One of the most misleading net zero arguments is that the UK ‘s policies taxing, subsidising and banning our way to more use of renewable electricity are creating so many jobs. They often claim 1 million or 1.1 million already.They imply that renewable power , batteries and new green products deliver this.
The ONS presumably under pressure from government have had several goes at trying to define and count green jobs. Their latest estimate in March 2016 gave us a figure of 652,100 full time equivalent jobs, not 1 million. Within this total only 69,600 jobs arise from renewables.
The larger total includes 129,000 people in waste management. The bin collectors and tip managers have miraculously been granted green status though those jobs pre date the green policies people usually refer to. It includes 12,600 forestry workers, where tending woods and felling timber predate modern greenery by centuries. 24,700 jobs cleaning up sewage and 37,400 jobs in ensuring good water quality have been recategorised as new green jobs. 8,400 jobs in maintaining and restoring countryside also slide across. 18,500 jobs are government civil servants and quango staff, and 47,500 work for a wide range of environmental charities. That’s 278,000 jobs that have little to do with the net zero policies and would continue if we were not following a green power transition course.
It is true Green transition has created a lot of jobs and new factories to make solar panels, wind towers and turbines. Most of these are in China or Germany. An entrepreneur in my past constituency who had a successful international business making steel bridges invested in a state of the art very automated plant to make wind towers in England. He could not win enough orders at realistic prices owing to fierce German,EU and Asian competition and action. There were no buyers for his excellent plant so he had to close it and sack the employees. He had to write off his substantial investment.
September 21, 2026
Vastly over state on balance the more expensive energy caused mainly by the subsidies so called renewables and the refusal to use frack, drill and mine destroys and exports far more jobs as does all the additional taxes needed for these subsidies and the market rigging. RENDERING the UK unable to compete in many areas of business relative to countries with energy cost 20% of ours, lower taxes and less red tape obstacles.
Vast low skilled net cost immigration is similarly damaging to GDP per capita.
September 21, 2026
vast import of manufactured goods from China and India is not green
September 21, 2026
Made largely using cheap energy from coal, gas, oil… and often rather shoddy products with rather short life expectancies.
September 21, 2026
Lifelogic, China’s reliance on fossil fuels is greatly decreasing. Whilst they’re leading the way in green energy and tech overall. And one important reason for not relying on fossil fuels so much is that they don’t want to be reliant on others outside China for their fuel – including price fluctuations and in some cases, corrupt regimes. But other reasons, too.
Whilst China is also moving from energy-consuming heavy industry to more financially rewarding lighter industry / economy overall.
September 21, 2026
In the first seven months of 2026 China added 50.3 GW of thermal (mostly coal) generating capacity—the highest such figure for that period in 15 years. Analysts expected 2026 to be one of the highest years on record for new coal plants coming online.
September 21, 2026
@Ed M – it would appear that the people in the Chinese Government are significantly more intelligent than those found in the UK Government or its Parliament. They the Chinese used simply logic and common cense, to move forward, to change how things were done needs vast amounts of money, money that comes from a Country earning. So they went big on growth and earnings so as to fund an different direction.
The UK Government and Parliament in contrast went for cancel, cancel, cancel. They cancelled the possibility for the Country and its People to have a future, they took away the means and banished the ability to ‘earn’
September 21, 2026
still relying on child labour and stealing intellectual property though
September 21, 2026
Also, from just a branding/human POV (forget the environment for the moment), it’s not surprising that the world is moving away from fossil fuels. People don’t want to be walking along the street with cars pumping fumes into them and into their children – nor loud, noisy cars driving past and planes flying over. It’s not the about the ‘environment’ but that society (including many on the right in cities) see fossil fuels as uncool. Uncouth. Redneck. And entrepreneurs have cottoned on to this and making or want to make a fortune from this.
But agreed, we need to be careful about Net Zero. On other hand, if we don’t make the argument I’ve just made here, then the comments of people such as you will be completely drowned out – and wasted (as you make some great points – seriously – but what’s the point of people like you making them if they get drowned out?!).
