Net Zero To Cost £50 Billion a Year
By Paul Homewood
Families face paying hundreds of pounds more a year for energy if the cost of responding to climate change is put on them, ministers have been warned.
The Government wants to reach net zero emissions by 2050 – but achieving the target will require investment of £50billion a year by 2030, according to official estimates.
Energy economist Professor Nick Butler criticised ministers for failing to set out how this will be paid, and warned it could cost households £400 a year each.
He predicted the ‘green levies’, which add about £160 a year to bills, could more than double to fund the £50billion investments.
‘Somebody has to meet that,’ he said.
‘Either government pays for it, which is more borrowing or taxation, or some comes on consumer bills.
The Government wants to reach net zero emissions by 2050 – but achieving the target will require investment of £50billion a year by 2030, according to official estimates
‘
I could easily see the green levy doubling from its current point – and could well be more.
‘They’ve just not talked about the whole thing yet.’
Professor Butler advised the Lords industry and regulators committee, which today publishes a report warning that funding the transition through charges to billpayers is ‘regressive’.
The peers urged ministers to set out how the net zero ambition will be paid for.
‘Funding the transition primarily through charges to billpayers… involves invidious trade-offs, making some consumers pay for investments that will not directly benefit them,’ the report states.
Experts have estimated that the average household faces a hit of at least £1,200 this year as taxes and energy bills rise.
A Government spokesman yesterday said it was on track to meet the 2050 target, adding: ‘Detailed measures are set out in our comprehensive net zero strategy, which has been widely welcomed by a range of experts.’
The cost of course will be much more than £400 per household, which is just the element they think will appear in energy bills. On top of that can be added the cost of buying heat pumps, electric cars, insulation and all of the costs faced by industry and the public sector.
After all, £50 billion equates to over £1800 pa.
The government’s response – “widely welcomed by a range of experts” – shows just how out of touch they are with the real world. Instead they are a part of the closed circle of green advisors and lobbyists.
It is also noticeable that they have not challenged any of Professor Butler’s costings.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I wonder who all these ‘experts’ are and what they are ‘expert’ in exactly. Paddington Bear is an ‘expert’ in marmalade. Perhaps he was one of the chosen few? He may as well be for all the comedic value of the current crop of Zeroists.
The thing I dislike the most is that you have Ministers like Gove who correctly disparage “experts” sometimes but then defend them when they agree with his opinions.
But the basic point is that “experts” are a waste of time. Either stuff is known so you don’t really need experts or its not, in which case experts don’t know or don’t agree.
Hopefully the public anger is building. Any data on that? Or all the polls green?
“Public support majority of net zero policies … unless there is a personal cost”
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/public-support-majority-net-zero-policies-unless-there-is-a-personal-cost
Government says “Detailed measures are set out in our comprehensive net zero strategy, which has been widely welcomed by a range of experts.”.
Which is probably what they said about the poll tax and joining the ERM too.
They went well. When will the Conservatives learn that government by diktat never works when it hits voters wallets.
‘Twas ever thus. Public support for net zero is clearly analogous to their enthusiasm for higher taxes. For everyone but themselves, of course.
Of course, this is what the “green” climate alarmists have advocated for years. Raise the price so we can lower emissions and “save the planet”. Even though lowering emissions takes no CO2 out. Wonder how they are doing now with their protests to take action.
Why is it acceptable that these comments are made by a “government spokesman”?
Nobody should be able to peddle this rubbish unless they are prepared to put their name to it.
Accountability…or rather, the lack of it.
The lobby system. Government slip out ideas to see what kind of reaction they get. Selected members of the press attend the briefings and then spread the word without attribution.
I would suspect the “widely welcomed by a range of experts” is a Mutual Admiration Society of a bunch of eco activists, quasi scientists, shysters profiting from energy production or distribution, ignorant politicians and silly servant troughers, manufacturers of green technologies – from heat pumps, EV’s, charging systems, etc. and “developers” of new green technology getting at the taxpayer funded trough
The “guestimates” being put forward for technologies could easily be and order of magnitude greater based of historic examples.
Aside from the expensive infrastructure needed and funded by the Government (taxpayers!!!). Individual families will be personally responsible for things like EV’s, Heat Pumps, and Charging systems which will have to be replaced every 10 years or so, coupled with ongoing maintenance costs. Home improvement’s will be substantial even if they are possible.
