Ted Grainger is Network Manager for Fighting for a Free Future.
When Net Zero 2050 was first introduced by Theresa May, many of us accepted the case for it. We naively assumed that someone, somewhere in Whitehall, had properly modelled it and that this was an achievable target. It would probably cost something, but it was manageable. If you are reading this and it does not sound familiar, then congratulations to you for seeing through it from the start. I am sad to admit that I was not with you then.
My earlier support came back to me recently when the longstanding Net Zero critic Lord Mackinlay recalled how the 2050 target was adopted. It came about through a simple statutory instrument, which in hindsight should have been the first sign that the necessary work had not been done for such a huge commitment. With Theresa May’s premiership in its final days and the Brexit wars raging, he and fellow MP Steve Baker decided not to force a vote. Rallying a handful of Brexiteers against a motion that was going to pass anyway would only have turned Net Zero into a proxy war for Brexit.
Once the 2050 date was placed onto the statute book, opposition to it was very much outside the Overton window. In the 2019 general election, not a single party that actually won a seat campaigned on repealing the target. The Conservatives reinforced their commitment to it, the Liberal Democrats proposed bringing the target forward five years to 2045 and Labour wanted a net-zero-carbon energy system within the 2030s. Even the DUP backed the UK’s 2050 Net Zero target, and the seatless Brexit Party had little to say on climate at all. Indeed, it was rare for people to stand up and question it. We must of course take our hats off to the few who did, including think tanks such as the IEA.
Public support followed the political consensus rather than leading it, the reverse of how democracy is supposed to work. That consensus was certainly what led me to support Net Zero in the first place. At the time of the 2019 general election, I was eighteen and about to vote for the first time. I remember seeing the parties’ competing Net Zero dates and assuming that not committing at all was simply not an option. Naturally, I assumed the Government had done the rigorous costings. In fact, weeks before Parliament approved it, the then Chancellor, Philip Hammond, had warned the Prime Minister that the target could cost “well in excess of a trillion pounds”, yet it passed without a full public assessment of the costs.
I suspect most of the public saw Net Zero the same way, not least because 2050 was a long way away. It can’t be that hard, surely, to wean ourselves off of fossil fuel reliance in just over thirty years? On top of that, almost every politician was telling the public that Net Zero would somehow make us richer. Some are still making that case today. It is quite frankly embarrassing that, as a country, we fell for it. We were told a green economy was the investment of a lifetime and would make everyone rich beyond their wildest dreams, but in order to achieve it, the green economy would require enormous subsidies, and punishment would be handed out if you failed to invest in it. As a rule of thumb, obviously fantastic investments do not require investors to be coerced into buying them. I accepted the target, but I never bought the promise that it would make us richer.
In 2026, the tide is turning. The share of Britons who want net zero reached before 2050 has almost halved since 2021, from 54% to 29%, according to King’s College London and Ipsos. This shift is happening for a very simple reason: people are starting to feel the impact of Net Zero in their pockets. People were happy to support Net Zero for as long as the bill was modest. Households now pay around 26p per kilowatt-hour for electricity under the price cap. What they will not accept is the 40p that Lord Mackinlay predicts is coming.
I do wish to issue a word of warning, however. People are falling out of love with Net Zero, but they have not changed their minds about climate change, which is real. Almost three-quarters of Britons are still worried about it. Critics of Net Zero will win the argument by demonstrating how expensive it is, and how it will not stop climate change. We must not make the mistake of throwing the baby out with the bathwater by dismissing climate change. This will only lead the vast majority of people to stop listening to Net Zero critics. We can argue about the extent to which it is perilous for humanity, but the core argument must be that we will overcome the challenges of climate change through private innovation, not top-down mandates and regulations.
Win the argument on cost, and the case for tackling climate change through innovation will follow.
People were naive beyond belief to accept any kind of 'net zero' nonsense. I have yet to find any meaningful definition for the term either. But, you were young at the time.
However, your climate change caveat still shows signs of muddled thinking. Although it is obvious to everyone that the climate does indeed change, it is the fixation on CO2/fossil fuel usage that has become an almost religious dogma that stands no dissent. The Earths global temparature has change wildly, both up and down over millenia, yet modellers and surprisingly few actual climate scientists have decided that they can predict what is going to happen (and why) in the next few years. A literal blink of an eye in planetary terms. I suggest you expand your reading to include people such as Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, John Christy et al.
Doing so well until you said you believed that climate change was real . . . with the implication that it had to be taken seriously.