The OBR have revised their net zero and climate change cost forecasts. They now see the UK needs to invest £720 bn up to 2050 of which 36% will be public sector. This entails a £10 bn a year cost in the public sector up to 2050. The first ten years sees the highest spend, with annual amounts reaching a peak of £16 bn before subsiding. The costs include subsidy for new power generation, investment in public sector buildings and the cost of carbon capture and related technologies.
There will also be large revenue losses. Most of the petrol and diesel tax disappears as new petrol and diesel vehicles are banned and replaced by battery ones. The double corporation tax and windfall tax on domestic oil and gas production will shrink as the industry is run down. There will be the loss of employment taxes, business tax and VAT on industrial activity as the government advances its de industrialisation policy through dear energy.
All this points to net zero policies adding large sums to the deficits and forcing government to look for new sources of revenue.
The government will probably shift car and motor fuel taxes onto users of battery cars. It will need to find new household taxes when people discontinue gas heating and so cease to contribute to the big fossil fuel tax take.
How will it replace lost industrial tax revenue?
July 10, 2025
Good morning.
There one thing, Sir John that you have not mentioned and, I think it is very much more important things than the other reasons you give. And that is the loss of knowledge & skills. For once these are gone they cannot be easily recovered. For example. How many here know how to weave a basket or spin a yarn of thread from a spinning wheel ? Very few I would guess. Yet, just over one hundred and fifty years ago people in more rural settings would have such skills. They are of course all gone and so is said skills.
As we slowly de-industrialise we lose the skills to mine coal, iron ore and create steel. We further lose the skills required to make things from such materials and so to our ability to sell on the open market. All along the chain skills and jobs are being replaced by things that bring no value, for that is the price Socialism places on society. ie Valueless.
In Animal Farm, when Boxer the horse was of no further use, he was ‘sent away’. The value of his work was not needed and all that was left to be made from him was in his skin and bones.
Orwell was not just a good writer of books. The man was a Profit !
July 10, 2025
Ah but Mark, our Politicians are relying on Ai to replace all of these skills, problem is they will not know real knowledge and common-sense from fiction, until they get the end result.
As a consequence the human brain in many people will cease to work as it does now, the ability to be creative, or investigative may be lost, and many will be reliant on robots, almost becoming robots themselves.
Perhaps we are already seeing this with our Mp’s and Party Politics, always toeing the party line, no matter about their own personal thoughts and experiences.
Perhaps that is the plan ?
July 10, 2025
This has always been the way with politicians, as in the G&S comic opera HMS Pinafore, where Sir Joseph Porter gives his monologue how he rose to the top of the tree –
“I always voted at my party’s call,
“And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.”
No change then since the C19th and probably well before then.
The problem is that the people vote for sweet lies, as the blunt truth is as popular as a bucket of sick.
July 10, 2025
Uneducated, with no critical thinking, and demoralised humans are easier to control. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that a global, one world governance is the aim of certain groups and billionaires.
In fact, Together Declaration through FOI request have discovered the following.
“The UK Government has quietly admitted it holds thousands of documents relating to its involvement in global digital governance and digital ID programmes led by the UN and World Economic Forum.
Working with Together, journalist Lewis Brackpool did a Freedom of Information request to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) which confirmed it is participating in initiatives related to:
– Digital identity
– “Trust frameworks”
– Digital public infrastructure
However the FCDO refused to release the material, citing cost of disclosure. A single UN programme alone produced nearly 2,000 documents involving UK officials.”
By the way, Sir John, congratulations on your new trustee post at the GWPF.
July 10, 2025
@Mark B – +1 ‘the loss of knowledge & skill’ technology banished, so Taxpayer money sent to Foreign Governments to ‘just survive’ That is not investment for a future that is destruction of a future
July 10, 2025
Replacing the people loses those and every other skill at a much faster rate.
We are also losing the big animal husbandry skills as farming is wound down. Really you need to be brought up with big animals to be able to read them instantaneously and know where to stand and how far to push them.
