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 the case whether or not human caused greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to a rise in global temperature.

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 and aviation, the military and emergency services and (ii) products such as cement and concrete, primary steel, plastics, nitrogen fertilisers, 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.

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 iii and large quantities of increasingly unavailable and expensive raw materials); and (iv) the intermittency of renewable energy (see 2 below).iv 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 the huge new data centres used in particular by rapidly expanding 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.v

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 vi 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.vii 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 health consequences threatening everyone and in particular the poor and vulnerable.viii

Net Zero’s most serious 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.ix The borrowing and taxes required for costs at this scale could destroy Britain’s credit standing and would put an impossible burden onto millions of households and businesses.

But Net Zero is already causing a serious 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.x 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 as back-up – can only make this worse. Unless urgent remedial action is taken, the government cannot possibly achieve its principal mission of increased economic growth. Worse than that, the UK could face economic collapse.

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.xi While impoverishing Britain, Net Zero would enrich China.xii

(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.xiii

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, as a positive step towards Net Zero as such action will increase global emissions. Yet efforts to ‘decarbonise’ the UK mean that’s what’s happening: it’s why we no longer produce key chemicals and, by closing our few remaining blast furnaces, will soon be unable to produce primary steel.xiv

(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.xv As a result, global emissions are increasing (by 62% since 1990) and are set to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. The UK is the source of less than 1% of global emissions – so any further emission reduction it may achieve would essentially have no impact on the global position.xvi

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:

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: 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 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

v 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).

vi 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.

vii 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).

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

ix The National Grid 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

x 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.

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

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

xiii 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

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

xv 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.)

xvi 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

35 Comments

  1. I’ve updated this yet again (1) take account of David Turver’s recent article and (2) to try to comply with John C’s excellent advice to make it more legible. I hope I’ve succeeded.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Hello Robin, I have just read through once slowly, and my immediate reaction was that the text is now much easier to read because it is easier on the eye. Well done.

    Two minor points I hope you can clarify for me when you wrote, “… a comprehensive non-fossil transition network and of providing a back-up for gas-fired power plants”.

    (1) Did you mean “… back-up OF gas-fired power plants”?

    (2) Please could you say a little more about the “non-fossil fuel transition network” for my elucidation. Do you mean an electricity Grid converted so as to be fit for a large number of renewable generation systems up and down the country and near the sea lanes?

    It is late so apologies if I have misread or failed to grasp the import of what you have written.

    Regards, John C.

    Like

  4. “Britons urged to dig out unwanted electricals to tackle copper shortage

    Items such as cables and old tech could contain £266m worth of metal vital for decarbonisation drive, study finds”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/08/britons-urged-to-dig-out-unwanted-electricals-to-tackle-copper-shortage

    Scientists have called for people to go “urban mining” after a study revealed that old cables, phone chargers and other unused electrical goods thrown away or stored in cupboards or drawers could stave off a looming shortage of copper.

    The research found that in the UK there are approximately 823m unused or broken tech items hiding in “drawers of doom” containing as much as 38,449 tonnes of copper – including 627m cables – enough to provide 30% of the copper needed for the UK’s planned transition to a decarbonised electricity grid by 2030.

    Copper is essential in the drive to decarbonise the economy – being a crucial element of solar and wind developments as well as electric cars....

    …“We need to start ‘urban mining’ and help protect the planet and nature from the harmful impacts of mining for raw materials and instead value and use what we have already.”…

    An interesting admission there that “green” policies are environmentally damaging. And also an explicit admission that the “decarbonisation” of the electricity grid by 2030 is dependent on something that is in short supply (and which, therefore, even if enough of it can be acquired, will be expensive).

    Like

  5. Thanks John C. Regarding your two points:

    (1) Yes I did mean ‘for gas-fired power plants’. Here’s the entire sentence:

    ‘The additional costs referred to elsewhere in this essay – for example the costs of establishing a comprehensive non-fossil transition network and of providing a back-up for gas-fired power plants – can only make this worse.’

