Prof Sir Dieter Helm has several advantages over the run-of-the-mill plebeian Net Zero sceptic when it comes to getting his message across. The first is that he is fully subscribed to the climate alarm theory, so his opinions are not immediately dismissed out of hand. He also has credentials that (if credentials actually mattered) outmatch the credentials of the Net Zero advocates. Plus, he speaks in sentences, and explains things in simple terms, which even a politician could understand.

On Wednesday, in the aftermath of the unnecessarily-prolonged decision on Jackdaw, BBC R4 had an interview with Helm on PM, with Evan Davies. Catching it while chopping vegetables for a stir fry, I nearly lost a finger.

I cannot imagine that lines such as this would have been broadcast by the BBC a year or two ago. This is a welcome change, so well done to them for finally realising that the claims of “consensus” on this topic have always been about silencing the critics.

A loose transcript follows. Well, the meaning is 100%, but the odd word might be astray.

Evan’s preamble:
…although emissions from items produced and consumed within the UK have fallen very substantially since the 1990s, emissions from imports have risen very substantially. So we’ve been offshoring the energy-intensive production and then importing the goods, and these imported emissions now account for more than half the UK’s total.
…
[Evan asks Dieter about the Jackdaw decision]

Dieter Helm
We are trying to get to Net Zero electricity by 2030 – which is a matter of 30 months away – and we are trying to get to Net Zero for the economy as a whole by 2050. Now this is Net Zero territorial carbon production. so that’s the emissions coming out in Britain and the sequestration taking place in Britain, and we’ve been pretty successful overall in reducing territorial emissions, but partly because we’ve been de-industrialising. What our Net Zero measure doesn’t account for is the carbon which is being imported into the country through all the manufactured and energy intensive stuff that we used to produce at home. So we closed Grangemouth, we closed refineries, we closed the fertiliser industry and then those emissions don’t count any more. Now within that context the problem with Jackdaw is that if you are pursuing that domestic emissions target then it’s within our waters. If you don’t do Jackdaw and you simply import the gas instead, that doesn’t count, but of course from a climate change perspective it certainly does. So there’s no advantage in terms of addressing global warming from not doing a Jackdaw and there are quite a lot of security, balance of payments, economic benefits which the PM has been listing today.

Evan Davies
Just in terms of the progress we’re making, let’s start with electricity, you mentioned the 2030 target to decarbonise the grid. Is that going to happen?

Dieter Helm
No. We are quite a long way off and not surprisingly it’s not for want of people trying to dash towards getting the grid, all the generation, all the storage, all the batteries all lined up to a short-term deadline. It’s always going to be very difficult and stunningly expensive as well. What we’ve actually achieved is the highest electricity prices in the developed world. And why? Well, people think that a wind turbine is cheaper, and a solar farm is cheaper, true. But it’s a system cost. So in electricity, in the bad old days, we had about 60 GW of capacity to meet a peak demand of 45. Just keep those two numbers in mind. What we now have is a move towards having twice the grid we had before, all the batteries and storage which we didn’t need before, and something like 120 GW of capacity to produce the same output. That’s why it’s so much more expensive. Wind and solar are intermittent, we don’t have any coal to back the system up and we’re heavily reliant on gas to keep the lights on. And wind and solar don’t work most of the time so you need all this extra stuff and it costs you a lot more and that leads to both the very high prices domestic electricity customers are paying and the stunningly high prices that industrial customers are paying, and that’s why they can’t compete.

Evan Davies
A very big question that hangs over UK policy towards Net Zero is surely the very fact that we actually are not going to make any difference to climate change. What we’re doing is part of a global effort, it needs to be part of a global effort where everybody does their bit, right? Where do you feel the world is going on all of this, because you might say there’s no point in the British busting a gut to get to the last drop of oil not being used if everyone else is just burning fossil fuels with abandon.

Dieter Helm
Well, I can see the point of that argument if you put it in the form of “there’s no point us driving down our emissions and closing down a lot of our energy-intensive industries to be produced abroad and having the high prices to go with it.” But it does, you’re right, it has to be put in a global context. You know global warming isn’t going to be solved in Oxford or England, it’s going to be solved in China, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, the Middle East, this is where the big emissions growth are. China burns more than half the total world coal for example. Indonesia is a very fast-growing, highly fossil-fuel intensive country. So that’s where it matters. So what we should say if we really care about climate change is every penny we spend on climate change policy should be designed to make a difference to global warming. What is it we can do here, which will most affect the growth of those emissions, to slow them down in the big players. If you look at these big players determining the frame of our world, it’s not exactly encouraging. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, doesn’t mean that you and I individually shouldn’t make efforts towards it, but what we’re actually doing is spending a great deal on having very little effect. And that’s where the Jackdaw comes into frame. Not doing Jackdaw is economically illiterate. But it’s not good for the climate either. it’s not as if the consequence of this is going to result – not doing Jackdaw – is going to result in lowering emissions. It isn’t. And so: we have to be brutally realistic, climate realism is what we need, and focussing on how serious the global problem is, and what we’re actually doing about it. And as you know the British government of Boris Johnson and back to the days of Ed Miliband, they all said that we were setting the example for the world of how to do it. Well we are an example to the world but not the way they thought about it. We’re an example of how not to do it. Because no world leader anywhere is looking to Britain to work out how they can have the most expensive electricity in the developed world. That’s not a success.

Evan Davies
And just by the way, you mentioned Jackdaw of course but the same logic from what you’re saying would apply to Rosebank.

Dieter Helm
Yes definitely! Definitely, definitely. I mean what is the point of using North Sea Norwegian oil over using North Sea British oil.

Evan Davies
Sir Dieter Helm there on Britain’s performance on Net Zero.