Big animals might be very good at breaking robots.
July 10, 2025
The policy to bankrupt us is goung swimmingly. All these negatives you point out are a direct loss to the treasury when welfare spending is due to double
By transferring taxes to EVs will kill the motor industry stone dead. One assumes that the purchase of petrol and diesel will be restricted to further the uptake of EVs. Alk it will do is drive thousands off the road which of course is the aim.
We are heading literally for some very dark days when the rest of the world watches this experiment destroy our country.
When these lunatics are driven out of office, it should be made clear they will be held personally responsible with all their family assets confiscated and jail terms issued.
The general public are getting restless and with todays humiliation by Macron of 17 paddlers in to one out, the die is cast.
Is this government incapable of doing anything right.
July 10, 2025
It isn’t 17 paddlers in to 1 out. The 1 out is replaced by 1 in so it is18 in as before. And the 1 out will be back tomorrow.
July 10, 2025
Roy
Exactly, one illegal to be replaced by one going out and a chosen one by France sent in does not control or reduce anything, in fact it actually increases the problem.
I have given up on Politicians so called logical thinking, because it is not logical, clever, or smart, it’s just complicated stupidity.
July 10, 2025
But surely, BA, knowing how “fond” of us the French are, they will send us the very best of the migrants (the doctors etc) and will keep any undesirables for themselves!!!
July 10, 2025
MM
Yes I can certainly imagine that would be the case.
In Starmer’s dreams perhaps.
July 10, 2025
Indeed with the limit to 50 a week returns to be exchanged the French still have every incentive to send as many as possible over in the RIBs as they clearly do and assist them now. I assume the Fench will send the worse ones they can find for the exchanges!
The Mail reports they you are £2,500 better off on disability benefits than on a minimum wage job. Actually it is even worse than this as they do not have commuting costs, office clothing and can do odd or bartering jops on the side. Looking after children for neighbours, clothing repairs or similar. Plus they have far more time to shop efficiently and cook efficiently…
The claiments are being rations given the mad system that pertains or pertained under the dire UNI PARTY.
(Words deleted that misrepresent the Conservative position)
July 10, 2025
Multiplied by a dozen as each migrant will bring in family members and they come free of charge unlike those who pay for their visas.
July 10, 2025
Seems this government and the last 14 years of the ConSocialists got nothing right! Not so far anyway.
July 10, 2025
The UK will be bankrupt long before that happens. Bankruptcy will be the consequence of a mix of unsustainable net zero policies, unsustainable benefits policies, unsustainable state pensions and unsustainable unfunded civil service gold plated index linked pensions. All of these are and have been pushed by the current and past governments. The public is slowly waking up to the realisation that this prospect is not just a nightmare but the reality. It is not a case of if but of when.
July 10, 2025
Even the OBR is waking up to that fact. The public (us) knew a very long time ago.
July 10, 2025
I was watching a debate on the affordability of the State Pension, especially when ‘triple locked’ and my mind wandered to those public servants fortunate enough to have a (index-linked) final salary scheme. Neither ‘Pensions’ are backed by any funds, both being paid out of petty cash. However, if I had the luxury of an indexed-linked FS Pension (and was planning to retire in the next few years) I might have the odd twitch of anxiety as to whether a Government (seemingly on the road to bankruptcy) could keep up the payments longer term…
July 10, 2025
Thatcher slashed the pensions of some civil servants by about 20% by not uprating them or the pay on which they were based during a period of higher inflation IIRC. It did mean that some of the more able moved to private industry, which may have benefited the country, if not the civil service.
July 10, 2025
The picture you paint would be a catastrophe, brought on our shoulders unnecessarily. Our British establishment believes (or pretends to believe) the world is ending so Britain must show we did our 1% in order to avoid CO2 armageddon, even if most of the rest of the world ignore us as cranks.
