Attacks on the net zero transition are ratcheting up, but what would happen if the critics of decarbonisation actually got what they wanted?
The boss of the Climate Change Committee, Emma Pinchbeck, was interviewed by The Times today under the headline "Anti-net zero politicians will make voters poorer, climate chief warns".
"The really important thing that politicians should understand is if they don't elect to enable that spend [to reach net zero], to create the markets of the private sector, to make electricity cheap, then their constituents will be worse off in 2050," she said. "It's absolutely crystal clear now."
Speaking to BusinessGreen earlier in the week, Pinchbeck offered an even punchier assessment of the current politics around the net zero transition. "If you are an elected representative who is hostile to renewables, heat pumps, electric vehicles, and some of these measures in the economy, what our numbers say is that you are also hostile to your constituents saving £700 on their energy bill and about £700 quid on their fuel bill through making these changes," she said. "When I look at these numbers from the Committee... what I see is a pitch for the economy and a pitch for security at a time where everything feels quite volatile out there in the world, and perhaps most importantly, a set of technologies that can help people with their energy bills at a time when people are struggling."
This is a compelling argument and the CCC is right to make it. At a time when climate action is facing fiercer criticism and a more concerted backlash than at any point in the past 15 years, it is critical to highlight the many benefits decarbonisation brings. But others can and should take this argument further. It is not just that reaching net zero will result in substantial economic, security, environmental, and health gains. It is that scrapping net zero would have the precisely the opposite effect.
Say the increasingly vocal voices calling for net zero efforts to be scrapped get their way - that the dog catches the car - then what?
Frack Lancashire and hope it really can be turned into a 'British Texas', regardless of the fact the US is a geographically isolated gas market with limited export capacity, vast open spaces, more accessible shale deposits, and gas prices that are held down by the way much of the extracted gas is a by-product of higher value shale oil production, and England is none of these things?
Find a way to convince people shale gas wells in their backyard are a great idea, completing a political task that proved beyond leaders as capable as David Cameron and, erm, Liz Truss?
Issue more drilling licenses in the North Sea and pray that this time they really will resuscitate a basin that has been in decline for decades?
Cross fingers and hope the gas producing countries that are way beyond Britain's control stop invading their neighbours and engineer a gas glut so our imports stop costing so much?
Many seem unable to face reality on UK gas
— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) February 27, 2025
Do you A: Fantasise about North Sea licensing (yellow sliver in chart) + Texas-on-Thames, continue to rely on gas heat/power, then cry as gas imports surge >>2x (hatched area)
Or B: Shift to clean energy & cut gas imports by two-thirds pic.twitter.com/sA39AYt9bA
Scrap 'green levies' on electricity bills and slap a tax on renewables, regardless of the fact it would push up energy bills, leave the UK even more exposed to gas imports, and destroy energy investor confidence in the UK for a generation?
Ban batteries on spurious safety grounds, ignoring the fact they are a critical component of modern grids?
Bury all new pylons and hope no one notices the resulting increase in their energy bills to pay for the expensive groundworks required to do so?
Pray that this time - this time - new nuclear projects will deliver on time and on budget, and investors can be attracted without subsidies that dwarf those handed to renewables generators?
Stop funding energy efficiency programmes, and tell the British public to suck it up and live with some of the coldest and dampest homes in Europe, not to mention schools and hospitals with collapsing roofs?
Tell auto manufacturers to double down on internal combustion engine production and ignore the fact global EV demand is soaring and Chinese manufacturers are poised to eat everyone's lunch?
Instruct boiler manufacturers to close their eyes to the way heat pumps are chipping away at their market share across Europe and beyond?
Actively turn the UK's back on fast emerging markets in areas such as carbon capture, carbon removals, alternative proteins, hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuels, and green steel, and let others reap the rewards from industries that are poised to dominate the 21st century?
Publicly argue that China is making a grave strategic error by investing so much in clean technologies and that the future lies in a revival of 20th century technologies based on burning stuff, regardless of what this does to the climate?
