Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won't Even Save the Planet)

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Credible Government plans exist for over a third of the UK’s required emissions reductions to meet the Sixth Carbon Budget in the mid-2030s; with a fair wind we will manage another quarter; and over a third cannot be relied on to deliver the necessary emissions reductions. A young woman protests the UK’s target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, which many believe is too late.

In the end, the mere prospect of carbon capture and storage gave policy makers a way out of making the much needed cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.The author demonstrates that the people who have recommended and made these decisions have absolutely no idea how much they will cost, no idea of whether they will work or the technologies they are relying on will deliver and worst of all he shows how many of the measures that they have already put in place are actually increasing the amount of CO2 we pump into the atmosphere instead of reducing it. However, these advances are too few and far between to deliver the kind of step change that is urgently required. Instead of representing everyday Aussies like you, our politicians have chosen to pander to big business and inner-city elites. By making such outlandish carbon neutrality claims, these corporations are not only misleading consumers and investors, they are opening themselves up to increasing legal and reputational liability.

In this analysis we look at the cost impacts of delays in these policies to household bills and the UK as a whole. Today’s report makes over 300 recommendations for filling out policies over the next year, reflecting the scale of the task at hand as the Government moves from strategy to implementation. That said, most attention in the mid-1990s was focused on increasing energy efficiency and energy switching (such as the UK’s move from coal to gas) and the potential of nuclear energy to deliver large amounts of carbon-free electricity.

On January 1, 2000, the BBC listed the noughties (derived from "nought" [10] a word used for zero in many English-speaking countries), as a potential moniker for the new decade. But progress on climate and energy policies to shift to newer, cleaner technologies has in some ways slowed in recent years, for example, with the ban on onshore wind farms. Consequently the only application of carbon capture in actual operation then – and now – is to use the trapped gas in enhanced oil recovery schemes.

The CCC welcomes the new Local Net Zero Forum, but it remains unclear how central, devolved and local Government will operate in concert to deliver Net Zero. It has also hastened the destruction of the natural world by increasing deforestation today, and greatly increases the risk of further devastation in the future. It also dismantles the bizarre decision by the UK Government to make a legal obligation to reach ‘Net Zero’ by 2050 without a strategy for achieving this goal. This hard-hitting polemic provides a timely critique of a potentially devastating political consensus which could hobble Britain's economy, cost billions and not even be effective.

NETs are increasingly being factored into emissions reduction plans, despite being completely unproven at scale. A technology was needed not only to slow down the increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but actually reverse it. In this critical decade for climate action, companies’ current plans do not reflect the necessary urgency for emission reductions,” says Thomas Day, co-author of the report.