The Spectator

It’s time to drop the net zero agenda

[Getty Images]

For years British energy policy has been an exercise in wishful thinking. We’ve been living in a fantasy world in which Britain can somehow achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050 without paying any serious economic price, and with no one significantly poorer as a result. ‘Not a hair-shirt in sight,’ said the Prime Minister, though most independent assessments said net zero would cost between £36,000 and £50,000 per household.

Reality, now, is biting. Reducing emissions is important but security of supply is vital, and Europe has been forced to come to terms with its dependence on Russian oil and gas. The dependence is so entrenched that it is possible Vladimir Putin thought that Europe would rather leave Ukraine undefended than impose sanctions. If this was Putin’s thinking, it was a miscalculation. Europe has collectively chosen pain. The question is now to ameliorate it.

Boris Johnson has proposed a new energy plan, due this month. The European Union has said it will cut Russian imports by two-thirds by the end of the year: quite an ambition, given that Russia supplies about half of Germany’s gas imports and almost all of that imported by Finland and the Baltic states. A frantic search for alternatives has begun which has ushered in a new era of energy realism. The German Greens are softening in their opposition to nuclear power, and there are signs that No. 10 is letting go of the net zero agenda.

Against this backdrop, net zero can’t last. The UK needs a grown-up energy policy instead

At present, it costs about £1,300 to heat the average home. By some estimates this will rise to £3,000 later this year, and that is before the other inflationary costs of food and basic shopping as a result of the sanctions. As Javier Blas argues in his article, the effect of the Ukraine war is all the greater because so many companies the world over are voluntarily imposing sanctions, compounding the effect of the official measures.

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