Loss of affordable personal transportation will have a tremendous effects and be highly disruptive and expensive.
If griping about cost kills Net Zero, that’s good.
But cost is not your problem. Net Zero is the Tsar Bomba to your country. Your economy will collapse. You won’t be able to have a military. Norway or Denmark will invade. England will cease to exist.
What’s bigger, £50 Billion a year, or the end of England?
‘Norway or Denmark will invade’. Bloody hell, not a rematch with the vikings? Thought we’d finished them off at Stamford Bridge in 1066 when old King Harold put Harold Hardrada’s finest to the sword. Best put the monks on Lindisfarne back on alert!
You thought you finished the Germans off in 1918. How’d that work out for you?
Only for Harold to be done to death by the son of a Viking a few weeks later.
I detect a sense of humour failure in the colonies Gamecock. Keep smiling mate.
In my view it won’t be long till someone destroys the energy infrastructure that keeps the lights on.
The government have demolished all the power stations, the gas supply infrastructure has been allowed to life expire.
We are sleep walking towards war encouraged by media hype, is it only me who thinks this is not a good idea.. Nobody will win.
Paul, typo there “After all, £50 billion equates to over £1800 pa.”
There are 28 million households and an apparent 67 million population
so that £50bn is £746 per person
The better unit is per household
And that’s just under £2,000 per household per year
That is only the money.. You’ll PAY in loss of freedom too
you won’t be allowed to fly on holiday etc.
£50 billion? In Boris’s dreams!
Going by the usual average of Government underestimation (HS2 anyone?) it will cost at least 3 times that – if we’re lucky.
See the Public Accounts Committee on Net Zero
Follow up No 44.for a real grasp of the government’s chaotic uncoordinated shambles of an approach to Net Zero. I mean really take a look at the text. Inter alia calls for regular reports on progress.
I tried to find what you are referring to. Your reference is far too opaque – got a link?
When can we start hanging greentards? For killing thousands of pensioners.
It’s going to be extremely hard to stop because it’s been absorbed into the structure of every part of the public sector. What’s that mountaineer’s mantra? “Because its there”. On exactly that premise my council is installing several miles of 3m wide tarmac cycle lanes, a snip at £4.1m, because it’s (national funding) there. Not wanted, not needed, geographically inappropriate in most locations, but the money’s there, so we’ll spend it, whilst complaining about “savage cuts” in other areas.
Cycle lanes are not net zero policy.
Of course they are – all about reducing vehicle usage and associated energy demand.
This definition of “an expert” probably applies to Climate Change experts more than perhaps any other – “an ex is a has been and a spurt is a drip under pressure”,
Or:
Expert – a person whose income depends on telling somebody what they want to hear
In the MoS today we have Kwasi Modo spouting drivel about how more unreliable energy will help bring the soaring electricity costs down. And somebody else in a letter to the Mail last week has got their new tariff and seen the standing charge rocket for them as has mine.
On Yesterday there is a series called Steam and Steel which looks at the way the industrial revolution continues to shape our world today. The latest episode went across to the Netherlands and showed a beautiful pumping station for draining the polders and keeping Amsterdam from flooding. They showed a working windmill and were told that they worked well as long as there was wind. He admitted that amazingly sometimes there isn’t. So back to the pumping station, powered by steam and coal, where we are told that it replaced 240 windmills with a reliable system. So……just remind me again why we are trying to use windmills to power an economy that can’t do without electricity when 2 centuries ago our more intelligent forefathers got rid of them?
This is lunacy. Greens want to replace reliable and available gas and oil with ‘renewables’ i.e. intermittent windmills and solar which don’t work when the wind don’t blow, or blows to hard when they’re wrecked and solar, which is useless in the short dull days of winter when power is most needed.
Windmills are not green anyway, taking into account the cost of making and erecting, laying miles of concrete access roads, and the impossibility of recycling after twenty or so years. Our governments seems to think it is green by outsourcing oil, gas and essential coal to other countries, from whence it has too be imported at extra cost. Never mind, it’s then their emissions, not ours. As for useless battery cars, they are totally impractical and will have no second-hand value when the cost of replacing the battery after 70,000 miles is more than the value of the car, never mind where’s the electricity to come from? More madness! Contact your MP and tell him/her/they to get fracking and carry on with North Sea oil and gas exploration.