    (2) When I mentioned the ‘non-fossil fuel transition network’ I was referring back to the second paragraph of my item 1 where I mentioned:

    ‘the complex engineering and cost challenges of establishing a stable, reliable, comprehensive non-fossil fuel grid by 2030’

    Perhaps it would be clearer if I simply substituted the word ‘grid’ for ‘transition network’?

    Liked by 1 person

  7. What a pity our know-it-all, hubristic, morally superior, highly-paid global-class elites are completely incapable of thinking through these issues like this.

    Like

  8. Robin; the article is excellent – should be required reading for Milliband’s crew though it would tax their comprehension.

    One trivial quibble…..shouldn’t “back-up for gas-fired power plants” be “back-up OF gas-fired power plants“? As is, it reads – to me at least – as meaning the cost of backing up the gas plants when their role will be to provide back-up for unreliable wind etc.

    Like

  9. Thanks MikeH.

    As for ‘back-up for’ vs, ‘back-up of’ see my reply to John C at 8:10 this morning.

    Like

  10. Robin: now I am puzzled. So, when you say “‘The additional costs referred to elsewhere in this essay – for example the costs of establishing a comprehensive non-fossil transition network and of providing a back-up for gas-fired power plants – can only make this worse.’” you mean that there will a requirement – and hence extra costs – to back up the gas plants? I didn’t realise that was an issue. I thought gas plants were the back-up?

    Like

  11. Ha – you’re right to be puzzled Mike: the proposed gas-fired plants are indeed the back-up. I was referring to the proposed CCS units that are supposed to make the gas-fired plants ‘clean’. Looks as though another amendment is required:

    ‘and of providing gas-fired power plants as back-up’.

    Thanks for pointing this out. And apologies to John C who also noticed this : (

    Like

  13. From the FT (paywalled):

    The world’s renewable energy potential is gridlocked
    Transmission lines and energy storage solutions need to be deployed much faster

    Oh dear.

    Like

  14. No it isn’t April Fools Day:

    “Anger at UK’s ‘bonkers’ plan to reach net zero by importing fuel from North Korea

    government criticised over list of potential countries for sourcing biomass, which also includes Afghanistan”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/09/anger-uk-plan-net-zero-import-biomass-fuel-north-korea

    …As well as being unclear whether such a large volume of biomass would be available to the UK, the model does not attempt to explain how existing deforestation problems in countries such as Brazil or the lack of transparency in a dictatorship such as North Korea would comply with sustainability rules.

    More fundamentally, Booth questioned the model’s assumption that bioenergy can actually limit greenhouse gas emissions.…

    Liked by 2 people

  15. So let me get this straight. We can’t extract or burn the trillions of toms of prehistoric biomass lying just beneath our feet, under British soil, but we can import fresh grown biomass from foreign dictatorships, totalitarian regimes and assorted other countries actively and seriously violating human rights, is that it?

    Liked by 3 people

  17. “Ed Miliband unlocks billions to build giant dams across Britain”

    Energy Minister Michael Shanks said: “We need to increase our ability to store energy for when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing.”

    Paywalled Telegraph link.

    Like

  18. Clean energy shift to trigger dam-building boom across Highlands

    Clean energy shift to trigger dam-building boom across Highlands

    Planned and operational pumped hydro storage schemes:

    A number of schemes are centred around Loch Ness, where critics say the projects will damage the local environment. 

    Brian Shaw, river director of the Ness District Salmon Fishery Board, said: “In places such as Loch Ness, this scale of pump storage hydro will overrun natural ecological processes, destroy the loch and surrounding ecosystems’ biodiversity, and devalue one of Scotland’s premier tourism destinations, all in the quest for not-so-cheap electricity.”

    Mad Miliband’s Loch Ness monstrosities.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Jit – just posted the same over on Open Mic. For some reason I have access to the article.

    Partial quote –

    “In a bid to strengthen the country’s energy storage capabilities, the Energy Secretary has approved a scheme that will provide a financial safety net for dam developers. The proposal has been approved to encourage a spate of new dam projects across England and Scotland, which will be used to store backup hydropower for times when wind and solar farms cannot meet electricity demand. The eventual cost of supporting such projects will be added to consumer bills, with Mr Miliband introducing the backstop to help developers make a profit.”

