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 pointless. And that’s true whether or not Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to increased global temperatures.
1. It’s unachievable.
1.1 A modern 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
1.2 Wind is Britain’s most effective source of renewable electricity – because of our latitude solar makes only a small contribution. But wind power also has significant problems: (i) the substantial costs of subsidising, building, operating, maintaining and replacing (when worn-out) 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 substantial 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
1.3 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 a massive programme of house building.viii
2. It’s potentially disastrous.
2.1 The Government aims for 95% renewable electricity by 2030, but hasn’t published a fully costed engineering plan for the provision of grid-scale back-up and network stability when there’s little or no wind or sun; a problem that’s complicated by the likely retirement of elderly nuclear and gas power plants. The Government has indicated that the problem may be resolved by the provision of new gas-fired power plants ix or possibly by ‘green’ hydrogen. But it hasn’t published any detail about its plans for either and anyway gas plants have an eight year lead time. The former is obviously not a ‘clean’ solution and it seems the Government’s answer is to fit the gas 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 a solution, electricity blackouts are likely, potentially ruining many businesses and causing dreadful problems including serious health risks for everyone, particularly the most vulnerable. And note: the blackout in Spain on 28th April this year (the result it seems of over reliance on solar power and lack of ‘grid inertia’xi) caused at least 8 deaths.xii
2.2 Another major Net Zero problem 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.xiii 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 problemsxiv, could further jeopardise Britain’s increasingly vulnerable international credit standing and threaten its economic viability.
2.3 But Net Zero is already contributing to a serious economic concern: essentially because of the massive system costs of renewables (e.g. subsidies, grid balancing, grid expansion, ‘constraint’ payments (compensation for having to switch off) and the cost of back-up to cope with intermittency), the UK has the highest industrial and amongst the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world.xv The additional costs referred to elsewhere – for example updating the grid, the costs of fitting CCS systems to gas-fired power plants used as back-up and investment in ‘green’ hydrogen – can only make this worse. And high energy costs are making household energy bills unaffordable and are undermining the Government’s principal mission of increased economic growth.
2.4 Net Zero’s pursuit increases our dangerous reliance on other countries. For example the refusal to grant licences for further North Sea oil and gas means more uncertain imports of natural gas and of European generated electricity; likewise, our already risky dependence on China’s goodwill is exacerbated by its effective control of the supply of key materials (e.g. lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, copper and so-called rare earths) essential for the manufacture of renewables. There’s also concern about communication devices (so-called ‘kill switches’) found in Chinese-built power inverters.xvi
2.5 The UK is also becoming increasingly vulnerable to sabotage of or attack on its growing numbers of offshore wind turbines and numerous undersea cables – and offshore wind turbines can interfere with vital air defences.xvii
2.6 Renewables are particularly mineral intensive and the vast mining and mineral processing operations they require are already causing horrific 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.xviii The continued and growing pursuit of Net Zero will make all this far worse. However an important consequence of that growth is that renewables’ increasing demand for key minerals for which demand exceeds likely supply may threaten their future viability.xix
3. It’s pointless.
3.1 It’s absurd to regard the closure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting activities here and their ‘export’ mainly to South East Asia (especially China), to plants commonly with poor environmental regulation and powered by coal-fired electricity – thereby increasing global 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 chemical and fertiliser industries face extinctionxx and why the closure of our remaining blast furnaces would end our ability to produce commercially viable primary steel (see end note 3). These concerns apply also to most of the machines and other products listed in the first paragraph of item 1 above.xxi It means that Britain, instead of manufacturing or extracting key products and materials itself, is increasingly importing them in CO2 emitting ships from around the world. A related absurdity is our importing vast amounts of wood for the Drax power plant, the UK’s biggest emitter of CO2 – burning a fuel that emits more CO2 than coal.xxii
3.2 The USAxxiii plus most 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.xxiv 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 discernible difference to the global position.xxv
In other words, Net Zero means that Britain is legally obliged to pursue an unachievable, potentially disastrous and pointless policy – a policy that could result in its economic destruction.
Robin Guenier September 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
v http://tiny.cc/b9qtzz Also see paragraph 2.4 above.
vi For a comprehensive view of wind power’s many problems, see this: https://watt-logic.com/2023/06/14/wind-farm-costs/. And re the AI conundrum: http://tiny.cc/2r0r001
vii https://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 Re CCS: http://tiny.cc/emi9001, and https://heimildin.is/grein/24581/. Re hydrogen: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-2-14-when-you-crunch-the-numbers-green-hydrogen-is-a-non-starter.
xi An energy specialist reviews the facts and risks here: https://watt-logic.com/2025/05/09/the-iberian-blackout-shows-the-dangers-of-operating-power-grids-with-low-inertia/
xii See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout.
xiii 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
xiv A worrying view of the current state of Britain’s economy: http://tiny.cc/nli9001
xv For international price comparisons see Table 5.3.1 here: http://tiny.cc/9kbt001. Note that the UK’s industrial electricity price is well above that of our international competition. Also note, from Table 5.7.1, that the UK gas price is about average and from table 5.5.1, that domestic electricity prices are exceptionally high . And see this comprehensive report: https://watt-logic.com/2025/05/19/new-report-the-true-affordability-of-net-zero/
xvi See http://tiny.cc/6nm9001 and http://tiny.cc/0gvj001. And re unauthorised communication devices found in power inverters in Chinese-built solar panels and batteries see: http://tiny.cc/vgvj001
xvii For examples of vulnerability concerns see these: http://tiny.cc/9ruf001, http://tiny.cc/xau9001 and http://tiny.cc/r73j001. Also this essay by Dieter Helm (Professor of Economic Policy at Oxford) covers vulnerability and much else considered above: http://tiny.cc/dtyf001
xviii 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.
xix A problem that’s reviewed here: http://tiny.cc/6dzq001
xx As explained here: http://tiny.cc/chg5001
xxi A current example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70zxjldqnxo
xxii See this: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/drax-is-still-the-uks-largest-emitter/. And this Public Accounts Committee report: http://tiny.cc/qpwh001
xxiii 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
xxiv This essay shows how developing countries have taken control of climate negotiations: http://tiny.cc/xgnq001 (Nothing since 2020 changes the conclusion: for example the ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 of which item 38 unambiguously confirms developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation.)
xxv This comprehensive EU analysis 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
Climate Scepticism 
Well, it looks as though Kemi Badenoch is convinced. I wonder if she reads Cliscep?
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Badenoch wants to ‘replace’ the Climate Change Act 2008. With what? She still doesn’t get it.
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In an interview for the Spectator:
“It’s not just the ECHR she has in her sights. Badenoch tells Shippers that the Tories will abolish (my bold) the Climate Change Act 2008, which set the mandate to hit net zero by 2050. ‘I’m not sceptical about climate change,’ she tells him. But net zero has become ‘nothing more than a slogan… If other countries aren’t doing [anything], then us being the goody-two-shoes of the world is not actually encouraging anyone to improve.’”
Sounds pragmatic and adopts one of Robin’s main points.
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The Dems in the US condemned themselves to irrelevance on the twin-peaked folly of “climate change” and politically-abetted mass immigration, along with other nonsenses. The UK Uniparty may not be quite as “psycho” as the Dems, e.g. has not yet taken to assassination of their rivals, but they have lied to us for so many years, even on matters of life, death and impoverishment, that I will never vote of any of them again. Let’s hope the entire UK Uniparty gets swept away to irrelevance.
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This is what I’ve been saying all along. Even when Net Zero is seen to fail and politicians are forced to admit that it’s a failure, even by being forced to dismantle their own legislative framework for addressing climate change, they will still cling on to the Settled Science as justification to continue prosecuting their ideological agenda by alternate means. Only when The Science is dismantled once and for all will we see an end to the cult of Global Warming.
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See the article “Scientific proof that CO2 does NOT cause global warming”
Click to access WJARR-2024-0884.pdf
The control knob for our climate is simply the amount of SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere.
Increase it, and it cools down. Decrease it and it warms up. This is irrefutable.
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Burl,
Arguing that man-made aerosols cool the planet and that the lack of them warms the planet, and indeed is responsible for most of the warming post 1980, is just as scientifically dubious as arguing that CO2 is responsible for post 1980 warming. Also, it’s dangerous, because it gives justification for geoengineering megalomaniacs to start pumping sulphur dioxide aerosols and other pollutants into the atmosphere in an attempt to mitigate ‘dangerous’ warming. I would not be at all surprised, by the way, if this becomes the focus of alternate ‘Conservative’ efforts to address the imaginary climate crisis. Especially when geoengineering advocacy is now starting to go mainstream:
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Jaime, you say: ‘Only when The Science is dismantled once and for all will we see an end to the cult of Global Warming.’ If that’s true, we’ll be waiting for a long time because the cultists are well organised and are determined never to give up. For example, in July five distinguished scientists – John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin,
Ross McKitrick and Roy Spencer – published a detailed paper titled ‘A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate‘ which went a long way towards dismantling ‘The Science’. Yet what happened? THIS was published. If four undistinguished commentators can sweep aside the likes of Christy, Curry, Koonin, McKitirick and Spencer, who is even remotely likely to terminate the cult?
Yes, that’s a problem. But fortunately it doesn’t really matter. As I hope the header article demonstrates, it’s possible to undermine the cultists’ position on for example net zero without any mention of ‘The Science’.
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Robin,
The critical review published by the US Dept of Energy was just a warning shot across the bows as far as ‘dismantling The Science’ is concerned. A promising start, but there is a long way to go. Curry et al’s effort was, I believe, the overture in preparation for the Trump administration’s repeal of the EPA’s ‘endangerment finding’ which classes CO2 and other GHGs as ‘pollutants’ which are dangerous to the environment. In the US at least, this will take the sting out of the supposed urgency to decarbonise.
Carbon Brief’s ‘fact check’ of that report is risible and does not ‘sweep aside’ the authors as you suggest, even though it pretends to.
To reiterate, it does matter, because even if, as now seems to be the case, Net Zero is being seriously undermined in that the official Opposition have dropped it like a ton of hot bricks, they still haven’t dropped The Science or the UK version of the US ‘endangerment finding’, so they will be looking around for some other means to tackle the imaginary ‘climate crisis’. And on it will go, ad infinitum – until hard data and proper science dismantle their climate mitigation ‘necessity’ argument based on the poor science, politicised science, pseudoscience, and socio-political waffle which now comprise the bulk of the IPCC Assessment Reports.
