From David Turner’s EIGEN VALUES Substack

My talk for Sacred Cows, slaying the Net Zero myths and Government approach to climate change.

David Turver

Last week, the Government gave its response to a petition calling for the repeal of the Climate Change Act and for Net Zero targets to be rolled back. The response could have been written by a Just Stop Oil activist and can be summarised as “the earth is warming, build more windmills.” I was going to draft an article rebutting their claims, but as luck would have it, the video of the talk I gave for Sacred Cows last month is now available and goes into more detail than I could in a single article. I would be grateful if you could share this article and video far and wide.

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The slides accompanying the talk can be downloaded on the link below.

Sacred Cows: Net Zero Worse Than Climate Change 1.21MB ∙ PDF file

What if the Net Zero cure is worse than the Climate Change disease?

My argument can be summarised as follows.

Climate Change Exaggerated

Although people like Antonio Guterres have made the foolish claim we have entered the era of global boiling, we have to acknowledge that the world has warmed a bit since pre-industrial times. The alarmist response to this is Net Zero which is an example of a so-called mitigation strategy that calls for everyone to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide to save the planet.

Mitigation Can Never Work

The trouble with this approach is that it can only work if two conditions are met. First, mitigation can only work if CO₂ is the only climate control knob. But we know this to be wrong, because the IPCC’s first report showed marked temperature fluctuations over thousand-, ten thousand- and million-year timescales when CO₂ levels in the atmosphere were pretty constant. Second, mitigation can only work if everyone else follows the same strategy. But we know that global emissions of greenhouse gases are rising sharply even though ours have fallen into insignificance. Global consumption of coal, oil and gas are at record levels. Neither condition is met, so the UK’s Net Zero mitigation strategy can never work.

Impact of Net Zero Policies

Nevertheless this has not stopped politicians and policymakers rushing headlong into Net Zero policies that have resulted in the UK having the most expensive industrial electricity costs in the IEA, some 4X those of the US and 2.6X Korean prices. This is leading to energy austerity with UK primary energy consumption down 23% since 1990 while global energy consumption is up 72% over the same period. Our National Energy System Operator, NESO wants to double down on energy austerity and halve our energy consumption per capita from 2023 levels by 2050.

High energy prices coupled with energy austerity have led to economic stagnation. There is a strong correlation between reduced energy use and slow growth, with the EU27 and US growing faster than the UK because they have had smaller cuts to energy use. Korea, India China and the rest of the world are using much more energy and their economies are powering ahead.

Myths Created to Promote Renewables

Despite the obvious economic and social costs of Net Zero, a series of myths have been created to support the renewables agenda. They claim renewables are cheap, but we pay £11bn/yr in renewables subsidies, £2.5bn for grid balancing and a further £1bn for the capacity market. National Grid have announced £112bn in spending on grid expansion by 2035 which will also find its way on to our bills. Moreover, the cost of renewables is rising and projects like Norfolk Boreas and Hornsea Project Four have been cancelled because the developers cannot make money at the prices they agreed. Ed Miliband wants to spend £260-290bn by 2030 on his Clean Power plan to save only around £7bn/yr of the money we spend on gas-fired generation.

The second myth is that Net Zero will create jobs and growth. But the truth is expensive energy costs are destroying high-productivity industries like chemicals, petrochemicals, ceramics and steel that are growing more slowly than the rest of the economy or outright shrinking. Instead we are growing less energy intensive low-productivity sectors that are damaging productivity and growth for the whole economy. Green energy jobs are destroying real jobs and cost around £250K/yr per job.

The third myth is that renewables increase energy security. But intermittent sources like wind and solar can never deliver security because we cannot control the weather. As a result we came close to blackouts last month as NESO suffered a margin call. We cannot rely upon interconnectors either, because the Norwegian Government fell because of the impact interconnectors are having on their electricity prices.

Finally, it is claimed that wind and solar renewables are green and kind to the environment. But both have very high mineral intensity, meaning massive mines will be scarring the landscape to produce the copper, silver, cobalt and rare earth metals required. They also take up a lot of land, land that would be better utilised to grow food.

Adaptation is a Superior Strategy

By contrast, adaptation is a far superior strategy. Deaths from natural disasters and weather events have fallen more than 10-fold over the past century as we have used cheap, abundant energy to tame nature. Global life expectancy has doubled since 1850 and cereal yields are up three times since 1961. These remarkable achievements have come despite, some might argue because of, the rise in temperatures and global CO₂ levels.

Nuclear Power is the Answer

Turning now to the answer. For humanity to thrive, we need cheap, abundant and reliable energy. This will give us the surplus energy that we need to continue to adapt by building flood defences, improving irrigation developing new crop varieties and so on. Adaptation has the big advantage is that it works regardless of the cause of global warming or climate change. The only technology that is proven to work at scale is nuclear power. This will take time, so we need gas as a transition technology. Nuclear power has the added advantage of being energy dense, reliable and requires very little mining so has the smallest overall environmental footprint. We need nuclear power everywhere all at once.

In conclusion, Net Zero is ineffective in achieving its primary goal and can never stop the weather changing. The impact of Net Zero policies is devastating for the economy and high productivity, energy intensive industries in particular. Renewables are not kind to the environment and the lies being told to promote them are untenable. The Net Zero cure is worse than the climate change disease.

Many thanks to Will and the team at Sacred Cows for giving me the opportunity to speak. The venue was sold out and judging by the conversations I had afterwards, the event went down very well on the night.

The talk is now also available as a podcast on Spotify.