    Truth be told, I always thought UK needed more Dams/reservoir’s just to have fresh water for a growing population to better control the catch & release of downpours we have.

    Only problem with this scheme is that It’s all driven by “energy storage capabilities”.

    So lots in Scotland I bet & no help for water shortages in southern England.

    Like

  21. Ben Pile has a good piece in this morning’s Daily Sceptic:

    Climate Change Committee Appoints Humanities Graduate as CEO

    Considering the appointment of Emma Pinchbeck as CEO of the Climate Change Committee, Ben reviews how in today’s mad climate world low calibre but committed idealists instead of practical hands-on experts get appointed to key jobs where qualified experience should be all that matters.

    Here’s Ben:

    Engineers play second-fiddle to PR fluffers because no part of the Green Blob ever had any idea about how emissions reduction targets could be achieved. And this is because environmentalism requires radical social reorganisation more than it is concerned with “saving the planet”.

    The problem being … that nobody knows how to achieve CCA/Net Zero targets, and in their haste, the so-called “independent” panel of “experts”, who are in fact merely zealots and chancers, have blustered or simply lied to Parliament to drive the agenda on.

    His conclusion:

    The chorus of Green Blob wonks may well be cheering her on, but Pinchbeck is not equal to the task ahead of her. MPs, lobbied to exhaustion by that blob, voted to defer responsibility for the parameters of climate policy to the CCC back in the 2000s; by the same token they pass the blame for the failure of the green agenda and its false promises. In that time, the CCA’s ambition has been raised from 80% emissions reduction to Net Zero, and “clean power by 2030” and “lower bills” have been promised, too. These promises, like all green promises, will fail. The CCC, hitherto unknown to most people, is soon going to be the most hated quango in Britain.

    Worth reading in full.

    Like

  22. If Daily Sceptic actually want to influence people, they should stop paywalling articles and thereby deterring the casual reader.

    Liked by 3 people

  23. Jit – I agree. That’s why when I refer to a DS article I usually quote chunks of what the author says.

    Like

  24. It used to be the case that Budgets unravelled a day or so after being delivered once the detail was scrutinised, as chancellors such as Gordon Brown (stealth taxes) or George Osborne (Pasty-Gate) found out to their embarrassment. 

    But Labour has promised us “change”, so in its own farcical incompetent way Reeves’s first Budget is unravelling before it is even delivered.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/rachel-reeves-budget-tax-policies-dont-work-in-real-world/

    LOL.

    I wonder if the planned tax raid on North Sea oil and gas will be delayed/cancelled? If so, expect the Net Zero Absolutists to throw a wobbly. More soup.

    Like

  25. Jaime; even if they do back away from the tax raid, the damage has already been done. By failing to support existing licence applications, banning any new ones and talking of higher taxes they have shown themselves to be untrustworthy and implacably hostile to the O & G industry. Whatever they say now, that can’t be undone: they’ve screwed our domestic industry and condemned us to increased imports, job losses, lower tax revenues, weaker energy security, etc..

    They’ve got this investment beanfest coming up….if I was attending, my first question would be: “Why should invest when you will, sooner or later, tax any returns to death?”

    Liked by 2 people

  27. MikeH – “Why should we invest when you will, sooner or later, tax any returns to death?” – exactly my thinking.

    Never owned/run a business. but if you employ under 10/20? people in UK today, seems to me not worth it by the time labour costs/tax/NI etc eat away any profit for the owner.

    Like

  28. Mark – thanks for that scary future, sure ED is a AI bot & has it all figured out.

    Like

  29. Fraser Myers has a good article in Spiked this morning:

    The madness of Ed Miliband
    Why Labour’s Net Zero secretary is the most dangerous man in British politics.

    Nothing there we don’t know – but he puts it well.