September 21, 2026
You think people want to walk along the street and have a vehicle creep up unthread?
Redneck is the Afrikaans word used to denigrate the British. Yes we did invent the modern world and that involved creating plentiful cheap energy.
How do you propose to continue without energy – because putting fissile fuel aside means that THERE WILL BE NO ENERGY.
September 21, 2026
The majority of green jobs are in compliance. No added value, just more spooning in the gravy bowl. Let the ONS quantify the number of skilled, well paid jobs lost in the non subsidised oil and gas industry including the loss of tax revenue.
We are being lied to in an industrial scale by a very corrupt government.
September 21, 2026
low quality immigration is bad no matter where in the skills spectrum, a lot of supposedly highly skilled immigration is low quality
September 21, 2026
One of those many daft lefties that GBNew has on tried to defend a suggestion that CGT rates should be equalised at 45% by saying Nigel Lawson did this in 1988 (at 40%). What he did not say is that we had inflation indexation then so were only taxing real gains. Also the CGT tax take after this actually reduced as selling became far less attractive so fewer people sold things. Especially older people as no CGT on death just IHI.
If you sell then die a day later or anytime you die you may have to pay both CGT and IHT if you have not disposed of the proceeds and the. lived 7 years.
September 21, 2026
Talking of ‘daft’ people on the news, I just learnt from the ‘Today’ programme that David Gauke is now Sir David Gauke !
He was always completely useless – but sought out for his establishment views. Despite being kicked out of the Conservative Party in 2019 and failing to be elected as an independent in a subsequent election, he constantly has articles in the so-called ‘Conservative Home’, ‘The Spectator’ and ‘The New Statesman’. So he is clearly considered useful across the political spectrum, despite not having been in government for seven years.
September 21, 2026
I met him before he was elected. I was astonished that he had been selected. He was genuinely lost from the start.
September 21, 2026
Hardly a surprise John that Government are manipulating figures to suit their own arguments.
Been going on for years, but seems to be growing more and more common as the years pass bye.
Quite honestly it is difficult to believe anything politicians now say to back up any argument they make for ever more tax, spend ,and pour down the drain policies.
They appear to be in a different World to most of us out here, who see things rather differently.
September 21, 2026
Certainly anything the “most” politicians say.
Alas often worse than just “tip down the drain” it is so often spent doing vast net harms as with Covid Vaccines, Covid Lockdowns, Net Zero, HS2, much of the NHS activity, most of the woke and DEI insanities, the many counterproductive wars, prosecuting Lucy Letby, the Covid and Lucy Letby enquiry, enforced folic acid in foods, the EU membership, the Windsor accord, the Gibraltar sell out, Chagos…
September 21, 2026
I agree, it is very difficult to believe those that we should be able to put our trust in.
Unfortunately they as a collective have been found wanting all too often when it comes to being honest, and when it comes to doing their solemn duty to us.
What’s worse now is that so many of them are not even particularly bright, or even very good liars.
As education standards, morals, sense of duty and general all round expectations and standards in everything slide, what can we expect but low grade middle management material at best, all following an agenda that suits their ideology and that of their globalist string pullers.
September 21, 2026
@Berkshire Alan – agreed, we have reached the stage that even the ballot papers should have a warning ‘don’t believe the promises’
All we do know is what they actually do in practice, even that is coded in smoke screens for something else.
September 21, 2026
Good morning.
Getting rid of old and still useable cars and making people buy EV’s is good for GDP. Another con trick used to make the Potemkin UK economy look viable.
This charade will of course come to an end. And the sooner the better.
September 21, 2026
EVs that rarely even save CO2 relative to keeping you old ICE car for longer as a new car and battery has to be mined and constructed and then recycled. PLUS there is virtually no spare low carbon electricity to charge it with anyway in the UK. TOTAL insanity even if you do believe the CO2 devil gas exaggerations.
September 21, 2026
Some EVs have wording on the rear of them stating “Zero Emissions”. These vehicles are much heavier than most ICE cars and consequently whenever the driver uses the brakes the emissions of brake dust is greater than an ICE car and when cornering the wear and tear on tyres is also greater. According to geologist Scott Tinker the cost of recycling EV batteries is so great that he claims that at end of useful life they will be dumped.
