by Will Jones
The Climate Change Committee, the UK’s official Net Zero advisory body, has told the Government that to hit Net Zero it must impose radical lifestyle changes on the UK population. The Mail has more.
The UK’s drive for Net Zero means millions of Brits face having to install heat pumps in their homes over the next decade, according to the Government’s climate advisers.
The Climate Change Committee said there needed to be around 1.5 million heat pump installations a year in existing homes by 2035 – up from just 60,000 in 2023.
In its [advice on the UK’s] Seventh Carbon Budget, which sets a limit for UK greenhouse gas emissions between 2038 to 2042, the committee also piled pressure on Brits to buy electric cars, fly less and cut their meat and dairy consumption.
The report said, in order to meet the country’s Net Zero ambition, three-quarters of cars and vans and two-thirds of heavy good vehicles (HGVs) would need to be electric by 2040.
At the same time, Brits should be shunning their cars to cycle and walk more, while eating 25% less meat, the committee stated.
Holidaymakers were warned of more expensive flights as the committee urged the Government to commit to a 17% fall in aviation emissions compared to 2023.
Demand for air travel needed to be managed to curb emissions, with airlines taking responsibility for the costs of decarbonising through sustainable fuels, capturing carbon and electric and hybrid planes, the committee said. [All of which are, being generous, unproven technology.]
That would push up costs, for example increasing the price of a return ticket to Alicante, Spain, by £150 and a round-trip to New York could be £300 more expensive by 2050, according to the report.
Critics of Net Zero policies condemned the report as the committee’s “usual Marxist garbage” and urged Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to “face down the zealots” as his Labour administration scrambles for economic growth.
The Government is committed to reaching Net Zero – which means reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 100% from 1990 levels – by 2050.
Under the committee’s “balanced pathway” for reaching this target, the report found achieving Net Zero would cost around £110 billion over the next 25 years.
At an average of £4 billion per year between 2025 and 2050, this translates to around 0.2% of GDP.
This was estimated to be front-loaded into the first half of the period, peaking at annual net cost of £33 billion in 2029.
For the period between 2025 and 2040, the committee’s figures showed the drive to Net Zero would cost an eye-watering £320 billion.
But the report added, from 2040, the annual net cost would become a saving due to falling technology costs and more efficient use of energy and resources. [Jam tomorrow.]
This would lead to a net saving of around £35 billion in 2050, it said.
In its latest advice, the committee urged the Government to commit to an 87% cut on the UK’s 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
It set out what it said was a deliverable and cost-effective route to the greenhouse gas emissions cuts required from 2038 to 2042 to ensure the UK meets Net Zero by 2050.
Around a third of the emissions cuts in the period will have to come from action by households, mainly buying an electric car and a heat pump to replace an old gas boiler.
But personal choices on eating less meat and dairy, and flying, would play a “smaller, but important role”, the committee added.
To cut emissions from meat and dairy production – and free up land for tree planting to absorb carbon – Brits were told they would have to eat 25% less meat by 2040 compared with 2019 levels.
Worth reading in full.
The Climate Change Committee was created by the Climate Change Act 2008 to give the Government independent advice on how to achieve its climate goals. The Government is obliged under the act to create legally binding carbon budgets for each five year period up to 2050 to ensure it is on track. The Government doesn’t have to accept the committee’s advice – though to date it invariably has – but it does have to set a binding carbon budget (this will be the seventh, for 2038-2042) that keeps the country on target. Without repealing or amending the act the Government has very little wiggle room, so it’s worth looking out for what it actually comes up with in the next year or so. We shouldn’t expect it to be much different to what the committee has suggested, though. The point of the committee, after all, is to do the donkey work in figuring it all out. How this fits with ‘going for growth’, though, is anybody’s guess.
Stop Press: BP has announced it will cut its renewable energy investments by more than $5 billion (£3.9 billion) a year and instead focus on increasing oil and gas production, boosting its investments there by about 20% to $10 billion (£7.9 billion) a year.
If I lived in either Germany or the UK right now I would be doing everything in my power to get out. Both countries have made it clear they would rather commit suicide than face reality.
And what does the committee think that British citizens should do to enhance their unicorn herding operations and fairy hatcheries?
These people need to report directly to DOGE. They are damn lucky I can’t be put in control of them, they wouldn’t have time to clear out their desks before they hit the road. What a worthless gaggle of bottom feeders.
What are the odds of any government staying in office if it tried to impose such asinine proposals on the electorate? Better still, what are the odds that such a government would get elected in the first place? One of the reasons that Trump was elected was that enough Americans had become fed up with Biden’s environment and climate-saving gimmicks. A main reason that Canada is likely to elect the federal Conservatives in May is that voters are sick of paying higher prices to supposedly save the planet when all these have done was to raise living costs. Meanwhile the country is currently running 20% below its emissions reductions targets for 2030.
Correction: Canada is running 80% below its emissions-reduction target for 2030. 20% would be a great achievement except its citizens really don’t give a damn whether these goals are attained in the first place
It was never about saving the planet for the usual jackbooters-
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You will keep us in the manner to which we’re accustomed and do as you’re told or else!
90% of the UK Civil Service is arts educated. None of the senior civil servants at the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero have any scientific qualification. Emma Pinchbeck has a degree in Classics and presumably has a non-numerate background. Since energy production and consumption tend to be quite quantitative subjects the CCC should be dominated by engineers. Pigs might fly!
Story tip.
This is a podcast by a very distinguished engineer about the practical consequences of achieving net-zero.
I have always said that green fantasies will eventually collide with engineering reality, but Mike Kelly is devastating on the subject.
Apologies, for some reason a US site won’t display this.
It is called:
Net Zero is a fantasy – We don’t have the Money, Material or workforce to achieve Net zero – By Michael Kelly. Although UK centric it is well worth watching.
the Climate Change Committee is an example of how British governments have avoided democratic oversight by passing on their responsibilities to unelected bodies, They create organisations that are stuffed with unelected ‘experts’ (i.e.fanatics), then when they report with the desired conclusions, they accept the recommendations of the ‘experts’ in full. It is unlikely that everything will actually happen in this case, they will be forced to turn back when it becomes obvious that disaster is looming. This has already happened with ‘smart’ motorways and is beginning to happen with electric vehicles.
To cut emissions from meat and dairy production – and free up land for tree planting to absorb carbon – Brits were told they would have to eat 25% less meat by 2040 compared with 2019 levels.
But didn’t they read the study reported in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/feb/26/plants-losing-appetite-for-carbon-dioxide-amid-effects-of-warming-climate
What should we be at the beck and call of the CCC as they pinch our lifestyle?
But there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on our global climate system. There is plenty of scientific rationale to conclude that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero. The AGW hypothesis has been falsified by science. Mankind does not even know what the optimal global climate is let alone how to achieve it. World wide trillions of dollars have been spent in the name of fighting climate change yet no one is saying that there has been any amprovement in our climate. There is no real reason to be trying to achidve net zero. Spending money to fight climate change is just a big waste of funds.