EVERY five years the Climate Change Committee (CCC) publish a Carbon Budget, laying down targets for carbon emissions and setting out a roadmap of how to get there. Now they have published the Seventh Carbon Budget, which covers the period 2038 to 2042.
The emissions targets in the first six have all been made legally binding, and doubtless this new set will be as well. But the CCC faced real difficulties this time around as the public have finally begun to wake up to the crippling costs involved in the pursuit of Net Zero. Instead of admitting the true costs and impacts on people’s lives, they chose instead to lie about them and cover them up.
First, they have assumed that the costs of renewable energy will miraculously plummet, so that in the long run we will all be better off. They have calculated their costings on the basis that wind and solar power is already much cheaper than we are currently paying, and that it will fall further in the next five years. For offshore wind, for instance, their costings are based on a price of £51.12/MWh for this year, dropping to £37.60/MWh in 2030. (All based on 2023 prices.) Yet the new contracts signed just last summer are priced at £82/MWh, and there is every indication the price will rise again this year. Similarly with solar power, which they assume is currently £46.00, and will drop to £34.42 by 2030. However current prices stand at £69.
The effect of this skulduggery is to understate the true costs by approximately £16billion a year. Over the full period to 2050, we are looking at something like £400billion.
The comparison with the CCC’s fake costings with the National Energy System Operator’s (NESO) figures is striking. In their Clean Power 2030 plan, NESO said we would need to spend £48billion a year up to 2030 on electricity supply CAPEX (capital expenditure). The CCC’s figure is just £18billion for a similar increase in capacity. (See chart below).
The second big lie concerns the price of electric cars, which the CCC say will reach price parity with petrol cars between 2026 and 2028, and quickly become 10 per cent cheaper. This is a nonsense, and they know it is. EVs have consistently been at least £10,000 more expensive than petrol for years, and there is no evidence that this gap will shrink any time soon.
Between now and 2040, the CCC calculate that car owners will be £6billion better off because of ‘cheaper EVs’. In reality, at current price levels they will be £20billion a year worse off.
The CCC’s own figures say that there will be a cost of £319billion by 2040 in achieving their carbon budgets, but we now know that this figure has been underestimated by at least £600billion. The real cost will therefore be close to a trillion.
NESO Clean Power 2030
Seventh Carbon Budget
According to a puff piece by the BBC: ‘The CCC estimates most of the expense will be borne by the private sector and calculates the savings from moving to more efficient technologies should outweigh costs by the early 2040s.’
It apparently has not occurred to the BBC that these private investors will want their money back, plus interest and a return on capital!
And nobody knows what will happen in 20 years, so pretending that we will all be better off in 2050, by which time half of us will be dead, is a con-trick.
The head of the CCC, Emma Pinchbeck, neatly summed up the swindle when she told the BBC: ‘Regardless of what you think about climate change, what we are laying out today is a massive industrial revolution. It will save the economy money by 2040, it saves people money on their energy bills, it saves people money on their driving costs, but all of that is underpinned by a cheaper electricity price.’
None of that is true.
The CCC is supposed to be independent, but it clearly is not. The whole purpose of this fabrication is to defuse public concern about Net Zero and provide cover for Ed Miliband to force through the climate agenda both are committed to.
Command and Control
IT’S MUCH more than a matter of cost though: Net Zero and the CCC’s plans to get there will massively affect us all for the worse, while increasing the state’s ability to control how we live our everyday lives.
The list of the CCC’s recommendations is bad enough, including:
- The ban on new petrol and diesel cars in 2030
- An effective ban on installing gas boilers by 2035
- Cutting our use of cars
- Eating less meat and dairy products
- Increasing the cost of air travel
- Rationing electricity
All of these policies require state compulsion, regulation and taxation to enforce them. We have already seen this in action with the enforced adoption of electric cars, through a combination of fines and bans. Few drivers can afford to pay the extra £10k needed to buy one, and will be forced to buy a smaller or a second-hand car instead. As for the unlucky four out of ten who don’t have off-street parking, they will be stuck with inconvenient and expensive public chargers. As a result, many will have to give up driving completely.
Neither can homeowners afford £15k or more for a heat pump. Yet the CCC demand that annual installations hit 450,000 by 2030. One way or another this will have to be enforced by the government, whether by fines or diktat.
Similarly, they demand that consumption of meat and dairy is cut by a quarter in the next decade. These products will either have to be rationed or made too expensive for many to afford; there are no other options. (The CCC, for example, are already suggesting import tariffs to force up prices and reduce demand.)
The CCC has already made it plain that its decarbonisation policies will make air travel much more expensive in the near future, and that this is deliberately designed to reduce demand.
As for electricity, the CCC is surprisingly frank in admitting that demand for power will have to be severely curtailed during times of shortages. Again, the choice lies between reducing demand via higher prices and rationing, aka rolling blackouts.
There is a common denominator here. Time and again, it will be ordinary families and working people who will suffer the most. The wealthier can afford to buy Teslas, pay for foreign holidays and visit a posh restaurant. The rest of us will just have to do what we are told.
And pay through the nose for the privilege!