Already the changes in technology of EVs is happening a rate that means that used ones of 5 years of age or older hold little attraction for buyers according to people I speak to in the trade.
September 21, 2026
I post as the lone voice on this blog who speaks in favour of saving our lovely planet from the ravages of the global climate emergency by supporting the energy transition. And to counteract the endless anti-renewables and pro-fossil fuels bullshit put out by people such as the appalling Dominic Lawson in the right wing press
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) issued a report last year strongly in favour of the net zero sector. Their detailed analysis showed unequivocally that the net zero sector is growing three times faster than the overall UK economy, providing high-wage jobs across the country, while cutting climate changing emissions and increasing the UK’s energy security
The CBI showed that the net zero economy grew by 10% in 2024 and generated £83bn in added value. 22,000 net zero businesses do employ almost a million people in full-time jobs. The average annual wage in the businesses – £43,000 – was also £5,600 higher than the national average. The report analysed the growth attributable to businesses working in renewable energy, electric vehicles, heat pumps, energy storage, green finance, waste management and recycling.
Right across the country there are plants that burn household waste etc and turn the energy produced into electricity
Net zero is the British industrial opportunity of the 21st century. The sector is expanding strongly, with the 10% growth in 2024 following a 9% jump in 2023. JR’s entrepreneurial associate should have won sufficient orders before building his plant, tho I regret that it failed with job losses
Reply You repeat the misleading nonsense. We had bin men and tree surgeons before net zero so how come these are now fast growing green jobs?
September 21, 2026
SG
When we in the UK get to net zero, by how much will global temperatures be reduced?
Do you know?
September 21, 2026
Lord Redwood is correct that the government has widened the definition a “green job” in order to promote its Net Zero, de-industrialising agenda. I blame the ONS for giving in to the government’s bullying. The growth of the Net Zero economy and thus the CBI being “in favour” of this sector is because the taxpayer is subsidising it. According to Professor Gordon Hughes of the renewable Energy Foundation, we have already spent £220bn (2024 prices) on Net Zero and we are currently funding £26bn/year in subsidies. In addition NESO say their Clean Power 2030 project will cost “over £40bn annually”. The irony is that since a prosperous economy depends upon cheap, abundant reliable energy the more people engaged in energy production the poorer we all become. It would not surprise me if our Net Zero Pol Pot Parliament decided to end the use of farm machinery in order to create millions of “green” jobs in the fields. Our renewable energy production only appears to be affordable because all the “green” building infrastructure and devices jobs is of course in China who use cheap coal power, slave labour and ignore all the environmental consequences of mining and toxic manufacturing tailing lakes. We are even importing from China the concrete for the fixed offshore wind farms. We’re not even a net exporter of all our renewable electricity. We import 3 times more electricity than we export and import prices are far higher than export prices. China has grabbed all the “green” jobs and left us nothing to export. Rather than being a “green energy superpower where industries are coming to use our cheap, abundant green energy” whole industries are fleeing the country because our industrial energy prices are the highest in the developed world
September 21, 2026
‘It is true Green transition has created a lot of jobs and new factories to make solar panels, wind towers and turbines. Most of these are in China or Germany’ – so why can’t the UK compete with the Germans here?
There are certainly a lot of crazy pro Net Zero arguments, I agree. But at the same time (and in admittedly to a much lesser degree) there is still money to be made from green tech and the Germans are taking advantage of this. And it’s not mere fluke. It’s down, to a certain degree, to high tech innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit to creating energy and not just relying on the big companies for it.
September 21, 2026
So do that and show the rest of us how.
September 21, 2026
This autumn it is likely that global oil stockpiles will run out due to the closure of the Straigt of Hormuz. The Big Oil/LNG cartels will seize the opportunity to impose a massive spike in the price of their energy, as they did in 2022 after the war criminal Putin invaded Ukraine in his three week “special military operation”
Another issue is the unpredictable nature of the US President Donald Trump. Nobody can predict what he will do next, tho Putin and Chinese emperor Xi Jinping seem to be able to influence him
The UK government, coupled with the EU, has recommended that citizens build a larder of non-perishable foodstuffs, such as rice, pasta, tinned fruit and vegetables, corned beef, flour, yeast and sugar (British honey?) etc. Enough for a couple of weeks maybe.