It’s difficult to picture the ruptures in society, and between rural and urban Britain, in a country where ICE cars have no infrastructure. Petrol stations will be uneconomic, yet they function as shops in many rural areas. Mechanics will retire and new ones not train on ICEs, so only those who can afford an electric car will have transport. We’ll all be hit with more tax, to force through the plans. Unemployment will rise. The government will need to become more coercive and to crack down on rising dissent and fractures between rich and poor.
Hopefully we’ll elect a Party that will ditch this lunacy in the next 4 years or so. Otherwise we are stuffed.
July 10, 2025
At the rate we are going, ‘our world’ will certanly end a good deal sooner than anyone elses on this planet!
July 10, 2025
And then there were three. The dreadful Nigel Farage, who was mocked and roundly heckled across the House yesterday at PMQ’s (“why don’t you shut up”) has lost another MP. This one resigned the Reform whip whilst being investigated for financial irregularities during the Chinese plague virus crisis. Who will be next? During his attempt to speak yesterday, Farage’s grovelling chum Richard Tice was falling about laughing…..
Farage and his 3-MP Reform UK limited company get pages and pages in the right wing press, who are in ecstasies over his “rise” and who stupidly report his every utterance, no matter how ridiuculous.
Compare their coverage of Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who has to resort to film-industry stunts to get a column inch or two. The pro-net zero Lib Dems became the third largest party with 72 seats at the 2024 election, their best modern result. The Lib Dems look likely to become the official opposition at the next GE
Reply Reform have 4 MPs including tge by election winner. They are polling three times as much as the Lib Dems currently which interests the media.
July 10, 2025
The Lib-Dems. Comedy Gold. A collection of elderly students with zero political skills. Run by a bloke who has to rely on pathetic home movies to remind us he’s still around.
Perpetual third place in elections. Hardly any one is interested in them.
They’ll drop to fourth next time we get a General election.
July 10, 2025
I agree – all Davey can do is provide regular stunts, why else would anyone listen?
July 10, 2025
He best stunt was to side with the Post Office against the Post Masters. That was very funny – we are all still giggling.
July 10, 2025
This is the problem with Reform – it lacks depth. It’s a one man movement with perhaps just one other support act. They are on a trajectory to become the leading party in the next election, but there again the whole movement could just fall apart with internal dissent. Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe have left, who next?
July 10, 2025
The “Shut Up!” came from Lee Anderson and was directed at the Muslim Independent MP who was sat behind Farage and doing the heckling.
Farage has a long time to get his house in order and we will have to wait and see if he can do so. The same is true of Kemi Badenoch, although she has a harder task in any ways (and maybe less time). As for the Lib Dems, we’ve seen them in coalition before and it wasn’t very impressive I’m afraid.
July 10, 2025
You spoiled the tarnished Gold by providing the truth!
July 10, 2025
I don’t think Farage has a long time. I am very sympathetic of the Reform as a movement, as representation of the desire for radical change. But it looks like Farage is running it purely as his personal vehicle to become prime minister, not as the means to affect changes to benefit the rest of us. There needs to be a solid, collaborative team addressing the breadth of issues consistently over a period of time to offer a potential, competent government, not just Farage chopping and changing “policy” to appeal to as many centrist voters as he deems.
In short Farage needs to demonstrate effective leadership rather than the figurehead who throws an occasional tantrum and ejects someone he feels is not a yes-man.
July 10, 2025
Reform are also growing at the local level. We were clumped in with another borough, but now have our own local rep!
Councillors are growing in number…
July 10, 2025
Well the one thing all the parties, save reform, have totally wrong is the destructive lunacy of Net Zero. Kemi and Coutino still cling to it. An engineer and a half maths Oxon. lass they should know better but then neither did a physics A level. Worth voting reform just to kill net zero!
July 10, 2025
SG :
Would that be the Ed Davey who was the business minister from 2010 to 2012, which involved oversight of the Post Office during the Horizon scandal, and who has admitted that he “failed to see through the Post Office’s lies and took 5 months to meet Alan Bates”? Would that also be the Ed Davey who was the Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change who, together with Cameron and Osborne, decided to use Chinese finance at 9% for Hinkley Point C and, as a result, according to Professor Sir Dieter Helm, Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford, doubled its cost (Interview with the BBC in 2018)?
