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

[Echobelly]

Politicians like Kemi Badenoch and right wing newspaper front pages love to talk as though everyone hates Net Zero and sustainability as concepts and wants us to get on with burning coal and drilling for oil. They seem to stake an awful lot on people not like sustainability mostly because they see it as 'woke' as far as I can tell.

I think most people don't think about it enough to hate it really and most people broadly want the outcomes of improved sustainability but would like it to happen without it needing any investment. I reckon some people don't like feeling 'nagged' about saving the environment and in many ways I don't blame them as, while we should all do our bit, really it's up to governments and big businesses to actually do the damn work to truly make a difference.

Maybe Net Zero has a bit of a PR problem as it sounds unachievable, and also maybe it sounds like you get nothing, or something will be taken away from you/society. It might do better to have a name that sounds more 'positive'. But it's a shame because ultimately, even if for some reason you don't believe in climate change it seems to me that the benefits of renewable energy (such as ending energy dependence on some not always friendly countries and less pollution) are pretty clear and I'm not sure people realise it's not just powering a few kettles, it's often around 50% of UK energy production

Almost as if we need fossil fuels and renewable energy in the mix..and if renewable energy is so cheap and effective it can compete on the free market right?

I know for example solar works and is amazing. Works well on homes and it's good for car parks as well. Absolutely great. It was subsidised as part of the RHI but this ended as the market matured

He's mixed up his ROC subsidies with CfDs leading to some double counting and his average costs of renewables are not weighted average which over inflates the cost.

But generally speaking he is correct. If anything he has under estimated the cost of renewables by not taking into account the significant cost to everyone's bills of the massive expansion of both the distribution and transmission needed to connect all
the new wind and solar farms, plus this new grid infrastructure is underutilised- for example a solar farm in the UK has a load factor of about 11% which means that the km and km of new cables connecting it to the grid are not used for 89% of the time but still need to be paid for.

He also misses out the Capacity Market subsidy which is paid to nuclear and gas fired plants for just being available to produce power in events of no wind or sun - even if most of the time they don't.

The reason it sounds like madness is because it is.

When it works of course.

Which is where load factor comes in. If you had perfect levels of sunshine, no cloud and no night time for every hour of the year (24 x 365 =8,760 hours) then the load factor would be 100%.

However UK solar load factor is only 11%. By comparison Australian or Spanish solar is around 35%.

Thank you

Actually that's not the worst bit.

Because of the taxes on electricity bills and additional costs for grid expansion caused by the growth of renewables, UK electricity bills are amongst the highest in the world.

This then causes demand to drop (it's been decreasing since 2010 despite the growth in EV, heat pumps, aircon etc.

The Government reaction to complaints about high electricity costs is to expand the number of renewable generation plants. This in turn pushes up prices higher, reduces demand and so on.

It really is insane.

The reason we don't produce as much steel in the UK as we could is a mixture of deliberate deindustrialization from the 80s onwards, plus the issues associated with high industrial energy prices, plus also TBH the effects of Brexit didn't help. China chooses to massively subsidise it's industry and it's energy, this means it's easier for them to produce steel cheaply. The UK has lost blast furnaces steadily but that's nothing to do with net zero. The issues with expensive energy also predate net zero. Countries with cheap energy/cheap fuel either massively subsidise that fuel or they are major oil states and fuel is nationalised. This makes them more competitive

The UK government has pumped a lot of money into subsidising electric arc furnaces in Port Talbot Wales and more recently into keeping the last remaining blast furnace open. This is complicated by the fact the (small Chinese company) that owned it seemed to want to starve it deliberately. So now it's likely going to be nationalised which will upset the right but ultimately we either have a steel industry or we don't. And making virgin steel isn't at all Carbon Neutral. But the government still supports it as a domestic industry because we need steel and it's better we can make it ourselves.

And that's what is so frustrating. There is an ideological belief in wanting everything to be free market, left to the invisible hand, no subsidies, no nationalisation. When that results in closing industry you want to turn round and blame net zero but it's not because of Net Zero. There is no plan in net zero to stop making steel and buy it from China.

The UK currently subsidises oil and gas extraction and refinement by about 17 billion a year. The easiest way to cut carbon would be to end those subsidies immediately and let it all crash down. But that would result in even more expensive energy, and really hurt the economy. Or we could do what some countries do and subsidise energy/fuel much more than we do now. That would help industry and consumers short term but isn't sustainable for the economy long term. So instead the UK is subsidising local renewables to a far smaller extent than they subsidise oil and gas and the plan is in time those renewables will usurp oil and gas as the main source of energy. In the long run this will save money as we won't be paying for everything increasing oil prices and we won't be subsidising those hugely profitable companies.

China, the country making all that steel, is steaming ahead with renewables. Because they are doing what is best for China.

We need to do grid expansion. It doesn't matter if you care about the environment or not, the UK electricity grid has been underfunded for almost 2 decades. It needs updating or there will be blackouts, the same way there are blackouts in South Africa. Because eventually decades of neglect catches up. Switching to renewables makes this more urgent because of the way renewable electricity is generated. But it's money that needs to be spent anyway. And yes, it is expensive.