    Liked by 1 person

  30. Fraser Myers got it wrong when he said: ‘Under his [Miliband’s] 2030 target, gas will be phased out almost entirely from the grid, even as backup.’ In fact it seems that, amazingly, his backup ‘solution’ is to use gas-fired power stations fitted with expensive, controversial and commercially unproven carbon capture.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. Another good analysis from David Turver:

    “Open AI Wants to Build Data Centres That Would Consume More Electricity Per Year Than the Whole of the U.K.”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2024/10/14/open-ai-wants-to-build-data-centres-that-would-consume-more-electricity-per-year-than-the-whole-of-the-u-k/

    His concluding section:

    ...Clearly, AI energy demand is going to be huge and if we want to compete in this new industry, we are going to need cheap, reliable and abundant energy. However, the plans for U.K. electricity use in 2050 are tiny by comparison. The Royal Society assumed 570TWh of annual demand in its report on long term storage. In their latest FES report, the NG ESO assumed a total 615-719TWh of demand across Industrial & Commercial, Residential and Transport sectors in their pathways that achieve Net Zero by 2050. The RS report relies solely on wind and solar renewables plus hydrogen storage whereas the FES report supplements renewables with BECCS, gas with carbon capture, together with some nuclear and hydrogen. It is easy to see how the AI revolution could consume an extremely high proportion, or even all the electricity that is being planned for 2050. It is difficult to see how there is going to be enough electricity to go around.

    We are already way off-track to deliver the renewables capacity for both Labour’s 2030 target and the Royal Society’s 2050 plan. There is precious little chance of accelerating delivery to meet electricity demand that might easily be twice the current estimates. Of course, they are also relying upon what they euphemistically call Demand Side Response, otherwise known as turning off companies and domestic appliances at times of high demand or in plain terms energy rationing. A rickety power system where data centres can be turned off at short notice (even if they are paid to do so) will not be robust enough for the AI industry, which is why so many of them are talking about nuclear power. However, only last week we learned that an appointee to the DESNZ Board of Commissioners is actively opposed to nuclear power.

    This all puts in doubt Blackstone’s recently agreed deal to invest £10 billion in a new data centre complex in Blyth. With the Government recently announcing we have the most expensive industrial electricity costs of the 28 countries covered by the IEA, there has to be a significant risk that the project does not go ahead. Remember, the same Blyth site was once earmarked to manufacture energy-intensive EV batteries and that deal fell through.

    We can see that plans for expensive, scarce energy are not only damaging existing industries, they are also hampering our ability to compete to host the industries of the future. We need to radically change our energy policy before it is too late. As the Amazon and Microsoft investments demonstrate, nuclear needs to play a much bigger role in our future energy mix. We need much more of it and we need it now.

    Like

  32. David Turver is as usual dead right. Yet, according to Kate Andrews, the Spectator’s economics editor, writing today about the Government’s Investment Summit: ‘The good news, including a combined investment of £6.3 billion from four US technology firms to expand data-centre infrastructure in Britain – is rolling in.’ I wonder what happened to Blackstone’s £10 billion ‘deal’? Yet £6.3 billion is a lot of dosh – are these four investors not concerned about the cost and unreliability of our electricity?

    Like

  33. “…are these four investors not concerned about the cost and unreliability of our electricity?”

    If they’re not, then I’m glad that I don’t have any money invested with them!

    Like

  34. Tech companies are going to locate their datacentres where electricity is cheap. The latency from here to the east coast of the U.S. is a trivial 100 ms, for example. They may need to locate here when there are data protection issues at hand, i.e. to prevent personal data from crossing national boundaries.

    By which I mean David Turver’s analysis is a little off-beam. There may not be enough electricity for the AI companies. But they won’t be coming here anyway, unless they have to.

    Like

  35. But Jit, if the Spectator’s economics editor got it right (see above) when she reported that four US technology firms agreed at the Government’s Investment Summit to invest £6.3 billion to expand data-centre infrastructure in Britain, it would seem that some AI (or AI related) companies are coming here. That would appear to be very foolish – but there you are.

    Like

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