July 10, 2025
SG
Who got more more vote’s, Reform of the LibDums.?
How effective are the LibDims in opposition ?
Come to that how effective are the present Tories in opposition ?
The three biggest Party’s all seem to think along the same failed lines.
July 10, 2025
This is madness. The only intention must be to destroy the Western world. Voters need to wake up and get rid of anyone who supports Net Zero and immigration.
We also face the added problem that much of our valuable, productive farmland is being turned into solar farms and cable corridors or built on to house our ever-increasing population. The more we become dependent on foreign food imports, the less security we have, and I see a future of food and energy rationing.
Immigration is set to worsen with the latest agreements with France and Ireland. This government is accelerating our population replacement at an alarming rate.
July 10, 2025
NetZero is at the core of NewLabour’s economic philosophy. They never did the maths.
July 10, 2025
And now they are crying.
There will be no EVs on the roads, there will be no electricity.
July 10, 2025
Nor the phusics, nor the engineering, nor any real economics. Everythring they do is anti growth.
July 10, 2025
The government are a bunch of unthinking, green lackies. NZ 2050 is a political invention only. There is no reliable proof whatsoever that the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions need to be net zero by 2050 so we therefore have time.
In my opinion we should gradually transition to nuclear over whatever time is practicable (even if that takes 80 years for completion) and we should be exporting any surplus energy in perpetuity to offset the costs of the transition which would mean lost industrial tax revenue should be mitigated.
July 10, 2025
If we have energy why will we lose industrial industries and therefore taxes?
July 10, 2025
Quite right Lynn. My oversight
July 10, 2025
Short terms frack, drill, mine, stick with fossil fuels – longer term we will get better nuclear and then practical fusion plus we can then make fossil fuels for some applications like air travel.Renewables are fine if and when they can compete without subsidies or market rigging and without vast ecological harms. Let the market do its job.
July 10, 2025
Yesterday on the Jacob Rees-Mogg Show (GB News) Labour’s John McTernan was explaining that a wealth tax could be levied to raise revenue. He suggested that people could be required to pay an annual levy based on how many unused bedrooms they have in their home. That, of course, would hit the elderly the hardest since, in many cases, they will continue to reside in the house where they raised their family.
Since many are likely to be asset rich but income poor, he said that if they couldn’t afford the levy they would have the choice of downsizing, and paying substantial taxes in order to do so, or taking in lodgers (just what an elderly, potentially vulnerable person wants and needs).
You see, when the Uni-Party’s Masters at the WEF said “you will own nothing” that is exactly what they meant.
July 10, 2025
All based on assumption that the ‘wealthy’ will stick around to have the Labour hands scrabling around to dip hands in the sweetie drawer.
July 10, 2025
@ Donna “… he said that if they couldn’t afford the levy they would have the choice of …. taking in lodgers” – an essential step to accommodate all the bogus asylum seekers since A. Rayner’s new house building efforts are insufficient to meet demand.
July 10, 2025
#Donna. They are flushing all the untaxed/ not highly-taxed assets back into the system. The potentially large sum of capital released from downsizing can’t be sheltered – unless you are already super-rich, with tax avoidance consultants on hand. The middle class is being impoverished, and as you say, it’s deliberate. Unfortunately, many of them vote for the Parties doing this.
July 10, 2025
I always thought the bedroom tax would be expanded to private homes. Next we will be fined if we don’t take in an illegal immigrant and that illegal immigrant will be given the right to buy our home at a big discount.
July 10, 2025
I am not totally against that suggestion Donna but would levy the tax based on purchase price not current value.
Thus the elderly who are still living in their family homes (which will eventually be subject to 40% inheritance tax) would likely need to pay very little.
I would prefer that a royalty tax was levied on multinationals to collect tax on off shored profit and, even better, spending was cut dramatically. Particularly easy access to all kinds of benefits
July 10, 2025
The government will probably shift car and motor fuel taxes onto users of battery cars. It will need to find new household taxes when people discontinue gas heating and so cease to contribute to the big fossil fuel tax take.