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As you say Jaime ‘there is a long way to go‘ towards dismantling ‘The Science’. You’re right – and that long way will take a long time. But we haven’t got a long time. However I continue to be completely convinced that we can demolish the absurdities of Net Zero and sideline the cultists without any reference to scientific issues and that the optimum way of getting to where we must be is to continue to do just that. Of course you and others who share your views are very welcome to pursue the path you’ve chosen. And good luck to you!
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Remember the Iberian blackouts? There was a determined attempt in the aftermath to stress that it wasn’t caused by over-reliance on renewables. Is the narrative subtly changing?
“Blackout in Spain and Portugal ‘first of its kind’, report finds”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7d4vjdlrmo
A power surge that caused a widespread blackout in Spain and Portugal was the “most severe” in Europe in the last 20 years, and the first of its kind, a report has found.
Damian Cortinas, president of the association of electricity grid operators Entso-e, said the incident was the first known blackout to be caused by overvoltage, which occurs when there is too much electrical voltage in a network….
...The outage triggered a broader debate that spilled into the political arena about Spain’s energy model.
The opposition suggested an increasingly heavy reliance on renewable energy, promoted by the left-wing government of Pedro Sánchez, could have been a factor in causing the blackout and the country’s decreasing supply of nuclear energy meant a dependable back-up was not available.
The government roundly rejected these theories and the new report was careful to avoid taking sides when it came to the causes of April’s unprecedented blackout....
Not taking sides is not the same as saying (as per the Guardian narrative) that it had nothing to do with too much renewable energy.
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“Maurice Cousins: It is time for the Conservatives to return to reality on Net Zero”
https://conservativehome.com/2025/10/02/maurice-cousins-it-is-time-for-the-conservatives-to-return-to-reality-on-net-zero/
…History makes the lesson plain: from the Great Unrest of 1911 to the paralysis of the 1970s, whenever domestic energy is destabilised, British politics is destabilised. Today the pattern is repeating. High energy bills caused by domestic policy are fuelling anti-system sentiment, with those hardest hit the most likely to say Britain’s institutions should be allowed to “burn.”
This is the true legacy of the Net Zero consensus: the politics of despair. When households cannot afford the basics, trust collapses, and the system itself begins to lose legitimacy.
By treating Net Zero as a categorical imperative, Westminster ignored the physics that make it unworkable, the geopolitics that made it reckless, and the domestic political realities that make it corrosive. The lesson of the last two decades could not be clearer: when leaders abandon prudence and pursue the wrong ideals, they do not secure virtue – they undermine the very stability on which democracy depends.
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“Net Zero Crumbling Slowly At First, Then Suddenly
Net Zero collapsing faster the coal-fired power stations blown up by Alok Sharma”
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/net-zero-crumbling-slowly-at-first-then-suddenly
...Kemi’s announcement came the day after Ed Miliband’s speech at Labour Conference where he claimed Nigel Farage and Reform are “investment crushing, job destroying, bill raising, poverty driving, science denying, Putin appeasing, young people betraying bunch of ideological extremists.”
I think this is what psychologists call projection. Miliband his accusing his opponents wanting to do the very same things he is already doing himself. Jim Ratcliff’s INEOS has ended all UK investment because of Net Zero policies pushing up taxes on North Sea oil and gas and expensive energy prices. This of course destroys jobs too. Miliband is pushing up bills by pressing ahead with Allocation Round 7, extending contracts to 20 years and offering prices that are much more expensive than gas-fired generation and of course high bills drive poverty. Miliband denies the physics of intermittent renewables and seems totally unaware of the Laws of Thermodynamics. If Miliband (and the EU) really wanted to damage Putin, they would have all got behind “drill, baby drill” because increased supply of hydrocarbons would reduce prices so cutting revenues to the Russian regime. Pursuing expensive and intermittent energy sources as an ideological goal, coupled with the associated economic destruction does far more to betray the younger generation than almost any other policy….
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Hmm … it hasn’t collapsed yet.
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Nope – all that can be said is that the political consensus has snapped. Some folk seem all too eager to announce victory.
[Edit: typo]
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Thanks for the link Mark – I’ve commented there with a more fleshed-out version of what I said just now.
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This afternoon The Conversation published an article titled ‘We surveyed British MPs – most don’t know how urgent climate action is‘. There have been 6 comments so far – including one from me (yes, yes I know …). All are critical, including one from john lasonia.
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Excellent comment, Robin. I wonder if the authors of the article will reply?
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Most unlikely Mark. And note that even John C’s friend ‘john lasonia’ says ‘Since UK is not a significant source of emissions now does it really matter that much?‘ – making my point more succinctly. I wonder if he’ll get a reply?
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According to the A.I., the value of “DeepDCarb Advanced Grant 882601” is 2.5 million euros.
What if people don’t want those societal changes?
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As I rushed past the radio on my morning chores, have I just heard Myles Allen and Sir Adair Turner speaking on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme about the benefits of renewables and carbon capture? And they were essentially unchallenged? Where was the balance, BBC? Silly question. Silly me.
Regards, John C.
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The Government aims for 95% renewable electricity by 2030
Where can I place a bet against that?
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Jaime, your point reminds me of this:
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John, I also rushed past the radio this morning but at a different time. When I passed, it sounded as if someone from the British Transport Police was losing his job in real time, as he tried to explain why his force was too lazy to review CCTV footage when a bike was stolen from outside a railway station.
(Actually he said they had no time to review the footage. Well, I have an easy fix for that. You invite the person who had their bike stolen to come into the station and review the footage themselves, if they can be bothered. If they turn up and find the moment their bike was nicked, then maybe the cops would be prepared to investigate.)
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Earlier on this thread, Robin observed, amid the hype about the Tories’ change of policy on net zero, that net zero hasn’t collapsed yet. Jit concurred, observing “Nope – all that can be said is that the political consensus has snapped. Some folk seem all too eager to announce victory.“
Lest anyone think it’s going to be easy to remove net zero from the fabric of our society, I refer you to the edition of BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions that was on the radio on Friday evening and Saturday lunchtime just gone:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002k4q6
Its panel was the usual sort of BBC selection of “the great and the good”:
Alex Forsyth presents political debate from The Square at Chester Zoo, with the Conservative MP and member of the Commons foreign affairs committee, Aphra Brandreth; the crossbench peer and former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile; Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner, George Monbiot; and the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, Labour’s Emma Reynolds.
A correspondent has kindly sent to me a small transcript of the part of the programme that dealt with a question from the audience about net zero. I haven’t checked the notes or the transcript, but as I trust my informant, I am confident that it went along the following lines, as suggested:
Notes/Transcript follow:
Host Alex Forsyth interrupted shadow minister Aphra Brandreth who was explaining how scrapping the CC Act would reduce energy bills to ask
“Explain how scrapping the CCA is going to reduce energy costs because a large percent of energy costs is to do with gas prices for which we are dependent on volatile international markets. So how is getting rid of that reducing energy costs?“
George Monbiot (34 mins) Kemi Badenoch is culture-warring the issue – that’s the only contribution she’s made to the politics of this country.
“The cost of electricity in this country is so phenomenally, gobsmackingly high because it is pegged to the price of wholesale gas [applause]
This is a ridiculous state of affairs – in 2024 renewables provided over 50% of our electricity and gas 32% of our electricity, and yet it’s the gas that sets the price.
The reason prices are so high is that gas prices have been climbing and climbing since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, whereas renewable’s prices have been falling and falling.
And not only have they been falling spectacularly. but they’ve also stimulated a fantastically successful aspect of British industry. The green economy grew by 10% last year – that was faster than any other sector. Over one million people [applause] now owe their employment.
Do the conservatives want to take us back to the fossil economy where far fewer people are going to be employed and where we lag behind the rest of the World
As for Aphra’s disgraceful comment about China [she had said that China continued to pump out CO2] – is she really unaware about what China has been doing – the most spectacular green transition of any country on earth [applause]. Did you not do any research before this programme?
This is an absolute standout example of environmental transition and yet let’s blame the Chinese.
Our Climate Change Act is global pioneering legislation which at least 50 other countries have adopted. We should be proud of that. That is a point of national pride which the Tories are prepared to rip down and ditch. It’s a disgrace.“
Emma Reynolds
“Wholesale gas prices have gone up 75% since Russia invaded Ukraine. We know that our energy prices are largely determined by international markets. The idea that if we scrap the CC Act suddenly all our energy prices come tumbling down – I mean it’s just ridiculous. I mean it’s kind of laughable.
I doubt very much if Aphra really believes in this policy after spending ten years at DEFRA earlier in her career.
Theresa May doesn’t agree, Alok Sharma doesn’t agree, Zak Goldsmith doesn’t agree, John Gummer doesn’t agree and neither do any of the leaders who have come from 2008 until now agree with this bonkers policy. What we need to do is get ourselves off the fossil fuel roller coaster by investing in renewables which is what this government is doing by capitalising investment in renewables and investing in nuclear for the long-term.”
Alec Carlile
After admitting that achieving net zero was challenging, he said it should nevertheless be pursued.
He described the Tories latest move as “Shameful political opportunism”
He continued: “If, like me, you are in your 70s, you have felt and you have seen climate change coming along. We have different winters and we have different summers. If you’re lucky enough to go to Spain, as I was this year, it’s 40 degrees where it used to be 35 degrees some years ago. We have to deal with this problem and simply saying ‘drill, drill, drill’ is completely irresponsible and not worthy of any political party.“
I think I spotted a significant number of falsehoods in there, a huge amount of spin and a lot of emotional rhetoric that wasn’t grounded in fact. Be in no doubt that the net zero-wedded establishment will fight tooth and nail to resist any attempt to repeal the CCA, to abolish the CCC, or to row back one inch on net zero.
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Yes, I caught a bit of Monbiot too. I think he made a more rational response to whatever the next question was, but it was sufficiently vanilla that I can’t remember either the question or his response.
It’s a pity that the Any Questions audience appear to prioritise virtue signalling over good sense. What else would we expect from a self-selecting R4 audience?
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Stats this morning (8:15): wind 7%; sun 0%; gas 71%; nuclear 11%; wood 5%; interconnectors 1%. Price: £115.52/MWh.
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Stats this evening (5:20): wind 5%; sun 3%; gas 66%; nuclear 10%; wood 7%; interconnectors 5%. Price: ££223.00/MWh.
Not so good. Does Ed know?
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It spiked up to nearly £300 / MWh earlier this evening. Presently (1905) it’s £273.
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Solar is now supplying nothing (of course) and wind is offering just 3.9%. The average price over the past day is £122.77/MWh. Never mind whether Ed knows. Does he care?