There are already shortages of fresh food in the aisles . Those who remember what happened before the first lockdown, when the supermarkets were completely empty, may have already done so.
September 21, 2026
SG. I don’t know where you shop but perhaps you could go in person rather than relying on deliveries.
September 21, 2026
Yet we have left ourselves open and vulnerable by not using our own resources all in the name of ‘net zero’
I have no issues with energy being made ‘cleaner’ if it is done sensibly, and all practicalities considered.
What has been done here is utterly insane. A target date set, enshrined in law.
Why a set date, and a rush to upend a whole energy system and not only that but it seems we can’t do it ourselves and are reliant on much of the hardware from abroad. Why not a more sensible thought out, time, money and technologically capable plan, that eases in the changes only when and if they prove to be more efficient and affordable.
A huge undertaking by successive governments who can’t even lay a bit of a rail track on time and on budget.
I believe former MI6 chief Dearlove delivered a speech to the annual Global Warming Policy Foundation
warning that our approach to energy being driven by climate policy has left us strategically vulnerable.
In a nutshell we wouldn’t be able to fix critical infrastructure in any emergency and Russia and China are all too willing to use economic/tech and infrastructure dependencies as instruments of power.
Shame he didn’t open his mouth when it was his job to sound the alarm on our safety!!
September 21, 2026
SG, I think you mean “…the Big Oil/LNG cartels will impose a spike in the price of their energy, as they did in 2022 after Britain and the EU decided to boycott Russian oil and gas”. Europe inflicted high energy prices on itself.
September 21, 2026
Is it any surprise there should be food shortages? The country is already only capable of growing about 50% of the population’s food needs, then fields are being converted into solar farms or rewilding, farmers are being assaulted with punitive tax measures and millions have been imported in.
I think it’s valid to have a no-immigration policy all the time the population exceeds food production.
September 21, 2026
SG
You are making a good argument for the UK to be more energy independent.
Oil and gas extraction should be a priority plus increased exploration.
Fracking should be started.
And we need much more nuclear power.
September 21, 2026
SG : “Nobody can predict what he [President Trump] will do next, tho Putin and Chinese emperor Xi Jinping seem to be able to influence him”
President Xi seems to be able to do more than simply influence our government as evidenced by the Chagos giveaway with an enormous dowry to their Mauritius mates, the huge London embassy close to our telecommunications cables and by purchasing from China all the infrastructure and devices for our de-industrialising and impoverishing Net Zero Strategy. I expect the Chinese cannot believe, let alone understand, how a country can commit economic and national suicide by deciding that social security is more important than national security. Or pursue policies as those of Lord Gus O’Donnell who, when Cabinet Secretary, said in 2011: “When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration….. I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare not national.”
September 21, 2026
I agree with most people here about Net Zero but at the same time it’s a mindset that isn’t just confined to the UK but to Europe and many Western countries and others. So what are the solutions? One can try and change the mindset but the right aren’t doing a very good job at that. The alternative is to keep carry on trying to change the mindset but also trying to make money out of green tech too! To support the entrepreneurs making money out of it. And Net Zero won’t go away. I mean China is playing a significant role here.
And CHINA is the major elephant in the room that people often seem to be ignoring. It is China that is hugely disrupting the Western economy. It is thanks, to an important degree, to China that Trump got into power. Because China has helped to decimate working-class jobs and working-class areas in the USA (and Europe and the Western World).
So the big picture is we have to figure out how to become more competitive with China (in general – not specifically in some industries as that it’s impossible – or almost impossible – to compete with them over). Huge task. But that’s the elephant in the room we have to face up to (and no easy solutions – agreed).
September 21, 2026
The EU (which includes Germany Ed) has a daily deficit with China that tops €1 Billion.
Why is that do you think?