No shit Sherlock I’ve been saying this for years ever since they started to penalise the tobacco industry/smokers, what next a tax on the amount of windows in your house, the size of your lungs capacity to breathe in fresh air , we really are getting stuffed and at the moment there’s not a bloody thing we can do about it, the only person who as the power to stop all this nonsense is King Charles but he won’t because he believes in all this Net Zero crap, let’s hope there isn’t going to be a ww3 situation in the near future because they’ll be a lot of people not willing to fight for this country as they did for ww2
July 10, 2025
It appears our King does not believe in borders. If there are no borders, then there is no nation and if there is no nation there cannot be a king. I am quite convinced that King Charles the Third is determined to end our Monarchy. Perhaps it is simply because he believes the world will end from anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
July 10, 2025
The latest estimate of Net Zero cost to the economy is a smoke and mirrors exercise. The previous effort gave us a figure of £1.1 trillion pounds put out following years of demand for an estimate. This latest best guess from the OBR has reduced the costs down to about £800 billion no doubt as a means to ease the anxiety the previous effort generated.
The numbers are all guesses and are all unaffordable.
The end of Net Zero is simply no economy, no power (literally) and no influence on world affairs.
How any political party imagines a nation of 80 million because that will be where our population is by 2050 if not higher, can be supported without economic activity I have no idea? The £30 billion/year suggested cost of Net Zero will be of no interest when the population left here are all struggling to survive in our cold climate. Meanwhile those in India and China, sustained by coal powered energy and massive economic activity, will look upon these islands with contempt and puzzled /pity. Wondering why a once proud productive people that gifted the world so much are willing to progress economic suicide and possibly the death of a nation.
Those presenting this madness will be just a footnote in history as our grandchildren ask, why did they do this?
July 10, 2025
Answer – mad zealots wanted to reduce an industrial, successful and law respecting nation down to become a poor, impoverished, racially troubled country like so many around the world.
July 10, 2025
NetZero has damaged our young and students by treating Carbon Dioxide as an evil gas, harmful to all and requiring its `removal. So many adults are now convinced that CO2 is a dangerous gas that it is little wonder that the young are following suit. There will need to be a period of scientific re-education after the madness of NetZero is finally recognised.
July 10, 2025
Indeed it is not “pollution” but a harmless, odourless, clear gas and plant, tree and crop food that greens the planet nicely. The Gas of life in fact vital for virtually all life on earth. They also like to use the word Carbon as that is black and dirty rather than CO2 plus the weasel words “Climate Change” are the alarmists not even sure if it is going to get hotter or colder then? Might be good to know if we are to counteract this?
Many people even think CO2 is a poison!
Listen to the pleasant enough but scientifically ignorant Classics Graduate Emma Pinchbeck on the rest is politics. I do not suppose she would even dare to have a serious discussions with someone sensible like Prof. William Happer! Just two daft climate alarmist lefties!
July 10, 2025
Might as well call CO2 diamonds as call it Carbon! Weasel words like King Charles’s irregular migrants, climate emergency or the 7/7 bombs that it seems just placed & detonated themselves as if by magic. Nothing to do with the suicide bombers at all!
July 10, 2025
Complete insanity. And for what? The madness will not shift the dial on so called climate change in any way that can even be measured let alone be beneficial. An utter pointless tragic waste.
July 10, 2025
Indeed vast costs and economic harms for zero upside!
July 10, 2025
Exactly, at least it can be said Net Zero is right in this one regard.
We will spend literally £trillians and achieve Net Zero impact climate impact by our effort.
There is no climate crisis, there is just climate alarmism propagated by uneducated non scientists.
July 10, 2025
Hardly surprising to see the OBR misusing the word “investment” in the present context, in the same manner as the political advocates of Net Zero aka the Great Leap Backward. Here in the real world, we ordinary plebs know only too well that they are not talking about the application of capital with a view to profit; they are talking about spending, subsidising or squandering.
