AIBU to think that the Tories are utterly wicked to drop net zero?

[Upsizer]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/rishi-sunak-planning-drop-net-zero-policies-pre-election-challenge-labour

I think this is genuinely wicked but I guess it was inevitable with the easiness of drumming up a culture war over environmental issues to win votes. Environment is the new Brexit.

Fighting climate change is going to cost all of us thousands of pounds. So we won’t do it - to get votes.

Our children will live on an island suffering extremes of heat and fighting off refugees from uninhabitable parts of the world.

But it will save us some cash I guess.

AIBU to think this is wicked?

Heat pumps are not the only issue here. Other countries have schemes such as neighbourhood heating systems: we should be exploring all sorts of ideas. And insulation insulation insulation: making our homes more energy efficient.

Very good points. The longer we leave it, the more it will cost us one way or another.

Sunak's whole message came across as 'you should all be relieved I've removed that financial burden from working people' when in fact it should have been 'we are sticking to our goals and it will be financed by taxes imposed on super rich individuals and corporations, who are responsible for most of the carbon production anyway'.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't all do our bit, but his absolute refusal to accept culpability and correct his approach to those with the means is infuriating.

I hope the actions of individuals like him, who are in a position to make critically important legislative change and yet abuse their power in this way, become liable for criminal prosecution for actively blocking essential environmental reform.

If Starmer comes into my house trying to steal my boiler, I'll deal with him with my shot gun. ;)

Heat pumps cannot be installed in isolation, people need larger pipes for radiators (which may need replacing also), under-floor heating too. The costs will run into five figures easily.

What home grown tech? Siemens/Gamesa are leaders in wind tech and as you spend your evenings interviewing international fund managers on their investment decisions, you'll have a list of UK companies at hand.

Snide remarks are always good for a well-balanced debate. I could go through their portfolio companies and share a list of names. But honestly it's a busman's holiday and frankly, I'm happy to take them at their word that they're investing in U.K. cleantech companies given it was a theme across most of the fund managers.

I find the doomsdaying about U.K. corporates quite depressing at times. We have plenty of successful businesses across a wide range of sectors. Rishi Sunak delaying the ban on non electric cars by 5 years and the like isn't going to suddenly destroy all external or domestic investment in the U.K.

Good to hear @sep135

You say, “this week” presumably not yesterday evening then!

This is your ‘personal experience’ but sadly this is not borne out by the data. The Climate Change Commitee stated that the UK was no longer a leader in climate change action back in June! Research in investment in UK clean technology does show an acceleration in investment in 2022 but we will be left behind by the U.S and the EU with the lack of bold and predictable government policy. The political uncertainty with this rollback on the 2030 targets has made this worse, we weren’t even on track for delivering our targets prior to this announcement, how exactly, despite many business leaders, Economists saying otherwise do you think we’ll remain unaffected by the changing of the goal posts? Sorry but your assessment is inaccurate and I’m wondering what purpose that serves.

This is anecdata, why are you bolstered by this information?

sep135, I see you reference “successful businesses across a wide range of sectors” so not cleantech then as this is what this thread is about?

Its not a snide remark at all, you ve just taken it that way.

Posters should be able to substantiate their claims surely? how else can there be a debate, we can all make stuff.

If you could just come up with a few examples of UK world leading decarbonisation and renewable tech companies, it would be great to hear of our successes in this area.

I agree with this, why would you not it is not exactly bad PR for them, “ oh no, loads more people know that we are a green sustainable company, how can we contain this!”

As per, the government in an echo chamber, superficially acting on the persuasiveness of the right wing press just like brexit, wake up and smell the coffee this is an existent crisis!

Existential

Just glad that the electric vehicle frenzy is being minimised.
The Atacama Desert is being destroyed by lithium mining for the batteries.

Dropping certain policies (NB: NOT net zero itself) isn't wicked; it's pragmatic.

Moving the 2030 end of petrol and diesel cars to 2035 only aligns us with the EU target (surely no-one using "Brexit" as an insult can object to that!) EVs for all isn't practical at the moment and with 2030 barely more than 6 years away it's blindingly obvious that we need more time.

Phasing out gas and oil boilers similarly isn't practical if the only alternative being offered is heat pumps which (a) cost an absolute bomb (b) aren't exact replacements - have to be installed outdoors, need different pipework and radiators etc. Even then there simply won't be enough tradespeople trained on heat pumps to refit the entire UK housing stock in the space of 10 years or so.

Moreover, Sunak is absolutely right to insist other countries need to do more. Whatever the UK does is a drop in the ocean compared to China, and China is approving 2 new coal power stations to be built virtually every single week.

The race to impose battery EVs and heat pumps feels to me like the rush to ban incandescent light bulbs in favour of those curly-turd CFL bulbs full of toxic chemicals, when proper LED bulbs were just a few years away. Or the rush to replace petrol cars with "low CO2" diesels. People were literally paid to scrap their old petrol cars for "clean" diesels that would nowadays be eligible for ULEZ penalties in certain cities, whereas their old (now scrapped) petrol car would not be eligible for those charges if they'd just kept that instead.

we will be left behind by the U.S and the EU with the lack of bold and predictable government policy

We are so far ahead of the US they will never catch up to us. The Sunak announcements align us with the EU so instead of being ahead of them, we will be in lockstep - not behind them.

This is why I voted yabu

For example, if the government had invested in energy security infrastructure and building efficiency instead of propping up private industry, ignoring covid fraud, or building a pointless trainline, they could have avoided having to spend £40bn of taxpayers money on ensuring people could pay their energy bills last year.

Energy security infrastructure would be expanding our oil and gas fields which Sunak decided to do and that then caused hypocritical outcry from all the environmental activists who misrepresented it as a commitment to increase oil and dependency when it is really ensuring a domestic supply that tapers off as we approach net zero.

We'll as with brexit, my vote is certainly not going to them. Happy to pay more and do my bit in a world where 7 out of 9 planetary boundaries have been crossed.

According to the CCPI we are 11th in the world (this index has no one in the top 3 places) so that means there are only 7 countries doing better than we are.

We are not only still in the race, but we are still in the top ten global leaders.

Apparently you’d prefer that British is Best no matter the human cost. If that’s not imperialistic, I don’t know what is.

Not just that but it is a fact we do not generate enough electricity to power all these heat pumps and our national grid couldn’t cope with that much power even if we could generate it.

We cannot just go round ripping out gas boilers and installing heat pumps oh and plugging in electric vehicles until we generate enough electricity to power it all and upgrade the national grid so it can feed that level of continuous electricity supply to all the homes in the U.K.

It’s one reason why any U.K. student going into electrical engineering gets a nice bursary to pay their Uni tuition fees. They’re investing in the young adults so that we can ramp up to this.

Not so much backed out as ran out of money. The U.K. isn’t as wealthy as it was a decade ago. (The Tories caused a lot of this)

Oh so we are 11th now, we had FALLEN to 7th in 2021- having fallen 2 places in 2020, considering we haven’t seen the impact of Sunak’s rollback yet it doesn’t look hopeful does it?

Brexit isolated us and we lost so much business and foreign investment. The online safety bill is going to make it even worse. No business involved in technology or doing any sort of research/development or with trade secrets is going to want to operate with no internet traffic encryption.