Michael Liebreich is an entrepreneur, expert on clean energy and transport, former member of the Board of Trade, former member of the board of Transport for London, and a former Olympic skier.
British Conservatives risk sleepwalking into a decision that will haunt them for decades. Are we really going to reject the goal of net zero 2050?
It is easy to claim to be a net zero sceptic but not a climate sceptic, but in reality there is no such middle ground. Not being a climate sceptic does not mean embracing the most lurid disaster scenarios promoted by Just Stop Oil, but it does means accepting a few things as proven: that our emissions of CO2 and methane are driving higher temperatures; that those higher temperatures are disrupting physical and biological systems; that those disruptions will accelerate even if emissions flatten today; that they pose risks of an almost incalculable magnitude later this century; and that this country does not have a get out of jail free card.
Not being a climate sceptic therefore means accepting the need for action. And the science is clear on what that action needs to look like: temperatures will not stop rising until we stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere – i.e. until we reach net zero. Science also says that the sooner we get there, the less damage we will have caused, and the lower risk of runway effects, which may be unlikely but cannot be ruled out.
If it means anything to be a Conservative, it means accepting not just the need for action, but for leadership.
Margaret Thatcher certainly understood this. We do not wait until other nations act, even if their contribution to the problem is larger than ours. The UK is a rich country, with unmatched natural and human resources, and when we set sail for net zero 2050, we gave ourselves an entirely appropriate 30 years to get there. All other advanced economies followed suit; if they are now wavering in their resolve, that does not give us licence to do the same.
The good news is that leading the switch to new energy sources is a UK speciality. In the 18th Century, we were the first to switch from wood-burning to coal, triggering the industrial revolution. In 1911, Winston Churchill decided that Royal Navy ships would be fuelled by oil, rather than coal; 20 years later purchases of coal by the Royal Navy were down 90%. In 2012, over 40% of our electricity was still from coal; this year we shut our final coal plant.
The UK has truly earned international respect for its efforts on climate change.
We lead the G20 in reducing emission, eclipsing Germany with its wretched Energiewende by a wide margin. And not just because we deindustrialised: last year the UK overtook France to regain our place as the eighth biggest manufacturing nation in the world. We held on to our car industry and created hundreds of thousands of jobs. The City of London is the world’s leading hub for financing all things green and jolly. We created world-leading enterprises, including Octopus Energy, on track to be the Amazon of the global electricity system. And we protected our people – our pensioners in particular – from soaring international energy prices.
The tragedy is that at the last General Election we didn’t just walk away from this incredible achievement, we actively rejected it. We took entirely the wrong lesson from the Uxbridge byelection: having won by attacking a disastrous Labour policy – ULEZ expansion – we extrapolated to attacking our own successful policies, in an area shown to have cut-through with the public, and particularly with young urban voters.
We can of course have a discussion about the exact meaning of the words “net” and “zero”, and establish a bit of wiggle room. And there is most certainly a discussion to be had about how to get there. How much can we leave to the raw power of innovation? How much top-down dirigiste action is sadly needed? How do we maintain core industries, wind down those that have to go, and create new ones that will generate the jobs and exports of the future? How do we protect our most precious landscapes? And above all, how do we keep costs down, particularly for those struggling to get by?
What about Reform? Well, what about them! Let them live in the world of nostalgia. If we want to get back into power, we have to live in the world of reality.
In the world of reality, one in two new cars in China are electric: cheaper and better than anything our car companies are making. In the world of reality, gas, not renewables, is responsible for our high energy prices. And even if fracking were to produce a trickle of gas, it would disappear into the maw of the commodities markets. In the world of reality, wind and solar produce twice as much electricity as nuclear power. And when there’s no wind and sun, batteries are cheaper than natural gas.
In the world of reality, you can’t revive North Sea oil and gas output by giving tax breaks to oil and gas companies. In the world of reality, nuclear plants are slow and expensive to build. Small Modular Reactors might eventually prove cheaper and quicker, but we haven’t built one yet, and we would need hundreds to meet UK power demand. In the world of reality, hydrogen will be too expensive ever to serve as a heating fuel.
The luxury of being in opposition is that we can admit where we got things wrong and course-correct. We can acknowledge that many people became deeply uncomfortable with the costs that net zero seemed set to impose on them. But we must also use the time to go back to first principles – as scientists, as engineers, as financiers and as Conservatives.
We need to be the party that knows how to get cheap EVs into the hands of the people who need them – hard-pressed families who can’t live without their cars. We need to be the party that knows how to electrify heat, not because it’s good for the climate, but because it will be cheaper and healthier than natural gas, oil or LPG.
Above all, we need to get our mojo back on markets. It was when we led the move from state-mandated Feed-In Tariffs to Contracts for Difference with reverse auctions that the cost of wind and solar power plummeted. We are the party that knows, price signals work!
One problem is that we got so good at getting renewables built that we started having to pay wind farms to stop producing on windy days. Madness! Labour is going to push through new transmission lines, at huge cost and against people’s will. Instead, when there is too much wind or solar power, we should be dumping free electricity on local consumers. There will be no more NIMBYs. Then, when there is no wind and sun, shift the timing of demand using smart vehicle charging, electric heating and home batteries.
Millions of Brits are already buying when power is cheap; we should be thinking about how to help millions more do the same – as well as how to protect the most vulnerable.
Over the next few years, Labour is going to throw taxpayer money at net zero. They will manage to reduce emissions, but they won’t manage to achieve a 100% clean electricity system by 2030, and they won’t deliver low utility bills. We should be going into the 2029 election restating our commitment to net zero 2050 and laying out an inspiring, affordable, job-creating, reality-based programme to get there.
If we don’t, we will remain in opposition. And we will deserve to.