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H/t IDAU in a comment at Paul Homewood’s place:
“Net zero plans could “run dry” without action on water
Water demand from hydrogen and carbon capture could trigger regional deficits by 2030″
https://www.energylivenews.com/2025/10/13/our-net-zero-plans-could-run-dry-without-action-on-water/
A new report warns that the UK’s path to net zero risks “running dry” unless water scarcity is actively managed across major industrial clusters.
Commissioned by national water retailer Wave and produced by Durham University, the study finds that the additional water needed for blue and green hydrogen production and carbon capture could exceed 850–860 million litres per day by 2050, with pinch points emerging much sooner….
…Activity around Humberside is projected to push the Anglian Water region into deficit by 2030, rising toward a shortfall of about 130 million litres per day by mid century.…
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Stats this morning (6:30): wind 8%; sun 0%; gas 79%; nuclear 13%; wood 8%; interconnectors – 7%. Price: £75.67/MWh.
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Stats this evening (6:00): wind 11%; sun 0%; gas 65%; nuclear 10%; wood 6%; interconnectors 1%. Price: £166.72/MWh.
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Robin, your quotes regarding interconnectors and electricity prices are interesting as they confirm an analysis by Kathryn Porter IIRC. She suggested in one of her reports that as an energy dependent country we would export electricity when prices are low and import when prices are high …
This morning at 5:42am you quoted interconnectors exporting 7% with price £75.67/MWh. Yesterday at 4:28pm you quoted interconnectors importing 5% with price £223/MWh.
Ouch! A roughly 3:1 price difference that the lucky UK electricity consumer has to stump up. But does our political class care a milliwatt?
Regards, John C.
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John C,
I suspect nothing much has changed since David Turver wrote this:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/the-great-interconnector-swindle
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Stats this morning (7:05): wind 13%; sun 0%; gas 74%; nuclear 12%; wood 8%; interconnectors – 9%. Price: £80.86/MWh.
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Stats this evening (6:00): wind 8%; sun 0%; gas 60%; nuclear 11%; wood 7%; interconnectors 8%. Price: £137.94/MWh.
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Since then the interconnectors have stepped up a bit (12.8%) while gas has dropped off (to 57.1%) and the price has gone up, to £140.84. Coincidence or in this case is correlation indicative of causation? I.e, it may be that David Turver is correct, and the interconnectors generally see us selling to Europe cheap and buying from Europe at high prices.
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Stats this morning (7:00): wind 13%; sun 0%; gas 64%; nuclear 13%; wood 8%; interconnectors – 2%. Price: £91.29/MWh.
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Net zero causes problems in the Netherlands, too:
“Netherlands’ renewables drive putting pressure on its power grid”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn40y9yxkgvo
In a Dutch government TV campaign called “Flip the Switch” an actress warns viewers about their electricity usage.
“When we all use electricity at the same time, our power grid gets overloaded,” she says. “This can cause malfunctions. So, use as little electricity as possible between four and nine.”
It is the sign that, in one of the most-advanced economies in the world, something has gone wrong with the country’s power supply.
The Netherlands has been an enthusiastic adopter of electric cars. It has the highest number of charging points, external per capita in Europe.
As for electricity production, the Netherlands has replaced gas from its large North Sea reserves with wind and solar.
So much so that it leads the way in Europe for the number of solar panels per person., external In fact, more than one third of Dutch homes have solar panels fitted., external
The country is also aiming for offshore wind farms to be its biggest source of energy by 2030., external
This is all good in environmental terms [sic], but it’s putting the Dutch national electricity grid under enormous stress, and in recent years there have been a number of power cuts.
The problem is “grid congestion”, says Kees-Jan Rameau, chief executive of Dutch energy producer and supplier Eneco, 70% of whose electricity generation is now solar and wind.
“Grid congestion is like a traffic jam on the power grid. It’s caused by either too much power demand in a certain area, or too much power supply put onto the grid, more than the grid can handle.”
He explains that the problem is that the grid “was designed in the days when we had just a few very large, mainly gas-fired power plants”.
“So we built a grid with very big power lines close to those power plants, and increasingly smaller power lines as you got more towards the households….
Sound familiar?
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Stats this evening (6:00): wind 6%; sun 0%; gas 62%; nuclear 11%; wood 7%; interconnectors 10%. Price: £114.09/MWh.
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Stats this morning (7:30): wind 7%; sun 0%; gas 71%; nuclear 13%; wood 8%; interconnectors – 3%. Price: £113.52/MWh.
This lack of wind is looking serious. Just as well it’s not January.
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Indeed. From the “Past Week” stats wind has averaged just 3.1 GW. That is less than 10% of the nameplate capacity.
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The wind industry’s dirty secret is that ‘clean’ wind energy is not a reliable source of electricity generation, over periods of hours, days, weeks, months years or decades. On an annual basis, there are huge variations from year to year in mean annual wind speed (2010 and 2021 were historic ‘still’ years) which, furthermore, are superimposed upon a highly significant declining trend in mean annual wind speed since the 1970s. 2022/23/24 present only a very modest recovery from the low wind speeds experienced in 2021. Wind resource in the UK is exceptionally variable and is furthermore diminishing over the long term.
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Jaime: have you got a link to the source of those interesting details?
BTW: wind is currently contributing less than 4% to our electricity generation.
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I presented analysis of 5 years’ of wind power data here:
https://cliscep.com/2024/06/14/wind-power-variability-in-the-uk/
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Robin,
Here is the graph of annual mean wind speed from the Met Office’s State of the UK Climate report 2024:
Here’s a study published in 2013 which showed that wind speeds declined over the period 1980-2010;
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/26/4/jcli-d-12-00026.1.xml#bib45
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Thanks Jaime (and Jit) – that’s devastating stuff.
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Wind is now down to 2.46 GW over the past week – probably the low point as output is picking up this morning. To get such a low average over so long there must have been a lot of turbines that were idle and drawing power from the grid for their systems and to turn the blades very slowly.
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Even the Guardian is recognising there are problems!
“Ed Miliband needs a plan for industry – without it, the move to net zero could ruin UK manufacturing
Manufacturing is buckling under sky-high energy bills. Time to closely regulate price-gouging gas plants or take ownership of supply”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/oct/18/ed-miliband-needs-a-plan-for-industry-without-it-the-move-to-net-zero-could-ruin-uk-manufacturing
Quite a good article, save for the failure to comprehend that gas plants aren’t “price-gouging” – they have been forced to run intermittently and inefficiently, adding to their costs, so when they’re expected to ramp up and down at short notice to solve the grid’s problems caused by the unreliability of renewables, that comes at a cost.
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Back to that thorny, contested issue of conspiracy vs. cockup. Here is Lord Monckton, long time climate change sceptic:
https://x.com/benonwine/status/1979661223743664350
My only point of disagreement is that he targets the Labour party specifically, whereas it is the Parliamentary Uniparty which he should be talking about.
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So, out of curiosity, after a very critical post on Miliband by Andrew Neil, I speculated as to whether Miliband might be deranged or devious and I asked Grok AI to comment. Predictably, it opted for deranged but the reason it gave for doing so didn’t seem justified to me, so I challenged it further. Here was the reply, which is interesting:
He’s not adapting to evidence. He doubles down every time evidence shows that his policies are wrecking the economy. To my mind, if he adapted to evidence, that would show that he was formerly labouring under a spell of delusion which, though strong, can be fractured by the intrusion of harsh reality. If he persists in steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the self evident harms of his energy policy, then his intention must surely be malign.
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How about neither devious nor deranged but more simply an ideologue who’s been captured by what amounts to a cult?
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Jaime: could you provide a link to that Neil post on Miliband?
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Jaime / Robin, either way, surely, he should not remain in office one moment longer. The fact that he seems well ensconced (and has, apparently, resisted one weak attempt to remove him) suggests (as many here have long suspected) that the Uniparty mentality resonates deeply within our political class, irrespective of energy reality.
A glimmer of hope, perhaps echoed in the belated Guardian article, is that, as Ayn Rand said, “We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality”. https://www.azquotes.com/author/12074-Ayn_Rand
However, any eventual reversal of UK energy policy is likely to come at huge cost since, as Ayn Rand also remarked, “”A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. If bureaucrat [or politician] makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you.”
Regards, John C.
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Robin,
If you follow the link to my reply and just scroll up, you will see Andrew’s post.
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Jaime,
I’m sorry but that doesn’t help – probably because I don’t do X. Could you cite the link here?
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Robin, sorry, didn’t realise you couldn’t see it. Andrew was referring to Mad Miliband talking about how his Clean Energy 2030 Plan was going to create 400k jobs:
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Thanks Jaime.
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Incidentally, it’s been obvious since 2015 that the so called Paris Climate Accord unfairly targeted Western industries in favour of allowing the Chinese economy to grow unrestrained. I do not think that it was merely coincidence that China was classified as a ‘developing’ economy. Now the China spy scandal is all over the news and we know for sure that this Labour government in particular has been infiltrated and fatally compromised by Chinese commercial and political interests. So if you’re looking around for a reason to explain why Miliband has not been sacked and the renewables agenda is going full speed ahead, then perhaps Chinese made solar panels and wind turbines and components might explain it. I quote Ian Duncan Smith:
I’m pretty sure that a significant portion of those “contractual issues and obligations” involve the expansion of renewables made in China, which may contain Chinese made spyware and even ‘kill switches’. Which would mean that Mad Ed (the Marxist) is not quite as mad as we thought.
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Jaime,
Or it might mean that he’s just as foolish as we thought.
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Robin, he may be as foolish or even more foolish than we imagine. However, as Secretary of State does he have any responsibility, morally or in law, for: (i) the consequences of his actions? (ii) the welfare of his fellow citizens?
And what about the responsibilities, if any, of his cabinet colleagues? Are they equally shallow in their understanding of energy policy and its consequences? Or do they not care because energy is not their brief?
My questions remind me of a story from the First World War related in a popular history by Andrew Marr [Ref. 1] from which I quote, “It is true that of all the British troops involved in the Somme offensive, three-quarters emerged unharmed … But how powerful is that, compared with knowing about Captain D. L. Martin of the 9th Devons, a former maths teacher, who carefully worked out from drawings and models that he and his men would certainly be killed by enfilading machine-gun fire on 1 July and explained this to senior officers, but who nevertheless led the attack as ordered? He was right – he and 160 men of the Devons were almost instantly killed, and buried in a mass grave over which was written: ‘The Devonshires held this trench. The Devonshires hold it still.’ “
Our present situation is as nothing compared to the Devonshires. However, the qualifications for high office in the UK seem not to have changed in a century. We are still led by donkeys!
