Paul Homewood recently reported on the House of Lords debate on Net Zero initiated by former Conservative MP Lord Lilley. Paul reports at length on Peter Lilley’s thoughtful and intelligent speech, and it is pleasing that the costs of net zero are at last being discussed in Parliament. Having discussed what passed for a debate on the Sixth Allocation Round (AR6) of the Contracts for Difference process in the House of Commons in A Puny Performance, a truly depressing experience, I hoped for something better from the members of the “upper” House. After all, one of the justifications usually put forward for our unelected, unrepresentative and thoroughly undemocratic second chamber is that it is full of people with experience, talent, skills and useful qualifications. The House of Lords Appointments Commission, whose job it is to supervise appointments to the independent cross benches, seeks to “add to the breadth of experience and expertise that already exists within the House of Lords, and also help ensure the House fully represents diversity within our country.” One might hope that the reference to diversity includes a diversity of opinions. Alas, so far as concerns this debate, it was something of a curate’s egg – only good in parts.

The debate featured twenty two members of the upper house, Lord Lilley included, and lasted for around two hours. Allowing for the fact that Lord Lilley both commenced and wound up the debate, this means that contributions were limited to little more than five minutes per speaker. Given that the purpose was supposed to be (per Lord Lilley) to “have an honest, frank, well-informed debate comparing the costs of action with the benefits of action”, there seemed to be little appetite on the part of the supporters of net zero for discussing, or even acknowledging, the costs of action, with much of the focus being on the supposed costs of inaction. None of this recognised the reality that the costs of inaction are zero, since nothing the UK does can influence the climate in the slightest, while the costs of action are both very real and very substantial.

Lord Lilley

I won’t repeat Lord Lilley’s speech, but I urge you to read it. In summary, his key points were broadly as follows:

Britain has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions more than any other major economy. They are now back to 1879 levels.

Britain has more offshore wind power than any country other than China, and lots of other renewable energy sources too.

Despite (or because of) this, British industry pays the highest electricity prices in Europe. In the two decades up to the start of the Ukraine war they doubled in real terms, while real gas prices remained largely unchanged.

We are losing vital industries and jobs. We import more and more energy-intensive goods.

Exporting manufacturing industry simply exports our emissions. Consequently, the real reduction in our “carbon footprint” is much less than the reported reduction.

The new government plans to accelerate the move to net zero, regardless of cost, to prevent North Sea exploration while importing oil and gas, and to ignore the impact of this on energy costs, growth and jobs.

Six succinct points, readily understandable, that should form the central aspect of the debate. Regrettably, they didn’t.

What follows is a note or two regarding the response to it. A response from 21 only of the 804 sitting members, with 782 of them not bothering to participate in the debate at all.

Lord Davies of Brixton

The first response was from Lord Davies of Brixton. He is an actuary by profession, and was made a Baron in the Dissolution Peerages 2019 by the Leader of the Labour Party at the time, Jeremy Corbyn. He made his maiden speech on 25 November 2020.

The Institute of Actuaries has produced a statement on climate change, which commences thus:

The IFoA recognises that the climate is changing globally at an unprecedented rate as a result of human activity. This change presents ecological, social, economic and financial risks. The potential impacts of climate change are global and systemic. As well as highly disruptive physical changes there are significant implications for the entire financial system.

We are a profession specialising in risk management, and climate change is one of the greatest risks facing our world today. Mitigating this risk is urgent. Future outcomes are uncertain, but the best value insurance premium that society can pay is to reduce our emissions today in order to avoid the irreversible consequences of unmitigated climate change tomorrow.

The IFoA supports the aim of the Paris Agreement to limit climate change to an increase of substantially under 2C from pre-industrial temperatures and recognises that in order for there to be a reasonable probability of achieving this aim there must be a transition to a global economy that has no net greenhouse gas emissions (“net zero”) by 2050.

It’s difficult to see what special insights actuaries have to make statements like this, which strike me as doing no more than parrot the prevailing mantra. What the mantra doesn’t address is the cost of the UK’s net zero policies, and its complete ineffectiveness in the absence of global action to the same effect. Given that this was the thrust of Lord Lilley’s speech, and what he was trying to get the House of Lords to discuss, it’s disappointing to see Lord Davies effectively ignore the purpose of the debate and instead to push the view of his Institute:

I will not pursue the specific points that were made in the introductory speech. I will use the limited time available to me to highlight some excellent and important work that has been undertaken on climate change by the actuarial profession.

With all due respect, Lord Davies, you should have responded to the specific points made in the introductory speech. Banging on about the risks of climate change, how those risks may be worse than we thought (“the message is that we need to give greater weight in our assessment to worst-case scenarios”) doesn’t begin to answer Lord Lilley’s arguments.

