Future Energy Costs and Infrastructure

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Right now, many UK investors are paying unnecessary fees to their platform , but IG is for smart investors, because they charge zero commission on all stocks, shares and ETFs plus zero platform fees, so more of your money stays in your portfolio. Search IG.com to find out more. IG Trade, Invest, Progress. Capital is at risk. Other fees may apply. Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Oskre Pinson. For nearly two decades, net zero has sat at the heart of Britain's policy agenda. Once framed as a clear moral imperative, it saw political parties promising to slash carbon emissions and ministers racing to position the UK as a leader on the international stage. But as economic pressures and global instability mount, that consensus is beginning to fray. Now, in this very special episode of the podcast, you will be hearing an extract from a debate that we staged earlier in this week titled the Net Zero Debate, Bin It or Back It. You'll be hearing from those on opposing sides of this debate. Lord Lilly and journalist Liam Halligan will be making the case for the skeptics, and Bob Ward of the Influential Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment, as well as Shahara Ali , former Deputy Leader of the Green Party, will be making the case for the defence. This debate was chaired by our assistant editor Isabel Hardman, and we pick up the discussion after they've each made their opening statements and begin to probe holes in each other's arguments. I hope you enjoy. Well thank you. Uh that's the first section of our debate. All of our speakers have made their opening arguments. The cases have been made. And now it's time to allow each side to expose the weaknesses in their opponents' arguments, and they're going to go head to head as they take it in turns to debate each other across the floor. I'm just going to open by turning to Bob and Shara , it was an accusation that that Liam made um that you're in a a cult, and you may have noticed that that the floor is not currently with you. And I wonder whether you're a little bit worried that your side is losing the argument more widely. Bob. So um the opinion polls show that the majority of the UK public want climate change to be tackled because they can see it's happening around them. They can see that the weather's changing, they can see that coastal erosion is causing more damage. So the fact is that climate change is existing. Peter likes to down play its significance, but I just suggest you go and look at the website of the Royal Society. Our leading scientists, not just climate scientists, all the scientists, they all lay clear that it is an important it is a risk that is increasing, and that if we allow it to continue, it will have truly damaging and very severe impacts. And that unfortunately, there's an attempt to try and hide that fact. The net zero debate in the UK at the moment is being framed as if it's a bureaucratic target, and there's a desperate attempt not to mention why we have it. Liam managed to get all the way through his seven minutes, didn't even mention climate change once. So what we really need is a debate where we bring in all the facts. We can talk about good policy and bad policy on net zero, but to pretend that net zero doesn't matter, that its virtue signalling is just denying the scientific case for it. Liam, are you in denial? No, and I I I reject the use of that language. I think just as the kind of we've all heard of the use of the word transphobe to close down the debate when it comes to sex-based rights and common sense in one aspect of our politics. Well, I think the use of the word denier when we talk about climate change is outrageous because people use you often usually use the word denier when they're expressing disgusting views about the Holocaust, conspiracy theories about the Holocaust. There are plenty of scientists, if you like, who don't agree with the science, it's just they barely get a hearing because they're not trough nuzzling grants all over the place . You know, talk to Michael Kelly, Emeritus Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge, talked to really mainstream, highly regarded economists like Dieter Helm, who say that uh he's not I have to be careful how I characterize his views, but he's absolutely adamant. Listen to his podcast s, that the current policies on net zero are in his words not credible. So I don't think I'm in denial. I just think that what we're doing at the moment, yes, it's great to move to renewables, yes, hydrocarb ons are finite, but the pace at which we're doing it is completely mad. We're we're not taking the country with us. The country can see that there's now a rapacious green industrial complex that's combining with this kind of middle class neurosis about telling other people how lacking in virtue that they are to create a situation where we are destroying our economy. So I don't think I'm in denial at all . Shara Ali, you seem to be quite anti lots of other middle class neuroses, so why are you in favour of this one? What, because I think that trans women are men. Is that a middle class neurasist? Right. Um look , uh I was at a I was chairing a meeting in London's living room with the then mayor, uh, Ken Livingston, in two thousand and four, right, twenty two years ago. And he was asked the question, What are we going to do about climate change? And he he replied, It's too l ate. That's 22 years ago. Now, it's not because he was in denial about the reality of the uh the climate calamity that could impose itself upon us. It was rather because he didn't think with, his understanding of human nature, that we would get there in time. And I think it's our problem is much more to do with human behavior and habits. I'm a hypocrite, I'm a knowing hypocrite. Uh Liam came with his active cycling uh measures to to the venue, I hope you don't mind my mentioning. Laudable, right? Um I used a car to get to quite an old car to get to the station and I made my journey from there. So I'm not um in the business of holier than now . Speaking of middle class, it looks it's incredibly I mean the middle class set, if you want to call them that, yes, they probably are better on average in doing their waste streaming in the house but it's it's futile it's frankly futile when you can see other neighbors not playing ball and when you look at the fact that there's 1% of the emissions that UK citizens are responsible for, you might then ask, if we are unilaterally taking steps, which we might in some sense find