Reference 1. Andrew Marr, “The Making of Modern Britain”, MacMillan, 2009, pages 118 -119.
Regards, John C.
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As I see it John, neither Ed nor his Government colleagues believe Net Zero is a doomed policy. And nor do his advisers, the CCC and many activist websites as well as the IPCC and the EU bureaucracy … So he truly doesn’t regard his actions as morally or legally irresponsible. Most unfortunately we Clisceppers are in a minority with regard to this issue.
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Robin, thank you for setting out so concisely the likely argument of Ed & friends in relation to Net Zero. With most policy agendas I believe that such an argument would be a strong one because policy would have been formed based on risk- and cost-benefit analyses which would have highlighted the likely winners and losers from application of the policy in question.
However, it was known from early on that a UK-goes-it-alone policy would cost the UK and yet bring only modest benefits to the rest of the world. Furthermore, the only cost-benefit analysis that was given significant publicity in the UK was the Stern Review (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review) which is both old and, besides, much criticized.
The current situation – known to all who look – is that the UK’s Net Zero policy was built on and remains on very shaky ground as evidenced, for example, by Jit’s graph (https://cliscep.com/2025/10/18/electrify-everything/#comment-162947).
So while I could accept that a policy built on solid foundations could well be morally and legally defensible, I find it much, much harder to accept that such is the case for the current Net Zero/energy policies; there is just too much credible evidence to the contrary. And hence, I suggest, ministers having public welfare in mind should, at the very least, pause the policy while it is reviewed. The fact that such pause for thought is not happening speaks to me of a grave moral failure – I am not competent to speak to the legal responsibilities (if any).
The additional fact that Net Zero policies have been nodded through parliament with very little public scrutiny in general elections speaks both to the antidemocratic and authoritarian nature of the policies and their promoters. Or am I missing something?
Regards, John C.
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That’s very well expressed John, but I’m not persuaded. I doubt if anyone advising Miliband or anyone with whom he might discuss the issue or whose paper he might read has any doubt that the policy is the right one. I spend quite a lot of time exchanging views with senior UK scientists – Myles Allen and Kevin Anderson are very recent examples – and none of them has, so far as I can determine, expressed serious doubts about the importance of and need for net zero. Likewise when I examine the many well-funded activist websites that exist in the UK I have yet to detect even a hint of doubt. No one is telling him that there’s all this credible evidence that he’s wrong. That I’m sure is the atmosphere in which Miliband moves. As a result, he’s quite simply completely ignorant of the harsh reality that’s so obvious to you and me. Therefore I don’t think we can legitimately accuse him of being deliberately irresponsible or committing a grave moral failure.
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Robin, thank you for another clear explanation of the likely view from Ed’s bunker. However, I think the argument has a couple of related weaknesses.
1. Even if one accepts the importance of and need for Net Zero, it was known in academic circles long before David Turver popularised Weissbach’s work (see for example work by prof. Michael Kelly) that there are no EROEI-efficient wind or solar* renewable systems for grid applications. The fact that senior climate scientists do not acknowledge this work does them no credit and, more importantly, thereby distorts UK energy policy. This is yet another reason why red/blue team gaming has advantages where it is allowed to occur; bunker mentality should have no place in robust civil governance of a thriving democracy.
2. If one is enjoying a kitchen cabinet debate then taking an entrenched view can lead to a lively and vigorous argument (in, I hope, the friendly sense of that word!). However, if you are, say, the country’s Secretary of State for Policy-X then is it not morally incumbent upon you to seek out a range of opinions in relation to X, if only because so many people and organisations will be affected by your new laws related to X? The fact that off-message discourse is so much derided, even in Western countries, speaks poorly of their (and our!) polarised political culture.
Even civil war veteran (and therefore well versed in motivated reasoning) Oliver Cromwell said, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”
He also said, “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” Was he thinking of Ed & friends, I wonder? What foresight!
You seem to be arguing, Robin, that because Ed and his advisers are in an ideological cum political bunker then they cannot be blamed for being ignorant of the world outside. But surely the primary error was taking shelter in the ivory bunker in the first place, which they did because their armoury of arguments was somewhat threadbare and has never been replenished with anything other than damp squibs – this does not exclude the possibility that, in the long term, the research community may come to relieve the siege of the bunker by providing cost-effective high-EROEI renewables for grid applications.
In short, I will take your “I’m not persuaded” and raise it to “I’m not yet persuaded” for my own current position.
Regards, John C.
* Concentrated solar, IIRC, is an exception for those with a desert to spare.
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As usual I think John Cullen covers my reply. Only thing I would add (which John touched on) is this partial quote –
“I spend quite a lot of time exchanging views with senior UK scientists – Myles Allen and Kevin Anderson are very recent examples – and none of them has, so far as I can determine, expressed serious doubts about the importance of and need for net zero”.
Take they mean the UK net zero, wonder why you thought they would?
Anderson bio – “in 2022, with a previous Tyndall Centre colleague Dr Dan Calverley, he established a new project Climate Uncensored, providing “robust, unflinching commentary and assessment of the scale of the climate challenge and our responses to it.”[7] Acknowledging “the inspiring and often courageous work of the climate science community .. when it comes to cutting emissions, there is a widespread failure to accept the true scale and urgency of the challenge. Such ‘mitigation denial’ is rife, even within the expert community.” Climate Uncensored focuses on cutting emissions, taking its lead from the Paris commitment to hold the global temperature rise to ‘well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C’. it is guided by the IPCC’s carbon budgets and strives to remain cognisant of issues of equity and fairness.”
Keep us informed if the give you the time of day.
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John, thank you yet again for an interesting response.
My sole objection is to the concept that Miliband et al., knowing that pursuit of their net zero policy would probably be harmful, cynically and irresponsibly persevered with the policy. My view is that they didn’t know – and they didn’t know because none of their advisers and others whom they respected disagreed with their understanding and there was no Cromwell equivalent challenging them to consider the possibility that they might be wrong. They had no reason to think that their arguments were threadbare or that they were taking shelter in an ivory bunker – after all, many institutions (e.g. the Royal Academy) and most Western governments shared their position. Rather a large bunker.
But that doesn’t exempt them from blame. Were they better people they should have considered the possibility that their approach might be harmful. But they didn’t. And they didn’t because they had in effect signed up to a cult. And members of a cult don’t question their own beliefs. (To be fair, many of us find it hard to question our beliefs.)
PS: it might be thought that they should at least have taken note of the views of knowledgeable people such as David Turver, Kathryn Porter and Michael Kelly. But that was not going to happen in a world where such people are dismissed as ‘deniers’: LINK (Kelly, like anyone associated with the GWPF, is automatically dismissed.)
I continue to with my position of being unpersuaded.
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Ed “Baldrick” Miliband has come up with a cunning plan to create his 400,000 Green energy jobs:
Brilliant. Also, the next generation of supermarket shelf-stackers can also be included as ‘clean energy workers’.
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I struggle with the idea that Milliband & Co are unaware of dissenting views wrt their policies. They must read the papers. In addition, he has A levels in maths, further maths, physics and english so he should have a good grasp of numbers and an understanding of the technical issues of running the grid. Therefore it is certain that he knows that the various subsidies make wind power far more expensive than gas. He chooses to conceal the facts because they do not align with his idealogical zealotry.
A telling aspect is his total inaction wrt seeking ways to reduce costs. He talks endlessly about gas “setting the price” of power. So why doesn’t he do something about it as the SoS? For starters he could adjust the bidding process so that, once demand is met, each generator gets the price it bid rather than everyone being paid the “winning” price – often set by gas. Obviously this would risk reducing the revenues of wind farms that are on the ROC system and increasing the top-up payments for those on CfDs (as someone – John C? – pointed out when I made this comment on another thread).
Another step would be to take the emission taxes out of the wholesale prices paid to all the non-gas generators – worth approx £30/MWh. They don’t pay the tax so including it in their payments is just a bung.
Afaik, there has not been the faintest whisper of any measures like these to adjust the way the system is administered in order to reduce costs. (In)action speaks louder than words……
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Robin, in response to your post at 8:32am today, let me begin by agreeing that the ivory bunker is very large indeed, encompassing as it does so many Western governments and their advisors. However, the resulting Net Zero/energy policies are so widely damaging that I am seeking an international version of Sir John Harington’s cautionary ditty, “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
You have described Net Zero as a cult. I am not sure that is an informative use of the word in this context, except perhaps in the Feynman sense of a delusionary cargo cult that delivers nothing useful for ordinary people. Net Zero policies echo throughout the economy and are therefore, I believe, better or additionally described as a political agenda – and a most damaging one for ordinary people.
Your second main paragraph begins by acknowledging that Ed and friends are blameworthy to some degree, although not to the extent of deliberate, cynical and irresponsible perseverance of policy. The paragraph continues with a plea in mitigation based upon an explanation of what happened and why, but it did not, as I understand it, offer an exculpation. Perhaps that is unsurprising given that many of the rules of good governance have been known for decades (e.g. avoiding groupthink and checking your assumptions). Is it unreasonable to expect a senior politicians in a democracy to respect such rules? Or is it simply the case that ‘We in the NZ Uniparty are the Masters now’?
Regards, John C. [P.S. MikeH, just above, has put it rather well, I think.]
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We have a rogue government in place, who are actively seeking to destroy the country that we know and love. From the Chagos ‘giveaway’ (a net cost to British taxpayers) and allowing unvetted and clearly dangerous illegal immigrants to prey upon the native populace, and jailing and tormenting (even killing behind bars) those who object via the imposition of predatory justice, to Net Zero acceleration, to the decimation of farming, to assaults upon pensioners, unbridled borrowing and coming huge increases in taxes, driving away yet more business, rejoining the EU by the backdoor, providing illegal planning, assurances to the Chinese re. the construction of their spy-embassy, collapsing the trial of two Brits spying for China, deliberately stalling a national enquiry into rapes gangs, etc. etc. etc. More and more people are coming to that shattering conclusion as each terrible day passes under this Labour government – and we ain’t seen nothing yet. I think it would be wise to accept the facts at face value – we have in charge of Britain a dangerously compromised government which not only does not have our best interests at heart, it is implementing policies ever more rapidly, which will do and are doing us very serious harm as a nation and as individuals and families. That includes, but is not restricted to Net Zero.
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John – Tom Jones recently wrote an interesting piece on Motability, something that appears to have little to do with Net Zero, but I wonder whether the explanation he gives for its failures might have parallels to our disastrous energy policy. He refers to Mancur Olson’s explanation for ballooning welfare generally:
We have seen this government back away from the merest feather on the throttle when it comes to increasing benefits. Could they sell a Net Zero U-turn?
