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?

It is whataboutism to a degree.

But China is no shining light in renewable electricity generation.

Sure they are building a lot of renewable capacity. But they are a big country.

Check out how much new coal generation capacity they are adding for a more complete picture. It's horrifying.

I think the UK populace are pretty self critical on these issues. We are doing very well in greening our energy usage, with or without the latest changes. That doesn't mean we can't do better, but we have made significant progress.

What tends to irritate me is that we are more focussed on the absolutism of getting rid of fossil fuels entirely rather than practical improvements that come at a reasonable cost and although may not be fully renewable, reduce our emissions considerably (for example replacing coal with gas).

@GasPanic Very much agree, i'd rather we looked at reducing fossil fuel use, so home insulation, smaller and better tech car engines (euro 6 came out in 2015, nothing since) better fuels, changes to how we work.

But of course non of these make profit & that i'm afraid is what companies are only interested in.

Are there any large scale energy storage solutions? are we anywhere nr having them ?

Pump storage is probably the best storage mechanism for both price and scale.

Unfortunately we don't really have the terrain for it in the UK, there are a couple of places.

I think part of the rational with the North Sea Link is that we can take hydro power from Norway when we need it and return wind power to Norway to be used for pump storage but I don't know whether this is actually done in practice.

What tends to irritate me is that we are more focussed on the absolutism of getting rid of fossil fuels entirely rather than practical improvements that come at a reasonable cost and although may not be fully renewable, reduce our emissions considerably (for example replacing coal with gas)

The vast majority of our emissions reductions have been though moving from coal to gas, and building renewables. There is some more to be done there but we have barely touched transport and domestic emissions. That’s the harder bit, but all countries can’t ignore that and meet the targets it’s judged we need to

@GasPanic on export restrictions, I’m
sure there is legislation that could be used. But the point is, the government keep giving the justification that if we’re going to use oil it may as well be domestic but they haven’t said anything about export bans. Meaning their justification is rubbish

There was a push, but that is why it is being delayed because the infrastructure and energy production isn’t as far along as it needed to be to swap out gas boilers for ASHPs. It’s not just the fact that most homeowners can’t afford to due to the cost of living and mortgage interest rate crises.

Yes I agree. I do respect Sunak for announcing the delays to net zero, EPC minimum for landlords, petrol vehicles ban and so on as it is because of the Tory party’s gross mismanagement that we are behind. He could have just kept quiet until after the election next year and let the new government break the bad news. The schedule goal posts have been fucked for years, we’ve all known they were unachievable since before the pandemic. So I do give him credit where credit is due by admitting to the reality of things.

How is behind defined if we are ahead of other countries and at same rate as EU for cars?

Yes, but we are years away from needing an export ban. The licenses sold allow companies to start exploratory actions to see which oil and gas fields can be expanded. From then, it can be a decade before those licenses are progressed on to productive oil and gas wells. At that point, you’d start with an export ban. You can’t do one at the license stage.

In addition, an export ban might be on say refined oil rather than crude oil as Holland has a very low cost and energy efficient oil refinery set up and it may make sense to sell them crude oil to be refined and then buy it back afterwards.

I do think that’s a good point that much of the tech is not consumer ready. For example though- it’s all the government rhetoric that they are ‘on the side of the motorist’ etc with the London ULEZ that worries me. No tech barriers there at all. just political ones.

If many issues slowing our net zero approach were just about the immature technology then surely the government would announce new joint investment in maturing it or whatever? Britain could get ahead on being a world leader.

It feels very frightening that our government in this climate crisis we are already in, would try to make a political virtue out of being anti environmental but I feel it’s pretty obvious that’s what they are doing. We have absolutely no time to waste on this and it makes me so scared that they are going to fritter it away and we will all suffer.

We are behind on our plans, the U.K. plans. We are still ahead of most other countries that had less ambitious plans, or initially were doing nothing at all until the 2000s.

Surely that’s the extra room we have now though, which is a massive positive.

We can keep pushing at same rate but consumers are not ready to take the financial pain or use the gains to balance out other factors

We’re high tax already, by 2036 we’re trying to grow the health service to 1 in 11 employed by NHS. 1 in 11! We’ve got increasing migratory issues looming - for everyone. We can be overwhelmed or try to manage it. This means a different approach to people movement though

Basically they were U.K. goals, which were ahead of many others. We’re going to need the extra grace and I’m glad we’ve got it

On another note listening to lithium programme today also fascinating. Things will switch up, and I’m looking at lithium rich countries on my list

Last grasp from a party utterly devoid of ideas.

Yes it is a massive positive and we do have breathing space to slow down a bit and take care of more urgent human issues alongside- like the NHS that you mentioned and the sewage dumping I have mentioned, plus more and more people are going homeless, starving and so on. I did write yesterday that net zero has to be balanced with what the humans alive need now. We don’t have unlimited resources or government funds so it is a balancing act and there is no point having a net zero graveyard. We have to take care of everyone alive now as well as get to net zero for future generations.