July 10, 2025
Yup, billions or should we make that trillions wasted on ‘net-zero’
Co2 in the Earths atmosphere = 400 PPM (parts per million)
UK’s contribution to that is 1% Or 4 PPM
Result, the crippling of this country with the highest energy costs in the developed world. Crippling of industry and massive increase in unemployment.
And after achieving UK ‘net-zero’ it will make absolutely no difference to Co2 in the atmosphere, because our miniscule contribution will have been taken up by others (notably China)
P.S. Have you noticed how mad-Ed Milliband now refers to “energy security” and rarely allies his actions to ‘climate change’ Even he knows the truth, but now he has to hide it behind his new buzzwords.
July 10, 2025
This is the level of lunatic destruction the Westminster Uni-Party and Whitehall have been inflicting on us for over a decade now. Turbo-charged by Treason May, Johnson and now Two-Tier.
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/07/10/the-economic-illiteracy-of-uk-energy-policy-is-a-sight-to-behold/
July 10, 2025
This policy will cost millions of jobs as British production and related service sectors shut down. There will be no prospect of any significant tax revenue from either income nor from spending.
We will be bust.
This, of course will not happen as the government will U-turn as MPs rebel and threaten to walk the floor of the House.
July 10, 2025
How can it be remotely called investment, went it is first and foremost about sending hard earned taxpayer money to Foreign shores to shore up alternative economies at the detriment of the UK economy.
Example £500 million to the owners of steel manufacturing in Wales to be sent to owners abroad with a loss of ‘knowledge & skills’. So the Government has to now import the steel they banned from UK production just to supply the defence and needed infrastructure industries. Value to ‘Climate Change’ zero, in fact if by their logic that industry produces something they no longer want in the UK(emissions) they have increased World emissions by another magnitude. That is not investment that’s malicious destruction
The OBR’s £720billion doesn’t account for the cost of the skills lost or the hard-earned Taxpayer money that is sent to Foreign regime’s to prop them up. The OBR’s figures do not account for the cost Government policy and how it increases World Wide emissions.
A Legislator unable to think, just wanting a sound-bite to satisfy personal ego – the country can be damned as long as ego is stroked
July 10, 2025
From ta-days Media
Lord Herman has removed, the notion we live in a Sovereign Democracy. With is new direction/orders to Parliament he has removed Parliamentary Sovereignty. On whose authority can he do that?
International Law? there is no such thing.
“The rule of law requires compliance by the state with its obligations in international law as in national law, even though they operate on different planes: the government and Ministers must act in good faith to comply with the law and in a way that seeks to align the UK’s domestic law and international obligations. To honour the UK’s international obligations, the government should not invite Parliament to legislate contrary to those international obligations. ”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/07/09/lord-hermer-gives-himself-veto-over-government-policy/
July 10, 2025
We also learn from the same source 2TK has integrated further in to the EU by signing a declaration of giving Macron control of the UK’s Nuclear defence capability. But Macon still wants our fish in our waters and will not stop people/criminals escaping France.
July 10, 2025
+1
July 10, 2025
@IanB. Astonishing! Trying to stop a future government from taking a nationalist path. And with the amendment tonthevWHO Treaty likely coming in a few weeks, that will give them the power to mandate lock downs and vaccinations…
July 10, 2025
Beyond unaffordable economic and financial costs of course is the tragic cost (not yet fully paid but delivery of the bill is eagerly awaited) of Ed Miliband’s political career.
Having seen Wrecker’ Reeves’s fate, her successor is not going to savage welfare so net zero must fill the black hole in Exchequer sums surely.
July 10, 2025
This madness is, as you must know by now after all this time, a scam to control and impoverish the majority for the benefit of globalists.
July 10, 2025
Correct.
July 10, 2025
The stupidity of Net Zero needs to be challenged in so many ways:
First and foremost is that there is no evidence of an existential Climate Emergency, just a slight warming and nothing unusual in earth’s history.
