Net zero: the cold winds of reality

By Richard North - March 7, 2023

Of all the issues of concern in this world, I would hazard that reaching the government’s 2050 target for “net zero” is so far down the list as to be invisible to most people.

And while decades of warmist propaganda have elevated concerns about the so-called “climate crisis”, for most ordinary people the zeal for taking personal action tends to evaporate once they find they have to put their hands in their pockets, or make significant changes to their lifestyles.

Yet, for all the high-flown ambitions of the corporates and government agencies to secure the mythical beast of “net zero” emissions, if the completion date is going to be reached, the wholehearted cooperation of the bulk of the population will be needed, on top of significant increases in personal expenditure.

Increasingly though, as the clock ticks down to the closest of the deadlines, to the point where we can visualise the rate of progress and make reasonably accurate projections of compliance, the long-held suspicions that the targets are fantasy are beginning to firm up, not least because the popular enthusiasm simply isn’t there.

A good example is the ostensibly encouraging news on car sales for this month. A total of 74,441 new cars were registered, up 26.2 percent on the same period last year, with a forecast for the whole of 2023 of 1.79 million – up 11.1 percent on 2021.

But what will have the “net zero” zealots weeping and gnashing their teeth is that, while registrations of hybrid electric vehicles increased by 40 percent, the market share for pure electric vehicles was 16.5 percent, down from 17.1 percent last month.

Steve Gooding, of the RAC Foundation – supposedly pro-motorist but actually an establishment shill – expresses disappointment, “given the role electric vehicles are set to play in meeting our climate change objectives”.

“Unless we choose to drive less, by the end of 2030 we estimate that well over a third (37 percent) of all miles driven by cars must be zero emission from the exhaust. At the moment it is under two per cent, which suggests a far more rapid take-up of pure electric models is needed”, he says.

On current form, of course, this looks extremely unpromising. Not only are electric vehicles more expensive to buy, but running costs for those who do not have their own home chargers are actually higher than keeping a comparable petrol-fuelled car.

Meanwhile, the provision of public charging points is stalling, with only one charger installed for every new plug-in car registered in the fourth quarter of 2022. This, we are told, was a significant decrease in ratio quarter-on-quarter, from 38:1 in Q3 2022. It was also a decrease year-on-year, from 42:1 in January 2021.

Another high-profile scheme requiring a high level of public participation is the infamous gas boiler replacement programme, with the public being enjoined to fit heat pumps to provide domestic heating and hot water.

Yet, as the Lords Committee on climate change recently complained, the Government’s 2028 target of 600,000 installations per year is very unlikely to be met. In fact, based on, 2021 figures, when 42,779 heat pumps were installed in the UK, analysts estimate that almost 600 years would elapse before the 2050 target is reached.

Once again, the core problems are similar to those experienced with EVs – high up-front charges and increased running costs, coupled with the inability of many installations to provide the necessary warmth or sufficient hot water.

So far, government bribes have proved insufficient, and one-third of UK funding for insulation and heat pumps – approximately £2.1 billion – remains unspent.

But even where there is no capital outlay required, on the part of the consumer – as with the smart meter programme – progress has been lacklustre. Originally set to be completed by the end of 2020, currently less than half the 30 million households and small businesses have been fitted with meters.

And although the programme was in 2020 extended a further four years to 2024, the chances of completion by then are extremely remote. Even though the government is now imposing financial penalties on the utilities if they fail to reach their installation targets, the rate of installation is actually declining.

Looking at the industrial end of the great “net zero” project, the picture doesn’t look much more encouraging. The much-vaunted wind power “revolution” is running into trouble, as a raft of new taxes has provoked developers into complaining that investment in new wind turbines is no longer viable.

To add to this uncertainty, a few days ago Reuters was reporting that development of what would be the world’s largest wind farm off the coast of Britain was in doubt.

Developer Orsted was saying it needed more support from the government such as tax breaks to proceed with the project after costs had soared. Originally projected at £8 billion, the Hornsea 3 project was expected to have an installed capacity of almost 3GW, and was seen as vital to meet Johnson’s 50GW target of additional offshore wind by 2030, to power the “net zero” obsession.

But even if the installations proceed apace, there is still the problem of grid connections. Despite it being long-known that massive investment in upgrading the grid is needed – to the tune of £54 billion by 2039 – the National Audit Office is warning that the entire “net zero” plan is at risk because of delays in revamping the grid.

Other, more prosaic issues are beginning to emerge, such as the calculation that the UK would have to devote half its farmland or more than double its total renewable electricity supply to make enough aviation fuel to meet its ambitions for “jet zero”. Basically, any idea of civil aviation meeting “net zero” targets is moonshine.

As the cold winds of reality begins to impact on the fantasy world of the warmists, matching the temperatures outside, even the Observer is realising that the game is up.

It has Robin McKie, its science and environment editor, wailing that UK’s battle cries on net zero have led to nothing, and now “time is running out”. In 2019, he writes, the government passed legislation that committed the nation to achieving a goal of net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by the middle of the century.

It was, McKie purrs, one of the most ambitious targets set by any country in the battle to halt the worst effects of climate change. This is a nation committed to limiting global temperature rises, claimed Conservative party leaders.

Sadly, he now complains, those proud battle cries and that Churchillian rhetoric have not been matched by action. For the past four years, government departments have failed to put in place any coherent policies that could help limit carbon emissions.

Yesterday, the Guardian reinforced the message, complaining that on climate policy, the government is demonstrably failing to make good on its promises to the world.

Oddly, for all that, The Times is reporting claims that Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by more than 3 percent last year, much faster than the global average. The drop, we are told, leaves Britain’s emissions at 412 million tonnes of CO2, meaning the nation is roughly halfway to its self-imposed legally binding goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

However, reaching net zero by 2050 will require emissions to fall by 15 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023 and by the same again annually until the middle of the century. And that, short of the government intensifying its war on its own population, simply isn’t going to happen.