The public doesn't hate Net Zero as much as RW politicians insist they do

Banning domestic flights, how laughable. Going to ban shirt flights to the EU. How funny. My DC went to Paris on holiday earlier on in the year and flew back. It's faster and cheaper than Eurostar

I have a slow and a quick solution for her.

Slow is nuclear. Clean, cheap energy that doesn’t do much to landscapes. Build out our reactor fleet to get economies of scale and rationalise regulations.

Fast is divert our net zero subsidies to high quality carbon credits. Split the difference in order to save money and increase the carbon benefit at the same time.

She’s not being very consistent though.

She’s saying that climate change is real & she wants to leave a cleaner environment for “our children” but she wants growth, cheaper energy & protecting the landscapes that “we all love”. I’m not sure that these goals are consistent ones.

Again, it comes back to poor reporting but I wish she had been pressed more on what she intends to (& how she will pay for it) as if she does achieve her ambition to become prime minister she will have to deal with the wildfires & other consequences of climate change.

I want our energy system almost entirely replaced, from a starting point of gas / coal-fired power stations to an end point of renewables backed by copious nuclear energy capacity. This gets us most of the way. We’re doing that now, policies do not need cancelling, the missing policies to build copious nuclear capacity need instantiating.

I want fossil-fuel vehicles - both road and rail - phased out. There is no need for them now. I want a massive & public-service oriented (as opposed to profit oriented) increase in public transport to be rolled out. The UK should have a Swiss-style integrated network country-wide, and it should be cheap & pleasant to use.

I want domestic flights / ultra short haul flights to places accessible easily by train banned. No domestic flights at all; ban flights to eg Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam too.

I want to disincentivise meat consumption, or at least favour (massively) only allowing UK & Ireland sourced 100% grass-fed meat to be sold in the UK. It’s not about the food-miles, rather avoiding meat reared on deforested / clearcut land or fed with feed grown on clearcut land.

Finally I want to see a huge reduction in the use of plastic materials, especially in disposable products and packaging. Ban non-recyclable plastics altogether. Mandate a minimum required proportion of recycled plastic.

*Exemptions would only cover specific eg medical products where hygiene & performance requirements may override.

So one key challenge with renewable electricity is that it produces electricity when it's sunny or windy rather than when electricity is actually needed and there is no cost effective means of long duration storage of electricity.

This means that when it's sunny or windy supply often can be more than demand meaning wholesale market prices (not the prices you or I see which include taxes, grid costs etc) plummet and can even go negative.

Now this is not good news for wind or solar farm owners to be often selling their power at low or close to zero prices. To prevent this the Government gives them a guaranteed price and if wholesale prices drop below this then the Government tops them up with a subsidy.

Unfortunately the cost of this (significant) subsidy is paid for by a levy or tax on business and household electricity bills, rather than general taxation (which most other countries do).

Unfortunately this then makes supplied UK electricity prices some of the most expensive in the world.

For businesses that use lots of electricity such as heavy industry this makes it uncompetitive to operate in the UK so they move their operations (and importantly the jobs) to countries where electricity is cheaper. Similarly if you are going to be setting up a business which consumes a lot of energy then you wouldn't choose the UK.

Unfortunately these other countries with much cheaper electricity (China, India, US) achieve this through highly polluting coal fired power plants. Meaning that overall global CO2 emissions would be greater from a UK Net Zero policy.

Lastly because of these high electricity in the UK demand has actually fallen over the last 15 years and this is despite of the massive growth in EV vehicles, heat pumps and aircon.

Like many things UK Net Zero is simply virtue signalling that makes no difference to global CO2 emissions (if anything it increases them), it destroys UK industry and jobs and makes us all poorer (except the wind farm and solar farm owners).

Yet if you point these facts out then you will be accused of being a climate change denier or not understanding.

China is already electrified.

The UK hit peak carbon in the 90's. The PRC is not even at peak carbon. I reckon the PRC should be doing more.

In the context of my earlier post which you responded to, I think it's very clear. China is working towards electrification in a way that is boosting their economy. We're working towards it in a different way. I think rich vs poor is entirely relevant to 'preventing the destruction of the environment'. We know poor communities suffer more from climate change than wealthier ones.

The whole point of net zero is tackling the problem on a national scale

why not an international one?

The point, to me, is to reduce a global risk. One where the climate outcome doesn’t depend on where the action is taken, just on how effective (in total) it is.

OK, so I’m with you on the net zero goal (in fact, net negative).

I want most UK net zero policies scrapped and the money instead channeled to much more effective and cheaper carbon mitigation projects overseas. In fact that way, we can get both more carbon benefit and lower cost.

The worst types are those who use the moral imperative as a way to drive though net zero, but then don’t actually care whether the money we spend on it does the most carbon good that it can, in fact, resist more beneficial options because it requires them to rethink their positions. They are in the same bucket as the outright denialists (in fact worse, as failing to act on something you don’t believe exists is what we all do. Failing to act on something you say is a massive priority is worse).