Of course, we all hope that in the same situation we would be honest and let the die fall as it may. But politicians are interested above all else in power.
The fact is, to us the diagnosis seems obvious, and it is hard to understand others’ failure to agree with us. That is hard to square with our wish to see the best in people and not to question their motives (as they sometimes question ours). Increasingly the two positions seem to occupy a smaller and smaller common ground of potential reality.
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Things are starting to look different in Germany:
“‘A punch in the face’: Germany’s dash for gas raises questions over climate targets
Plans for a fossil fuel project in Wadden Sea nature reserve have angered local people and campaigners, as political enthusiasm for renewables wanes”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/20/germany-dash-for-gas-climate-targets-wadden-sea
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John (and others): I’ve got nothing to add to my previous comments about Miliband’s motivation. However I believe his campaign will begin to fall apart as its dreadful consequences become even more apparent. In fact I think there may already be signs of that happening.
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Mark – so reality hits Germany, but you have to wonder at this from the article –
“By Borkum’s beach huts, where Reemtsma and other activists spelled out the words “STOP GAS” with big red letters in the sand this summer, residents say they are more worried by the threat that industrialisation poses. The quiet island – which attracted nationwide outrage last year for a festival tradition that involved costumed men beating women with cow horns – is economically reliant on its nature’s appeal to tourists.”
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Jit, thank you for the link to Mancur Olsen’s work; it made a pleasant diversion from trying to square the circle of opinions here at Cliscep.
As I understand it (from, admittedly, a shallow dive) much current interest in Olsen’s work relates to his two proposals, “The two proposals are zero economic growth and zero population growth.”. From a Cliscep perspective we should note that current renewables have such low EROEI that they deliver not no growth but economic contraction making everything more difficult for everybody, notably welfare providers. I mention the latter because some of my Guardian-reading socialist friends are interested in both no growth and increased welfare support – another difficult circle to square.
My own very recent discovery is the concept of endification, found today in the writing of Eugyppius: “I propose to call this phenomenon endification, and I think it is very significant. It seems to happen whenever you mobilise large, complex systems towards goals that sooner or later prove unattainable. As these goals pass out of reach but the system remains mobilised, basic understandings of what we are even trying to do shift. The erstwhile means become almost sacred, worthy of pursuing in themselves, often for moral reasons. This can go on for a very long time even though it makes no sense and is painfully retarded.” https://dailysceptic.org/2025/10/21/the-firewall-is-backfiring/
To me endification sounds like a Westernised version of Feynman’s cargo cults e.g. Net Zero as unproductive ritual currently embedded in the UK’s political culture.
Regards, John C.
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I believe that senior UK politicians and many, many others have failed morally in these matters so I will attempt to draw up a rap sheet. I will keep it short, with just a few holding charges:-
Arrogance such that they and only they know what is best and that all contrary opinions should be dismissed out of hand.
Wilful ignorance of the many arguments deployed over many years that contradict their preferred narrative.
Contempt for and demonisation of those many people and arguments that are not ‘on message’.
Lack of empathy with those who have to suffer and otherwise pay for their wretched ill-conceived policies.
Antidemocratic methods that deprive and deprived the public and parliament of adequate and realistic NZ risk & cost-benefit analyses.
How’s that? Banged to rights … or not? You decide.
Regards, John C.
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John C,
I believe your charge sheet starts weakly, but gets stronger as it progresses:
Arrogance such that they and only they know what is best and that all contrary opinions should be dismissed out of hand.
They might, with some justification, say that it is we, not they, who are arrogant, since they will point to the mass of support within the establishment, including the scientific establishment, for the views that they espouse.
Wilful ignorance of the many arguments deployed over many years that contradict their preferred narrative.
They would accuse of wilful ignorance of the many arguments (and scientific “proofs”) deployed over the years that contradict our preferred narrative.
Contempt for and demonisation of those many people and arguments that are not ‘on message’.
Difficult to argue with that one.
Lack of empathy with those who have to suffer and otherwise pay for their wretched ill-conceived policies.
They would say they do have empathy, hence why they keep banging on about the importance of a “just transition” (which never materialises).
Antidemocratic methods that deprive and deprived the public and parliament of adequate and realistic NZ risk & cost-benefit analyses.
Guilty as charged. The hysteria around the breakdown of “the consensus” demonstrates amply to me that they are not interested in achieving their aims by democratic means. To be concerned that the public is to have a choice about net zero at the next election shows utter contempt for democracy, so far as I am concerned. But then I would say that:
https://cliscep.com/2021/10/29/net-zero-democracy/
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Just now the price of electricity is £164.86 per MWh. Gas is supplying 57.4%, with wind providing 7.8% and solar just 2.3%. The price almost always seems to be highest, and renewables least effective, at times of peak domestic demand.
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Mark, my recent Cliscep comments have been delayed or disappeared so will try to reply again tomorrow. Thanks for your critique. Regards, John C.
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John C,
Apologies, but that’s a mystery. There is nothing lurking in pending or spam waiting to be approved.
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John, I suggest writing the comment in Notepad or similar and then pasting it into the comment box. That way, if the comment vanishes, you can try again.
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Mark and Jit, thank you for your help; I have indeed reverted to using Notepad. I hope this is a temporary measure, but my new computer seems more unhappy with the Cliscep site (and with The Conversation site) than my old one. Plenty of blank screens when I select from the list of latest Cliscep postings, and then I often get only the picture above the head post, and then when I try to go to the end of the file for that latest post in the thread I am unable to do so using PgDn or End. So I have to move the side bar manually; it takes only a few seconds but is irritating. But then on other occasions I have no trouble at all. Regards, John C.
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Mark, not wanting to hijack Robin’s thread I will continue this discussion on your Net Zero Democracy one. However, before departing thither I would like to point readers to Ted Nordhaus’s apparent partial conversion:-
“For that, Ted Nordhaus deserves genuine respect. He may not yet be a full skeptic, but he has done something rare in the climate priesthood: he has confessed that the prophecies were false.
And perhaps, in time, he’ll see that the real danger was never the weather. It was the arrogance of those who thought they could control it.”
There is that word ‘arrogance’ again.
Regards, John C.
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“Miliband admits wind power less reliable than expected
Energy Secretary would have to pay higher subsidies, making it harder to reach clean power targets”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/10/28/ed-miliband-admits-wind-power-less-reliable-than-expected/
…The Government has slashed forecasts for the amount of electricity it expects wind farms to generate in a blow to Ed Miliband’s net zero plans.
In documents published before an auction of green energy subsidies this week, officials said they were revising down the predicted efficiency of wind turbines by more than a quarter as a result of “updated modelling”.
Industry sources claimed developers had previously warned officials that estimates for power generation were unrealistic, but that the Government had stuck with them anyway. One said: “The numbers were statistically absurd.”
And much more in similar vein, but unfortunately behind a paywall.
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I have found more:
...’The Government’s new estimates slashed the predicted “load factor” – the proportion of the year turbines are expected to generate power – from 61pc to 43.6pc for offshore wind. The estimated load factor for onshore turbines was also revised down, from 48.7pc to 33.4pc.’
‘Less efficient wind turbines still face the same construction costs, pushing up the amount of subsidy needed to make projects viable. Industry experts said the latest round of subsidies was not generous enough to deliver the level of wind power needed to hit the Energy Secretary’s goals.‘
Kathryn Porter, an independent energy consultant, said the Government’s load factor revisions could not “change budget reality” and meant that Mr Miliband would be able to procure less capacity than last year.
She added: “You can assume higher load factors in a spreadsheet, but that doesn’t reduce the actual capital outlay or construction cost per gigawatt.”
The “likely practical outcome” was that this year’s £900m budget would “underwrite fewer gigawatts” than before, Ms Porter said.’
Matt Ridley, on X, has said ‘People think it must be satisfying to say “I told you so”. No, it’s not. It’s infuriating to have spent more than 15 years not being listened to by politicians and officials.’...
…An DESNZ spokesman stressed that the revision did not necessarily mean higher subsidies would need to be paid out, as the money is only paid out if wholesale power prices in the future fall below a certain level....
That final paragraph reads like a hope or an admission that wholesale power prices (from renewables) are going to keep rising, rather than fall, as they have been long telling us would be the case. It’s a shambles.
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A non-paywalled version can be found here:
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/miliband-admits-wind-power-less-194100662.html
Well worth a read – the important points contained within it are too lengthy to quote here.
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Mark; it’s good to see some awareness of reality creeping into Miliband’s crew:
’The Government’s new estimates slashed the predicted “load factor” – the proportion of the year turbines are expected to generate power – from 61pc to 43.6pc for offshore wind. The estimated load factor for onshore turbines was also revised down, from 48.7pc to 33.4pc.’
However I strongly suspect that those figures are still optimistic. New turbines might achieve those capacity factors but there is a host of older, smaller units that, aiui, are nowhere near such performance levels. Hopefully someone has charted the actual numbers to date?
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NZW is launching a contact-your-MP campaign to get AR7 cancelled:-
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/x6oind8l6wqfpenzqmra9c8e3hx7sj
https://www.netzerowatch.com/email-your-mp
Regards, John C.
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Dieter Helm has just published another remarkable article. Although he still accepts the need to encourage decarbonisation, it destroys all the Government’s claims about its energy policy:
British energy policy – not cheap, not home-grown and not secure
It’s replete with interesting and useful information and comment, making it difficult to find an extract that epitomises the whole. Well worth reading in full.
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Robin, I have just had a first read of Sir Dieter’s article and I, as an electrical engineer, conclude that matters are much worse than he describes. The EROEI parameter (as related by e.g. Turver and based upon research by Weissbach et al. over 10 years ago [https://davidturver.substack.com/p/why-eroei-matters]) is clear that , for grid applications, there are currently no energy efficient “renewables” unless you have a hot desert to spare. So continuing with wind and solar “renewables” is madness IF we in the UK are trying to reduce global CO2 production; but the “renewables” are quite good for pretending (via an accountancy trick) that the UK is reducing CO2 production.
If we in the UK want to continue pretending that we are ‘fighting CO2-driven climate change’ then, at immense cost to the public and the economy, further deployment of the current “renewables” is a good way to keep up the pretence. However, if we want to actually reduce global CO2 production while retaining a viable and affordable modern(ish) economy then dashing for gas – noting that the delivery time for new gas-turbines is about 7 years – would be a good way to go.
