This will not be the energy-policy election… but it should be

In a guest post, Ed Rennie of Climate Debate UK argues that Net Zero policies are a disaster - and the only way to turn the political tide is start writing letters to our would-be representatives.

The general election this year will focus on several key issues, including, as usual: tax, the economy and our public services. But it remains highly unlikely that our country’s dire energy policies will become a prominent concern. Not unlike the issue of unsustainably high levels of inward migration, the state of the UK’s energy provision has already been undermining our prosperity. But so far there has not been a genuine political focus on this most urgent of issues, either in our mainstream ‘legacy’ media, or amongst new media where, although it has had some attention, it has still not had the focus it needs.

In short, we are likely heading towards an energy crisis. Due in large part to the policy direction that began in the early 1990s – and which accelerated after the 2008 Climate Change Act and is now known as our Net Zero approach to emissions - we are facing not just much higher energy bills, but also potential blackouts. The so-called renewable energy sources, especially wind power, simply cannot provide the affordable and reliable energy that small businesses and households need at the price levels that have been so vital to the economic improvements we have seen across the world in recent decades.

Additionally, existing carbon and energy taxes and further planned restrictions on motor vehicle transportation and domestic energy use mean that, whatever the result of the election, we are headed in a direction that will make the cost-of-living crisis a semi-permanent feature of most people’s lives.

How did we get here? One major driver has been a small army of letter writers who have inundated parliamentarians with dire stories about the ‘climate emergency’. Of course, high-level institutional lobbying (both national and global) was significant. But for ordinary backbench MPs in the hitherto three main parties, letters provided additional pressure to convince them that an imminent climate crisis was chief amongst their constituents’ concerns. Consequently, most MPs were convinced that a move away from hydrocarbon sources of energy was an unquestionable imperative.

Many of us understand that, whatever the extent of global warming and however unprecedented human beings’ contribution to it may be, the answer to our energy needs must still involve nuclear power, gas, oil, and even coal. Therefore, we must begin the pushback against these policies. We can all start by writing to our prospective parliamentary candidates, asking them about their views on energy. To make this process easier, the organisation I co-founded, Climate Debate UK, has drafted a template letter that you can download for this exact purpose, to modify, or send as it is.

We would be delighted to hear the responses you receive, to help us to begin developing a resource for more effective communication with the next generation of our representatives. People who are sceptical of climate policy, and people who believe that all policy agendas must be subject to democratic debate, must actively engage with the democratic process itself, even if only one or two smaller parties seem to stand for our views. The unchecked climate-policy agenda is damaging not just the UK and Europe’s economies but also already undermining the economic progress of much of the developing world.

Our democratic representatives must be made to understand what is at stake and change direction. At the very least, they need to be made aware that, despite the ‘green’ lobby being very wealthy and vociferous, a much larger and growing number of people are beginning to recognise that the climate policy agenda is not working in our interests, and that MPs will lose their jobs in future elections if they fail to represent us.

Ed Rennie is founder and co-director of Climate Debate UK. Follow Ed on X/Twitter: @edrennie77

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Forthcoming event: Can the UK afford Net Zero?

Academy of Ideas Economy Forum, Thursday 27 June, 7pm (UK), via Zoom

Attendance is free but please register to get login details via Eventbrite.
With a UK general election just weeks away, the major parties will be pitching their different plans for the next five years. But there is one major policy on which they are almost all united: to reach ‘Net Zero’ emissions by 2050. Indeed, there is such unanimity among politicians and the mainstream media on this issue that there is unlikely to be very much discussion about it at all during the campaign.

Yet achieving this goal would involve not only a transformation in our economic system but a sacrifice of many other objectives which may be equally or more important to the electorate. The UK is running a unsustainable fiscal deficit of more than 6% of GDP. All parties promise to spend more health care, housing, education, infrastructure, defence, etc, while also promising to freeze or reduce the tax burden. Alongside such promises, realistic estimates of the costs of adopting Net Zero, not just for the UK but for Europe and the USA, start at 5% of GDP for the next 25 years and may be as high as 10% of GDP.

There is no prospect of financing such expenditures by borrowing. Cutting other public and private investment will accelerate the recent decline in the country’s capital stock and GDP per head. Raising taxes is both politically difficult and counter-productive for economic growth. Within such tight fiscal and macroeconomic constraints the money to pay for Net Zero must come either by reducing other public spending or by a drastic squeeze on private consumption.

The failure to discuss such choices openly raises questions about whether a future government will have the authority and public consent to impose the sacrifices required by Net Zero. Or will the result be evasion and a rapid loss of trust in and public support for the new government?

SPEAKER:
Professor Gordon Hughes
Former adviser to the World Bank and professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh.

READING:
Financing the energy transition: Do the numbers add up?, Professor Gordon Hughes, Global Warming Policy Foundation, March 2024