Is China brilliant, advanced and innovative?
Or are the Leaders of Europe, with the sole exception of Putin, bigoted and stupid?
September 21, 2026
I think we can all agree the transition to green ideology in all its forms whether energy production, closing down our domestic coal fired plants and our domestic coal extraction, or our gas power options closing down our energy hungry industries such as ceramics, aluminium or chemicals along with metal fabrication. These have all been net job losses with the work once done in the UK now being done in low cost reliable energy countries across the world. Then we have eco green demanding the reduction in domestic farming, with emphasis placed on importing foods we can easily produce but the rewilding movement along with the solar energy land demand has destroyed traditional farm economics. The electrification of transport has also resulted in a net loss of manufacturing and hence loss of jobs across the domestic industry. The priority is to import cars from China who holds the monopoly on battery production and can undercut all other country’s car production prices.
What we are seeing is total control of factors of production and entrepreneurial enterprise being vested in the hands of bureaucrats in what can only be described as Soviet style control of society.
It took 70 years before the Soviets accepted their social model was a failure let us hope we have learned enough from that debacle to avoid repeating the mistake in the 21st century.
Bureaucrats and civil servants are there to serve society not to instruct it or try to control its every facet of existence.
We need to re-strike the balance between state authority i.e. Public Sector wants and priorities over the Private Sector’s essential needs required for economic and business success for all. If we do not do this the whole social structure will collapse including all of the Public sector that can no longer be funded.
September 21, 2026
Please send this article to the Guardian, for the attention of George Monbiot.
September 21, 2026
It was ridiculous that anybody believed the lies associated with these made up numbers.
From the very start the likes of the climate change committee have been putting out false estimates because they had no real data to manipulate. Making up a fantasy to pretend it matches something good is just what these people have been good at.
Their estimates of the cost of net-0 were/are always understated but never touched reality.
Let’s face it net-0 has been a scam from the start – Gore even had his hockey stick upside down.
September 21, 2026
It is now pellucidly clear that the political and civil service class hold us in such contempt that they don’t even fabricate plausible lies.
Church leaders fall into the same category.
What are we going to actually do about it?
September 21, 2026
Replace much of the civil service with the private sector for a start.
Tell Church leaders to get out of politics and look to their own teachings.
September 21, 2026
A good article as far as it goes. Boosting ‘Green’ is what you would expect from bureaucrats. The real problem is there are so few real useful jobs for British humans to do. We are forced into pseudo jobs, just look around government and the legislature.
A good FT article last week – ‘UK’s problems arise from neglect’. Lack of consistent national planning and too much political meddling – from all parties. But neglect is only part of the problem. The real problem is there really is very little use for an overpaid overpopulated under educated country.
Certainly ‘The Market Will Provide’ is true enough, but not here. The market will provide where it is welcome. Then overpopulation. Certainly we have to import people – doctors, surgeons, engineers but along with those we get many unskilled low or zero contributing people – to add to home grown unskilled low or zero contributing people.
But getting rid of our own merely creates a vacuum. So we could see to it that under used problem spots in the world get properly utilised. Car and computer factories in Africa and Somalia and Lebanon and Syria. Manufacturers of aircraft and missiles and nuclear power in Eritrea and Afghanistan and the removal of over consuming people from Europe and America. Not a plan that would sit well with Mr Trump or HM Treasury.
All this and world population heading for 10 Billion and no sign of and sensible plan from our world leaders. Lord John, you have made a good start defining a microscopic part of the problem. The real problems are just coming down the road.
September 21, 2026
Of course we could always train our own Doctors, Engineers etc, but that’s a heresy in today’s Britain.
Why put a cap on the amount of our own capable students to train for medicine, then continue growing the population and scratching of heads as to why everything is creaking under the strain?
We could even do away with some of the useless social reprogramming that goes on in schools and instead use the time for more useful things such as longer lessons in maths/English and more help in core subjects.
We could even stop encouraging children to believe they can all be famous footballers or pop stars, or the next reality TV sensation, and show them that there are other paths more long lasting and useful.