Having said that going by pp before yours and how people will vote Labour would reverse it and people will have to pay up anyway.

We moved into our house in 1997. It was built, very solidly, by a good builder as his forever house in the 1980s. There was no central heating system, only night storage. And it was not warm, so we had an oil central heating system installed and have massively increased the insulation and improved the glazing. We have a big boiler and plenty of radiators. In 1997, we paid £97 for 1000 litres of kerosene which lasted months.

Then we put a woodburner in the sitting room. We are off grid for gas.

When ASHPs were invented we put one in the kitchen where we spend most of our time, so we could spot heat in the space we used most.

We have three times asked trusted plumbers and heating engineers to give us an appraisal of the pro's and cons of updating and none has yet said that it would be sensible and cost-effective to change over to an electric fuel system. Our old oil boiler, thoroughly serviced annually, is going to outlive most systems now being fitted because it's mostly run well below it's full capacity. We crank it up when grandma visits because she feels the cold more than us.

To be honest, they were always going to. I'm surprised it's taken them so long.

Labour can’t reverse it unless they want to lose all credibility because they will have to then U-turn as well. It’s not about making people pay up, the issues with the net zero 2035 are substantial and mostly revolving around infrastructure, not technology.

Infrastructure takes both a shit ton of money and decades to upgrade. How long have they faffed about with HS2? That is one single rail line…it’s nothing compared to upgrading the entire national grid for supplying electricity, it’s nothing compared to replacing burning gas with renewable energy sources, it’s nothing compared to decarbonising fleets of ships and planes and dare I say it all our military ships, planes, tanks and what not too.

They are looking to retrofit oil boilers and tanks to use bio-fuel oil for heat which are technically carbon neutral.
https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/boilers/bio-fuel-oil-boilers

ASHPs are not the answer for everyone.

Infrastructure is always expensive and difficult. But the fact that infrastructure in the UK is THIS expensive and THIS difficult is not an act of God - it is the result of policy choices, especially giving nimbies too much power of veto over products. Spain has just built a shitload of high speed rail, at a cost-per-km that is ONE TENTH that of the UK. We can do this. We just need to accept that it means making hard choices. It would help if a lot of people in the UK - especially pensioners - could grow up a bit and accept that the UK is not an especially wealthy country anymore and that they need to accept things like train tracks and pylons in locations visible from their homes.

Yes, but we are years away from needing an export ban. The licenses sold allow companies to start exploratory actions to see which oil and gas fields can be expanded. From then, it can be a decade before those licenses are progressed on to productive oil and gas wells. At that point, you’d start with an export ban. You can’t do one at the license stag

If government are taking now about that it’s best to use domestic oil and gas as a justification for more oil licenses then they also need to be saying now how they will actually keep it domestic. Otherwise it’s a nonsense justification. They could also do it now for the small amounts we produce if that is the policy they want to follow but they don’t, because they are lying about how it would work to justify the licenses.

As well as being concerned about Rishi’s stance on the actual changes, I despise the dishonest way it’s been presented - saying that policies that never even existed are being stopped. I think it’s a very dangerous direction for politics.

Labour can’t reverse it unless they want to lose all credibility because they will have to then U-turn as well.

Idk, maybe they will need to u turn as well. I doubt they think much on credibility these days they pretty much u turn weekly already. They’ve already stated they’ll reverse it though.

It’s not about making people pay up, the issues with the net zero 2035 are substantial and mostly revolving around infrastructure, not technology.

Not sure about this part. The cost of changing our domestic setting is huge. Surely. When it comes to our individual house we pay whatever the grant doesn’t cover (atm about 7k on ASHP) or grants change and the taxpayer funds them.

There are other massive things to do but our individual homes are easily tangible in terms of what we’ll pay.

Funny! Tories reverse years of policy and thats pragmatic and sensible... but should Lab do similar.. well thats their credibility down the pan!!!

I expect Lab will need to keep the tory target, business needs to know where they stand but i hope Lab will also explain what they will do with these extra 5 years....

What you and other posters are saying is that its all fine to postpone until 2035 but what will change because of those extra 5 years? ... cars and HPs aren't going to become cheaper in real terms and neither is the electricity they use either.

It takes 20 or 30 years to build a nuclear power station, we ve watered down off and on shore wind (look at the last build auction, no bidders) and are we looking to upgrade our electric distribution network? i mean are we actually doing it rather than talking..... and who is paying?

If the argument is the delay is required because we wont have the infrastructure (a pov i agree with btw) what are we doing to build the extra required? Sunak hasn't mentioned any of this....

Its all an attempt to gain popularity but judging by this mornings YouGov poll, popularity has actually plunged.

Are people really wanting this action to stay on heat pumps?

I’m glad it’s changed but if others are keen they can switch already, upgrade to EV, whatever they want

£7.5k grant is hefty too

Labour missed a trick.
They should have said a few weeks ago that they would rethink boilers / cars / heat pumps and the time scales because of the cost / impracticalities.

Then seen what the Conservatives would have done.