Lord Browne of Madingley

Next up was Lord Browne of Madingley, former Chief Executive of BP. A “people’s peer”, he sits as a cross-bencher. Very properly he declared his numerous interests, which may be a bit surprising for someone who spent so much of his career with BP. He is Chairman of Beyond Net Zero (“General Atlantic’s Climate Growth Equity Fund”); chairman of Carbonplace, (which makes money out of carbon trading); a director of Equatic (which seeks to profit from carbon capture and the production of “green” hydrogen); a board member of the Institute for Carbon Management at the University of California, Los Angeles (“We are UCLA’s accelerator for breakthrough climate technologies”); and co-chair of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology. Not exactly disinterested, then, and consequently his comments were perhaps to be expected. I can’t see that he attempted to answer any of the points raised by Lord Lilley, preferring to make four separate but related points, which amounted to a demand for more government support for and accelerated progress towards net zero. No surprise there, then.

The Lord Bishop of St Alban’s

He was followed by the Lord Bishop of St Albans. It’s difficult to know what to make of his contribution. He stressed the need to take climate change extremely seriously; he commended the last and current government for they steps they took and are taking; he supported Lord Lilley’s plea for open and transparent costs of net zero so that we can make informed choices; but then he went on to say that net zero will have positive economic impacts and will offset the negative impacts of climate change. No reference there to the need for global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. He concentrated his remarks on agriculture and made a plea for more money for farmers and protection of agricultural land, so as to preserve it for food production, while asking for more solar energy on rooftops and brownfield sites.

Lord Willetts

Lord Willetts was next up. He is a former Conservative MP, with a reputation for being an intellectual (which earned him the nick name “two brains”). He is President of the Resolution Foundation, and was elevated to the Lords in 2015. He wasn’t supportive of Lord Lilley, and his speech reads like a call for carbon taxes, with a sprinkling of “just transition” rhetoric (though he didn’t actually use those words). The closest he came to agreeing that the costs of net zero need to be considered was when he said: “The costs of adjustment are indeed high. We absolutely need rigorous economic analysis of what those costs are and who bears them.” Then he expressed a belief that net zero will bring enormous benefits – greater security of supply; much less exposure to the risks of volatile gas prices; in many cases lower operational costs, especially for motoring. He claimed “hundreds of billions of pounds of savings when we move to fundamentally lower-cost electric vehicles, powered by clean energy.” He didn’t address any of the points made by Lord Lilley.

Baroness May of Maidenhead

He was followed by another, and very well-known, former Tory MP (and former PM) – Baroness May of Maidenhead – who chose this occasion to make her maiden speech in the Lords. When I started writing, I intended to do no more than summarise the various speeches, but given that Baroness May is the architect of net zero, I feel I have to reproduce in full that part of her speech which deals with climate change and net zero. Clearly she remains convinced of the rightness of the cause, citing extreme claims, failing to deal with the costs question, and apparently believing that UK net zero can solve many of the world’s climate problems, even modern slavery and human trafficking:

…I view with deep concern the changes in our climate recently; 2023 was the hottest year in human history. Without action, we will see the frequency and severity of extreme weather events accelerating. The Amazon rainforest will become a carbon source, not a carbon sink. Some of those countries currently sitting around the Commonwealth Heads of Government table will simply cease to exist.

But I believe that there is good news and that we can reap economic benefit from dealing with climate change. The net zero review of 2023 indicated that dealing with the transition from fossil fuels to sustainability was the growth opportunity of the 21st century, estimating that we could see nearly half a million new green jobs here in the UK by 2030. McKinsey has estimated that dealing with providing goods and services for the global net-zero transition could bring £1 trillion to the UK economy by 2030.

I also believe there is a cost of inaction. As just one example, the Green Finance Institute has estimated that the degradation of our environment linked to climate could lead to a loss of 12% of our GDP. I also think that, if we look at this debate just as a matter of who has the biggest sterling figure on their side of the argument, we are missing something. There is a real human cost to climate change.

When extreme weather destroys homes and livelihoods, harvests fail and water supplies dry up, people are driven to destitution and desperation. In that destitution and desperation lies vulnerability, and particularly vulnerability to modern slavery and human trafficking. If the agriculture in a community fails year on year, parents are more likely to take the difficult, heartbreaking decision to let their sons and daughters move or be taken away to the promise of a better life—but in fact taken into slavery, forced into work from which they cannot escape, their freedom and human dignity cruelly taken from them. I believe that is an issue we simply cannot and must not ignore.

