I had been tempted to retire from posting comments on CO2ECONOMICS, partly because so much of the basic truths I described were becoming mainstream, and partly because my own direct involvement in climate issues and their analysis was reducing. However there is nothing like a piece of truly egregious dishonesty, or a deliberate attempt to hide the facts, to stimulate response in the climate policy debate.
Step forward Nigel Farage in his recent interview with Laura Kuenssberg (20 July). According to the fiscal maestro, future tax reductions would be funded, inter alia, through the fiscal savings of £ 30 billion that would result from scrapping the government’s net zero targets. The £30 billion estimate was attributed to the independent and usually authoritative Office of Budget Responsibility.
[We should not, incidentally, ignore the hapless Tories under Kemi Badenoch in this discussion, as they have been only too happy to jump on the “scrap net zero” bandwagon.]
As ever, when dubious arguments appear to depend on evidence from normally reliable sources, it is worth checking the sources themselves. And the Farage claim is no exception. Simple headlines conceal the real truths which tell a rather different story.
The most recent OBR projections (July 2025) do indeed indicate a £30 billion a year cost to the public finances to 2050. However two-thirds of this stems from lost government revenues – especially fuel duty – as drivers switch to electric vehicles.
It’s actually a tax cut!
In other words one major impact of net zero policies is expected to be a huge reduction of about £ 20 billion per annum in the take of the hated fuel duty tax, something one might expect a Reform leader, in other contexts, to be championing or celebrating. The impact of net zero in this respect is not a cost to the economy or living standards, but simply the reduced take from one particular means of taxation, easily replaceable by an equivalent levy, eg via road pricing, on electric vehicle use, or in many other ways.
Moreover scrapping net zero policies would not mean that drivers would stop changing to ever improving electric cars.
There is a lot more from the OBR on climate change that deserves serious discussion. Among their more important conclusions are the following:
· Estimates of the real cost to the economy of a net zero policy have fallen dramatically in the last few years. (This of course is an even more important metric than the impact on public finances.)
· The cost of net zero policies is a magnitude less than the costs we face through a global failure to address the problem.
· Acting early carries a substantially lower cost burden than delay.
Surely time for one of our political heavyweights to put the record straight!
