Sunak breaks the Net Zero consensus
By Paul Homewood
London, 20 September – Net Zero Watch has welcomed reports that the government is planning to delay and water down some of its Net Zero targets.
According to news reports, Rishi Sunak is set to delay a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 amid economic hardship for millions of families. The Prime Minister is also considering watering down the ban on gas boilers in homes in order to cut costs for consumers.
Net Zero Watch has long warned that current Net Zero plans are astronomically costly, technologically impossible and politically unsustainable.
As European governments have begun to retreat from their own Net Zero plans, it was just a question of time before the UK, which has even more utopian targets, had to make a U-turn, and return to the path of economic and technological realism.
The Home Secretary’s statement that the UK ‘is not going to save the planet by bankrupting the British people’ is a welcome acknowledgment of Net Zero Watch’s warnings that current Net Zero plans are economically self-destructive and politically irrational.
If the reported changes turn out to be true, they could represent a significant first move towards a complete reassessment of the unilateral Net Zero targets embedded in the Climate Change Act.
There has been a noisy backlash from green Conservatives and big corporations, arguing that delaying the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles reduces business certainty. This suggests that they have limited confidence that people will purchase EVs without an element of state coercion.
Net Zero Watch hopes that in the coming days the Prime Minister will stick to his guns.
For me, it’s a no-brainer for the PM.
Push back these bans by 5 years or more, and force the inevitable next Labour government to make the unpopular decision to revert to the original plans.
If they do, they will quickly lose a lot of support.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It’s not really surprising with a GE on the horizon but it’s just pragmatism and I don’t believe a word of it from him.
“Push back these bans by 5 years or more …”
I’d go for ‘or more’, but I suppose it will be ‘one step at a time’.
Just means that the chinese will have to wait another 5 years
Too little too late, the government needs to recede its legal commitment and disband the climate change committee
A “delay” is still a ban. The ban needs scrapping in its entirety.
>> delay a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars
Agree …they’re just kicking the can down the road
Except by 2030 they will have to accept that the EV ‘revolution’ is not happening. According to the IEA EV sales in 2022 exceeded 10m with 60% being sold in China, 15% in Europe and 8% in the US. ROW just 17%.
Total numbers of EVs worldwide was still less than 20m. There are 1.4bn ICEVs worldwide.
In the UK a survey of 15,000 drivers by the AA in Feb 2023 found 18% were planning to buy an EV down from 25% in 2022.
Maybe they’ll keep kicking the can down the road forever. I can’t believe they’ll ever admit net zero is a colosal mistake. Hopefully they’ll just keep pushing it back and talk less about it so it slowly gets quietly forgotten about.
Don’t forget the whitewash of the Cimategate inquiry. The rot has been in place a long time.
>>I can’t believe they’ll ever admit net zero is a colosal mistake
The BBC are almost in tears and have wheeled out a string of eco-nuts. Gummer is threatening to sue the government etc. Sadly, the real damage has already been done, as we have not increased gas supply and have blown up most of our coal fired power stations.
When an elite says Wait just a minute — CO2 is not an important contributor to AGW . . . . Wake me.
This exactly what the Austrian in Berlin used to do in negotiations. He would make outrageous demands with the threat of violence backing them up. Then, when his targets were in shock but not convinced yet to accept them, he would make some minor concession. For example, time. Hand over “X” in one week might be delayed to three weeks. Then, his supporters would point to that concession and laud him for his flexibility. This is no different.
I think that this is a good start. Reality finally bites!
I suspect that they also realise that they can’t start taxing EVs until they have enough on the road so they need to keep that good old fossil fuel duty rolling in.
You know it’s a good decision when the BBC and the Grauniad are crying their eyes out!
Not to mention ITV and Channel 4, who were also terribly, terribly upset.
Sunak was still banging on about how cheap off-shore wind generation is (NOT). It’s a good political move as far as it goes because the Net Zero nutjobs will be spitting feathers.
They’re fools, The Net Zero Bill is simply the 2nd longest national suicide note in History, The longest suicide note in history” is an epithet originally used by United Kingdom Labour MP Gerald Kaufman to describe his party’s 1983 general election manifesto.
You can’t cure stupid, there is no vax for that.
Good news, Labour won’t reverse these delays, but would never do them themselves, especially in coalition with other even “greener” parties, so good to get them in place before the next GE.
Comedy Gold to hear the media refer to slight slowdowns as U-turns.
My letter (forlorn hope) to the DT:
“Dear Sir,
When a salesman tells me he has such a good product, that will make my like so much better, and he is willing to subsidise the price to a very great extent – I smell a rat.
The PM is missing his calling in life: to sell funeral plans on afternoon TV.
I will not pay a subsidised rate for a heat-pump, nor will I want to pay through my taxes, the costs of one for my neighbours.
The reality of being a leader in the race to NZ is that the UK, with only a 1% contribution to ‘climate change’, the country will achieve Net Poverty before it achieves Net Zero. Whether we meet our ‘carbon targets’ is immaterial: no-one will ever notice that we did.
Yours”
“make my like so much better” s/b “make my life so much better”
Hopefully the first step on the route to the death of net zero
High prise to the governments spin doctors, the net-zero targets continue (petrol car and gas boiler ban delayed by five years only) …nothing has changed, carbon tax, environmental tax, net-zero tax …all the climate change committee policies continue
What has changed is that now, whether he meant it or not, Sunak has finessed Starmer so that it will be up to him to say that Labour will double down on NZC – and lose their voters as a result.
This is just the start. Net Zero unrealism will become common knowledge. Why should I lose my job for one per cent? Why buy an EV which costs more and doesn’t do the job? What’s the point as the ginormous artic thunders past. What about aviation? What is the ridiculous criminally involved Lord Gummer’s target’ here? Why doesn’t the BBC ask him?