ON MONDAY, Paul Homewood alerted TCW readers to the sheer insanity of the Climate and Nature Bill which has its Second Reading in Parliament on Friday. He wrote: ‘If this Bill becomes law, the country will be unrecognisable in ten years’ time. There will be energy and food shortages, industry will be decimated, private transport and foreign holidays a thing of the past. What we take for granted today will be unaffordable for most. And there will be nothing we can do about it.’
There is, however, something you can do about it now. TCW contributor ROGER ARTHUR has produced a letter which you can copy and send to your MP either by email or printed out by recorded delivery, signed by yourself.
It is essential that MPs should not be allowed to pretend that they didn’t know.
Dear [MP’s name]
You will shortly be voting on the Second Reading of the Climate and Nature Bill(CAN) Bill. So I am appealing to you to confront the reality – indeed the impossibility of – Net Zero and its serious impact on many who are having to choose between eating and heating.
The UK has pursued Net Zero at a reckless rate, halving its CO2 emissions since 1990, faster than most. Net Zero has not been properly costed and the impact on fuel poverty has not been factored into any viability assessment and agreed by the people, but we now face a government which wants to go even faster.
The government failed to anticipate that excess deaths would arise from lockdown and did not monitor the upward trend and take action to minimise the adverse impact. Now they are making the same mistake with Net Zero.
So if Net Zero targets are not deferred and the CAN legislation is passed, then I and many others will hold MPs who voted for it or abstained accountable for the consequences. So please do not attempt to plead ignorance of the impact.
Supporting information
1. Energy Costs The premature penalisation of fossil fuels and closure of coal-fired power stations without affordable alternatives in place has left the UK over-exposed to the vagaries of the international gas market and has increased the UK’s dependence on foreign energy supplies.
Now the UK relies on gas to generate 40 per cent of its electricity, compared with less than 20 per cent which most European countries rely on. The UK’s over-dependence on gas, along with green tariffs, is a big reason why UK energy prices are higher than elsewhere.
Annual consumer price inflation for gas and electricity in the UK soared to around 80 per cent in 2022, around twice that in the eurozone, which has badly affected those who were in fuel poverty. Unsurprisingly the aggregate fuel poverty gap in England increased by an estimated 67 per cent between 2020 and 2023, which will likely contribute to a rise in excess deaths.
The excessive energy costs are also driving businesses abroad to higher emitting countries, where they will increase global emissions. Since more are dying from the cold than from excess temperature, why would you want to make things worse?
2. Cost of Net Zero McKinsey estimates that it will cost around 7 per cent of GDP per annum, ie around £5trillion – through to 2050 – raising the Debt/GDP ratio to around 3. That will include the cost of uprating and decarbonising of the Grid, at £3trillion (£100,000 per household) as estimated by National Grid. At that rate it will take almost 100 years to meet the £5trillion cost of Net Zero, averaging £170,000 per household, many of which will not be able to contribute.
3. Lack of materials A 95kWh EV battery requires around 15kg of lithium. At the current rate of mining (
The above neglects the Li required by commercial EVs, by grid scale batteries plus ubiquitous electronic devices etc. So we are unlikely to see all 1.5billion cars replaced before the end of the century without a substantial increase in mining output. It typically takes around ten years to get a new mine up and running and since battery life is supposed to exceed ten years we can’t expect recycling to come to the rescue any time soon.
According to the Copper Development Association (CDA), the average copper content of an ICE vehicle is around 23kg, and this will increase to 60kg for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and to 83kg for pure EVs. That’s a ratio of almost 4:1 for EVs compared with ICE cars.
4. Lack of Power Generation Capacity Recently, the UK grid was close to collapse when maximum demand (MD) approached 50GW, while wind and solar output amounted to only 3 or 4GW. That MD is expected to exceed 80GW by the early 2030s and it will take ten to 15 years to connect all new wind and solar farms. So we might expect power cuts within the next year or two, because it takes three or four years to get new Gas Turbine Generators up and running; the new Teesside 0.8GW plant has only just been ordered.
An extra 600,000 roadside EV charging points are to be installed, to which must be added the loads of heat pumps, data centres and hundreds of thousands of new homes. It is surely time for some joined up thinking if power cuts are to be avoided.
Bear in mind that around 30GW of ageing nuclear and gas turbine power stations are due to retire by the early 30s.
Since we have neither the materials, skilled resources nor the money to deliver Net Zero targets, why don’t you campaign for Net Zero to be slowed to a realistic pace, avoiding needless loss of life, jobs and power cuts?
Will you continue to evade this issue, or will you stand tall and address the poverty and the serious financial impact and defer (not accelerate) Net Zero targets according to what is feasible.
Whatever you do, please do not vote for Net Zero to be accelerated, as proposed in the CAN Bill, unless you want to be on the wrong side of history.
Yours sincerely
[Your name]