Halt investments in new rail upgrades, EV charging networks, and water infrastructure, on the grounds the UK's approach of having some of the lowest levels of capital investment in the OECD has served the country so well over the past 20 years?
Draw up a plan to drastically increase funding for flood defences, heat-proofing our homes and cities, and overhauling our food systems and supply chains in recognition that until the global economy reaches net zero temperatures will keep spiralling upwards and climate impacts will become ever more severe?
Quit the Paris Agreement, because if it is OK for President Trump to torch international relations and hang US allies out to dry, why can't the UK do the same?
These are all legitimate questions and they deserve answers. Strangely, none of them are ever addressed in the now daily op-eds attacking Ed Miliband and cherry-picking data from the CCC's reports.
These same arguments can also be applied to those corporates that are quietly diluting their decarbonisation efforts and doubling down on fossil fuels, as exemplified this week by BP's 're-set'.
Scaling back long-term clean energy investments and ramping up oil and gas production may help the share price now - although it does not seem to have done much good for BP - but what happens in five to 10 years' time when EVs and renewables have eaten even more of fossil fuels' market share? What happens if the gas price does start to trend downwards again?
Equally, if everyone follows the lead of Trump and the fossil fuel industry, what happens when temperature increases push beyond 2C and 3C of warming? What does business-as-usual and return on investment look like in a world of rolling climate disasters, collapsing food systems, and surging migration?
None of this is to say the net zero transition will be easy. The Labour government will have looked at the CCC's modelling this week and the way it suggests the investments required to meet the UK's climate goals will peak in 2029 and cursed its luck. The payback from those investments will come, but if energy bills do not start falling in the next year or so, those long-term gains will be of little comfort to a government facing right-wing parties that will shamelessly exploit the same economic headwinds they did so much to create. Lower energy and fuel costs for households in the late 2030s will be of little help to a government trying to get re-elected in 2028.
But while net zero costs may peak in 2029, those costs need to be put in perspective. One of the most interesting and under-reported aspects of the CCC report was the modelling that suggested the net spend required to meet net zero targets would only push up the UK's total annual capital spending on everything across the economy to around 19 per cent of GDP, which would still be below the OECD average capital investment level of 22 per cent. As my colleague Michael Holder pointed out, the estimated £4bn a year of additional investment is less than what Premier League football clubs spent on player transfers in the past two years.
And returns would come from these investments. Following the most cost-effective net zero pathway is estimated to result in £35bn a year of net savings to the UK economy by 2050. The economic gains could prove to be far bigger still if global energy shocks continue, clean tech cost reductions surpass expectations, and hard to quantify health benefits start to emerge. There are also plenty of policy levers the government could pull in the short term to curb costs for working families and ensure the jobs and economic benefits that result from green investments are more evenly shared.
The UK has stumbled through the past 15 years - and arguably the last 30 years - pursuing a low investment, low productivity economic model. Can anyone honestly say it has worked? Does the country's infrastructure not need an urgent upgrade? If we're going to do what has to eventually be done, why not deliver upgrades that also serve to tackle a climate crisis that threatens everything? Why not restore energy security and proactively work to improve health and quality of life for millions?
And as Pinchbeck highlighted, these changes will prove much less disruptive than critics claim. "We want people to have better technologies when they're coming to replace things [cars and boilers]," she said. "You can still eat meat. You can still fly. You can do a lot of the things that I think the environmental movement has historically said [no to]."
Those now arguing for net zero to be scrapped have been broadly aligned for much of the past 15 years with an economic project that has objectively failed. They have tended to be pro-financial deregulation, pro-austerity, pro-Brexit, and some of them are now increasingly pro-fascist adjacent Trumpist politics. Meanwhile, the UK economy has faltered, public services and key infrastructure have crumbled, and real wages have flat-lined. They have been wrong about so much. Why should anyone think they are right about net zero? What does their plan for scrapping climate action even entail? What costs would it bring?
It is right to acknowledge there are some costs associated with decarbonising an industrial economy, but the costs of not doing so are likely to prove far, far greater.