(btw, I’m not accusing you of this. I don’t know your position at all).

This.

We are all paying more for something that won’t make any difference, as our emissions are so low.
I rarely agree with Badenoch, but I do with this.

And that is because of steps taken.

If we do nothing, and therefore nobody else does anything either, do things improve ?

This isn’t about the UK, all countries except four utter remedials - the literal horsemen of the apocalypse - are on this pathway.

The UK has no impact.

Yeah but
yeah but
yeah but

I am not sure what you mean. At the end of the day it is not really about being rich or poor. It's about trying to prevent the destruction of the environment that humanity depends on.

Use the magic spicy rocks that get hot when you bring them close together.

Zero emissions. Abundant energy.

We have nowhere near the economic growth and resources of China and the USA doesn’t care what it does. We are a minnow by comparison.

Being green costs! We have heat pumps, solar panels and batteries, plus an EV. My God has this cost us some outlay! Our electricity bill - around £400 a month, still! There’s no cheap solution for households. We don’t have gas in the village and we’ve got rid of the oil boiler. We can afford it but most cannot.

The hosepipe ban has nothing to do with net zero. It's imposed in some areas at the behest if water companies although since it's due to drought it is arguably connected to climate change. That said it's also connected to water companies being absolutely useless.

The whole point of net zero is tackling the problem on a national scale not punishing individuals/haranguing them to be net zero. Hence the push to replace fossil fuels with renewables etc. Theres aspects of that that do involve individual/household participation. Hence the push to subsidise heat pumps, solar power, make new builds more energy efficient etc. All of those things should also make life more affordable for impacted people not less. And yes it is also good to be more energy efficient on a personal level (turning lights of etc) but as you say it's not enough on its own and that's why that's not the main focus of net zero

If you mean AI data centres I agree. I think a lot of the hype around AI is bobbins. If you mean data centres in general we do need those. Mumsnet needs servers to function, so do all internet based services. Aside from computing we need some industry. Yes it can use more energy than ordinary people, but the answer to that is to make electricity more sustainable not get rid of business.

People want cheaper bills. Some countries have decarbonised and cut energy costs. That's due to cheap hydro power. Some have done nuclear. We've done neither.

Nope. Most people hate it.

https://observer.co.uk/news/business/article/its-refined-in-india-but-putins-oil-is-still-gushing-into-the-uk

I guess it’s not Russian if it had a little journey to India.

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

No idea how much (if any) of this went ahead but someone must have been set to make a fair bit of money.

Also - Why are businesses allowed to keep lights and pcs on when no one is in the office? Drive round an industrial estate and you can see lights on. Offices/estate agents in town centres. Turn off the lights!

Plus the gas companies and electric companies don’t want us to use less - it will cost them their profits. They said wind turbines would cut our bills - did they?

If the government really cared they would support farmers, teach the public to eat seasonally, locally and ensure high quality animal welfare. Move towards organic.

Boilers, washing machines, fridges etc would be expected to last 25-30 years (like my grandmothers did) if this means no flashing lights and smart features so be it. Manufactures would be penalised for not having an average life span of x years.

Cars - you should be able to replace a screw in your gear box without having to bin the gear box. Reward people who keep a car for 20 years. The longer you keep it the less the tax.

Teach kids to cook a decent cheap meal from seasonal food. Repair classes in school so kids can fix their clothes or the dishwasher etc.

These changes would help the public too - funny how the government are not encouraging any of them.

Instead we import oil from Russia via India. We buy products from countries which pump out energy and have poor human rights records. (And they pretend it’s low carbon because it’s not from Britain) 🤣. Is it wood pellets from Canada that we say are zero carbon because the carbon counts in Canada - what a load of bollocks.

You wouldn’t cover the soil in solar panels - grass verges on the side of moto ways could be used. Thousands of new builds over the last 15 years don’t have solar panels. Only two years ago the pipe work in new builds was not being set up for heat pumps (I know a plumber who thought it was hilarious as he got paid to rip out year old pipes to install new ones for a heat pump).

It’s all nonsense and when the lights start going off hopefully there will be less virtue signallers. Climate change is a way to get more money from the public. Eating locally, seasonally, 25 year boilers, fridges (my old one lasted 40 years - my plumber said I’d be lucky to get 15 from a boiler today) would help the environment and save people cash - something the gov don’t seem to be too good at.

When commercial ventures don’t care, and are the main perpetrators, banging on about my personal need to be net zero is ridiculous. When you’re building massive data centres which need huge amounts of power and wear, but my hosepipe will destroy the UK, I have a problem. When you’re importing oil, and not caring about other countries with a much larger footprint, but expecting me to save power and use sensibly, then I have a problem. So no, I don’t care because the hypocrisy surrounding it makes it a farce shoving it down my throat

We will all get there in the end. We will be poorer, China will be richer. I guess you just have to decide how you want to get there.