painful, what's the point when you've got 99% carrying on business as usual. That's not a reason not to pursue the goal because there's so much at stake. So the bottom line is that we need to collectively change our lifestyles, I think that's basically the hard nut that you know we have to crack. That's gonna be unpalatable. I'm not in the in the business uh uh as um in political communication to tell people what to do. If that can't be achieved through democratic uh liberal democratic means, through the popular vote and through persuasion, it's simply not gonna happen. I'm I don't agree with finally an important point um you you know I don't agree with the the tactics of environmental activists to block roads and stopping emergency vehicles reaching hospitals, right? I'm not in favor of throwing canned soup at Van Gogh or you know, bore getting on top of a train in Canning Town. These things happened in recent years. This is not a way to win friends and influence people. But those who are sufficiently educated, which is the majority of us, understand that there's something going wrong in the ecosystem and biodiversity. There is a scientific cause for it. And even if you felt, as um Lord Liddy appears to, that the risk wasn't as extreme as we're being told, I think it's jolly well real enough that even if you think that we've got uh five hundred years instead of fifty years, we need to start acting now because of the inbuilt inertia and intransigence of human beings to change their habits. Lord Lily, I'll I'll come to you on that point about inbuilt inertia and time scales, but also why are the Greens doing so well if this isn't a concern? Well, they're certainly not playing to this concern. They're playing to a belief that you can solve all our problems by taxing a few mythical billionaires. If you could, I'd be all in favour of it, but unfortunately the billionaires would then up sticks and go elsewhere. So that's not a very good story. But they very rarely mentioned the uh environment has mentioned that uh it it's an eco-free uh green Party at the moment and, uh it needs more people in him like in it like him than uh the present leadership. You were talking about the the time scale. When I I speak a lot in schools about various things, and I asked them when this subject comes come up up, I say, What do you really fear ? What of the consequences of global uh warming do you really fear? And they usually say it's if the ice caps melt and the sea level rises by thirty meters, that would sort of wipe out whole cities. And I said to them, yeah, I understand that, but do you know what the IPCC says about that? It says that that process, if we do nothing, will take centuries and probably millennia to happen, because it takes quite a lot of warmth to melt the ice cream. So the warmest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica is minus 14 degre es. And you don't need to be a scientist to know that ice doesn't melt until it's zero degrees. So it's got to rise 14 degrees before it will start melting. Now the ice that's floating around will be maybe melt melt melted by the uh the sea beforehand, but we're talking about something which will take centuries, if not millennia. And humankind is very adaptable, I think, and very inventive. I think they'll found ways of using energy that doesn't cause climate change within less than a few centuries and certainly less than a few thousand years. So um I don't think we're being overrushed. Peter Lilly makes it sound as though you're just being a bit of a pessimist about human capacity for invention. Um I'm not uh a pessimist at all. I think we've shown that we can actually get off fossil fuels much quicker than we are at the moment. Uh we know what the alternatives are. It's about deploying them . There are challenges with every energy form, but renewables are cheaper now than fossil fuels in most parts of the world. They're not. I know you don't want to believe it. I know it's much easier to believe that you can carry on burning fossil fuels, but even if you did, you have to accept the fact that our fossil fuel supplies, basically our oil, crude oil production in the North Sea is cut by seventy-eight percent since its peak in two thousand. So even if you believe that we should carry on burning fossil fuels, what you're doing is saying we'll become more and more dependent on the supplies from other parts of the world and we'll be more exposed to the risks that we're seeing currently play out in the Strait of Hormuz. So it's just not going to work for us, even if you didn't accept the science of climate change, and I'm glad that Liam finally uh declared his hand and he doesn't accept the science of climate change. Um the fact is that what Peter Lilly is describing about the science of climate change is wrong You're talking about a report that's twelve years old. Sorry? Your report you're citing is twelve years old. It was 2018, and then in this subsequent uh report, they said we have no reason to change our view. You wrote to me at the time, and I wrote back pointing to it. I wrote to you because you keep misquoting it. I didn't. I quoted it word for word. Word for word . What way did I misquote it? What way did I misquote it? You consistently misrepresent both what they are warning in terms of the risks and what they are saying about the potential economic consequences. I read out and I promise you and you can go and check it, word for word, the opening paragraphs of that chapter of the IPCC.. Uh Mr Ward said that I misquoted, I didn't misquote it. Then he said I misrepresented it, I didn't misrepresent it, I simply read it. That's what it said. He doesn't like it, but that's what it's not like it because it's not true, Peter Right. Now I was very keen for you two to be able to respond to one another on that, but this is a debate specifically about the solution to the problem which is net zero and whether this is the correct solution. So I may start ringing my bell if we end up going round in circles on who is a denier, who isn't, who created which report it who else? Because I feel as though we may have covered that ground and we may be just slightly widening the focus from what we're actually debating. So just coming to you, Liam, on um on the solution on net zero, is it not that the case as Shahar said that that actually it it's not just about the economy, it's also about um and I don't want to sound like a you know a David Cameron Conservative poster in two thousand and nine, but it is also about quality of life. And if we don't have a functioning environment, if we uh allow our biodiversity