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

The key problem with energy bills is the price cap ties all energy prices to the most expensive, and the most expensive is oil and gas.

Break that link and energy bills will fall immediately.

Yes and we are doing quite well at replacing the % of electricity generated by renewables.

But electricity still is only a relatively small proportion of the total energy we actually use.

Are you beginning to understand this now ? Domestic heating, industrial gas usage, lorries, most private car usage, it all uses a massive amount of energy and the vast majority currently comes from fossil fuels.

My argument isn't that there is not enough capacity to generate all our energy from renewables. There probably is. But it will take a very long time and a lot of money to exploit that capacity. One because just replacing the capacity like for like is a huge and expensive job both in terms of generation and transmission. And two because renewable energy can not be relied on for baseload.

The wind doesn't blow all the time and the sun doesn't shine all the time. So we actually need significantly more generation capacity than we have at the moment to mitigate that. Unless we want to learn to live in a society where we can't have energy on demand.

How's that playing out on your energy bill?

That's nothing to do with net zero. You've been lied to. Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels.

People experience net zero as higher energy bills, reduced local manufacturing and jobs in their area because high energy bills, increased cost of products (because high energy bills), lack of investment in areas (because of high energy bills). We have had at least 6 power cuts this year so far in my area.
No one likes net zero as an experience, it is thoroughly unpleasant. Another wishy washy thought that the rest of the world mock us for, that self harms in reality.

Tax revenues are never invested, we'd have the Norwegian sovereign fund if they were.

They are used on tax breaks for the rich, time and again.

Why not put money directly in people's pockets instead?

You've missed the bit about jobs and businesses in the UK which would be created if we explored and drilled in OUR own waters for OUR own oil/gas. The oil and gas industry is a massive employer, directly and indirectly through support businesses.

We really need to stop this flawed thinking about buying things from abroad because it's cheaper, whether fuel, chinese plastic crap or whatever. The "headline" price might be a bit cheaper, but we have to pay for the consequences of not manufacturing our own stuff via unemployment benefits, social deprivation costs, loss of tax revenues, etc.

In 2024. It had already reduced a bit by 2025. The bulk of that use was heating and transport not electrocoty prodiction. Alternatives already exist for heating (heat pumps) and private transport (electric cars) and the use of said alternativea has been steadily increasing. Making take up of these alternatives easier is part of net zero. That might include charging points for electric cars, or making installing heat pumps in new builds mandatory or subsidising heat pump installation

If the argument is, that as people switch to electricity, there aren't enough renewables, that isn't truenat all. As the page you linked to shows,the share of electricity provided by renewables is dramatically increasing year by year.

And yes, the grid needs to be able to provide that electricity. Net zero or otherwise, we need grid infrastructure and spending on it. And it is being upgraded so yay. Saying net zero is a bad idea because it requires a functioning electric grid is crazy work.

It wouldn’t lower household bills and experts say it will not bring a large boost to the overall economy or lower household energy bills very much.The North Sea is an old basin, meaning most of the easiest and cheapest oil and gas has already been taken out over the last 60 years. Building new projects requires high costs and tax reliefs, meaning the public take on heavy financial risks while private companies keep most profits.
Oil and gas from the North Sea are sold on the global market by private companies, so UK citizens do not get a special discount either.

Research indicates that spending money on renewable energy saves households much more money than drilling for more fossil fuels.

Re EV cars. I’ve only got a hybrid and that has cut my bills from £60 a week to £15. We need to find a way to help people switch and the same with heat pumps and solar panels.

We need gas to heat homes. We need oil for transport..why not use the local supply instead of paying from Norway.

if transport costs come down as well that's great

So what ?

80% of the UKs energy use comes from fossil fuels. That's the claim I made and what that article supports in the primary energy graph.

The gas used for domestic heating and oil used for transport can be ignored if people want to.

But if the claim is that we can do without fossil fuels, we have to find replacement for that energy from somewhere. And if it is to come from renewables like wind then we also have to find a way of transmitting it through the electricity grid.

Most people can't actually afford a heat pump and not everyone can afford an EV.

The impact north sea has on global emissions is negligible, why not export and sell a valuable commodity, make some money and also get some tax revenue to invest in these renewables you love so much.

Just one some all point...

the "1%" argument posted many times on the first few pages is beyond stupid.

There are 17 countries above the arbitrary 1%... and only 8 above 2%

That leaves the rest of the 195 countries not needing to do anything right? Because they are all less than 1%...

The problem with this logic is that it doesn't account for how many countries there are, and outside of a select few, the picture is one of many many smaller countries. Of course the vast majority of countries are going to produce less than 1% of emissions, when there are nearly 200 of them.. But if you want any meaningful change, you need both the small number of larger poulters to act AND a large number of smaller polluters to act.

Imagine a beach, where 195 people drop rubbish in a day. Sure there are 17 people dropping 4-5 pieces of rubbish each ... but then there are 178 people each dropping 1 piece or a half a piece.

Stopping dropping your 1 piece, doesn't clean up the beach... but the beach won't ever get cleaned up if all of those 178 people refuse to stop because on their own it won't matter...

Environmental for one, ulez is having significant positive impact on air quality, if we can go further and stop more oil public health will improve.

We will also start to break dependency on foreign oil. That is a big benefit.

In summary it doesn't support your statement.