In looking at and dealing with climate change, I believe there is an economic benefit. It can bring jobs and prosperity, but it can also help us reduce vulnerability to modern slavery and human trafficking. I urge the Government and all across this House to recognise the need to deal with climate change to save our planet and to save our humanity.

Having thanked Lord Lilley for initiating the debate, she ignored the points he raised and parroted the usual mantra in response to them.

Lord Young of Cookham

Lord Young of Cookham followed, and was fulsome in his tribute to Baroness May (it took up the first seven paragraphs of his speech). He is another former Conservative MP, elevated to the House of Lords in 2015. His contribution to the net zero debate was to compare climate change (an existential threat, he said) with World War Two, and to say that we shouldn’t worry about the costs of dealing with it any more than we worried about the costs of fighting Hitler (I paraphrase slightly, but that’s basically it). In that context, he says, costs are secondary. “The primary question should be: how effective is the Government’s agenda in averting climate change?” Unfortunately he didn’t follow through on these musings. Had he done so it might have occurred to him that the answer is “completely ineffective”.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon is another Conservative peer, though this time not a former MP. He was made a life peer in 2011. His speech consisted of a tribute to Baroness May and to a lot of alarmism about climate change. He didn’t address any of the issues raised by Lord Lilley.

Lord Deben

He was followed by Lord Deben, yet another former Conservative MP (so much for diversity), and requiring no introduction to Cliscep readers. He declared his interest as former chairman of the Climate Change Committee, and launched his speech by saying that it’s dishonourable to take the attitude that we don’t have to do anything about climate change unless others do too – “every country could say that” (I have news for Lord Deben – most of them do). “If you believe in climate change and see it as an existential threat, you have to act.” I suppose that’s an inevitable mindset from the former chair of the Climate Change Committee, but it’s rather depressing to note that this is the level of debate. What is the point of acting if it won’t achieve anything (other than maintaining one’s honour)?

He said that others are following our lead (following the Glasgow COP “nations throughout the world have signed up to net zero and have begun to ratchet up what they are doing.). He said that the cost of inaction is huge, but didn’t explain how those costs are made up nor how they would be avoided as a result of the UK’s net zero policies if the rest of the world doesn’t follow suit.

He concluded with a delicious irony, saying that he is fed-up with people who cherry-pick the facts, before going on to cherry-pick facts himself. “The basic cost of gas today is £83 per megawatt hour; onshore and solar have just been agreed at £68 per megawatt hour and offshore at £80 per megawatt hour, so already it is clearly lower, and that is with gas not at its highest price.” He said it’s all laid out in Climate Change Committee documents and Lord Lilley should read them. He didn’t explain why, if this is right, with existing high levels of renewable energy in the UK system, the UK’s electricity is the most expensive in the world among developed countries. He didn’t address the ignored costs associated with renewable energy, which add massively to its costs, but which are ignored by the Levelised Cost of Electricity calculation. Nor did he mention the massively high prices awarded to tidal energy projects and to floating offshore wind in the AR6 round. That’s what I call cherry-picking.

Lord Frost

Interestingly, he was followed by Lord Frost (who declared his trusteeship of the Global Warming Policy Foundation). He started with what for us sceptics was an upbeat note:

I think the net zero consensus is beginning to crumble. In my view, we are not in a climate emergency. Climate change is a challenge we can meet; it is not one that requires us to upend our entire economy and way of life.

He said there are six fallacies in the net zero argument.

First, the broken window fallacy. Spending money on a glazier to repair a broken window is money well-spent, to the extent that it gets you your window back, but it doesn’t make you better off. But what we are doing is making us worse off. The new asset – rickety and expensive renewables – is worse than the old one, representing a massive reduction in productive capacity.

Second, that it will be all right on the night. Interconnectors will work, and those we rely on to send us their energy will never put their interests before ours. We will solve the storage problem, somehow. And so on.

Third, self-deception, most obviously on prices and costs. Renewables are not getting cheaper, some are very expensive. Existing CfD-funded offshore wind farms have cost us £150 per Mwh this year. Projects in AR6 awarded £80 per hour compare badly to the current market price of £60 per hour. Renewables figures ignore the subsidy, they ignore the need for back-up and storage. A child can see that it’s not cheaper to build a renewables grid with back-up than just to build the back-up and forget about the renewables.

Fourth, that jobs are a benefit, not a cost. If renewable energy requires many more people, how is that enhancing our productivity?

