Net-zero targets have hamstrung British prosperity

Britain’s ‘net-zero economy’ is booming, creating more better-paid jobs than any other sector, but it is all being put at risk by the government’s reversal on policies on electric vehicles and heat pumps.

That, at any rate, is what the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) wants us to believe. In a report this week, these groups claim that the net-zero target has spawned an industry worth £74 billion, up 9 per cent in just a year. It has created 765,000 jobs which are 1.6 times as productive as the average UK job and which offer average wages of £44,600, compared with £35,400 for the rest of the economy. Yet, ‘at a time when the US and EU are ramping up investment and tax breaks in the pursuit of clean industries setting up shop on their soil, the UK has been chopping and changing’, with ‘mixed signals, policy U-turns and contradictory political rhetoric’ discouraging investment. In other words, never mind about such trifles as the 2,500 jobs to be lost at Port Talbot as the blast furnaces are closed, taking with them Britain’s remaining capacity for primary steel-making – there are better-paid green jobs out there for anyone who wants them.

This analysis falls at the first hurdle. The EU is doing pretty much the same as Britain in retreating from net-zero targets when they collide head-on with reality. Just as Rishi Sunak’s government put back the proposed ban on new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, the EU – which never planned to ban them until 2035 in the first place – has revised its rules so that internal combustion engines will still be allowed after 2035 as long as they are capable of running on synthetic fuel.