From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Another dagger in the heart of Net Zero.
From the Telegraph:
Reaching 2050 target could exceed even highest official predictions of £7.6tn amid ‘faulty assumptions’
Reaching net zero will cost Britain even more than feared, a report has found.
The gross cost to the UK economy of achieving the 2050 target could exceed even the highest official predictions of £7.6tn, an Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) paper said.
The report said that previous estimates of the financial impact of net zero were based on “fantasy assumptions” of the cost of renewable energy and low-carbon technology.
Lord Frost, the head of the IEA, said the low estimates were also the result of “heroic assumptions” of the cost of household technologies such as heat pumps and electric cars.
David Turver, the paper author, said: “The various public bodies responsible for working out the costs of net zero have not been entirely truthful in their analysis. They have made fantasy assumptions about the cost of renewables and low-carbon technologies.
“The true cost of net zero is much higher than we have been led to believe. If we are to have a serious debate about net zero, the various public bodies need to be more transparent and frankly more honest.”
The Government’s approach to reaching net zero has come under increasing scrutiny over the last year, with pressures to go further on green policy from inside Labour.
On Monday night, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said it rejected the IEA analysis, which it said ignored the costs of “staying on the fossil fuel roller-coaster”.
Full story here.
No longer is Miliband arguing about lower costs. His only defence of the craziness is avoiding the volatility of fossil fuel prices, the roller-coaster as they call it.
Instead he wants to us into much higher costs for 20 years.
The lies by the Blob apparatchiks are terrible…but the truth is terrifying…
Even Google AI tells lies…
I asked…How much would it cost the US to go Zero Emissions?
It answered…
The total cost varies widely, the best estimate is $3.5T globally with the US having the largest share.
So I then rephrased the question…
I’ve seen reports of a cost of $7 trillion for the UK to achieve Net Zero, How much would it cost the US to go Zero Emissions
Then it answered…
Estimates for the U.S. to reach net-zero vary widely, from potentially low annual costs (around $1 per person daily for energy infrastructure) to multi-trillion dollar figures, with one analysis suggesting $4.5 trillion for 100% renewables by 2030, while Goldman Sachs projected a massive $75 trillion global investment for net-zero by 2070, much higher than U.S. GDP.
.
I guess even Google AI has been trained to “Whitewash” the truth.
Google, and the rest, has been “trained” to generate utterances that look like answers should look. That is all. There is zero reasoning; zero resort to evidence, and zero comprehension.
Don’t be enchanted by their fluency.
A most interesting article (if a bit hard going) from Judith Curry’s website about AI’s responses to climate questions: https://judithcurry.com/2026/01/05/ai-models-and-their-knowledge-of-climate-change/.
AI use internet sources for their responses.
If there are 10,000 publications claiming everything is coming up roses and daffodils and only one warning of thorns, AI will go with the preponderance of the evidence.
AI is incapable of judgement. It can only do pattern recognition.
There’s more than pattern recognition going on when AI expresses the cost in dollars per day per person. That’s salesman talk.
If you keep pushing, AI will keep going in your direction, but it is a waste of your time. AI can only answer from the lies, biases, and disinformation in its data base.
“around $1 per person daily for energy infrastructure”
$1 per day = $365/year
2050-2026 = 24 years
$365/year * 24 year = $8760
USA population = 340M in 2026
$8760 * 340M = 2.98T
So about $3 trillion for infrastructure. Are there other costs, like maintenance and operation?
(Note that the AI put $3T on the low side of the range)
And that cost is just for the UK for the IPCC globalists’ “net zero by 2050”
We are talking about black hole proportions.in terms of cost, that will doom Western civilization, like during the Dark Ages.
Not even the richest countries can afford such a folly.
The UK will be even more of a basket case.
Also, increased CO2 ppm is a life gas essential for increased fauna and flora, reduced desert ares, and increased crop yields per acre to better feed 8 billion people
‘…that will doom Western civilization…’
Let’s see, unlimited immigration, net zero, DEI, etc. It almost sounds intentional.