Fifth, the infinite availability of resources fallacy:

In this world, in the net zero world, there is always lots of capital waiting to be used; we always have enough workers; there are no linkages or timing problems for proper sequencing; foreigners are always willing to lend to the UK; and UK consumers are always happy to save instead of consuming. Massive projects, such as insulating every home in the UK or doubling the capacity of the energy grid, can be undertaken apparently without any resource constraints or knock-on effects in the wider economy. To put it charitably, that is not a realistic depiction of the world in which we live.

Finally, the industrial policy fallacy, that government knows best. Economic theory tells us that allowing the government to pick the projects and the technologies will be a drag on the economy.

His conclusion:

I would have more sympathy with net-zero proponents if, as some have been today, they were honest about this. If they said, “This is going to cost you, but we have to do it anyway”, at least it would focus minds and we could have a real debate about whether the ends justify the means and not the fantasy debate that we are currently in, where everything is for the best and everything will turn out right.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

A greater change of emphasis can scarcely be imagined than following that analysis with Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, a Green Party representative (and one-time party leader) elevated to the House of Lords by none other than Baroness May in her resignation honours list.

She commenced by commenting on the external costs of energy sources, and claimed (as Lord Willetts did) that fossil fuels have great external costs (she said they are costing us the earth). She claimed that the ending of AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) , giving us a Scandinavian climate, as a result of burning fossil fuels, would mean that fossil fuels weren’t cheap at all.

She acknowledged Lord Lilley’s point about territorial versus consumption emissions, but didn’t explain how exporting jobs and industry would address that issue.

She said we should stop being so concerned about growth – in a finite world we couldn’t have infinite growth, and we are now in a post-growth world. Which sounds to me like an admission that the Greens aren’t concerned about making the cake bigger, merely redistributing a shrinking cake (read her speech, and you may conclude that this is indeed what she believes). She blames ill-health on fossil fuels, and says that renewable energy will help address the nation’s health woes. Then she claimed that childhood obesity, poor diet and a broken food system are based on fossil fuels. We should be looking for “zero carbon”by the early 2030s, for the well-being and prosperity of our nation, that we need to ensure that we have well-paid and secure jobs and a just transition. She didn’t explain how we achieve this with more expensive and unreliable energy, and with agricultural land given over to solar farms.

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

She was followed by Baroness McIntosh of Pickering, yet another former Tory MP, who has been in the Lords since 2015. She injected a note of realism, and in many ways reiterated the points made by the Bishop of St Albans, making a plea for rural and agricultural areas. She argued that a global approach is necessary to dealing with climate change, failing which “progress will be slow, and it could serve potentially only to penalise our own industry and households.” A reality check would be welcome.

Rushing to ban the sale of all cars except electric ones by 2030 will be problematic in rural areas where charging points are scarce. In such areas, range anxiety is a particular problem. Renewable energy is often generated far from where it is needed, and has to be transported through ugly, intrusive pylons. There is hostility to this. Energy should be generated closer to where it is needed. We need to be more self-sufficient in food. “The climate agenda should work just as well for rural areas as for urban ones. It should not undermine food production, jobs, growth and prosperity in rural communities, as it currently appears to do.”

Lord Moynihan of Chelsea

Lord Moynihan of Chelsea followed. He was appointed to the Lords by Liz Truss in her resignation honours list. He took issue with Lord Davies of Brixton, and claimed that it is time we stop basing policy on the precautionary principle. He wondered why there has been no impact assessment with regard to the introduction of net zero in law. He speculated that it might ne because net zero is a religion, not a logical decision. Amazon and Microsoft have carried out impact assessments, and concluded that they need nuclear power rather than renewables.

He referred to Lord (Craig) Mackinlay, who has pointed out that in 2019 the Climate Change Committee estimated the cost of net zero as being £50 billion per annum, since raised to £70 billion. The Office for Budget Responsibility put the cost at £1.4 trillion, which is £56 billion every year until 2050. But that was five years ago, and today costs vary between that £1.4 trillion and £8 or £9 trillion. Whatever the cost, it will beggar the country. The Chancellor is alarmed about a £20 billion black hole, but here we are talking about speculative expenditure of thousands of billions of pounds. We should therefore have a high level of certainty that net zero is going to work, but we don’t.

There are lots of ways in which it could fail. If the net zero carbon models are wrong, the entire cost will have been wasted. If the rest of the world doesn’t follow (and it isn’t) we will beggar ourselves while making a pinprick in levels of emissions. If we overload the grid, we will have brownouts, blackouts, and a shrinking economy. If the optimistic forecasts of falling costs of renewables are wrong, or if there are more windless days than forecast, then the costs of the project will dramatically and unaffordably escalate. What if there is a war or a Europe-wide energy crisis? “Probability theory tells us, therefore, that 2050 net zero will, in the end, never come to pass. Like some religiously motivated children’s crusade, it will never arrive at its intended destination, but there will be plenty of misery along the road.”

