Net Zero could cost £300,000 per household
Costs exceed benefits many times over
New study from Net Zero Watch corrects significant flaws in earlier estimates.
With current technology, cost to 2050 is £10 trillion, and costs are ten times the benefits.
With most optimistic assumptions, cost is £7 trillion and costs are double the benefits.
Net Zero Watch has published a new study that encompasses the first empirically based estimate of the costs of Net Zero, and the first cost-benefit analysis. Official estimates have been criticised as hugely overoptimistic and for failing to present a formal cost-benefit analysis.
The study is the first to consider the full variability of the weather and its effects on both supply and demand for energy, and finds that much larger capacities of wind solar and energy storage will be required to deliver Net Zero than suggested in any previous Net Zero cost estimate.
It is also the first to base its cost figures, where possible, on empirical data. Previous estimates have assumed that a renewables cost revolution has already taken place, a position that is refuted by the accounts of wind and solar farms.
The study takes in different scenarios of how technologies and their costs might develop as we head to Net Zero, as well as a scenario in which we abandon renewables and return to fossil fuels. Each also incorporates estimates of the harms caused by any remaining carbon dioxide emissions – the so-called social cost of carbon – to each scenario, so that the optimal approach can be identified.
In all cases, the cost-optimal approach is to return to fossil fuels, even once global warming harms are taken into account.
With current technology, the spend to 2050 would be nearly £10 trillion pounds, amounting to over £300,000 per household. The costs would be ten times the benefits – the reduction in global warming harms.
In the most optimistic scenario – in which Net Zero technologies are assumed to become very cheap and very efficient compared to today, fossil fuel prices are assumed to rise steadily, and a high cost is assumed for each tonne of emissions – the costs are still double the benefits. In this scenario, the UK still needs to pay out £7 trillion, or £250,000 per household.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford, the author of the report, said:
These figures are horrifying, but should still be seen as conservative, because the study makes no attempt to find costs for hard-to-decarbonise sectors, such as aviation and shipping. It’s clear that the UK is on the road to economic ruin.”
In his foreword to the study, Lord Mackinlay said:
Britain’s political consensus, it seems, is to tax CO2 emissions at a higher rate than the damage they do and then spend trillions more subsidising technologies that the public would not choose without compulsion. This cannot be sustainable.”
The report can be downloaded by clicking the image below.
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