/s
It IS intentional!
Add negation of freedom of speech, assembly, association, and take away personal arms to protect oneself from the mobs and the unelected “governments”
Erase national cultures that are several thousand years old, and reduce all to the lowest common denominator.
1984 is tame by comparison.
CCC claims it’ll only cost £108 billion.
I wouldn’t mind betting that by 2050 it will be closer to £15 trillion or more
I definitely won’t be taking that bet, unless £15 is your top limit in which case I’d go higher.
I doubt anyone will still be trying to reduce CO2 by the year 2050.
Maybe Mad Ed, but he would be the only one.
Only if he stops breathing.
According to Goldman-Sachs it would take more than $75T globally. I believe this to be a far conservative estimate and likely doesn’t include Government Subsidies paid to Renewable Generation Sources for providing absolutely nothing of value
Interestingly the more Conservative Estimates are made by Liberals while the more Liberal Estimates are made by Conservatives.
I wouldn’t mind betting that by 2050 I’ll be dead. But then again, I couldn’t collect when I win, so why bother.
They’re not faulty assumptions; they are intentionally under-stated lies.
Yes, your friendly government agency is deliberately lying to you about the costs of Net Zero.
It’s worse than you think.
These make used cars salesmen blush.
Hm.
Yesterday Strativarius gave a link which said £9 trillion.
Now it is £7.6 trillion.
Is this what is called the shrinking economy?
It still isn’t on any of the MSM outlets, though.
Indeed I did. The take away is nobody knows the true cost of the fantasy
Fury as Ed Miliband’s Net Zero fanaticism set to cost taxpayers ‘more than £9 trillion’
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2156854/fury-ed-milibands-net-zero#
Standard political costing rules apply it will cost 10 times the estimate and will not be completed … so $90 trillion and no net-zero will be closer to truth,
Not only 10 times the cost estimate, but also 10 times the time estimate.
How many Trillion$ have already been spent fighting climate change since Rio? (Ten$ of Trillion$)
And how much CO2 has been attenuated as a result?? (ZERO)
AND much have temperatures fallen due to that CO2 reduction??? (ZERO)
I believe the word that Frost and Turver is looking for is “lies”. And the response by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero? More lies. They just can’t stop lying.
Lying is the only way they can go forward.
But at least they’re Gilded Lies
I fear I am more and more an outlier on the subject of our leaders’ honesty.
I don’t think they’re lying. I think they are thick. Absolutely pig-ignorant and thick.
Hanlon’s Razor:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity,”
I do not believe Hanlon’s Razor applies to politicians, although malice could easily be greed.
“Plausible deniability is the ability to deny knowledge or responsibility for an action, often by creating a situation where there’s a lack of concrete evidence linking a high-ranking official or organization to wrongdoing by subordinates or covert operations, allowing them to claim ignorance and avoid accountability.”
If Net Zero policies continue 10 years from now, I’ll be surprised.
I think this CO2 science fiction is about to run out of gas. it’s harder to predict the psychology of this situation. True believers will continue on even in the face of failure.
The upward revisions are unsustainable?
Story Tip:
Climate change has now shrunk US salaries by 12%. And worse is to come | BBC Science Focus Magazine
Oh Noes!!!!!
Funny that report. Cost of doing nothing is 1,266 trillion.
It misses the mark. The greatest loss of income is due to inflation and debt.
The threat to future generations is not climate, it is the massive accumulation of debt they will face without having a voice in any of the decisions.
Total gibberish of course, as is most crap from the BBC.
For a start, there has been human caused warming in the USA since 2005, , according to USCRN.
And the USA was much warmer in the 1930,40s
On ethe other hand… there is no doubt that the “Climate Change Agenda” has been a very costly burden to society.