To conclude, sooner or later the net-zero programme will come to be seen as having been a tragic cul-de-sac. The longer we take to conclude that, the worse it will be for our economy. We owe it to our country to end this misguided, ultimately catastrophic programme as soon as possible.

Lord Randall of Uxbridge

Lord Randall of Uxbridge was up next, yet another former Tory MP, elevated to the Lords in 2018. He threw Lord Lilley a bone by telling him he agreed with him about Drax Power Station, but then declared his interest as a member of Peers for the Planet, (“the House of Lords Climate and Nature Action Group”). He worries about climate change and acknowledges that doing something about it involves things that are “inconvenient”. He feels guilty about flying so much. We might not be able to make a huge difference, but we can be good neighbours and give an example to others. We have to have the debate, because we need to let people know what we are letting ourselves in for.

All very worthy and very nice, but also I fear very anodyne, and nowhere near addressing the points made by Lord Lilley.

Baroness Hayman

Baroness Hayman, a former Labour MP, was up next. She declared her interest as Chair of Peers for the Planet (mentioned above). She talked of the existential challenge of climate change, acknowledged that net zero involves “big numbers”, but asserted that they are not as big as the numbers involved if we don’t do anything, invoking the Stern Review and claiming that there is a cost to inaction as there is a cost to action.

There followed a lot of what I regard as wishful thinking. The problem with saying that we have to do something is that it ignores the prospect of what happens if we take expensive action and others don’t? In that scenario, it seems to me that we incur both the costs of action and the costs of inaction, but Baroness Hayman doesn’t seem to think like that. She praised China’s renewables growth, said we shouldn’t underestimate the power of government to unleash new economic opportunities by providing incentives and consistent policy frameworks, and concluded that we shouldn’t underestimate how globally influential we can be in this area:

I conclude by saying that I have always believed that this country’s contribution to fighting climate change will be measured not only in the quantity of the emissions we reduce but mainly in the quality of the leadership that we provide. I hope this Government will continue that leadership.

I conclude by regarding that as an expression of pious hopes that failed to deal with Lord Lilley’s arguments.

Lord Lucas

Lord Lucas, one of the remaining hereditary peers allowed to remain in the Lords, was next. He disagreed with much that Lord Moynihan said, but did agree with him on the precautionary principle, and accused actuaries of having made a huge mess of our pensions system.

Perhaps it’s a failing on my part, but I struggle to understand where he stands on net zero. He said he would like to see more red-teaming in the context of climate change science. He said he bristles when he hears about scientific consensus. “Science is not about consensus; it is about disagreement and challenge. By and large, we have done a pretty good job on that. Where I think we have failed is on net zero.” Which sounds pretty sceptical, but then he said the failing is that “we are not being open about what lies in front of us—we are not taking people with us.…We are a long way away from 2050. How we think we are going to get there will change every year, but we need to be telling that story openly and I really hope that that is something the Government will set their mind to.” I read that as an acceptance of the need to achieve net zero by 2050, but with a plea for more honesty about what will be involved.

He seemed to accept that we will still need fossil fuels for some things – chemical industries, jet fuel – and urged an audit of where available resources are so that we will have them when we need them. He said we should make more use of nuclear fuel. He said that we need to eradicate technological pinch points and put more money into research.

I can’t see that he really got to grips with the points raised by Lord Lilley.

The Earl of Leicester

The Earl of Leicester spoke next. He is an hereditary peer affiliated to the Conservative Party, and he sits in the House of Lords by dint of winning a by-election in 2021 to fill a vacancy among the hereditary peers who still sit in the Lords by virtue of Tony Blair’s botched reform.

He referred to his interests as a large landowner in Norfolk, and mentioned how he has installed various types of renewable energy (except wind) on his land over the last three decades. He said he did this before such things received subsidies, and he did it on economic grounds. His estate aims to be net zero by 2035 and “carbon negative” by 2040. Despite this, he expressed reservations about the Government’s dash to “decarbonise” the grid by 2030:

To put it bluntly, in less than three months it will be 2025. From that point onwards, the Government will have five years to radically transform the entire energy supply sector of our economy to be completely carbon free by 2030. Once again, I reiterate that I am a supporter of the transition to a greener future. However, I am also a realist. To believe that this transformation can occur in a mere five years, without having a crippling impact on various facets of our economy, is bordering on delusion.