Second, there is no need to decarbonise, because the scientific evidence is that CO2, whilst a greenhouse gas as low concentrations becomes saturated at and above current levels and has little effect on global warming.
Third, as the world is not following Mad Ed’s leadership and continues to increase the burning of fossil fuels, it is inconceivable the the UK reducing its less than 1% of global emissions will affect anything.
Fourth, current net zero policies in the UK will lead to extinction of manufacturing, higher balance of payments, collapse of the economy and general impoverishment, as well as destruction of our countryside by turbines, solar farms and transmission lines.
July 10, 2025
Indeed and many of the tech. things they push to save CO2 do not – at best they save very little or just export the production.
July 14, 2025
You can add to your list that ice cores from Antarctica (EPICA C) show that over 8 interglacial cycles, ie 800,000 years rising temperatures have always preceded rising CO2. Ergo CO2 cannot be the cause of rising temperatures on these time-scales. We are still in an interglacial warming phase.
July 10, 2025
“The first ten years sees the highest spend, with annual amounts reaching a peak of £16 bn before subsiding.”
The cost of Clean Power 2030 (well, 95% “clean” power) according to NESO is “over £40bn annually” (p6). Electricity is just 20% of our total energy usage. So the idea that the cost of Net Zero is £16bn/year or less is nonsense. I would suggest anyone interested reads David Turver’s eigenvalues substack website for a better analysis. A big play is made of all the “green” jobs created. Never about all the jobs destroyed. The more we spend on producing energy the poorer we all become. Is the CCC/DESNZ going to suggest that we ban the use of farm machinery to lower our CO2 emissions and return to manual labour thus creating millions of “green” jobs?
Reply Yes of course the total cost is much higher. I am setting out public spending additions as presented by government.
July 10, 2025
Reply to Reply : Firstly do you really believe this £16bn/year maximum figure? Won’t this simply be another HS2 figure? Secondly as Professor Sir Dieter Helm, Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford, has pointed out in his “Fiddling The Books on Debt” Helm Talks podcast of 09/06/2025, for large basic utilities that everyone uses and needs, such as electricity or water, it does not matter whether the borrowing and hence the debt is public or private. For these services customers and taxpayers are essentially the same, except that the customers’ base is more regressive. So whether the debt is public or private we’re liable for both and hence for private debt to not be included in the public debt when accounting for the national debt is essentially fiddling the books.
Reply No of course I do not believe the government figure but it is the one which helps control budget options. I wrote a short book called the $275 trillion revolution on the global implausibility of the numbers and the task.
July 10, 2025
The OBR estimate £800bn by 2050. But this is surely an HS2 estimate as it will cost far more to just net zero our electricity, the easiest part and just 20% of our total energy usage. The cost of renewable electricity used by the CCC and hence the OBR is entirely false. On P106 of the CCC’s 7th Carbon Budeget they write : “The average cost of offshore wind is expected to fall from £49/MWh to £35/MWh by 2040.” Well, the current CfD price for the last Allocation Round 6 is £85/MWhr and this price is rising not falling. Floating offshore wind is currently £202/MWhr and GB Energy have recently announced that we will need to move to floating offshore wind because “we are running out of space” (presumably runnng out of shallow waters). And it must never be forgotten that since renewables are unreliable and chaotically intermittent it is necessary to overbuild, add grid stability and, if reliability is required either run a complete parallel system with hydrocarbon generators or develop grid-scale storage which according to the Royal Society doubles the price again even allowing for improved technology which does not yet exist. NESO estimates the Clean Power by 2030 plan will cost at least £40bn/year. They know all of this but believe that if they tell a big enough lie often enough people will believe it, including of course that CO2 causes global warming.