In 2020 maybe the 40% thing was true. No more...

From that source
One such announcement was the Low Carbon Transition Plan launched by the Brown ministry in July 2009, which aimed to generate 30% electricity from renewable sources, and 40% from low-carbon content fuels by 2020.[5] The UK is one of the best sites in Europe for wind energy, and wind power production is its fastest growing supply.[6][7][8] Wind power contributed 29.4% of UK electricity generation in 2023.[9
The electricity sector's grid supply for the United Kingdom in 2024 came from 26.9% fossil fuel power (almost all from natural gas), 51% zero-carbon power (including 14% nuclear power and 37% from wind, solar and hydroelectricity), 6.8% from biomass, 14.1% imports, and 1.2% from storage.[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom

I don't think you understand how energy companies think.

Oil prices have been volatile for years. I remember when it was down to $10 a barrel. The oil industry deals with it. Of course they would prefer to go to KSA and get their oil from a hole in Ghawar cheap and sell it high all the time. But that isn't possible, so they have to go somewhere else. They survive and over the years have become pretty good at it. Every now and then a price collapse takes someone down (at which point their assets are normally bought by someone else with deeper pockets) but in general the industry survives volatility well and has done for many decades.

Diversification of supply is done because it helps insulate against various issues in various places. They are willing to produce at higher cost if they view there is some mitigation, such as better political stability, or more consistent economic policy. It also has the side benefit of building expertise. Techniques learnt in drilling offshore in the North Sea for example can be built on and applied offshore in Brazil in a more difficult climate.

The North Sea was a good place to produce oil, not always because of the production cost, but because of the political stability amongst a few other things. Now due to net zero making politicians flip flop on decisions, it becomes (at least on the UK side) a place with both higher costs and poor political stability. So no longer a place people are really interested in. So no, the main issue affecting oil companies willingness to invest in the North Sea at the moment is net zero and the constant flip flopping of decisions which mean companies can put considerable time and expense into planning and evaluation only to have a flip flop at the last minute stop them. Why would you do that ?

I've worked on EOR production techniques in the past. Some are expensive, some are cheaper, they get better all the time, as does mapping to find out where the oil is and where it can be extracted. They tend to be shorter term in application than field exploitation, so it can very much be a calculation of, the price is high atm, let's use EOR more. A lot of oil is left in place. We are getting better and will get better still at extracting it. Some of the EOR techniques are actually dual benefit in terms of things like carbon sequestration. It's a dynamic process to evaluate whether it should be used, not a blanket EOR is too expensive so we can't use it in this field/basin.

Not extracting oil may not significantly affect consumer prices. But it will significantly affect the 30000 jobs (direct) and 150000 (indirect) jobs associated with the sector. It will also affect energy security, I don't know about the oil situation but I do know the government has the ability to halt gas exports if it needs to. Whether it ever would I don't know, as the benefits of pursuing this sort of action are generally thought to be overall negative, but it remains a possibility.

Renewables can be good if done well (like in Texas). In Texas you have a mix of wind,solar, oil and gas

What costs are there? Do you not use oil and gas?

Source?

China are streets ahead of us as regards Net Zeto and renewables. The USA are going to regret massively backing the wrong horse as regards energy.

YANBU

The UK will not lower energy bills by drilling the remaining 10% of oil and gas reserves in the North Sea. The private companies who will profit from them will sell the oil on the global market.

The UK is seeing unprecedented heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, yet we also saw a wetter winter and more extreme flooding and coastal erosion. No reservoirs built in the last 30 years. Farmers estimate food supplies will be affected.

We must act now to invest in renewable energy and protect our homes and cities from extreme weather events. This summer is the coolest one we'll ever know. There's no more room for head in the sand, "well China/the US" are making it worse, why shouldn't we continue to add fuel to the fire?

The solutions already exist, the technology to turn the tide around is already out there. It's not pure doom-mongering, but we (by which I particularly mean governments and corporations, but also individuals with their votes and lobbying MPs and local councillors) do need to act. There is reason for hope but not if the population stands idly by, or worse, fights against net zero commitments.

The UK won't have a leg to stand on on the international stage if we aren't leaders in trying to reach next zero. And for a parenting forum I think it's shameful to see people refusing to take any action in support of net zero. How old will your children be towards the end of this century?

Unfortunately a large part of our electricity bills right now is going towards a long overdue grid upgrade, which should have happened over the last 14 years of Tory government, but somehow didn't 🤔.

Perhaps ask Chat GPT about the impacts of runaway climate change too? 🤔

Aaargh, I always promise myself I'm not going to get sucked into these threads and then I do....but I'm just asking myself how much misinformation and propaganda it takes to convince people that renewable energy is going to personally cost them more?

According to a recent article in the Grauniad, the amount of renewables we have in our energy mix has already reduced the average household's bill by £150. Unfortunately that has been eclipsed by the twatting around of Messrs Trump and Putin, which has sent the element of the energy mix provided by gas and oil through the roof. How is depending more on fossil fuels going to make this better?! Wind is currently the cheapest form of energy we have!

Similarly, how have they managed to convince people that paying through the nose for petrol is somehow preferable to charging your car up for £3-4 ? Or that a gas central heating system is better than a heat pump?! I've got a heat pump and an all electric 2 bed house, and my annual electricity bill is about £1100 !