He also acknowledged that “when renewables are used to replace fossil fuels, the price of electricity goes up” and pointed to the German “energiewende” as an example of this. He also referred to California:

…the home of US renewable power supplies, [where] progressive policies such as these have increased prices at a rate which is five times faster than the rest of the United States. I wonder whether the Government have considered such case studies when formulating their decarbonisation targets. Can our economy, which is already under significant strain, afford for such additional pressures within the next five years?

He approves of renewable energy in principle, but pointed out that its intermittency is a problem. It hasn’t been too much of a problem to date, he said, because we still rely on a baseload of fossil fuel, but it will be a problem when we longer do that. The cost of batteries would have to fall by 90% for them to offer a viable solution to the storage problem, but he can’t see that happening in the Government’s timescales.

The National Grid is warning of blackouts in the south-east of England by 2028. The government’s plans, if they are to be achieved while keeping the lights on, will involve “an unbelievable financial cost”. He doubts that our economy has the capacity for such spending. Decarbonisation by deindustrialisation will have a direct, detrimental impact on our economy. Jobs are being lost, and will continue to be lost. He concluded:

Let us be clear: these actions will not move the dial on global carbon reduction.

In many ways, I think this was the best speech of the day. A renewables enthusiast, he nevertheless recognises the problems and costs associated with the government’s timetable, and also recognises that unless the rest of the world emulates our actions, it will make no difference whatsoever to “global carbon reduction”.

Lord Strathcarron

Lord Strathcarron followed and spoke in similar vein. He is another hereditary peer who is allowed to sit having been elected by his peers in December 2021. He set his stall out from the beginning:

The main impact of the Government’s climate agenda is to import pollution and to export jobs, growth and prosperity, and the two are directly linked.

Since 1990, he said, the UK’s share of CO2 emissions embedded in imports has risen form just over 10% to nearly 50%. We import almost half our emissions, which should give us pause for thought, yet we are moving in the opposite direction. Ceasing new oil and gas licences simply means we will have to import more. Fossil fuels are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Even the government admits that by 2040 demand for natural gas will have fallen by only 4%. So reduction in domestic sources means we offshore production and jobs, while increasing imports, which will have to be liquefied and shipped here – all adding to the “pollution” associated with using gas.

Ministers can stand up at international conferences and claim that domestic emissions have reduced, but this has been achieved by policies which have contributed to increasing global emissions. With responsibility for just 1% of global emissions it might be said that we can’t achieve much anyway, and the gesture is more important than the reality, but “it is a mighty counterproductive gesture with a direct, negative impact on our standard of living and quality of life.”

As for jobs, growth and prosperity, the net zero crusade (my words, not his) is having a detrimental effect on all three. We have the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world, and this is the direct result of the costs of subsidies, carbon pricing and the cost of renewables infrastructure. The OBR suggests that renewables subsidies alone will add £12 billion to our bills this year. It will get worse with future subsidies plus the £100 billion that will have to be spent upgrading the grid to cope with decarbonisation. In 2014 Mr Miliband promised a million green jobs, but official data shows just 40,000 in the low carbon sector. We have to offset job losses in the manufacturing sector, job losses which will continue. We now have the worst of all worlds – high taxes to pay for job losses.

He takes a less starry-eyed view of China than do some of his colleagues on the red benches:

The other great beneficiary of all this wishful thinking is China. It is now the world leader in two seemingly contradictory energy policies: green energy, by securing the global supply and demand lines for lithium-ion batteries, solar panels and wind farm components; and brown energy, by building the equivalent of two coal-powered power stations a week. However, the Chinese famously take much a longer-term view of events than we do.

He concluded by daring to issue heretical climate sceptic views:

…due to recent advances in paleoclimate science, we know that over the last 400 million years the earth’s climate has been changing constantly and often dramatically. Relatively speaking, we are now in one of its cooler periods—the late Cenozoic ice age—meaning that we are at the tail-end of a 50-million-year cooling period.

On our own continent, even very recently we can see climate change in action. In Roman times, it was far warmer than it is now, followed by a brutal cold period in the Dark Ages. Then came the medieval warm period, when vines were growing even in Scotland. That was followed most recently by an especially cold period called the “little ice age”, the coldest period in the last 10,000 years. The statement we heard today that 2023 was the hottest year on record is quite simply not true—far from it.

This long-term view of the earth’s climate changes puts the whole net-zero delusion into a much greater perspective. It suggests that we are taxing and bankrupting ourselves domestically for absolutely minimal global benefit, if any. This whole worldview of climate change should be the subject of another debate, and a very fruitful one it would be too.