July 10, 2025
There is no climate emergency. Table 12 in Chaper 12 of the IPCC Working Group 1 (“The Science”) shows there to be no signals for changes to precipitation, droughts or storms. Only some mild warming which UAH satellite data shows to be 0.14 degrees C per decade for the lower troposphere. Even the IPCC can only calculate a warming of 1.2 degrees C for a doubling of CO2 (p95 of the same report). Happer & Wijngaarden have demonstrated, using the IPCC’s own radiative warming greenhouse gas theory, that increasing CO2 brings little if any additional warming because of saturation, a phenomenon recognised by The Royal Society. And Shula & Ott have made a compelling case for the whole IPCC radiative warming theory to be invalid both experimentally and theoretically because of thermalisation. There is no historical evidence for CO2, let alone anthropogenic CO2, controlling temperature such as the cause of and exit from the last ice age which ended just 11,000 years ago.
July 10, 2025
“All this points to net zero policies adding large sums to the deficits and forcing government to look for new sources of revenue.”
I would say this all points to a policy to deliberately bankrupt the country by sabotaging our energy, economy, national security and democracy. A policy not adopted by China or Russia. Now why would that be? Are we living on a different planet? Or is it because these two countries are already authoritarian regimes?
July 10, 2025
@Original Richard. They are authoritarian, true. But at least they look after their national interests better than we do!
July 10, 2025
Slightly off topic but perhaps a bit relevant, have just seen Starmer and Micron clutching each other so tightly outside No 10 that they would probably make good contenders for the next bout of Strictly Come Dancing.
July 10, 2025
The root of the problem is the belief in Global Warming and Net Zero, with CO2 being a problem. Until somebody wakes up to the fact that it is all nonsense, the UK will simply decline into bankruptcy.
What we have is Net Stupidity from the present and recent governments, MPs, the House of Fools, sorry, I meant Lords, the Civil Service and the NHS, all following a false premise with religious devotion.
With the right leadership, unleashing the talent of the British people, the UK could have a great future. But since 1990, we have had 35 years of mediocre leadership. If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else!
July 10, 2025
Like all OBR estimates this is a work of fiction that will end up being a very long way from the truth, and has probably been produced because the Treasury is now supposed to be inferior to the OBR and the false numbers give quotes for Miliband from another “independent ” source. In reality, these numbers are just sliced and diced differently, but originate in the completely unrealistic assumptions used by the CCC in developing its fictional carbon budgets. Like an HS2 budget, multiply by an order of magnitude. It reminds you of A.A.Milne’s King of Peru –
Eight eights are eighty one
Multiply by seven.
If it’s more
carry four
and take away eleven.
July 10, 2025
2TK and his team are constantly embedding the EU as the controller of the UK. The giveaway’s that are always one sided, the tax-pounds sent to prop up EU States under the guise of Net Zero.
All the while they are causing the closure of UK’s Industry and Enterprise, causing those with money to leave (if you don’t vote Labour you ‘must’ leave is the new drum beat). In essence it appears ensuring there can be no recovery, no future. No longer just a conspiracy this team and the majority of our legislators are still fighting the people and wanting to surrender the country to an unelected unaccountable Bureaucracy in another land – have they been bribed with a cosy personal well-funded future or do they just hate the UK with a passion?
There is just something obscene, even dishonest the way our legislators treat those that empower and pay them.
July 10, 2025
Covid and Climate have a feature in common. It is that anyone who disputes the official narrative, no matter how highly qualified or experienced, has to be cast as a “Denier” and ridiculed. censored and have their career threatened. Science is all about debate and testing hypotheses. If these are forbidden then it isn’t science, it’s authoritarianism and it must be challenged continuously. If I knew then what I know now I would have ignored the measures forced on me in 2020/1. And many discussions I have had since with medical people have confirmed this view.
July 10, 2025
I wonder if other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE could also be persuaded to run down their oil and gas producing industries. Granted it may ruin their economies and perhaps eventually return their nations to the austerity levels of the 1930s and earlier before oil was discovered. But at least it would please the Net Zero advocates.
July 10, 2025
An unacceptable cost, for a very questionable aim, resulting in deindustrialisation on a terminal destructive scale. Understanding what it is leads to the conclusion that it is deliberate.
July 14, 2025
Congratulations on your appointment to GWPF. Excellent.