The Retreat From Net Zero, And How To Stop It

The sound of Russian gunfire and the alarm has gone off on energy security. The retreat from the net zero strategies is all too apparent: keeping coal-fired power stations running, increasing the coal burn, drilling for more oil and gas and even considering opening a new coal mine, cutting fuel duties and subsidising household energy, and supporting large energy users. The simple illusion that building lots of renewables can be pursued without taking seriously the security of supply consequences has left the UK exposed to the biggest impacts of the gas price shocks, even though it imports only around 4% of its gas from Russia. Decarbonisation with intermittent, low-density, disaggregated wind requires a lot of back-up, which will mostly be gas in the next decade or so. Asleep at the wheel, having neglected security of supply, ministers now face the consequences of no gas storage and short-term spot wholesale markets. Ignoring the facts that 80% of global energy comes from fossil fuels, that the destruction of the natural environment to soak up carbon has left the Amazon as a net emitter, and that the stock of carbon in the atmosphere has continued to go up year on year by 2 parts per million since 1990, including last year with the lockdowns, means that the claim that net zero on a territorial basis will unilaterally stop the UK causing climate change is sadly misguided. The current energy crisis – what I call the "first net zero energy price crisis" – should sound a very loud alarm bell. It is time to face up to what unilateralism means: paying the costs of our carbon consumption, and applying that pollution carbon price to imports as well as agriculture, heating, power, transport and industry at home.