Net Zero Is About To Get Even More Painful

In few areas of public policy is this more exhaustive than net zero.

Conscious that the public's patience may begin to wear thin, the Prime Minister earlier this year promised a more "Pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach" to net zero.

This primarily involved pushing back the deadline for the end of new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers - but even the new 2035 date will be a stretch.

If the 2050 net zero target - the most consequential economic policy decision for generations, made by a piece of secondary legislation without a proper parliamentary debate - wasn't restrictive enough, the Government is obliged to set binding, five-year carbon budgets which cap the maximum amount of emissions allowed during each period.

In its sixth Carbon Budget Paper, the CCC, which ostensibly provides advice to the Government but often acts more like an eco-activist NGO, advises homeowners to turn on their heating in the afternoon, so that they can turn it off again in the evening when demand for electricity is higher.

There will be huge waste, with the taxpayer footing the bill: when the Government asked the economist Dieter Helm to look into what it was doing to meet the net zero target, he concluded that up to £100bn had been squandered, largely from investment in technologies which hadn't matured to the point where they were cheaper than the alternative.

Responding to the news that the UK had halved its emissions, Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho hailed the country as a "World leader" in tackling climate change. 

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