Committee on Climate Change’s Net Zero advice to government is "a political suicide note"

London, 10 December: Energy experts at the Global Warming Policy Forum have called the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) advice to government on Net Zero decarbonisation "a political suicide note".

The criticism follows the publication of the Sixth Carbon Budget outlining how the government can achieve Net Zero and at what cost.

Claims by the CCC that the cost of Net Zero will be "surprisingly low" are based on fallacious assumptions and magical thinking that is simply not credible.

The magnitude of the CCC costing errors can be seen in this comparison of the BEIS estimates on which they rely, and the reality known from audited accounts:

Source: Gordon Hughes, Wind Power Economics: Rhetoric & Reality, (2020).

The GWPF's own economic analysis reveals that the decarbonisation of the electricity system, housing and private transport alone is estimated to cost more than £3 trillion in the next three decades.

Dr John Constable, GWPF energy editor, said:

The central cost assumptions used in the Sixth Carbon Budget are entirely divorced from reality. Some of them are out by several hundred percent, meaning that the claim that we can decarbonise painlessly doesn't stand up to even cursory scrutiny."

Offshore wind is twice as expensive to build as the CCC assumes, and two to four times more expensive to operate. The resulting electricity will be many, many times more expensive than they claim, making the use of heat pumps and Electric Vehicles utterly unaffordable."

Worse still, these mistaken assumptions aren’t even their own errors; the CCC itself admits that all it has done is accept the generation cost estimates of Alok Sharma’s Department of Business. Far from being an independent advisor, the CCC is nothing more than a passive and uncritical sock puppet repeating government nonsense.”

GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser warned that if the major parties continue to go along with the government's plans they face an existential crisis and political realignment:

The 6th Carbon Budget is just sales-talk designed to fool the public into signing on the dotted line and sacrificing their futures and those of their families. The CCC analysis is an attempt to conceal true costs and trick the public into committing to a policy that will ruin lives across society, with truly terrible effects on low income households."

Every time someone has to buy a high-price heat pump rather than a cheap gas-fired boiler, every time they are forced to replace their cheap car with an expensive electric one and every time they get their ever more expensive electricity bill, they will remember who lied to them about the cost of Net Zero."

This plan is a political suicide note. Any party supporting this economic and social disaster will be punished ruthlessly at the polls in coming elections."