Cold, hungry, stuck at home: Net Zero’s drastic lifestyle changes

Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith (CLS) recently started a row by pointing out that the Climate Change Committee (CCC) made a mistake in its grid design calculations. We do not need to go into all the details of that argument, because it masks the fact all the main Net Zero players are agreed that we should be using much less energy in 2050.

The 570TWh of demand outlined in CLS’s Royal Society (RS) report is in the same ballpark as the National Grid ESO Future Energy Scenarios published in 2023 (FES23), which calculates 2050 end-user demand across Residential, Industrial and Commercial and Transport sectors of 601—810 TWh for its Net Zero compliant scenarios. The CCC estimates end-user demand of 610 TWh in 2050 in its Balanced Net Zero pathway. Their dispute is about the amount of storage that would be required to cope with weather-dependent electricity generation from renewables.

This is a distraction from what the real argument ought to be. We should be having a much deeper discussion about how much energy we will need in 2050. Broadly speaking, FES23, the RS report and the CCC are calling for final energy demand to halve between now and 2050.

This matters because a chart (See Figure 1) from Our World in Data shows that there are no rich countries with low energy consumption.

Figure 1: Energy use versus GDP per capita

In fact, halving our per capita energy consumption would put us on a par with countries like Mexico, Brazil, Algeria and Paraguay today, all very much poorer countries. This is troubling because on another occasion, CLS seemed to acknowledge that an energy scarce world would be a bad thing. He put his name to another recent paper that assumed a conservative estimate of future final electricity demand would be 1,500 TWh, or 2.6 times that assumed in the RS report.

The CCC, NGESO have given some clues about what an energy scarce world would look like for ordinary citizens. Overall, they want nearly 60% of emissions reduction to come from what they euphemistically refer to as behaviour change.

Buildings

Let’s start with buildings. In its Sixth Carbon Budget, the CCC called for a shift in relative energy prices in favour of electricity over gas. A cynic might interpret this as a tacit admission that electricity prices have risen too far because of renewables subsidies, so they need to load these costs on to gas to make heat pumps less unattractive. They are also keen on “pre-heating” our homes, which appears to mean turning on the central heating when you’re at work in the hope your house might be warm enough when you get home and have to turn off the heat pump because the electricity price has gone up for the peak hours.

The FES23 report also calls for us all to spend on triple glazing and big thermal storage tanks to help manage peaks and troughs in heat demand. The also want us to turn down our thermostats by 0.5°C in their Consumer Transformation scenario. However, the Leading the Way scenario calls for our houses to be a full degree colder. It is not clear how many people will willingly follow them as they lead the way to colder homes.

So far, the Government has gone along with this agenda by increasing the subsidies available for heat pumps, and penalising companies who have the audacity to sell too many gas boilers to customers that want them.

In apparent recognition of the undesirable nature of their recommendations, the CCC also called for stronger compliance and enforcement. We will come back to this later.

Transport

In the Sixth Carbon Budget, the CCC was keen to build on the response to the Covid-19 pandemic and reduce demand for transport. They want to “enhance” town centres by introducing low/zero emissions zones, otherwise known as “extra taxes on those who cannot afford modern cars”. They want to make such people live in 15-minute ghettos.

FES23 anticipates shifting EV charging away from peak times by introducing incentives and tariffs.

The CCC also want to see a 17% reduction in car miles by 2050 in their Balanced scenario, and a 34% reduction in their Widespread Engagement scenario. It is difficult envisage the type of engagement that will be needed to encourage people to voluntarily cut their driving by over a third.

The Government is supporting the CCC, mandating the phase-out of internal combustion engines and introducing fines for car makers if they dare to sell you the cars you prefer instead of more expensive EVs. Indeed, the subsidies for EVs are thus far largely confined to fleet purchases, so the workers are effectively subsidising their bosses to swan around in Teslas. How very progressive!

The CCC also want to ban airport expansion unless the sector is set to outperform its emissions reduction targets. They will generously allow air traffic to rise, but more slowly than it would do naturally and only if aircraft efficiency improves and they use more expensive Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). If we do not toe the line, we can expect to have frequent flyer taxes imposed upon us and guilt labels applied to show us the CO₂ emissions we will be responsible for if we go on foreign holidays.

Food and land use

The CCC wants us to cut meat and dairy consumption by 35—50% by 2050, depending upon scenario. They position this as a move to “healthy diets” but fail to mention that we currently derive half our protein from those sources.

Moreover, meat, dairy and eggs are important sources of other vital nutrients, such as iron, calcium, zinc and vitamins A, B2 and B12.

They also have plans for how we use land. They want to “release” 9—11% of our land from agriculture and instead use it for things that reduce emissions. Notice how they imply that this agricultural land is somehow being held hostage to provide food for us. This released land will be available to plant 50,000—70,000 hectares of trees each year. They also want 0.2—1.4 million hectares of land to be “liberated” to produce energy crops.

Demand-side response

The FES23 report says that our current electricity networks are “demand-led”, which means that supply is varied to meet demand. In their vision of the future, with more weather-dependent generation, demand will need to shift to follow supply. In other words, we will have to organise our lives around the grid instead of the grid being designed to meet our needs. They describe this shift as “Demand-side response” (DSR). Apparently, we must be “supported” to engage in this element of the energy transition. This means we must respond to “market signals” and be careful about when we cook, switch on the heating and do our washing. Otherwise, we will be charged penal rates through our smart meters at peak times. We can of course choose to live nocturnal lives and decide to eat in the middle of the night to take advantage of low off-peak rates, but we might have to compete with all those EVs charging themselves up.

DSR also covers industry: large users will be paid to switch off their processes at times of peak demand. Unfortunately, as Germany has seen with BASF and we have seen with Port Talbot, when energy is expensive and scarce, companies instead choose to shut down their factories permanently and move to countries where energy is cheaper and more reliable.

More extreme measures

Other bodies, such as UK FIRES, funded by the government, are afraid new technologies to support Net Zero will not come online fast enough. So, they are recommending even more extreme measures than the officials at the CCC. It appears their role is to propose the most extreme measures they can think of, so that when the actual recommendations emerge from the CCC we feel good that things are not as bad as we feared. But be in no doubt, UK FIRES is proposing severe restrictions on our lives.

For them, no hairshirt can be uncomfortable enough. We must end all flying and shipping by 2050 and cut car use by 40% compared to 2020. This was the pandemic year when we were confined to our homes for much of the time anyway, so they are effectively proposing a self-sufficient hermit-like existence. Under their scheme, we would only be able to have our heating powered on to 60% of today’s levels, so we would be shivering in our homes. We would not even be able to soothe ourselves with comfort food because consumption of beef and lamb would halve by 2029 and be phased out altogether by 2049.

When you put all this together, if we have reduced our agricultural land use in line with CCC policies and aviation and shipping are banned, in line with UK FIRES, where will our food come from?

Enforcement

To enforce the scarce energy world, the Government has legislated to take central control of your heating, your fridge, dishwasher and washing machine. The Energy Act also allows them to take control of your EV charger and any battery you might have installed to mitigate against power cuts.

They have also granted themselves powers of forced entry, search and seizure to ensure appliances are compliant. Why would a government confident in its energy policy feel the need to take such draconian powers against its own people? It looks like that, somewhere in the deepest recesses of Government, there is a realisation that the energy-scarce world they are proposing will not work and will not be popular. The Government appears to believe that we will not embrace their vision without coercion. Civil Wars have been fought for less.