https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2026/07/29/britain-cant-stop-climate-change-scrap-net-zero/
Over the past twentyish years we citizens of the developed nations have been fooled into believing that we could, by sacrificing our comfortable lifestyles, prosperity, industry (jobs), cars and warm,secure, well lit homes, lead the way in saving the world from catastrophic global warming, a futile gambit if there ever were one.
The point of the propaganda deployed to make the case for 'Net Zero by 2050' was that by combatting climate change we could develop new green industries that could provide a boost to the European and North American economies through the replacement of traditional industry and commerce with new, clean,green technologies and industries. This ideology was most eagerly embraced by British political parties, with the leaders of the three main parties, Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats signing a binding agreement committing us to achieve Net Zero by 2035.
Since then all our governments have adopted national economic suicide as their energy policy.
Serious advocates of Net Zero understand that getting a tiny island like Britain to the target would make no difference when countries like India, China, America and Russia continue to choke the planet. But a lot of other countries want to lower their emissions and so there was and is a huge opportunity for a country with an advanced manufacturing sector to build business opportunities.
Climate change is real ... and has been for around 4 billion years (according to best estimates,) is when the planet began to cool sufficiently for the formation of rock, water and atmosphere. And the climate has been changing ever since.
However The battle against climate change was lost the moment some plank decided it was caused by CO2, and further, solely by CO2 emitted by human activity. Anthropogenic global warming was just one of H L Menken's political hobgoblins and net zero is a scam that rode on its back.
To date the UK government has spent £200Bn in taxpayers money subsidising the construction of renewable electricity generation, with Germany, France, Spain and Italy, Europe's most populated nations spaffing similar amounts in pursuit of the unattainable.
Sticking with the UK as our example, because being British I have UK figures at my fingertips, the generating capacity that £200nbillion is now producing half of all our electricity. However we consume only a quarter of our energy in the form of electricity.This is who Net Zero is unattainable, those clever scientists who decided we could get all our energy from windmills and solar panels were too dim to understand that energy and electriity are not the same thing.
And that renewable electricity generation relies on gas fired power stations being kept on standby at great expense to fill in when renewables are not available (i.e. when the wind does not blow through the long dark winter nights..
The result? We have the most expensive industrial electricity prices in the developed world so entire industries are shutting down or off-shoring to survive.
Former UK Energy Secretary and Clown Prince of Net Zero Ed Miliband harping on about "making us energy secure by getting off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel prices," "Making UK the world leader in clean energy," and about "homegrown clean British energy," cut no ice with British businesses or voters.
It beggars belief how anyone can claim that the rollout of wind and solar power over the last decade has made us energy secure and has made the electricity supply “more British,” when we regularly have to import up to 30% of the electricity we are using via undersea cables from France, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway.
How can it be secure when no one, not even Ed Miliband, can control weather? How can it be secure and “more British” when virtually the entire low-carbon energy industry growing up in the UK has been invested in, built by and operated by foreign companies? And owned by foreign governments.
The green levies charged onto our energy bills and CfD (contracts for difference) put billions of pounds into the pockets of foreign state-owned and foreign private entities...... The foreign owned operators basically have been afforded a virtually guaranteed revenue stream. Which they then leverage up to the eyeballs to optimise returns. That’s why US private equity - e.g. KKR- has been buying up large stakes. What should be producing utility industry returns is now a licence to print money, at the taxpayers expense.
When RWE says “If you’re in offshore wind, the UK is the best market in the world. The CfD is the gold standard – and it went to platinum when it went from 15 to 20 years.” , you know you 've been taken to the woodshed. The price of power in Great Britain is set by regulations already, rather than gas.
Then there’s the supply chain, which is again overwhelmingly foreign-controlled. The UK doesn’t have an offshore turbine manufacturer to its name, and only a small stake in the manufacture of towers, transition pieces and substructures. Ditto for cabling.
Ditch Net Zero! JustStopInsanity!
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