By Paul Homewood
Meanwhile the Earth Edition of the Telegraph discusses some of the real risks associated with the mad rush to Net Zero.
Associate Political Editor, Tony Diver, uncovers the government’s own report into Net Zero, which it tried to bury:
Labour’s net zero drive risks taking Britain back to the 1970s and could have the same effect as an “oil price shock” on the economy, leaked documents reveal.
A report by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) found that the transition to net zero by 2050 could have a significant impact on growth and could spur inflation.
Officials warned that green policies “could act like a supply side shock, with some similarities to a standard oil price shock”, like the global financial crisis caused by the 1973 oil embargo imposed by Arab states on Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
The document, written in November 2023, reveals significant scepticism about the Government’s net zero plans by civil service analysts.
The report said that the shift to net zero could see a drop in private-sector consumption because companies will be forced to retire “stranded” machinery and other goods earlier than planned.
That will redirect money from spending into unplanned capital investment, which would pose a “particular challenge” to the economy, it said, adding: “Estimates suggest that by 2030, 10 per cent of GDP will have been subtracted from consumption to turn unsustainable output into sustainable output.
“A decrease in consumption levels poses a particular challenge following a decade of relatively weak real wage growth and households facing an extended cost of living crisis due to high inflation.”
Read the full story here.
And Matt Ridley also has a piece:
A leaked government analysis has found that Net Zero could crash the economy, reducing GDP by a massive 10 per cent by 2030. Yet the spectacular thing about this analysis is that it expects this to happen not if Net Zero fails – but if it succeeds. In effect, it is saying that if the government really does force us to give up petrol cars, gas boilers, foreign holidays and beef, then there would be perfectly useful things left idle: such as cars, boilers, planes and cows. Idling – or stranding – productive assets in this way is an expensive economic disaster.
Even more intriguing was the government’s economically illiterate response to the leak. A spokesman said: “Net zero is the economic opportunity of the twenty-first century, and will deliver good jobs, economic growth and energy security as part of our Plan for Change.”
Do they really think that economic growth is the same thing as spending money? Because it isn’t.
He uses the broken window analogy:
“Imagine the government saying that it is going to require the entire population to throw out all their socks and buy new ones by next Thursday. Under the logic it espouses for Net Zero, this would result in a tremendous burst of economic growth. Think of all the jobs created in the sock industry and the shops! They would be better off. Ah, but you, the consumer, would be poorer: you would have as many socks as before but less money. This is the broken window fallacy, exploded by Frederic Bastiat nearly 200 years ago: going around breaking windows makes work for glaziers but does not create growth.”
In reality the risk to the UK goes far wider than these domestic issues. The DBT report also highlighted global risks of stranded assets, from which the UK won’t be immune. If the global economy crashes, ours will as well.
Moreover UK banks and pension funds are heavily invested in all sorts of international businesses, many of which stand to be badly affected – and these won’t just be oil companies.