By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Cunningham
A new article in the Telegraph, “Britain gripped by industrial decline as net zero drives up energy costs”, reveals how much damage Net Zero is doing to the industrial sector:
“Britain faces years of industrial decline and falling factory employment as high energy prices blamed on net zero undermine the manufacturing sector.
EY Item Club said Britain’s manufacturing sector was on track for three years of falling employment in the face of energy costs that are four times as high as those in the US, and 50pc more than those paid by factories in France and Germany.
Factory output is also expected to shrink by 0.6pc this year, the influential forecaster predicted.
Peter Arnold, the UK chief economist at EY, said the sky-high energy costs were the result of running down fossil fuels without a reliable replacement.
He said: “The UK has invested heavily in renewables like wind and solar but these are intermittent, as opposed to say nuclear power, and this can also increase pricing volatility.”
Mr Miliband has argued that breaking Britain’s reliance on oil and gas will ultimately lower energy bills. However, Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, and industrialist Sir Jim Ratcliffe have both blamed net zero policies for surging prices.
Sir Jim, the Ineos boss, warned in January that Britain’s chemicals industry was facing “extinction” because of high energy bills and the shift to net zero. After Ineos closed down a synthetic ethanol centre in Scotland because of carbon taxes and energy costs, Sir Jim said: “We are witnessing the extinction of one of our major industries as chemical manufacture has the life squeezed out of it.”
Read the full story here.