True cost of Labour’s net zero target revealed in audio leak
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
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Reaching Labour’s target for decarbonising the economy will cost “hundreds of billions” of pounds, a shadow minister has disclosed in a recording obtained by The Telegraph.
Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said the £28 billion per year originally allocated to Labour’s green investment plan was a “tiny” amount.
He said the fact that Sir Keir Starmer had downgraded his investment plans from £28 billion to £4.7 billion “made it sound as if we basically junked the whole thing but we definitely haven’t”.
Mr Jones told a public meeting in Bristol that private capital would have to be used to upgrade infrastructure, but “public subsidy” would still be needed alongside that.
His comments are set to reignite the row over Labour’s spending plans.
On Wednesday night, Rishi Sunak challenged Sir Keir about the revelation, saying during a debate on the BBC: “Just be straight with people, how many hundreds is it. Is it 200, is it 300, is it 400?”
Sir Keir, the Labour leader, appeared to argue that some of the money would be invested by the private sector rather than just the public sector.
Mr Jones was asked about Labour’s green investment plan during a meeting held in a cinema on March 14, the month after Sir Keir dropped his proposal for a £28 billion-a-year green industrial revolution.
He told the meeting that the £28 billion figure “became a distraction against the mission of decarbonising the power system by 2030” and that “it wasn’t really defined well enough in the first place, so we probably shouldn’t have announced it in the way we did”.
Mr Jones told an audience member who spoke to him at the end of the meeting that decarbonising the power system “is still one of the top five priorities and it is going to be a huge amount of effort to get there because we’ll have to move quite quickly.
“But a lot of the coverage in the news was about that specific 28 [billion pounds], which because journalists saw conflict made it sound as if we basically junked the whole thing but we definitely haven’t.”
When an audience member said some people would say that £28 billion a year was not enough to decarbonise the economy, Mr Jones replied: “No, it’s tiny. Hundreds of billions of pounds we need.”
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Starmer’s claim that some of the money will be invested by the private sector is utter irrelevant. Whether it is government or private money, it will still have to be paid for ultimately by the public.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
If Labour – or the Tories – don’t want the lights to go off, the country will need to spend an enormous amount of money on back-up.
Back-up these days – storage or other power production.
Given the watermelons have ruled out anything that emits the gas of life – CO2 – and also nuclear – we’re left with storage.
Dinorwig will [equivalently] power the UK grid for about 6 minutes [a tenth of an hour!]. So for a 48 hour dunkelflaute, we need 480 Dinorwigs … in 6 years for Labour. [11 years for the Tories – still hopelessly, madly, optimistic!].
Or batteries – the country used c. 30 GW at the moment – both parties dream of electrifying everything, so that will increase mightily – so about 720 GWh/day. Two days, thus – 1440 GWh. Or about 1.4TWh
The nice Mr Musk’s Tesla does batteries at [2023] USD$ 575 per kWh. $575,000 per MWh; $575,000,000 for a GWh.
That’s $575,000,000,000 for 1 TWh. And we’ll need two TWh, at least – at a time when all the rest of Europe will be looking for batteries, too, so we may, or may not, get a bulk discount. If the kit can actually be supplied – huge amounts of minerals to be mined refined and transported. And all by cah-bunn-neutral means if we are to avoid a possible rise of global temperatures of 0.006 centigrade by 2100 [well after my grandkids get their pensions].
In pounds – it looks a little less lunatic … still vapour-trails of zeroes – and the above back-of-a [demonised] fag-packet sum doesn’t even ask that the batteries are charged – just there to be charged!
Realsitic assessments of the ‘number of days’ power to eb stored to have a 99.9% chance of avoiding a blackout across the entire Uk, that i have seen, suggest ‘many days’ – perhaps seven, perhaps twelve. So 10, or perhaps 16 TWh – at current electric demand.
Utterly preposterous doesn’t even approach the stupidity of trying to run a modern society on breezes and sunbeams – certainly at over 50 degrees North!.
But do the watermelons want to have a modern society in the UK?
Auto
The number doesn’t matter; you aren’t going to have it, anyway.
UK’s days of hundreds of billions of pounds is ending. A neolithic economy won’t produce such numbers. Cirrusly, the pending government has announced publicly you will have electricity for 6 more years.
Use it wisely.
As ever, whenever Labour say that something can be achieved for nothing, the tax payer ends up billions out of pocket. If decarbonising the Nat.Grid was both easy and inexpensive, the private sector would be beating a path to the door, as it is, they know that the whole project is constrained by problems especially in the supply chain- the network upgrade will require a serious investment in high voltage cabling, cabling that is only manufactured by three non-UK based companies whose order books are already committed until 2035- ah,but, we are going to hit the target in 2030, so where will the required cabling come from?, the cables will need replacement pylons manufactured from high grade structural steel, which we will stop manufacturing in the next two years. The whole decarbonisation is turning into a pantomime fiasco with no-one connecting the dots or for that matter sounding the alarm.
As with so many other areas, the problem arises from the disproportionate influence exerted by so-called “activists” and pressure groups. Recommend writing to whoever turns out to be your MP in a few weeks time demanding they stop doing that and start listening to real people with real knowledge !
Chances are not high though !
A one off letter, a foot stamp of complaint, a raised voice , or whatever is completely futile. Activists do not work like that – they are relentless. They never stop, they question everything, they infiltrate everywhere.
To combate these activists they only way is organised relentless attacking back. There are no stage victories, it is endless warfare against them in the same way as they endlessly attack.
The general public are not up for that and the activists know that.
There are no stage victories, it is endless warfare against them in the same way as they endlessly attack.
The agenda (the “battleground”) is currently generally set by the believers, who have substantial resources. “Scattergun” = a believer tactic, which stretches the reduced resources of non-believers.
Non-believers need to concentrate on “agenda items” that are narrowly defined and winnable; top of my list being the lack of proof of dangerous AGW.
Micky I totally agree. That is my MO for attacking dodgy Met Office data.
Private investment wants a return on its investment and there is competition on that front. Nobody will invest in energy infrastructure or generation in this country – or in any country infected with the mental disease of Net Zero – without the taxpayer having to pay them a substantial inducement. The only possible back up generation is gas turbine plants but without taxpayer cash nobody will build them because their runtime will be government restricted and thus uneconomic.
gezza: you are absolutely correct other than the small possibility of SMRs stepping in. If we follow the ccgt route we absolutely must adopt the Ireland Alternative Fuel Ob-
ligation and provide for storage and burning of distillate fuels. But that won’t solve the financial issue. These plants must have an average annual running load of 50-60 % of nameplate to be worth investing in. When Labour, esp Millibrain, are in power it ain’t going to happen. All our friends who post on here have made the negative point but, in reality, what is going to happen? My guess is a national emergency government within two years, probably sooner depending on what happens in France next month. Watch this space.
That is of course hundreds of billions if pounds PER YEAR.
I’m not sure that the public will end up paying for all of these malinvestments. These “assets”, whatever they may be, will be owned by the investors. However they will only invest if they are guaranteed juicy subsidies. I think this is the essence of the Labour sleight of hand.
Well that puts pay to Labour’s “of the people, for the people”. In this respect, they are much worse than the Conservatives. Is there any party ‘for the people’? Ah, yes, one…
Is Decarbonising the same as Net Zero? Net Zero means nothing left. Decarbonising means getting rid of a lot of gases and solids, so pretty much the same thing. Are we then to believe that politicians and power elites wish to destroy humanity and the planet?
Just leave these nebulous statements to someone who can understand and speak english and preferably be able to understand a bit of science too.