Net zero

Wednesday

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

‘Pray your boilers don’t fail’: the Church of England is in the grip of eco-zealots

It came to pass in 2020 that a decree went out from the General Synod that all the Church of England must be carbon net-zero by 2030. And this ruling was first made when Justin Welby was Archbishop of Canterbury. And all went to have a good hard look at their church heating systems, every one into his own vestry cupboard… How easy it is to issue a decree from on high; and how hard it is for the people on the ground to have to deal with its consequences. The miscreants now have to rip out the new gas boilers and replace them with an eco alternative One of

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Britain’s energy policy is unsustainable

Unsustainable energy Sir: Sir Richard Dearlove (‘Net cost’, 22 November) succinctly sums up the views of many of us who cannot understand the whole lemming-like net-zero policy. This leap into the abyss was precipitated by Boris Johnson and the torch is now carried by Ed Miliband, who seems to have carte blanche to make matters worse. The destruction of our automobile and energy industries in terms of GDP and Treasury receipts is mindless – more so in a country producing less than 1 per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions. Interestingly, Matt Ridley’s article in the same issue (‘Star power’) gives longer-term hope regarding fusion energy generation, but it will be

Monday

Tim Shipman

Britain's expensive energy problem – with Claire Coutinho

16 min listen

Britain has an energy problem – while we produce some of the cleanest in the world, it’s also the most expensive, and that’s the case for almost every avenue of energy. On the day the Spectator hosts its Energy Summit in Westminster, a report commissioned by the Prime Minister has found that the UK is the most expensive place to produce nuclear energy. This is important for so many avenues of government – from future proofing for climate change, to reducing the burden households are facing through the cost-of-living crisis. Claire Coutinho, shadow secretary of state for energy, and political editor Tim Shipman join economics editor Michael Simmons to talk

Thursday

Richard Dearlove

Britain’s national security must not be sacrificed to net zero

Those who, like myself, experienced life behind the Iron Curtain understand instinctively that centrally planned economies beholden to an ideology do not bring benefit to the majority of the population on whom they are imposed. A few top-level individuals prosper, but the citizen finds himself and his aspirations crushed by the diktats of central government. The state itself is similarly confined by a set of ideas which are presented as self-evident truths which constrain its policy–making and exclude challenge. That Iron Curtain model describes pretty accurately the UK’s energy policy, driven as it is by the ideological pursuit of net zero and the diktats required to implement it. Thus: I

Matt Ridley

Are we finally about to crack fusion energy?

Imagine dropping a pea-sized capsule through a spherical chamber and hitting it with a colossal bolt of laser energy as it falls. If the capsule contains a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two heavy versions (isotopes) of hydrogen, then the atoms may fuse, turning into helium and emitting fast neutrons as they do so. Those neutrons and their accompanying radiation can heat molten salts around the walls of the chamber and that heat can be used to power industrial processes – or to boil water and generate electricity through a steam turbine. That’s the dream of a firm called Xcimer, one of the more ingenious fusion energy startups, based in

Wednesday

Michael Gove

Is Net Zero ‘mania’ over? And Labour’s migration crackdown

50 min listen

This week: a Commons showdown over asylum – and a cold shower for Net Zero orthodoxy. After Shabana Mahmood’s debuts Labour’s new asylum proposals, Michael and Maddie ask whether her barnstorming performance signals a new star in Starmer’s government – or whether the Home Secretary is dangerously over-promising on a problem no minister has yet cracked. Is her Denmark-inspired model workable? Can she get it past the Labour left? And are the right-wing plaudits a blessing – or a trap? Then: at COP30, the great climate jamboree struggles to command attention. As Ed Miliband charges ahead with his Net Zero agenda, the pair question whether Britain has finally passed ‘peak

Thursday

Oscar Edmondson

Why energy is the new political battleground

12 min listen

With three weeks until the Budget, the main political parties have been setting out their economic thinking. Each faces the same bind: anaemic growth, fiscal constraints and uncomfortable exposure to the bond markets. The upshot is that there is less ‘clear blue water’ on the economy between Labour, the Conservatives and Reform. This has left a space for energy to emerge as the policy area in which to differentiate the parties in this new era of five-party politics. The Westminster energy consensus is over – Net Zero is not as popular as it once was – and the parties are setting out their stalls. Could energy win the next election?

