Net-zero: battle lines

By Richard North - April 5, 2023

I totally get that Trump being prosecuted, as an ex-president, is unprecedented – and that there are all sorts of ramifications to the current drama.

At the same time, I do not really believe that his arraignment in the Manhattan court yesterday warranted hours of wall-to-wall coverage in the British media, especially as most was devoted to static shots of the scenes outside the courtroom, which conveyed next to no relevant information.

The trouble with this sort of media incontinence is that there is always an opportunity cost. While resources are being frittered away on overkill, all sorts of issues are not being covered properly or at all.

One of the issues to which quite insufficient coverage is being given is net-zero. Depending on which side of the divide you stand on, this is either the UK’s bid to save the planet for future generations or a government-induced suicide pact aimed at the destruction of the economy and our way of life as we know it.

Either way, the issue is important, especially so as a disturbing picture is beginning to emerge which suggests that the government is not really serious about reaching the targets it has set itself while paying lip-service to their pursuit, sufficient to cause intolerable economic damage with none of the supposed benefits.

Without much assistance, we had already deduced that the net-zero targets were unachievable and a further clue comes with a report in the Telegraph headed: “Heat pumps too expensive to meet net zero target”.

The article suggests that price reductions of 25 to 50 percent within two years are key to the government’s target of 600,000 installations a year by 2028, with the hope that they will cost the same as gas boilers by 2030 – a somewhat optimistic expectation at best.

But the thrust of the article is that even this is not going to be achieved. The average cost of a heat pump, about £10,000, has not come down in the past 10 years, and a study carried out by the UK Energy Research Centre suggests that the most that can be hoped for is a cut in the costs of purchase and installation of 20 to 25 percent by 2030, with price parity “a long way off”.

However, this finding is small beer. What really raises the stakes in this game is an article in today’s edition of The Times. It tells us that, before the latest raft of net-zero announcements were made, ministers had already been warned by officials that many of their schemes won’t work.

The claim is based on a leaked document by Defra – a ten-page advisory document – marked “not public facing” – which was produced on 20 February for the egregious Shapps. It assessed the “delivery risk” and “delivery confidence” of each of the net zero measures proposed by Defra, and marked them using a traffic-light code of green, amber and red.

Of 44 policies encompassing about 85 percent of Defra’s proposed emissions savings, 21 were marked red or red/amber, indicating they will be hard to achieve. A further 18 were marked as amber or amber/green, and only five were marked green, two of which disappeared from the final “carbon budget delivery plan” document published last Thursday.

No detail is offered about other departmental policies, but it is self-evident that targets won’t be met on electric cars. As for commercial vehicles, emission-free trucks and busses are a long way down the line while the possibility of commercial aviation achieving emission-free status is strictly for the birds – to coin a phrase.

Where this puts the government from legal and political perspectives is helpfully explained by Edie. It reminds us that, in July 2022 the High Court agreed with plaintiffs ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth that the government’s then current net-zero strategy was “unlawful”.

It failed, the court said, to detail sufficient measures for delivering the legally binding emissions targets to which the UK Government had committed itself, effectively breaching the Climate Change Act 2008, as amended in 2019 when the 2050 net-zero target was enshrined in law.

The outcome was that the court had ordered that the existing strategy be fleshed out and amended within eight months, setting the deadline to March 2023, which has just passed.

So far, the green groups which initiated the action are reserving judgement, waiting for an analysis the from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which won’t deliver its views until the summer. Meanwhile, they are warning government that it is not safe from further legal action. This means, potentially, that there could be a repeat of last year’s process, with the government having to produce yet another strategy.

The overall impression gained from this dynamic is that the government and the greens are engaged is a surreal game of “chicken” with the two sides facing each other off, each hoping that the other will give way.

At this point, there is no indication whatsoever that the well-funded and determined Green lobby is prepared to back down, effectively turning the rest of the nation into spectators of a gigantic battle of wills, in which we have no direct part.

Somewhere along the line, as the government bleats about its self-imposed legal obligations, we seem to have lost sight of the doctrine that no parliament may bind another. What has been done by way of mandatory targets or specific timescales can be undone, given the political will.

A robust government, sure of its ground, could put the issue to the nation at the general election next year or, better still, to a separate referendum where support for the policy could be properly tested without the message being blurred by other issues, as was the case in the 2019 election.

As it stands, it now begins to come clear why the government is pouring out a torrent of documentation, perhaps hoping that volume can make up for lack of clarity and bankable commitments.

As a harbinger for the way any future action might go, Edie cites Friends of the Earth’s head of policy Mike Childs. He says: “It is deeply troubling that, by its own admission, the government’s quantified plans don’t fully meet legal targets for reducing UK emissions, let alone the deeper cuts that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised at international climate talks just four months ago”.

Childs says that he and his team “are ready to take legal action again if necessary” and called the delivery of plans aligned with legal climate commitments “the absolute minimum of the urgent action needed”.

Here, the disclosures in The Times might have their greatest impact. Says Edie, land use, agriculture, buildings and heat were found last year to be some of the slowest British sectors to decarbonise by the CCC. The Committee warned of “glacial” progress in agriculture and “major failures in delivery programmes” in the other areas.

Amongst other measures, the CCC wants to see an increase tree in planting, bringing UK forestry cover up from 13 to at least 17 percent by 2050, through planting around 30,000 hectares (90 – 120 million trees) each year.

The Committee wants to see low-carbon farming practices, such as “controlled-release” fertilisers, improving livestock health and slurry acidification, restored peatlands and an expansion of energy crop planting.

But hidden in all this is a determined attempt to reach into our kitchens and dining rooms, with the Committee demanding that we reduce our consumption of the most carbon-intensive foods. This means, as a nation, we will be required to reduce our consumption of beef, lamb and dairy by at least 20 percent per person.

Even before the latest disclosures, the lobby group Carbon Brief believed that new plans on low-carbon farming were no more ambitious than their predecessors, while a land use strategy which was expected from Defra in January is now not expected until June.

Given the sensitivity of measures needed to meet net-zero targets, and the hostile reaction of Dutch farmers (amongst others), being tied down to specific commitments is something the government can do without. Yet, as the noose tightens, it will be forced to act. And when it comes to forcing individuals to cut back on meat and dairy consumption, all one can say is “good luck with that”.

One can see why the government might want all this to go away, but it is now caught in a trap of its own making. It will have to fight to extricate itself as the wriggle-room is running out.

A battle not reported, though, is a battle the government might not wish to join. We need a media marching to the sound of the guns.