However, if the UK, and especially its political elites, could (like much of the rest of the world) take a step back and consider the empirical science (e.g. the satellite record shows that the world is no warmer today than in 1998 [https://www.drroyspencer.com/2025/11/uah-v6-1-global-temperature-update-for-october-2025-0-53-deg-c/]) then the scare over CO2 could be seen as simply that, namely a scare that has had no effect over a human generation. Unfortunately, I fear that our UK elites are deeply committed to the CO2-as-demon meme and are unwilling to lose face by changing policy this side of a general election. Madness rules! Economic destruction of the UK will continue unabated.
Regards, in sadness, frustration and not a little *****, John C.
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These are the sort of things that the denialists have been saying for a long time, and they were right all along. Those who led us down this path should hang their heads in shame.
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John C, I think you and I are making the same point but from different perspectives. As I’ve said from the outset, the Government’s net zero policy – that, unless abandoned, will be a social, economic and environmental disaster (adding more recently that it will also be a major threat to national security) – is in any case pointless as it cannot have any impact on global emission reduction. Helm’s article is useful as it neatly destroys all the claims Miliband and his supporters are asserting.
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Jit, they should but they won’t – because they’re not listening.
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This short article by Kathryn Porter in the Telegraph sets out the AI vs. net zero dilemma beautifully:
Labour faces a choice: AI or net zero
New technology requires data centres whose energy needs are likely to increase emissions
Her conclusion:
Indeed so.
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By the way:
“Data centre in the shed reduces heat bills to £40”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0rpy7envr5o
I wonder to what extent all these data centres are contributing to the UHI effect?
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Mark – so far it’s a 1off, but thanks Ben Schofield BBC East, political correspondent for pushing the green agenda –
“The project is still in the pilot phase, but in the future, clients will pay Thermify to process their data using the HeatHubs.
Mr Theune adds the system provides “clean, green heat at a low-to-no price point” because “the electricity that’s generating that heat is paid for by somebody else”.
“Daniel Greenwood, Eastlight’s head of asset management, says he hopes the next phase of the project will see 50 homes get HeatHubs, and adds: “We’ve seen great results for the current installation, and although this is the first of its kind, we’re looking to roll that out more broadly.”
Jack McKellar, UK Power Networks’ innovation programme manager, says: “We don’t want anyone to miss out on the benefits of new and emerging technologies, as the UK moves towards a greener future.”
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Excellent article by Ben Pile on the DS this morning:
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/11/17/the-uns-contempt-for-democracy/
This para in particular struck me as a good perspective on the position we sceptics find ourselves in wrt arguing the science:
“And this story contains a message for climate sceptics. We can argue until we are blue in the face about the reality or not of global warming science’s claims. But science has always been secondary – i.e., downstream – of the political process. Conventional scepticism has it the other way around: that the process emerges from the scientific claim, which once debunks, deprives the process of its energy. The problem is that this forgets just how fickle institutional science has been, first in supporting the neomalthusian claims of the early 1970s that leant authority the process, such as overpopulation, resource depletion, and pollution build-up. These stories were debunked by history itself. Yet that caused little reflection by scientists about how their institutions had been colonised by politics. As soon as they failed, scare stories at the centre of the process’s narrative were simply swapped for others. Science is, sadly, no more immune to ideology than it is to money.”
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That Mike is why I think it best to ignore the so-called ‘science’ and focus exclusively on the hopeless impracticality of the policy.
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I thought Cliscep readers might be interested in the following as it gives an insight as to how a current UK MP is thinking in relation to climate/energy policy …
On 31st October on this thread I posted NZW’s call to stop AR7 through a letter writing campaign to our MPs. I duly wrote on 1st November and on 18th November I received the following reply from Baggy Shanker, MP for Derby South. A minor point is that I received the letter the day before he dated it!
QUOTE STARTS:-
19 November 2025
Dear John,
Re: Clean Power 2030 and Allocation Round 7
Thank you for contacting me.
I agree with you on the importance of tackling the cost of living and that addressing energy prices is crucial to this. Every family and business in the country has been hit by the energy insecurity and high energy bills that we have experienced over the last few years. I recognise the frustration and dismay that people will feel when seeing their utility bills each month. So I remain committed to supporting action to get bills down.
I disagree though that the way to do this is by slowing down the transition to clean power and continuing to rely on gas. It was the last Government’s failure to invest in clean energy that meant we were left exposed to international fossil fuel markets controlled by dictators like Putin and hit with the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation as a result. Wholesale gas costs for households remain 75% higher than they were before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the main reason energy bills remain high.
That is why I remain committed to the clean power mission that I believe is the only way to take back control of our energy system and protect billpayers for good. The more we generate from renewables such as wind or solar, the less we have to generate from more expensive gas.
Every wind turbine, solar panel and piece of grid infrastructure that we build protects us from the volatility of international fossil fuel markets and future price shocks. And at the same time, it plays a vital role in unlocking economic growth and jobs, boosting investment and building new industries in wind, nuclear, hydrogen, carbon capture and more.
I recognise that building the infrastructure to deliver clean power by 2030 will require significant investment in our energy system. But our country’s gas fleet is ageing, with half of it more than two decades old, so we would need to invest in rebuilding our power system in any scenario.
Replacing old gas plants would be significantly more expensive than building more renewables, with consumers also having to meet those costs. And in this situation, we would still be left exposed to the rollercoaster of global fossil fuel prices over which we have no control.
That is why I instead back the action the Government is taking, such as through AR7, to deliver the right amount of clean, homegrown power, at the right price for the British people, so we can take back control of our energy.
Thank you once again for contacting me about this important issue.
Yours sincerely,
[signature]
Baggy Shanker MP
Labour & Cooperative Member of Parliament for Derby South
QUOTE ENDS.
My immediate reaction was, “At least he is not wrong in every particular – just most of the important ones!” My second reaction was to wonder whether the Labour & Cooperative movements understand and appreciate the energy policies that Mr Shanker is promoting.
Regards, John C.
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John,
Thanks for sharing. The detachment from reality, and determination to believe things that aren’t true, sadly seems to permeate the Labour backbenches. It’s part of the reason why Labour is going to be wiped out at the next election. Sadly, unless reality swans very soon, they are going to inflict a lot of damage on this country in the next three and a half years.
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John – thanks for sharing, you can tell they all have the same crib sheet for replies –
“It was the last Government’s failure to invest in clean energy that meant we were left exposed to international fossil fuel markets controlled by dictators like Putin” – no Europe was you numty.
“That is why I instead back the action the Government is taking, such as through AR7, to deliver the right amount of clean, homegrown power, at the right price for the British people, so we can take back control of our energy.”
“at the right price”, care to expand on that Baggy, thought not.
PS – Mark – I agree, we need “reality swans” as the deluded ducklings have lost their way.
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Stats this morning (7:40): wind 16%; sun 0%; gas 62%; nuclear 11%; wood 9%; interconnectors -1%. Price: £188.08/MWh.
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The Spectator – but not the Coffee House – has published what I think is a most important article by Richard Dearlove, former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Titled ‘Britain’s national security must not be sacrificed to net zero’, he opens by noting how ‘In order to subsidise the drive to net zero we have some of the highest energy prices in the world. This leads to de-industrialisation which only helps our enemies such as China … Abundant gas and oil, essential to our energy security today and for decades to come, are left in the ground in favour of expensive imports’.
An extract:
And it’s when he discusses these ‘other points of vulnerability’ that he makes his most important observations.
For example:
He concludes:
The article is full of other important comments about Britain’s national security. Read it in full if possible.
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Clisceppers may be interested to note that, according to the (excellent) editorial of this week’s Spectator, the Dearlove article to which I refer above is the first of a series of articles about the costs of and assumptions underlying Britain’s energy policy that the magazine is committed to publishing. As the editorial says, ‘Science is not served by the hunting down of heretics but by the opening up of inquiry‘. Sounds promising.
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Dearlove gets to the essence of Net Zero. By submitting to a semi-internationalist NZ doctrine a nation destroys itself from within by walking over the EROEI.cliff. Everything in an economy becomes much more difficult and slower because energy and human effort are used less efficiently. NZ is thus a most excellent weapon in a war without weapons. Very dangerous times we in many Western countries are living through – and it’s largely our own fault. Regards, John C.
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The Dearlove article makes some good points and, as John C says, it highlights the fundamental weakness at the heart of NZ. However, imho, it indulges in too many flights of hyperbole and weakens its arguments by being under-informed in places.
A few minutes’ research, or a quick chat with a car nerd (we all know them!), would have advised Dearlove that all modern cars are stuffed with computers and are internet-connected, whatever their propulsion. China-sourced vehicles are the greatest concern wrt remote interference, but all vehicles have the same vulnerability. While most manufacturers are based in benign regimes, can we be sure of the provenance of the chips, etc they build into their vehicles? Further, they are all potentially vulnerable to hacking by “bad actors” from anywhere.
Unfortunately this inaccuracy on a significant point rather undermines the article. My reaction to similar assertions on, say, climate is along the lines: “If they’re wrong about this point which could have been easily checked, why should I trust the rest of the article?”.
That said, I agree with Robin: it’s very encouraging that the Spectator is giving such attention to the Net Zero issues with a sustained programme of articles.
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Mike, I don’t understand your point. Dearlove doesn’t say that modern cars are not stuffed with computers etc. What he does say is that it’s Chinese cars in particular that represent a serious danger. Is that hyperbole? I don’t think so. And the fact that non-Chinese vehicles may contain Chinese-made electronics only adds to the danger about which he’s giving what IMHO is a timely and important warning.
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Disclosure – I have edited Robin’s most recent comment, to make it clear he was responding to Mike. As written, it appeared to be a response to me.
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Robin,
That was my comment you picked up.
He focuses on Chinese EVs without putting them into the context that it is all vehicles which can be potentially vulnerable to interference, not just EVs and not only Chinese-made ones. China also exports a lot of ICE cars and trucks.
As for hyperbole…..the last two paras that you quoted seem to fit the bill.
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But Mike (sorry about the earlier error) his simple and important point is that Chinese EVs represent a serious security risk. The fact that their ICE vehicles and other imported and UK manufactured vehicles may also do so doesn’t lessen the importance of his warning. Far from it.
As for your claim of hyperbole, I think it’s quite possible – even likely – that China is exploiting the gullible minds of some Western politicians so as to encourage them to build an energy system that can be remotely disrupted.
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Robin, When I read articles which are critical of Net Zero – always welcome – I try to see them from the viewpoints of both an uninformed casual reader and a climate alarmist. In my view the former could well get the impression that it is only Chinese EVs which are a problem since there is no mention of all the other vehicles that may be vulnerable, Chinese-built and others. The flights of fantasy about Moby Dick and mad Captain Milliband would, imo, seem weird to a casual reader of a purportedly serious article. That’s how they seemed to me, even though I fully endorse the sceptic view that Milliband is unhinged!