For a UK temperature check, I went to:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/countries/united-kingdom/average-temperature-by-year. Tmax and Tmin data from 1901 to 2024 are displayed in
a table. Here is the temperature data for these two years:
Year——Tmax——Tmin——-Tavg Temperatures are ° C
2024——12.9——–6.9———9.9
1901——11.8——–4.7———8.7
Change–+1.1——+2.2——–+1.7
After 123 years there has been a slight warming in the UK, but this is of little since consequence because there will always be long cold winters. Thus net zero by 2050 is not possible. Fossil fuels will be required to keeps humans and pets from freezing to death in winter.
The humans of the UK exhale 67 million kilograms of CO2 everyday. To this should be added all the CO2 exhaled by domestic animals from cattle to canaries. Does Mad Ed have a plan for reducing the emission of CO2 from humans?
CO2 In Air Concentration Data
2024: 424 ppmv, 0.83 g CO2/cu. m. of air
1901: 295 ppmv, 0.58 g CO2/cu. m. of air.
Note how little CO2 there is air. We need to inform Mad Ed that he does not have to worry about any warming of air by CO2.
I find myself in the position of being able to say: “I told you so.” https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/17/on-externalities-integrated-assessment-models-and-uk-climate-policies/. I wish I could be satisfied about that, but I’m not.
That was six years ago, and still there has been no proper cost/benefit assessment of net zero, on either side of the ledger. We now have a situation where the IEA’s estimate of the costs of net zero (which I tend to believe; David Turver knows what he is doing) is higher than the CCC’s estimate by a factor of over 80. Madness. As to what the cost of inaction would have been if net zero had never existed, that has never been objectively and honestly calculated – which was the main point of my article.
In any case, the government “paper trail” I unearthed during that exercise (and linked to in the article) is still up there on the Internet. I think it’s quite damning.
The unreality of the UK Climate Change Committee’s estimates of anything was amply illustrated by this small quote from page 306 of their 2025 report on Net Zero.
“For the typical household bills will be lower in 2050 than in 2025 for heating and driving with minimal changes to food costs”
You have to believe in fairy dust to accept that!
Ed Miliband has just announced the latest batch of Net Zero madness.
His smugness indicator has gone through the roof.
He is actually proud of what he is doing.
He “believes”.
Yep.
Same problem in America..massive costs to consumers, lost competitive industrial base, and dependence on others for National security. Wasted money.Wasted opportunities. Based on fantasy..with no small interest in monetary and political self-interest.
Seems more like an enemy’s plan.
… confined to blue states. Here in FL, there’s no big push for netzero.
Getting those energy bills down – remember, a £300 cut was promised in July 2024…
Will Great Britain’s offshore wind subsidy auction mean lower energy bills?
Why ‘historic’ process is crucial to help government hit 2030 clean energy targets – The 6th Form
Prices for Fixed Bottom Offshore wind are up 11% to £117/MWh, Floating Offshore wind up 10.2% to £280/MWh, and onshore wind up 3.1% to £95/MWh.
https://ukreloaded.com/miliband-to-wreck-the-economy-with-ar7/
The Guardian knows bills will only go up yet feels it needs to be seen to be questioning its own narrative. Doublethink is a real asset to these people.
In May 2025, the Natural Gas, whl, GB price was around 28.7 GBP per MWh. This figure represents a 3.4% fall compared to the preceding month’s value, while Natural Gas, whl, GB prices increased by 10.5% on a year-over-year basis.
https://www.intratec.us/solutions/energy-prices-markets/commodity/natural-gas-price-united-kingdom
The way gas is used purely as a backup when nature fails us inflates the price of gas enormously.
If only the government understood even basic economics.
Ehrlich was right, though his timing and rationale were wrong.
“By the year
20002050 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year20002050.”Doublethink an Asset…or Asshat???
I’d suffix ass with hole.
“The way gas is used purely as a backup when nature fails us inflates the price of gas enormously.”
That bears repeating, and is the real problem with this plan and is the reason that electricity rates are going higher, The Net Zero fiends have to use natural gas this way as a means of including windmills and solar in the grid mix.