James Heale

Energy is the new political battleground

With three weeks until the Budget, the main political parties have been setting out their economic thinking. Each faces the same bind: anaemic growth, fiscal constraints and uncomfortable exposure to the bond markets. The upshot is that there is less ‘clear blue water’ on the economy between Labour, the Conservatives and Reform. Even Sir Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, irritated some colleagues by appearing to suggest he would raise income tax if he were in Rachel Reeves’s shoes at his party’s conference. ‘It’s a good job no one is listening to us,’ jokes a fellow frontbencher. If the economy is less of a dividing line in British politics, what might

Melissa Kite

Did our B&B guests smell a rat?

As I was showing a couple from Lincolnshire to their room, I smelt a rat. I don’t mean metaphorically, about them. I mean that halfway down the hallway, as I walked two paying guests from the front door towards the staircase, the most overwhelming stench of rotting carcass wafted upwards from the floor, right next to the fancy dresser displaying the tourist leaflets. I glanced at them nervously to see whether they had noticed. They were telling me about their house-hunting. They wanted to move to West Cork to go off grid and get in touch with nature. That’s handy, I thought, because nature is currently rotting under the floorboards.

Thursday

Melissa Kite

The folly of solar panels

The house fell silent as the last of the tourists took their oat milk and pretend cheese from the guest fridge. Winter came in the nick of time. I’ve bitten my lip for six months while the B&B guests have forced their pro-Palestine, anti-Trump views on me, while refusing to eat normal food or use the dishwasher because, in leftie parlance, dishwashers cause neurological damage. ‘What does the shower cause?’ I wanted to ask some of them, who didn’t even use one towel or open one wrapped mini-soap in a week-long stay. Is soap carcinogenic now? Are you staging some sort of Gaza protest by not washing? The bookings dried

Wednesday

James Heale

What is Tony Blair up to?

15 min listen

Tony Blair is making waves in Westminster today after his institute published a report on net zero that appears to undermine Ed Miliband and Labour’s green agenda. In his foreword – while not directly critical of the UK government – he encouraged governments around the world to reconsider the cost of net zero. Many have compared Blair’s comments to those made by Kemi Badenoch several weeks ago and questioned the timing – just 48 hours before the local elections. What is Blair up to? Should Labour listen to Tony? Also on the podcast, with the local elections tomorrow, we take one final look at the polling. With Labour expecting big

Thursday

Douglas Murray

The hypocrisy of the Heathrow Nimbys

Some readers may have noticed that it takes rather a long time to get anything done in Britain these days. For example, if you added them all together, I wonder how many hours of Prime Minister’s Questions and BBC Question Time – under consecutive governments – have been taken up by a discussion of HS2. The debate over whether the country could construct a faster way to get out of Birmingham seems to have dangled over us for decades now. It is always we who must become impoverished and everyone else who can become enriched It is the same with almost every other major infrastructure project. That is because the

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: The futility of net zero

Not zero Sir: I was delighted to see your leading article about the impossibility of net zero (‘Carbon candour’, 22 March). We need now to expose its futility. The UK’s efforts will make no difference at all to global temperature. Whether it is naturally occurring or produced through coal burning, there is not the slightest chance of stopping the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (not ‘carbon’, which is nasty black stuff). Guy Liardet Meonstoke, Hampshire Ideological bullets Sir: ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’, they say. But by biting the hand of business with her Budget, Rachel Reeves has shown total recklessness (‘The Rachel capers’, 22 March). By killing

Friday

Katy Balls

Does Kemi have a plan?

