From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
The CCC has now published its report, that was quoted in the FT this morning:
The report is remarkably data free, but offers this summary:
As I noted earlier, the benefits mentioned are totally spurious. They say:
“we now incorporate our assessment of co-impacts to fully appraise the value of the Net Zero transition. These include health benefits from improved air quality and active travel, warmer and less damp homes, and healthier eating habits. We also include benefits from avoided climate damages.”
Eat less, give up driving and be grateful, seems to be the message!
As for the monetary costs and savings, they merely reiterate the Seventh Carbon Budget that laughingly claimed the net additional cost would only be £4 billion a year, £100 billion by 2050:
Our Seventh Carbon Budget advice report estimated the additional cost of the Balanced Pathway – our pathway to Net Zero – would be around £4 billion per year on average between 2025 and 2050, relative to a baseline of no further emissions reductions from today
Dishonestly they don’t include the costs we have already incurred and continue to incur for Net Zero. According to the OBR, the bill will amount to £150 billion just in the next five years alone, to cover renewable subsidies and Ed Miliband’s crazy plans.
We also had the NESO analysis published in December, which found that aiming for 80% emission reduction, instead of the 100% demanded in Net Zero, would save 0.4% of GDP every year till 2050 on average. That adds up to £14 billion a year, or £350 billion by 2050.
If we can save £350 billion by slowing down Net Zero, how much more could we save if we dropped the whole idea?
https://www.neso.energy/document/374246/download
As I pointed out at the time, NESO made wholly unrealistic and optimistic assumptions such as price parity for EVs by next year and offshore wind prices of £70.10/MWh. The recent AR7 set prices of £90.10/MWh:
As with all these official analyses, it’s a case of pay now and you might get a spoonful of jam in twenty years time. As I never tire of pointing out, nobody has the slightest what the future will hold in 2050; attempting to analyse it is a fool’s errand.
But what we can realistically estimate are the costs in the short term, the next five or ten years, say.
Again, we can turn to NESO.
They costed Labour’s 2030 Clean Power Plan, and found that it would add £25/MWh in non-generation costs – that’s £10 billion a year, which is of course on top of the current costs we already incur.
The supposed saving on generation costs was fake, as they inflated gas generation costs by including a massive jacking up of carbon taxes. Given what we know of the CfD round, the roll out of wind power will add billions more to energy bills..
NESO did not factor in the power grid upgrades needed for Net Zero, which are estimated to be around £130 billion. Nor did they cost the distribution network upgrades needed to cope with higher electricity demand – even optimistic projections put a cost on this of £200 billion. The eventual bills will, of course, be much higher when return on capital is allowed for.
Meanwhile heat pumps are not coming down in price, as naively believed. A typical household will have to pay a premium of maybe £12000 over above the cost of a gas boiler. With annual sales of 2 million, that adds another £24 billion a year to the Net Zero bill.
And even the CCC cannot deny the fact that carbon capture and hydrogen are horrifyingly inefficient and expensive ways of doing what natural gas does already.
Households are already £800 worse off a year as a result of Net Zero policies on electricity costs, whether directly via energy bills or indirectly via higher taxes and prices.
Based on NESO/OFGEM figures, that figure will likely double in the next few years.
Being forced to buy a heat pump will add another £1000 a year to household costs, including loan interest. And with EVs still costing thousands more than petrol cars, they will be unaffordable for many.
You don’t need a fancy analysis to work out that people will be much worse off if Net Zero policies continue to be enforced.
