The Spectator

Letters: the problem with Net Zero

Zero balance

Sir: James Kirkup (‘In defence of net zero’, 14 August) highlights the falling cost of solar and wind energy. But he fails to mention
that on some winter days, the associated capacity totals only around 1 to 10 per cent of UK maximum demand. Adding more solar and wind generation will not change that. The shortfall has to be made up by nuclear or fossil-fuelled power plants, or by energy storage plants, which cost money to install and maintain. How much money?

Ross Clark’s article (‘Zero-sum game’) is more enlightening, with a National Grid estimate of £3 trillion just to decarbonise the grid. Add to that the replacement of domestic gas boilers, with electric heat pumps, plus new radiators and pipework for 28 million households, and the cost rises to around £3.5 trillion, or £125,000 per family.

As Ross points out, the cost of decarbonising transport and industrial systems must also be added, bearing in mind that petrol and diesel duties (around £30 billion p.a. — or £10,000 per vehicle) will have to be raised by other means.

No business would embark on such a strategy without a fully tested cost/benefit analysis. Indeed, the physicist Professor Richard Lindzen is clear that atmospheric levels of CO2 lag global temperature — not the other way around. He concludes: ‘The influence of mankind on climate is trivially true and numerically insignificant.’

Add to that that CO2 comprises only around 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere and that human activity contributes about 3 per cent of that, while the UK contributes around 1 per cent of that. Multiply the product of those percentages by the percentage contribution of CO2 to the greenhouse effect and you are likely to come to a similar conclusion as Professor Lindzen.

The UK is in danger of driving many into fuel poverty for limited benefit while big coal-burners such as China, India and Germany delight at our ever declining competitiveness — and our PM continues to burnish his green credentials.

Roger J.

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