plus most major 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.^xxi 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 perceptible difference to the global position.^xxii

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 GuenierApril 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

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: 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 These reports on CCS are useful: http://tiny.cc/emi9001 and http://tiny.cc/1lm9001 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 cause 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 An interesting summary here: http://tiny.cc/nli9001

xiv For international price comparisons go to p. 22 here: http://tiny.cc/xan6001 Note that the UK’s industrial electricity prices are well above those of international competition – and that’s not because of gas prices which are about average (p. 23) and are in any case applicable to the competition. Note also how gas prices have fallen recently here: http://tiny.cc/gouf001

xv For examples of vulnerability concerns see these: http://tiny.cc/9ruf001 and http://tiny.cc/xau9001 Also this essay (‘Defence and the retreat from net zero’) by Dieter Helm (Professor of Economic Policy at Oxford) is relevant re vulnerability and many of the other issues referred to in this essay: http://tiny.cc/dtyf001

xvihttp://tiny.cc/6nm9001 and https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/dependency-china-critical-minerals-dangerous

xvii 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.

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

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

xx 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

xxi 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.)

xxii This comprehensive analysis, based on an EU Commission database and updated annually, 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