No, The 'Benefits' of Net Zero Do Not Outweigh its Costs

The Climate Change Committee's bullshit new report is just fantasy 'benefits' offsetting grossly underestimated costs

“Under a range of assumptions, the benefits of Net Zero consistently outweigh the costs,” claims a new report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – the quango charged with telling Parliament what Britain’s ‘Carbon Budgets’ should be. They are the opening words of its “supplementary analysis” of the Seventh Carbon Budget, and they are, if read correctly, surprisingly candid. But the candour required to admit to basing policy recommendations on a “range of assumptions” has been immediately forgotten by journalists and politicians who have turned the CCC’s report into a statement of fact.

The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey was first to the scene. “Some real figures on the costs and benefits of Net Zero, as opposed to the made up ones beloved of the reality-deniers,” she tweeted, linking to her article in which she claims: ‘Reaching Net Zero by 2050 “cheaper for UK than one fossil fuel crisis”.’ She had already forgotten the “range of assumptions”.

The report’s publication is a defensive manoeuvre, made in response to failures the CCC had made in earlier communications and in response to communications from other parts of the climate quangocracy, most notably the National Energy System Operator (NESO). In January, the Institute of Economic Affairs published an analysis of the CCC’s and NESO’s estimates of the costs of reaching Net Zero by David Turver. Turver observes that the CCC’s previous estimates were more honest, requiring “£1.5 trillion for an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050”, but that recent estimates of £108 billion between 2025 and 2050 “relies on some heroic estimates of the cost of renewables and other low-carbon technologies”. Moreover, the CCC’s estimates clash with NESO’s £3 trillion “which calculated gross cash costs of £7.6 trillion or over £9 trillion including the carbon costs of emissions”.

“Since the advice report was published,” the CCC report replies, though not addressing Turver directly, “there has been challenge around what these costs mean, and public misunderstanding of some of the assumptions made.” Accordingly, the CCC does little more than reiterate what it believes are the costs and benefits, and subtracts the latter from the former. But this fails to address Turver’s point that the costs have been underestimated and the presumed benefits overstated. The CCC’s estimates of the cost of offshore wind for example is out by a factor of 2.5, and its estimates of the cost of solar are half what the evidence shows. These flawed figures are compounded by unrealistic estimates of the cost of capital – 3.5% for both government and private borrowing, which Turver points out do not compare to “30-year bond yields around 5.3% and typical car finance loans of 5.7% to 14.9% APR”.