Without natural gas backup, windmills and solar would not be viable. But using natural gas this way, as a backup, increases the costs dramatically, as opposed to a grid that was powered solely by natural gas. A pure natual gas grid would be cheaper than the jury-rigged grid the UK has now, with windmills and solar added in.
So the windmills and the solar are the real culprits when it comes to high electicity prices, not the natural gas power plants, which are being used in the most inefficient way possible, just so the Net Zero fanatics can run their windmills and solar and can pretend they are doing something about the weather..
Why spend this money? Decarbonisation, whatever that is, achieves nothing. It is a total sham by politicians who haven’t a clue what they are doing.
I suspect they know.
The Club of Rome.
The Population Bomb.
One World Order.
Lowering CO2 reduces plant growth, reducing overall population.
News just in…
The latest accounts from the Climate Change Committee – a taxpayer-funded body which tracks and advocates for measures to push Britain closer to Net Zero – show its chief executives have been handed a plum pay increase.
Chris Stark was in 2023/4 paid up to £210,000 for his work.
His replacement James Richardson enjoyed remuneration last year to the tune of £225,000 – his salary was boosted by a handsome pension benefit package.
Total funding for the growing organisation has also gone up. Staff costs have rocketed from £4,610,583 in 2023/4 to £5,166,863 just twelve months later. Total operating expenditure is up from £6,711,820 to £8,258,989. A Labour minister has today defended the ballooning costs: “The CCC has a vital role providing independent, expert advice on reducing emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change, and staff numbers have risen to manage the increased demands from the CCC’s work programme.” Hop on the gravy train while you can…
Miliband is today boasting about locking in £95/MWh prices for offshore wind in the latest auction round. The average electricity price last year was £80. Subsidise or die…
https://order-order.com/2026/01/14/taxpayer-funded-net-zero-body-hikes-spending-by-over-a-fifth/
James Richardson: Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford, then a PhD in Economics from LSE (thesis on wage subsidies).
So a real domain expert. /sarc
Is Chief Executive a full-time position? I struggle to image such an exalted being subsisting on less than a quarter million.
You will have nothing and you will be happy.
… as you starve and freeze in the dark and cold.
I previously poste this.
It was suggested that I regularly repost it.
Even at +2°C or +3°C or +5°C we would not suffer any more than those optimum eras that say the population flourish.
And surpassing 1850?
What evidence is there that 1850 was the climate optimum.
No one has yet to define the climate optimum in measurable metrics.
How do we know we are not moving towards the optimum?
Without knowing the optimum, no claims that things are getting worse are valid.
If climate science cannot decide on an optimum temperature, why should we believe +1.5°C is a problem.
The REAL cost is so high it will bankrupt us ALL and leave us with insufficient energy!
The rest is simply a LIE.
I can’t imagine that by 2050 China will be manufacturing toys for the West with tiny hand tools in dirty factories. Maybe that role will be for India? India does not seem to be aimed at that goal. Will robots do the grunt work? The major driver for overseas manufacturing has been labor cost avoidance, and robots are expensive.
The point is, looking beyond a few years into the future becomes fiction. Will there be ‘x’ in 2050? Make ‘x’ anything that seems out of reach in 2026 and the answer becomes ‘maybe’. Nuclear fusion power? Maybe. Flying cars? Maybe. One world government? Maybe.
Question..
Does this value include the cost of the complete collapse of the UK economy ???
And the answer is no, it doesn’t include the costs of bankrupting the UK.
It’s all fun and games until the money runs out, and then there is a logjam at the exit.
Hats off to IEA. It goes without saying we can’t be effective until we can hold these monsters accountable for all the harm even deaths that they are causing. What they (government) are doing is criminal they must be made to pay.
If the IEA is admitting this, it’s likely to be accurate, but at least it’s not trying to conceal anything or trying to greenwash the effort. It’s too bad that many governments aren’t seeing the light on the issue or admitting it. Instead they keep supporting policies that supposedly will help us reach this target without admitting to citizens that it’s just using it as an excuse to raise taxes on items, processes and various manufactures.
It is the Institute of Economic Affairs based in London not the International Energy Agency