September 21, 2026
We have to try to imagine how things will be in say a hundred years and that’s if there is any world left after Putin and Trump are finished? but In the meantime putting out statistics to suit an argument is if little use in the longer term because all we can do is to work towards a cleaner future and hope.
September 21, 2026
Thank you for that run down, very informative.
The only surprise for me was the number of pen pushers, I thought it would be more, but it’s early days yet.
September 21, 2026
Of course there are a million or more jobs created, in China, Denmark, France and Norway. Those are the Domains that have gained the most of UK Taxpayer subsidies, those are the Domains where hard earned Taxpayer money end up, never to return, never to circulate and cause a UK economy to thrive.
Although recently the EU Commission concluded Denmark’s Ørsted’s UK offshore wind farms, should be taxed primarily in the UK, where they are located and where they generate their revenue. As with many, many similar situations it is UK Taxpayer funding being syphoned off to support home territory tax regimes and has not been contributing to the economy of the UK that ‘pays’ them. The EU supporting the UK what ever next!
A one way street of Government bungling and ineptitude supporting foreign regimes at the ‘expense’ of the UK economy and people
Not sure where all the UK Taxpayer money goes? the UK Parliament sends it abroad never to return, causing jobs abroad at the expense of the UK Economy, UK Jobs, its Industry and Commerce. The UK’s Parliament is destroying the UK out of personal egotistical choice
September 21, 2026
Once again, the Government is being dishonest about green jobs. When that becomes clear in one area, you then question the Government’s honesty in other areas. For example, the desire to reset with the EU, which directly ignores the democratic vote to leave. The Government is again being dishonest about the benefits, which are zero.
This Labour Government is a shambles, with a PM who runs from reality and is too weak to make the tough decisions needed. Burnham is not continuity Starmer; he is worse, and that will become plain in a few months!
September 21, 2026
@Keith from Leeds – agreed many times over
September 21, 2026
interesting to watch the promo film NATO have released of the European and UK soldiers apparently so keen to go to war with Russia, every single face is a white person… revealing that DEI doesn’t appear in their thinking about who they plan to send into the meat grinder. do they really expect anyone to go when our home country is full of invaders and rapists are on every corner?
September 21, 2026
There is of course the machinery which sorts plastics etc ,the updating of the machines,the spare parts,the premises needed to organise the.logistics,the maintenance ,the transportation,the wooden pallets required to transport and the people who make them,the various products required in running engineering offshoots.
A family.member of mine runs such a place and I am very grateful for the specially large pallets which are more like material used for raised beds which are used for my vegetable beds.
September 21, 2026
Frankly the Net Zero mantra and obsession for everything green is very close to being fraudulent. Many promises made but very few delivered. The recent 2026 GWPF speech given by Sir John Dearlove exposes the fragility of our energy policy as flawed ideology has severely weakened our defence and industrial capabilities whilst offering spectacular benefits to our adversaries. Green jobs are a fallacy, there’s no such thing as a Green job, every job involves the emission of carbon dioxide. The wilful destruction of our industrial base is an act of vandalism and this must be changed. Global emissions continue to rise making our green policy complete nonsense. Outsourcing LNG and a range of manufacturing has been an act of wilful self harm whist actually helping to increase global emissions. We are on the wrong track and heading for a train smash
September 21, 2026
“The ONS presumably under pressure from government have had several goes at trying to define and count green jobs.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg. I no longer believe any statistics from the government, particularly those relating to immigration. We’ve even had collusion between government, the Civil Service and the judiciary to hide the importation of 40,000 immigrants using a super injunction.
September 21, 2026
defo not a cyber attack on uk airports
September 21, 2026
So now some of the British elitists propose ‘locking me up’ because I oppose the Axis powers attacking Christian Russia.
And the same man wants to press gang British people to fight on the Ukrainian front – why if Heroic Ukraine is winning as we are constantly told?
I have never been more ashamed of the morons we have allowed to speak for British people – of course Rees Mogg does not even know what a British person is, he has to see a government document asserting ‘citizenship’.
Nothing spiritual about that – of course he is a member of the Church of Rome ….