An alarmist would, my opinion again, ridicule the fantasies, using them to tar the whole article. He/she could easily use the “Chinese EV” comments to claim that the author seems to be unaware of the wider context and thus go on to disparage his other claims.
At the end of the day, it is good to see such an article getting an airing in a leading magazine, flaws and all. Let’s see what comes next!
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Well Mike it seems we’re – to use that well-worn formula – going to have to agree to disagree about this. But I agree about how welcome it was to see the article getting an airing in the Speccie. And I was even more pleased to see that it’s the first of a series of articles the magazine is committed to publishing about the costs of and assumptions underlying Britain’s energy policy.
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Across at WUWT, Vijay Jayaraj has an interesting take on the global aspects of the Net Zero etc. policy agenda:-
“The mass evangelism for EVs and wind turbines is not a noble crusade to save the planet. It is a cynical ploy to enrich a small cadre of green-tech investors and empower global bureaucrats … The point is, the “green” agenda is not green. It is a dark marketing campaign for a self-serving ideology willing to sacrifice whole regions to its toxic byproducts.” https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/12/01/ignoring-ev-pollution-for-fake-climate-crisis/
Regards, John C.
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Another day, another trenchant critique of the global Net Zero etc policy consequences. This time it comes from Jo Nova’s site:-
https://www.joannenova.com.au/2025/12/europes-20-year-reckless-green-experiment-to-control-the-weather-has-crippled-the-economy/
Regards, John C.
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Found while searching for something else:
“Energising Britain: Your voice in our Clean Energy Superpower Mission”
gov link.
The Minister for Climate is either a dimwit, or thinks she’s helping to run a country that is populated by dimwits, and can therefore get away with a bare-faced lie. The WSJ at John’s link above says that the UK is currently second only to Germany in the league table of countries with the most expensive domestic electricity – and it tops the league in terms of most expensive industrial electricity, at 4 times the price in the US.
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Despite the vast amounts of money spent on it, and the Northern Irish net zero plans…..
“Renewable energy generation ‘sliding backwards’ as figures dip”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9971dz82e4o
Renewable energy generation in Northern Ireland “is sliding backwards” an industry body has said, with the latest figures, external confirming another decrease.
In the 12 months to September 2025, 44.2% of electricity came from renewable sources, down 0.3% on the same time the previous year.
This is the third consecutive year that has shown a decline in renewable generation, since a peak of 51% in 2022.…
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Another good article by Tilak Doshi in the Climate Skeptic:
Time to Stop Pretending Renewables Are Cheap
While immediate costs are often low, total costs are a very different matter
His concluding comment:
There’s little that’s likely to be new to many of us here, but Doshi draws the issues together neatly in this piece.
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It’s rare that I am able to give credit to the Guardian for anything, but I do so for their publishing this letter:
“Homegrown gas is vital for UK energy security
Domestic gas production must be incentivised if the UK is to avoid damaging shortages, writes Prof John Underhill“
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/05/homegrown-gas-is-vital-for-uk-energy-security
Nils Pratley is right to bring attention to the warning from the National Energy System Operator (Neso) about secure gas supplies (Report detailing risk to UK gas security was not one to bury on budget day, 2 December). Without secure supplies and adequate subsurface storage, the UK has come close to running out of gas, most notably in March 2013, when we were within hours of doing so.
Given that 85% of the roughly 30m homes in the UK currently rely on gas for heating and cooking, pivoting away from the energy source is not going to happen soon. Furthermore, gas provides more than half of our electricity base load on cold, windless and dark days, meaning it’s critical that we have supplies for national security.
As the article pointed out, the Ormen Lange gas field and Langeled pipeline are critical points of failure. The alternatives are either to ensure we continue responsible production from domestic fields in UK waters, or to ramp up and pay for high-carbon intensity liquid natural gas imports from sources like Qatar and the US, which are far worse for the global climate and lead to the risk of price spikes that ultimately increase bills.
Securing the domestic sources requires the government to encourage and incentivise the sector to find and produce the gas we need as we manage the transition away from fossil fuels. The recent relaxation of policy through the introduction of transitional energy certificates is encouraging, but an obvious additional step is to remove the windfall tax. Unless that is done, I fear investment in domestic gas production will not be forthcoming, leaving the country vulnerable to gas shortages that Neso has highlighted.
Prof John Underhill
University director for energy transition, The Interdisciplinary Institute, Aberdeen University
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For Australia, read UK:
“Datacentres demand huge amounts of electricity. Could they derail Australia’s net zero ambitions?”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/03/datacentres-demand-huge-amounts-of-electricity-could-they-derail-australias-net-zero-ambitions
…According to the IEA: “A hyperscale, AI-focused datacentre can have a capacity of 100MW or more, consuming as much electricity annually as 100,000 households.”
The consumption of electricity and water is largely related to cooling, as servers, like other computing devices, convert electrical energy into heat, according to Prof Michael Brear, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Net Zero Australia project at the University of Melbourne.
“When you have a very large number of computers in a confined space, you need to air condition the space to maintain these devices at a safe and efficient working temperature,” he says.
Most digital infrastructure is cooled using air conditioning or water….
The UK government apparently thinks we can be a net zero world leader and an AI superpower…..
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Tunbridge Wells residents had their mains water turned off for at least 5 days last week because of a ‘bad batch’ of chemicals delivered to the treatment works. Water not fit for human consumption apparently, but hey, it’s OK, we can use it to cool the local AI datacentre processing facial recognition data! Brilliant, not a drop wasted.
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Passing through the kitchen last night, I heard the Tunbridge Wells incident being associated with climate change – I was only half-listening, but I think the dial-an-expert was saying that we will have more such problems because of climate change, thereby drawing a line between shortage with one cause, and shortage with another cause.
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The Science is clear:
Climate change = administrative incompetence and/or malign economic/political opportunism
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David Turver’s latest goes some way towards synthesising the approaches of both Robin and Jaime:
Follow the Science and Ditch Net Zero
None of the catastrophic climate predictions have come to pass, and Ed Miliband was left out in the cold at COP30 so why are we still aiming for Net Zero?
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/follow-science-ditch-net-zero
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Dr Roy Spencer has a couple of intersting posts on WUWT, with more to follow. He looks at average temperature trends across the 6 major provinces of Canada, together with the individual records:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/12/05/canada-summer-daily-high-temperature-trends-1900-2023/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/12/06/canada-summer-daily-low-temperature-trends-1900-2023/
He shows that there is a greater rise in the low temperatures than the high. This, of course, pushes up the averages. It’s a key point which the media never pick up: much of the reported warming is driven by warmer winters and nights. That’s mostly good news!
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Mark: thanks for the link to the Turver article. it’s an excellent overview of current developments in the climate change world. I have no problem with it at all – far from it. If that means my disagreements with Jaime are now resolved, I’m delighted.
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Unfortunately, I now disagree with David on one specific – but important – point!
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/follow-science-ditch-net-zero/comment/185134781
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Anyone who hasn’t seen it and can spare 35 minutes would I think enjoy this GBNews interview with Dr John Cunningham (Renewable Energy Foundation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP4CViALhV4
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“More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US datacenters
Exclusive: Congress urged to act against energy-hungry facilities blamed for increasing bills and worsening climate crisis”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/08/us-data-centers
A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the US, the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis.
The green groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch and dozens of local organizations, have urged members of Congress to halt the proliferation of energy-hungry datacenters, accusing them of causing planet-heating emissions, sucking up vast amounts of water and exacerbating electricity bill increases that have hit Americans this year.
“The rapid, largely unregulated rise of datacenters to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate and water security,” the letter states, adding that approval of new data centers should be paused until new regulations are put in place....
Meanwhile, the UK government wishes to be an AI world leader and to go hell for leather with net zero. Good luck with those mutually contradictory objectives.
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Headline on the front of today’s Times:
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Here’s the Telegraph version:
“Net zero is strangling our economy – here’s the proof
Limiting available electricity has stifled productivity without denting rising global emissions”
https://archive.ph/INWoG#selection-2559.4-2563.99
That link should get behind the paywall. Well worth a read, IMO. While it says nothing new to us, it pulls the strands together nicely.
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“Will net zero really cost UK households £500 a year?
An official report lays out different scenarios for the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels to net zero by 2050″
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/11/reaching-net-zero-cost-explainer-uk-price-worth-paying
A fascinating read. The Guardian journalists must be so disappointed by the NESO report. At the end they fall back on the old trope that yes, net zero’s going to cost lots of money, but it will cost more to do nothing because climate change will cost us so much more. For the umpteenth time, they demonstrate a logic by-pass: nothing the UK does will make any difference to climate change. Net zero is costing us a fortune while saving us nothing in terms of the (purported) costs of climate change. Unless the rest of the world joins in (and patently it isn’t) then net zero is a fool’s errand.
The article contains some scary numbers:
…The UK already spends about 10% of its gross domestic product on investments related to net zero, and Neso expects those costs will climb over the coming years and remain higher than they are today until the 2030s.
In its most ambitious green scenario, costs peak at about £460bn by 2029 before beginning to decline to about 5% of GDP by 2050 or roughly £220bn a year. …
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See also Paul Homewood:
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For Net Zero to make sense on any level, we would also have to reduce our consumption emissions to zero. Of course, we would have to do that if all the other countries all joined in the happy charade.
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Seems to me that some, who pushed this NZ for the UK, are now realizing that every promise/post they made about cheaper bills was always a fantasy, and are now trying to backtrack to save some credibility (to late for me).
ps – Ain’t it funny how authors on this site & many others are still labelled “deniers” when they have predicted this for years.
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During a discussion yesterday, I was treated to a very apposite analogy as to UK net zero.
Think of the climate crisis (sic) as an illness that needs to be treated. Net zero is the treatment. But it isn’t working – global temperatures keep rising and CO2 emissions globally also continue to rise. But the treatment (net zero) has appalling side effects, and these are seriously damaging both the UK economy and its environment. Arguably, also, one of the side effects is to increase global CO2 emissions, as the UK exports its manufacturing industry (and associated emissions) to countries with lower environmental standards, which rely heavily on fossil fuels.
Any doctor who continued to prescribe a failing mdicine with dangerous side effects would be struck off. It’s time the sime happened to UK politicians who continue to insist that net zero is the necessary medicine.
