Net zero is on the ballot paper. Greens have never wanted a referendum on whether we should make the road to net zero the centrepiece of so many of our policies and life choices. Many think there should be a vote , as this mission has become so dominant, affecting so many areas of government activity and of our daily lives . The country was never allowed a proper conversation about the wisdom of this course of action. All the main parties signed up so there was little debate in Parliament.
Greens will find policies to promote net zero increasingly become election issues despite the apparent party consensus as they weigh on people’s minds and the road gets tougher. In the UK there are two major issues confronting the government which the many pro green Opposition parties wish to shrug off. They are the costs of the transition and the issue of whether the public will buy the goods and services it will take.
The question of money has already come to the front pages. The Labour plans were said to need an extra £28bn over the next five years. Labour has had to withdraw this proposal as it does not fit in with the numbers supplied by the OBR about what is affordable. Labour will want to find ways to increase the contribution of private capital, and will be looking to see if there other taxes it can raise to pay the bills. One way or another it has to accept the fact that wanting to get the power sector to net zero by 2030, five years ahead of the government, will require a lot of extra spending which will need subsidy and incentives. I doubt it can be done, but it certainly cannot and will not be done by private money alone. Closing down our fleet of gas fired power stations early means writing them off and substituting dearer ways of generating power when full costs are taken into account. There would need to be government subsidies for the electricity storage and transition costs. I doubt we could build enough new capacity in time and couple renewables with all the ways you would need to keep the lights on when there is no wind or sun.
UK energy customers already carry a net zero burden on their energy bills. Lower costs of buying electricity have been overridden to provide boosts to the use of renewables and nuclear in past bidding rounds. Subsidies have been built into some net zero decisions that are carried as a general charge on bills. A mesh of controlled prices, windfall taxes and preferred fuel choices has kept prices higher recently, with some subsidies providing some offset. Voters do not warm to higher fuel prices, and the government stepped in with large subsidies when the Ukraine war caused a spike in fossil fuel costs with the withdrawal of Russian oil and gas from the market.
Clearly scrapping all fossil fuel power stations and putting in many new renewable generators is costly. There will also need to be substantial storage capacity , with investment in some mixture of batteries, hydrogen production from renewable energy and pump storage to able to cope with interruptible sources of electricity. In the meantime as government thinks about how and who pays for all that extra cost there needs to be back up power stations capable of being switched on when the wind dies and the sun sets.
Today there is considerable opposition to siting new wind farms near settlements, to putting pylons across landscapes, to drilling for onshore oil and gas and to digging up roads and pavements to install larger capacity cables. These can become issues in local elections in particular. If the costs of electricity storage and carbon capture become too high then the cost of energy will be back on the agenda as a running sore for the government that imposed the costs.
The question of consumer acceptance needs more debate than the greens allow. The truth is hardly anyone wants to buy a heat pump to rip out their gas boiler. Most people are put off by the large installation cost. They do not want the double disruption of putting in more insulation followed by heat pump works. They find the overall costs far too high, several times the cost of a new gas boiler. They are concerned that in an older house it may never be possible to get a heat pump to provide higher temperatures given heat loss, and are worried that running costs will still be high as electricity is a much dearer fuel than gas per unit of energy. It is true the heat pump cuts the need for energy in use, but that can be offset by the higher costs of the energy.
Battery electric cars are a minority choice for individual customers. Many are put off by the high prices, by the difficulty in finding recharging places on longer journeys, by range issues and by the time it takes to recharge. Some of these problems will be resolved as and when more fast chargers are put in. Many people are waiting for the roll out of hydrogen as a fuel for trucks, and of synthetic fuel for planes. As this happens why not use those fuels to power a conventional internal combustion engined car or van? Why not keep your home gas boiler in the expectation that clean gases will be added to the gas mix as more are produced.?
The green revolution wants to change the way we heat our homes, the kind of transport we use, the products we buy from industry and the diets we eat. To do this there needs to be far more consumer enthusiasm than there is today. Government and business are working together on this strategy. They need to spend more time working out which new products people will want to own and will be affordable. We still have no idea of what combination of hydrogen based or synthetic fuel based transport and heating we will have and how much will require improved battery vehicles and heat pumps. There is a danger of backing too many competing technologies and failing to get any of them to the scale where they will work better and be more affordable.
Bite sized books have just published John’s updated short book “The $275 trillion Green revolution. Will consumers buy it? ” available through Amazon.