to be depleted even further, then we won't have a decent quality of life. I think that's fair. Just before that, I just wanted to say, you know, the spectators broadly a centre-right um publication, of course. Uh and so I pay tribute to my opponents on the other side for for debating this. This is this isn't a way fixture for them. On the other hand, every time I've been at a TV studio, any time over the last ten years, it's been an away fixture for me. And it's not actually this is not actually a left-right thing. Louise Gilmour, who's the Scottish Secretary of the GMB, Britain's third largest union? She says that the idea that well-paid green jobs are going to replace the industrial jobs that we're destroying here and now is quotes delusional. This is arguably the most destructive industrial calamity in our nation's history. And that's exactly the view also of Gary Smith, who runs the GMB. So this is not a left-right thing . So of course I care about the environment, of course I care about bequeathing a better world for our children and our grandchildren. But I think this threat is being massively overhyped for commercial and polit ical reas ons for for for you know grant grabbing and political reasons. I mean look at the Labour Party at the moment. Rachel Reeves has been lobbying ferociously to actually ease the energy profits levy in the North Sea because you know she actually is starting to get it the fact that um Norway and Denmark are drilling in the North Sea and um far more than we are and selling us our their oil and gas is complet ely mad . But now, because the Greens won the Gaunton and Denton by-election, that whole idea has been scrapped. So this is not about the science, this is about postur ing and positioning and culture wars. And that is not a good enough reason, uh Isabel, that our physical environment notwithstanding, which I do think is holding up pretty well for the most part, that's not a good enough reason to destroy our economy. Because you know yes, we need leisure time, but people need to work. This is a democracy. We have to take the public with us and the greet the the other side of the the floor is losing the argument, not just in this room, if I may say so, but across the country. I cited a poll earlier from a s an academic study by King's College London. This wasn't a paid for right wing conspiracy opinion poll. This was an academic study by King's College London. Even Keir Starmer himself has acknowledged that the consensus about net zero is now broken and not a moment too soon in my view. Well, many of them many of them are. I think the issue the challenge that Liam uh highlights is is absolutely the case. If you are losing jobs or moving jobs, if you are taking away our capacity for North Sea oil and there's a big argument around can't we maintain that level of energy security in the short term? And then the argument comes back, well, no, because it's just going into the global market anyway, so you won't get any benefit from it. It still does hurt and harm the families in those industries. Absolutely no doubt about it. A bit like with the coal industries in Wales. Which have to find other ways of innovating and finding a way to earn a decent key to raise a family. So that is the short term prognosis and harm and hurt that can befall people through an ill thought through net zero strategy. And the way in which the Green Party develops the communication and I'll challenge Liam who said that we're losing the argument in the room. With respect, we don't know that yet. We're gonna take the vote at the yes. But um, you know, for sure at the start it's it's not looking good. But the trouble is that debate isn't being had , and I've I've already said and I've acknowledged it's a hard debate to win because we're being asked potentially to make sacrifices. And where are those trade-offs being taken? The reason why the trade unions aren't going to be automatically with us is because they see with their membership that they're losing. They're losing their livelihoods. And it's it's all well and good for those in a sort of a top-down manner, particularly politicians, saying that this is for the good of the country, for the good of future generations. But when they see hypocrisy writ large in carrying on taking flights which are completely unsustainable, they don't want to make that sacrifice. So essentially coming back to the issue, the real problem here is is like a social coordination problem . I think generally speaking, people are mind ed to make um compromises or even sacrifices if they feel everybody else is doing the same. It can look futile if the UK is pressing ahead with policies which harm some people , maybe benefit a few others, even within the UK, but it looks futile if nobody else is pulling their weight globally. That's a problem. It also looks futile if within our society some people are having to shoulder the burden of the economic cost small numbers. So we need to find a better strategy. Peter, if you accept that the sh that climate change is at some point going to be something that that governments do need to address through policy. What would your alternative proposal be? I don't necessarily think it will need that. I think it will probably solve itself because people will develop cheaper forms of energy. And when they do, they'll adopt cheaper forms of energy. But Bob's saying that they already have in the world. I know he's he does and he doesn't uh explain why if uh renewables are cheaper now and we use renewables to a higher proportion to produce our electricity than almost any other country. We have the highest cost of electricity of any country in the OECD . Nor nor does he explain why, if it's cheaper, you need to subsidize it and compel people to use it. Um I I'm very optimistic that actually, you know, eventually I and I support it, for example, onshore wind where where you can do it without subsidy, do it. Solar is if I lived in Texas I'd want solar because there's a lot of sun and it's correlated with demand for for uh air conditioning uh electricity so it it's perfect it's not much use here because the sun doesn't come out in winter or in the evening when we use most of our energy but uh no it it by and large it will solve itself like most problems. Bob, um Peter challenged you to explain um on the cost of renewables. So over to you. Yeah, so um the it is true that we have high electricity prices in the UK. The largest component of our electricity price is the wholesale price of electricity, which is set most of the time in the UK by the price of natural gas. There are also costs