12 min listen

It’s been Kemi-takes-action week for the Conservatives, with the leader of the opposition trying to prove that she can – in fact – do policy. She launched a series of policy reviews, which will be delivered in a steady stream between now and conference, with a headline statement on Net Zero, declaring that Britain’s 2050 emissions target was ‘impossible’. That went down well with the party, and many thought her announcement felt genuinely proactive rather than reactive. After months of being criticised for not doing enough, is she finally shifting the dial? Will it be enough to avoid a local elections wipeout? Katy Balls speaks to James Heale and Paul Goodman. Produced by

Thursday

Katy Balls

Reeves vs Miliband

10 min listen

After last week’s bond market jitters, the Chancellor pledged to go ‘further and faster’ to improve the UK’s anaemic economic growth. It looks as though Rachel Reeves’ hunt for growth could come at the expense of Labour’s green agenda. Reeves is poised to make a series of announcements over the next month, starting with a softened stance on non-doms and approval for Heathrow’s third runway – as well as expansions at Gatwick and Luton airports. The move indicates a shift in priorities, with economic growth taking precedence over climate targets. Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, is believed to be privately opposed to the airport expansion scheme. What happened to the

Thursday

Melissa Kite

The Irish laugh in the face of EU regulations

Our house was suddenly shrouded in a thick, grey mass of cloud and it felt like a sea fog had descended. The Irish could not give a damn for rules and regs and no one is going to tell them what they can set fire to To some extent it had, but the fog grew in density until it wasn’t feasible that this was coming off the sea. The builder boyfriend came in from the stable yard and reported an acrid smell in the rain. This is what happens when fog descends. People burn their most difficult and illegal waste when visibility is low. ‘It’s the plasticky dew,’ said the

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Is Trump an energy humanist?

27 min listen

Freddy speaks to Robert Bryce – author of an authoritative susbstack on energy – about Trump’s energy plans for his second term. The President elect’s Cabinet picks have been raising eyebrows, including the appointment of Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy. He is an ‘unapologetic energy humanist’ according to Robert and this is a statement of intent when it comes to energy production and driving energy costs down. But what exactly is an energy humanist? And will Chris Wright be able to ‘drill baby drill’? Freddy and Robert discuss. 

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Miliband's net zero madness & meet Reform UK's new poster boy

39 min listen

This week: Miliband’s empty energy promises. Ed Miliband has written a public letter confirming that Labour plans to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030. The problem with this, though, is that he doesn’t have the first idea about how to do it. The grid doesn’t have the capacity to transmit the required energy, Ross Clark writes, and Miliband’s claim that wind is ‘nine times cheaper’ than fossil fuels is based upon false assumptions. What is more, disclosed plans about ‘GB Energy’ reveal that Miliband’s pet project isn’t really a company at all – but an investment scheme. This empty vessel will funnel taxpayer money into the hands of private companies

Thursday

Ross Clark

Home insulation is the latest net zero farce

Zoe Godrich of Swansea might best be described as collateral damage in Britain’s glorious march towards net zero. Three years ago, she had her three-bedroom home fitted with cavity-wall insulation – which the government is out to encourage through its Great British Insulation Scheme. Sadly for her, it has not worked out quite as intended. With Labour now promising billions more to retrofit homes with this kind of stuff, what could possibly go wrong? Within weeks of having it fitted, Godrich says her walls started to run with water, and black mould started to form on her walls. She can no longer use two of her bedrooms, and she and

Friday

Kate Andrews

Fuel for thought: how business can make use of hydrogen

40 min listen

How we achieve net zero is more than just a political or environmental decision. It is one that will have huge societal impacts. How we get our energy translates to how we move around, how we heat our homes. It’s a reminder that the energy transition has many trade-offs, as we navigate achieving net zero while protecting the wellbeing of people and industry, especially during a cost-of-living crisis.  Might hydrogen be part of the answer? In this special podcast, The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews speaks with those working in government, NGOs, and industry about how to unlock this technology. She is joined by Chris Stark, Chief Executive of Climate