Lord Inglewood

Lord Inglewood followed this tour de force. His home (which is rather grander than mine) isn’t too far from where I live in north Cumbria. He is a former Conservative politician, and another hereditary peer. I’m not sure what to make of his short and speech. He began and ended thus:

I believe that there is a real challenge from climate change and that, where one is facing a challenge, you have to do something about it….It is important that we all recognise that action is necessary, and it must be considered action. As I thought about it, it struck me that perhaps the most effective response of all to climate change was one of the earliest ones. When Noah was told that the world was going to be flooded, he did not sit and wait; he cut down gopher trees and built an ark, and thereby saved the world.

Not quite such a tour de force, in my respectful opinion.

Lord Oates

Lord Oates is a Liberal Democrat politician who was elevated to the Lords in 2015. He declared his interest as chief executive of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger. Having paid fulsome tribute to Baroness May (the architect of net zero) what followed was rather predictable. He agreed with Lord Lilley that we have to be honest about the costs of net zero, but then fell into the logical trap of talking about the costs of inaction, as though action taken by the UK in isolation could avoid incurring the costs of inaction. Patently it can’t, and this way we end up with the worst of all worlds – we incur the costs of both action and inaction. To be clear, that’s my view, not the view of Lord Oates.

He spoke at length about the existential threat associated with climate change, raising everything from hunger, disease, malnutrition, conflict and modern slavery. He claimed that crops are declining in volume and in nutritional value, which I find a bit odd given that global crop yields have never been higher as they have to be if we are to feed a global human population that has never been higher.

He denied that India, China and Africa are indifferent to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. He didn’t provide any data to back up this claim, but said that others will follow our leadership. He claimed that huge economic opportunities arise from leadership. He concluded by damning the realists:

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said that it was quite rich for those on this side of the argument to be accused of saying that it will be all right on the night. I fully agree with her. The noble Lords, Lord Lilley, Lord Frost and Lord Moynihan, and others, like to pose as the hard-headed realists in the face of starry-eyed idealists like me and others, I suppose. However, they are the fantasists. Because they do not like some of the things that we will need to do, some of which will be difficult, they pretend that this does not exist. The noble Lord, Lord Frost, says that he does not believe in the climate emergency. Well, I am afraid science does. We need to act—and act now—because, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, the longer we wait, the more it will cost.

Inevitably, I disagree. I think he is a starry-eyed fantasist. He doesn’t explain how global emissions are to be reduced. He doesn’t explain why decades of UK leadership have failed to reduce global emissions, and he fails to explain why the future should be any different. He fails to explain how we avoid the costs of climate change by taking unilateral action, if the rest of the world doesn’t follow. He avoided talking about the costs of net zero.

Lord Offord of Garvel

Lord Offord of Garvel is another Tory politician, and was made a life peer in 2021. He applauded the ambition to make Britain a clean energy superpower. He notes that the energy mission is “stated as being to cut bills, create jobs and deliver security with cheaper zero-carbon electricity by 2030, accelerating to net zero.” Net zero by 2050, he says, is to flip our power sources from 75% hydrocarbon and 25% renewables to 25% hydrocarbon and 75% renewables. Some days the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Because we still have high-intensity industries, we need to power them, and that means we still need hydrocarbons. We need to make it green. No flaring, green hydrogen, carbon capture, etc. “The technology will allow us to have the greenest hydrocarbon fuels in the world, thereby not relying on bringing in dirty fuel from elsewhere.” But he worries about government imposing the proportions arbitrarily. He worries about the 2030 target. He worries about the costs. He cites Cornwall Insight, and says:

…if the renewables are principally solar, onshore and offshore wind, they will provide 44% of UK electricity by 2030. That is the date that the Government have in mind, but 67% is required to fully decarbonise the electricity system. These are two quite different numbers, and Cornwall Insight calculates that it would cost a whopping extra £48 billion, on top of the £18 billion already committed, to achieve that target by 2030. The British taxpayers will ultimately bear that cost, through a combination of higher consumer bills and higher taxes.

He is concerned about the lack of a Treasury impact assessment. He worries about endangering jobs and prosperity. He talks about 220,000 jobs in the North Sea oil and gas sector, and the damaging impact of increasing levels of windfall tax: “As one American investor said to me recently, “We now consider west Africa a more stable and appealing investment environment than the UK”.” Labour’s proposed ban on new oil and gas licences has spooked producers. Delays in implementing existing licences are not in the interests of anyone, consumers or otherwise.