This is the sort of account which confirms my suspicion that many net zero advocates don't give a shiny shit about long-term sustainability. Why are they using prime farmland for solar panels? How about covering some carparks? The likes of Dale Vince would rather collect lots of dividents than pay more initial costs on a carpark scheme.

"Rob Sturdy signed a three-generation tenancy at Eden Farm, so that one of his children could take it on after him. Then the estate that owns the land agreed a deal to cover forty-two per cent of it in solar panels.

His grandfather Guy came to Eden Farm in 1954. His father John took over in 1971. Three generations at Old Malton, North Yorkshire, growing cereals and rearing dairy calves across 280 acres. A hundred and thirty of those acres are going under 90,000 panels and a battery storage system.

The Sturdys do not own an acre of it. They rent. The landlord signs the deal and collects the money. The tenant loses half the farm and gets nothing.

And it is worse than half. Take those fields away and what is left barely grows enough straw to bed and feed the cattle. You do not lose 42 per cent of a farm. You lose the farm, slowly, while it still looks like a farm from the road.

North Yorkshire Council refused the plan in October 2023. Five hundred people objected. It was the biggest fight over a planning application the area had ever seen. Then, just before the public inquiry opened, the government stepped in and took the final decision away from the inspector and handed it to a minister.

At that inquiry, the developer's barrister told the room the scheme would take just 0.16 hectares of the very best farmland.

Nought point one six. That is what a grading map can be made to say about a farm that feeds people.

The minister approved it in February 2025. His decision notice gave significant weight to the fact that the site sat next to a substation.

The family is finished because the cable was close.

They went to the High Court and spent heavily doing it. In September the judge found no arguable case. There is no compensation. Emma Sturdy has said they are not sure they can even stay in the house.

Rob Sturdy said one thing at the start that has stayed with me. He said he did not want this to become the last harvest.

He signed a contract for his children. A minister read a map."

Re electric cars- I always have a used lease car, currently a petrol Hyundai Tucson (mid size suv, economical, v good) I pay £185 a month.
im due to renew in October- a Kia nero ev, very similar size to my current car is £180 am month, (3 months down payment, no balloon payment )
ev’s are definitely getting more affordable as they come onto the used market, in a few years the argument that they’re not affordable will be redundant.

What this country needs urgently is

Education systems that are fit for purpose
Social housing
New housing to ALL have solar panels on the roof as standard
New hospitals, more GPs, more dentists
Public transport that gets people to work and is affordable
Utilities that are affordable
New reservoirs urgently

some of that has an impact on our carbon footprint but that should be the focus, not fannying around with cardboard and yoghurt pot recycling

Is that written by AI? Regardless

• putting solar panels over cap parks makes sense. But it ends up costing about 4 times more than putting them on fields because you have to factor in the cost of raising the panels and with it the need to add additional wind resistance etc. basically the more raised of the ground panels are the more expensive. So if you have a set amount of money you could argue it can go 4 times further building conventional solar farms. I do thing we should be putting solar on rooftops and car parks personally. But then we need to make that worthwhile financially

• in terms of long term sustainability, nothing happens to the soil under solar panels. It's not like building roads or houses on prime farmland. It might be out of action while the panels are there but in 20 years time the soils better than it started. A lot of UK farmland is overworked. Also, about 8 times more UK land is used for golf courses than solar panels

• The particular case cited is the plight of a tenant farmer. That's someone who doesn't have any power over what happens to the land they work, and doesn't benefit from any land changes. Personally I think the amount of land concentrated in the hands of very few people in this country is a big problem. It's particularly hard for tenant farmers who know the most about the land and are skrewed over constantly. But it's odd that normally any attempts to address this are shouted down as far left. The only time a tenant farmer being removed from his land matters is when it relates to solar. Not golf courses, different farming uses, a different tenant. The tenant farmer had zero rights over that land. Ultimately the reason he was kicked of wasn't because of a cable, it's because the land was owned by someone else who thought they could make more profit doing something else. If.thats a problem, it's not a problem with renewables

I don't want to sound down about AI. It has it's purposes but this line annoys me

"Rob Sturdy said one thing at the start that has stayed with me."

Stayed with who??? The LLM writing it? It's annoying because it's a genuinely awful situation for a supposedly real person. But it did not "stay with" the glorified predictive text machine.

This is really interesting, thamk you.

Obviously I don't know where in the UK you are so here are a few examples:

From London, Eurostar will easily get you to Paris in three hours, including check-in, security and border control. The thing with Eurostar is that as long as you join the appropriate check-in line by the 30 minute cut-off (20 for Premier class) you'll get on the train. If there are delays in security or border control, the train will wait for you. Airlines don't do that.

From Manchester, 5h45 according to DB (though I've cut 20 minutes off of that time before by allowing less time to get from Euston to St Pancras and check in).

From Bristol, 5h40 according to DB (again I'd confidently shave 30 minutes from that time).