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Mark, Andrew Montford at Net Zero Watch (https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/the-renewables-trap) has today published an article describing how and why the doctor will continue to prescribe leeching of the British economy (via modern renewables) for a long time to come.
Unfortunately for most British people, the doctor is not about to be struck off. He is not even going to be hauled before the GMC. Indeed, as Andrew concludes, “Thus any government that is serious about reducing electricity prices faces economic, legal, diplomatic, political and constitutional chaos, perhaps for years. Alas, [with] the alternative being economic meltdown, this may be the path of least resistance.” Regards, John C.
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From that Andrew Montford report:
No comment.
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But you see JJ, when you’re saving the planet, economic pain and human cost have to be expected – and accepted.
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Robin, you rightly say, “when you’re saving the planet, economic pain and human cost have to be expected – and accepted.”
I find it interesting to consider who and what is paying that cost and experiencing that pain … and, on the other hand, who and what is enjoying the benefit of saving Gaia! I suspect that the ‘progressive Left’ and those with elitist ideas/luxury beliefs are in there somewhere – but on which side of the balance sheet? Regards, John C.
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John C: but surely saving the planet is reward enough? : )
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Robin,
When you’re saving the planet, extreme economic pain and catastrophic human cost are not only fully anticipated, but detailed and meticulous plans are laid to hardwire them in, in order that they cannot be avoided or even mitigated.
Apparently.
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I suppose It’s a bit like jumping of a cliff, you can’t change your mind half way down.
Seems UK is happily heading for a splat if NZ continues.
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“NESO Blows the Doors Off Net Zero
NESO’s economic annex dramatically understates the cost of Net Zero.”
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/neso-blows-doors-off-net-zero
Well worth a read:
Conclusions
The original press reports claiming that adopting the Falling Behind scenario would save £350bn compared to continuing with Holistic Transition were very damaging to the Net Zero cause. However, detailed analysis of the numbers demonstrates that the cost of Holistic Transition is under-stated by a considerable margin and the costs of Falling behind are over-stated.
There are hundreds of billions of electricity generation and infrastructure capex savings and hundreds of billions more savings in the cost of vehicles and the cost of electricity if we cease this nonsense. Both NESO scenarios are much more expensive than Stopping the Race to Net Zero. We can see now why the Economic Annex was delayed – NESO has inadvertently blown the doors off Net Zero.
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“Spain’s commitment to renewable energy may be in doubt”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn410nll79po
...However, in recent months, Spain’s all-in commitment to renewables has come under scrutiny. This was in great part due to an 28 April blackout that left homes, businesses, government buildings, public transport, schools and universities in the dark across Spain and neighbouring Portugal for several hours.
With the government unable to offer a full explanation for the outage, the country’s energy mix became a fiercely-debated political issue. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative opposition, accused the government of “fanaticism” in pursuing its green agenda, suggesting that an over-reliance on renewables might have caused the incident.
Feijóo and others on the right advocated a rethink of the national energy model.
The fact that, a week before the blackout, solar generation in mainland Spain registered a record 61.5% of the electricity mix has fuelled such claims.
Yet the government and national grid operator Red Eléctrica have both denied that the outage was linked to the preponderance of renewable energy sources in Spain.
“We have operated the system with higher renewable rates [previously] with no effect on the security of the system,” says Concha Sánchez, head of operations for Red Eléctrica. “Definitely it’s not a question of the rate of renewables at that moment.”
Ms Sánchez said the blackout was caused by a combination of issues, including an “unknown event” in the system moments before, which saw anomalous voltage oscillations.
However, Red Eléctrica and the government are still awaiting reports on the incident that they hope will determine the exact cause. A cyber-attack has repeatedly been ruled out.
Meanwhile, since April, Spain’s electricity mix has been modified somewhat, with greater reliance on natural gas, reinforcing the notion that the country is at an energy crossroads….
…But in the meantime, Spain’s renewable transition continues.
And for Figueruelas, in Aragón, that means not just cheap, clean energy, but investment. The town’s population, of just 1,000, is due to increase dramatically, with 2,000 Chinese workers scheduled to arrive to help build the new battery plant…
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“Chances of EU trucking industry hitting zero emissions targets are dire, says industry body
Only 10,000 out of economic bloc’s 6m trucks are electric and are more likely to be operating on short routes”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/15/eu-trucking-industry-zero-emissions-targets-electric-trucks
The chances of the European trucking industry hitting zero emissions targets are “dire”, an industry body has warned, as it emerged that only a tiny amount of lorries delivering goods in the EU are electric.
Speaking as the European Commission prepares to water down electric car targets, the boss of the association for commercial vehicles called on the commission to commit to an urgent review of the sector, tackling problems including a lack of public charging points, a lack of tax breaks for trucks and high energy costs.…
It’s all unravelling at quite a pace now.
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More unravelling:
“Morrisons becomes first UK supermarket to delay net zero targets
Britain’s fifth-biggest grocer postpones goal by 15 years to 2050, saying revised plan will now cover entire supply chain”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/15/morrisons-becomes-first-uk-supermarket-to-delay-net-zero-targets
…Morrisons is trying to turn around its sales performance, after running up debts in a £7bn takeover by the US private equity group Clayton, Dubilier and Rice in 2021. The German discounter Lidl has moved closer to overtaking Morrisons as the UK’s fifth biggest supermarket chain, behind Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Aldi. Morrisons has an 8.3% share of the grocery market, while Lidl has 8.1%.
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This is what happens when pushing water up an ever-steepening slope.
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“revised plan will now cover entire supply chain” by 2050.
Wonder what that means in reality, no more frozen stuff in store or transported, no more ship imported products, no more buying from foreign countries in other words. You have to laugh at the posturing, but guess the PR people know what they mean!!!
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While this announcement is specifically about Grangemouth, the comments by Ineos’ Jim Ratcliffe are very pertinent to this thread:
“INEOS is investing £150m at its Grangemouth site, supported by a £75m Government loan guarantee and £50m grant……
Sir Jim Ratcliffe said “The £150m investment in the future of a major UK industrial site demonstrates INEOS’ commitment to British manufacturing. The support of the UK Government is welcome. However, we need to continue to work together to deliver competitive and efficient low-carbon manufacturing for the UK, long term. The answer is NOT decarbonisation by deindustrialisation. Without a strong manufacturing base, the economy will continue to decline. High energy costs and punitive carbon charges are driving industry out of the UK at an alarming rate. If politicians want jobs, investment and energy security, then they must create a competitive environment.”“
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Another interesting post from Gordon Hughes, which I have read rather belatedly:
“Geography and electricity markets Part 3”
https://cloudwisdom.substack.com/p/geography-and-electricity-markets
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This morning David Turver has another depressing piece about Britain’s energy prices:
High UK Electricity Prices Continue into 2025
New Government data for first half of 2025 shows the UK still has the highest industrial electricity prices in Europe.
From his conclusion:
Needless to say our wretched Government will ignore this and soldier on with net zero.
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Main headline on the BBC website this morning:
2025 likely to be UK’s hottest on record, says Met Office
… scientists could not be clearer that human-caused climate change is driving the UK’s rapidly warming trend.
Mike Kendon, a climate information scientist at the Met Office, said:
The BBC added:
Of course the only international consensus is one that – far from ‘tackling climate change’ – prioritises economic and social development over emission reduction. Outside the West no major economy, not only producers of fossil fuels, has made a net zero commitment. Um … I wonder how they could have missed all that?
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The other thing that the article omits to mention is that talk of “warmest ever” is due to warmer nights rather than hotter days. They in turn might well have a great deal to do with the urban heat island effect, rather than the assertion of “Longer spells of hotter days and nights driven by climate change…”.
It’s also worth noting this:
...The Met Office’s projection uses observed temperatures up to 21 December and assumes that the remaining days of the year follow the long-term December average.
As a result, the Met Office cannot say with certainty that 2025 will be the hottest year, but it is the most likely outcome….
Indeed not, given that:
...With just over a week still to go, the average UK air temperature across 2025 is on track to end up at about 10.05C.
A cooler Christmas could affect final figures, but it is likely that 2025 will edge out the current record of 10.03C from 2022, the Met Office says.…
Why not wait and see rather than rush to push out the headline and associated story that might yet turn out to be incorrect? The answer is obvious – because this way, if it turns out not to be the hottest year, it hardly matters: people will have seen the headline that said it was, and that’s all that matters. Propaganda in full swing.
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Perhaps this is the reason why the Met Office report was rushed out (and given prominence by the BBC)?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cr7l1zy32e5o
Cold weather is going to arrive across the UK over the next few days – just in time for the festive season.…
...December so far has been mild and wet in most places, and this week started with more cloud and rain – and temperatures above the seasonal norm.
However, this is now beginning to change as high pressure takes hold across Scandinavia.
This will drift across the northern half of the UK over the next couple of days and along with low pressure to the south, will bring a feed of chilly easterly winds….
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An excellent comment on this story by Paul H: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/12/23/met-office-charlatans-claim-hottest-year-by-0-02c/.
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Apologies if I am late pointing out this rewriting by Kathryn Porter of T S Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’. Here is the original: https://poetryarchive.org/poem/journey-magi/
And here is Kathryn’s not so grid-compliant version: https://watt-logic.com/2025/12/19/journey-of-the-magi-revisited/
As an electrical engineer I particularly liked this bit, “There were times we regretted
High system margins and abundant firm power
Frequency stable, inertia high.” Regards, John C.
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Robin – thanks for the Paul H link above, which, thanks to comment by It doesn’t add up… leads to this link – Innovative collaboration at core of new Met Office and National Energy System Operator agreement – Met Office – Partial quote –
“Dr Deborah Petterson, Director of Resilience and Emergency Management at NESO, said: “What makes this partnership so exciting is the blend of expertise – bringing together those who understand climate with those that understand the energy system. That combination is not only essential but also inspiring as we develop our agreement with the Met Office.
“I’m delighted by the potential that this collaboration offers. By combining NESO’s energy system knowledge with the Met Office’s meteorological and climate expertise, we can plan more effectively for a cleaner, affordable energy future – while ensuring the continuing reliability of our system as we face climate change.”
Steve Calder, Director of Government and Industry Relationships at the Met Office said: “Weather is the ‘fuel’ behind Britain’s clean energy superpower. Partnering with NESO, our trusted weather and climate intelligence will support the UK’s journey to clean, secure, and resilient energy.
“By fully realising the opportunities of weather as energy, we can help enable a more efficient infrastructure that not only provides clean power, but also protects consumers.””
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Good luck with relying on the Met Office! I hope NESO isn’t planning on using them for long-range forecasting, since their long-range forecasts are almost invariably wrong.
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