The issue is ideology -v- practicality:

Hydrocarbon companies have the key components of capital and people. If we accelerate the transition just for ideological purposes—just to say at conferences that we have brought our target forward by five years—and along the way we reduce capital in the system and make skilled people redundant, I am afraid we will not get the transition we all want. There will be no transition at all; it certainly will not be a just transition. It will result in needless job losses and project cost inflation to the great detriment of British consumers and taxpayers. Offshore Energies UK thinks that trajectory of shutting down the North Sea too early will result in 42,000 job losses, 25% of this critical and well-paid sector. So my second question for the Minister is: have DESNZ and the Treasury done any impact assessment on the jobs and prosperity to come from this ideological early acceleration of the North Sea transition?

He concludes that it’s all being rushed through for ideological reasons:

…my worry is that we need to be more practical in how we deliver the transition, and we also need to allow technologies to emerge. They will provide the answer to the question we are facing. We do not wish to become like a telecoms company in the 1990s installing infrastructure for phone boxes, landlines and fax machines. We need to be savvy and technologically aware.

Lord Hunt of King’s Heath

Lord Hunt is Minister of State at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and so he had the job of answering on behalf of the government. He was created a life peer in 1997. He praised Baroness May and the other speakers who queued up to defend net zero. He agrees that the consensus on net zero may be breaking down, and regards it as a great pity if the Conservative Party, under new leadership, retreated from the consensus. We can’t afford to slow down, we need to speed up. Inconsistent messaging is damaging to net zero. Climate change is a terrible threat and we have to act. As to the question why should we take the lead, his answer is why on earth not? (Which isn’t a terribly convincing answer, given that so many years of “leadership” have not led to others following). He notes that Lord Lilley is critical of the levelised cost calculation, but says “it does attempt to compare the costs of different generating technologies over different timescales: essentially, over the lifetime of the generator.” To which I would respond that this is true, but it doesn’t deal with the very proper criticism of a flawed comparison, that loads artificial costs onto fossil fuels, and ignores many of the costs associated with renewables and the problems their increasing use causes to the grid.

He repeated the flawed mantra that we have to afford the costs of net zero because the costs of not dealing with climate change will be even greater. I do find it quite remarkable that intelligent people can’t see that if other countries don’t also reduce their emissions, then all we in the UK are doing are adding the costs of trying and failing to stop climate change to the costs of coping with it (whatever it is) when it happens.

Remarkably he says he accepts that we will never be a leading manufacturer in all renewable technologies (so much for leading the way!) but that we “can assemble, and we are now assembling, many of those imports, so a lot of the value comes to British companies and workers.” I think that’s pretty thin gruel, and it doesn’t deal with the argument about increased emissions associated with importing renewables, steel, etc, rather than making them ourselves. He claims that around 640,000 people are employed in green jobs, a rise of 20% between 2020 and 2022, but he doesn’t say where those jobs are or what those people are doing. The argument about green jobs will no doubt run and run.

He may have had a better point when he talked about nuclear technology, though of course we in the UK are way off the pace here. This sounded like a cop-out:

I was asked a number of questions about the externality of carbon emissions. The UK prices emissions in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, but I will write to noble Lords with some of the details of that.

He made a number of other platitudinous points, but failed to deal with the costs question and failed to deal with issues relating to energy security (especially the contradiction between more renewable energy and need for energy security). He concluded with a consumate political statement:

We need decisive action on both climate change and energy security. We will have a big positive impact on jobs and prosperity. We must press on and we will.

Lord Lilley had the last word, and he did well. I particularly liked his comment on Lord Deben’s contribution:

…because he could not refute a word that I had said, he chose to criticise things that I had not said…The noble Lord did not respond to the points about why he needed to take costly legal action to prevent publication of the analysis that his committee had done on the cost of climate change avoidance in 2050. My general view is that when people do not want to publish facts it is because they think the facts are rather weak. I assume that is why he did not refer to them.

Conclusion

The title to this piece appears a little harsh, I think. Some at least of the speakers in the debate have thought about the issues, recognised the problems, and spoke articulately about them. The echo chamber, however, remains the establishment. Bizarrely, it’s the new establishment that is the problem. Ironically, perhaps, I think some of the best speeches were made by hereditary peers, and some of the worst by the professional political class, former MPs. Although the debate was of mixed quality, I think it was better than the debate on AR6 in the House of Commons. Quite what this says about the state of our democracy, I’m not sure, but it isn’t good. The reliance on belief, emotion, and fairy dust on the part of the new establishment is very concerning. Unfortunately, I suspect that only those who were motivated (one way or the other) to speak in the debate are interested in the subject, and the vast majority of their Lord- and Ladyships almost certainly accept the consensus and didn’t care sufficiently about the destructive nature of the government’s net zero plans to attend the debate. Which is a shame. Had they done so, they might have learned something.