So how long does flying take? Well, firstly the airport probably isn't conveniently located. Less of an issue for London as there are several to choose from. Even so, more people will live closer to St Pancras than to their nearest airport, given that Gatwick, Luton and Stansted aren't actually in London. Bristol Airport is in the middle of nowhere whereas train passengers have a choice of two main stations, one in the centre and one just off of the motorway. Manchester Airport is on the south side of the city, whereas there are three stations in Greater Manchester with fast services to London (Piccadilly, Stockport and Wigan North Western) so the number of people who live closer to the airport than to a railway station are in a small minority. So if you live in Bolton or Rochdale, it'll take you twice as long to reach the airport as the railway station. If you're in Sale it's about even.

Then you have to allow time to get through security. The airlines generally seem to say a minimum of 40 minutes - but if there are security delays the plane will take off regardless, just look at what has been happening to people caught up in EES delays. In practice the airlines recommend you arrive around 2-3 hours before your flight.

Then flight time. From various London airports it's 1h20 to CDG, 1h35 to Orly. From Manchester it's 1h20 to Beauvais, 1h35 to CDG. From Bristol 1h20 to CDG.

Now you've landed, you need to go through passport control. EES is currently being implemented so it could take you anything from 90 minutes to 3 hours to get through. No such problems on Eurostar, you just walk out of the station.

Then you need to actually get to Paris. Not an issue with Eurostar, you're already in Paris. From CDG on the other hand, 40m. From Beauvais, 1h15. From Orly only 20m, but only one airline offers that route.

So, from any of the UK airports it'll take you at least 5 hours door-to-door. For Londoners this means that the train is far superior to flying. For Manchester and Bristol flying might be quicker, but only just.

So what about the cost then? What's actually included? Eurostar will let me (should I wish to) take two full-sized suitcases and a handbag onboard at no charge. The low-cost airlines by contrast make their money by stinging you for these extras, so unless you can live for a week out of a small purse you'll need to pay more than the headline fare.

Competition is coming to the Channel Tunnel too, with both Virgin and Trenitalia looking to take a chunk out of Eurostar's monopoly. That'll force Eurostar to drop fares.

As for the passenger experience, I'll take Eurostar over Ryanair any day.

I think the negativity towards Net Zero is nuts. Dependency on fossil fuels just hands power to dictators. We have some modest and expensive to extract North Sea reserves, but the bulk of the oil and gas reserves are in Venezuela, the Middle East, Russia and the CIS. Most of those are not countries you want to be dependent on. Net Zero gives the U.K. energy independence and resilience.

London to Manchester speed is already there. When the West Coast Route Modernisation was completed, journey times dropped to two hours and decimated the number of flights. Now all that's left flying between London and Manchester is a BA shuttle which purely exists for connecting passengers catching long-haul flights out of Heathrow.

The reason we're building (just about) HS2 is capacity. The West Coast Main Line is the busiest mixed traffic trunk line in Europe, peak fares have skyrocketed because even with the Pendolinos extended as long as the infrastructure can take them and running every 20 minutes they're still having to price off demand. HS2 doubles capacity and fares can fall as a result.

London to Edinburgh is just over the four hour threshold that is the tipping point where trains lose out to flights. HS2 built as far as Wigan (as per the original plans) would have brought this down to a nice, speedy 3h40. More importantly though it would also have increased capacity - the East Coast Main Line is also very busy and having to price excess passengers off.

I've actually done EES multiple times. Longest it took us was 20 minutes. Perfectly quick and simple.

I said before on the thread how do expect someone from Scotland and especially Aberdeen to get to Paris. And yes they do fly from there. I'm all for giving people choice on how they want to travel. Are you?

Double-deck trains won't happen on conventional routes in the UK. Our railways were the first in the world, therefore bridges were built much smaller than they are in Europe (never mind Russia or North America). It is a theoretical possibility on HS1, Eurostar is ordering double-decked trains which may end up serving London as well as their Paris-Amsterdam/Cologne routes.

HS2 is being built to the same loading gauge as European railways, though the platforms will be to the British standard.

Double decker trains can be high speed, have you never been on a TGV Duplex?

For a positive, realistic and pragmatic guide to climate change I recommend Hannah Ritchie “clearing the air” (I listened to audio)

Net zero WOULD mean cheaper bills - whether we use oil and gas from UK (very limited amount left) or elsewhere, we pay at prices set by global market. Renewables are cheaper - in the last ten years cost of solar fallen by 90%.

It is actually good for the economy. Green economy is growing far faster than any other element of the UK economy.

UK responsible for 1% of emissions yes - but a third of global emissions are 1% countries. Should all these countries do nothing? The UK also has huge historic emissions. Also, shrinking our emissions so far has not negatively impacted quality of life or the economy.

China actually has far lower emissions per person - and is rapidly scaling up wind and solar.

The benefits for households are huge - less air pollution, less negative impact to the economy when oil prices go up - but even if they weren’t, it would still be necessary. Continuing to add CO2 to the atmosphere at the rate we are now would be catastrophic for every country.

The wind farm I can see from my window is far more local than the North Sea. You posting bogus graphics you found on Twitter doesn't change the actual prices being charged.

And then I showed the thread with the analysis and PP also weighed in on it agreeing with it as well

"We still need to drive cars though"

Not everyone does. There's no reason those SUV drivers in Kensington can't find an alternative.