Main Edition
US
FR
February 21, 2024 - 7:00am
The UK Government’s Net Zero transition policies risk making the poor poorer, a new report has found.
Research published by the Young Foundation shows that the Net Zero plan requires wholesale participation across society, failing to account for the unique needs and vulnerabilities of different communities. Thus the poorest 40% of UK households are at risk of falling into “transition poverty” under these policies — meaning they’ll struggle to meet basic needs and see a decline in quality of life under rising costs.
Low-income households are less likely to be able to afford carbon-cutting measures, such as new cars and updates to their homes, making these families more likely to face tariffs and fines. The poor will also be hit harder by the shrinking of the job market in high-carbon sectors such as mining. Meanwhile, the earliest adopters of low-emissions updates are concentrated in higher-earning, higher-cost areas.
The green energy transition will exacerbate existing inequalities, the report finds, including through rising unemployment, rising food costs, and regulations forcing the poor to hold on to older vehicles and appliances as they become more expensive to maintain. The transition will also mean fewer opportunities for leisure and socialising as transportation becomes more expensive.
The report recommends that the Government gives financial support to the poor to help cover the cost of transportation and housing upgrades, as well as rising costs of food and fuel associated with the transition. “The transition risks pushing already vulnerable families and communities further into deprivation, exclusion and crisis,” the report reads. “Furthermore, these groups are most likely to be affected by both climate change impacts, and policy choices associated with Net Zero.” Other suggestions include decentralising authority in the implementation of Net Zero policies to allow for more local control.
The UK is aiming to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Immediate plans include restrictions on home heating appliances, and future proposals include special taxes on meat and flying as well as mandatory car-sharing. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak addressed inequality concerns related to Net Zero in a September speech, warning that, by disproportionately impacting the working class, Net Zero policies run the risk of losing public support. As it stands, the Government’s push to cut emissions enjoys majority support in the UK, and Sunak’s suggestion that Net Zero policies be rolled back has evidently hurt his own popularity.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeWhat tariffs and fines are these then?
Some valid points in this report, but also some wild guesses it seems.
What tariffs and fines are these then?
ULEZ for a start. It is a tax on the poor.
ULEZ has nothing to do with net zero, it’s a measure against local pollution. In London.
Besides, if any cars that attract payment are still on the road by 2050 they will be 45 years old – a very unlikely scenario in most cases.
A big strawman then, these ‘tarriffs and fines’, or a complete load of old tosh.
What do you think those cameras will be used for once those polluting cars are off the road?
Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with Net Zero policy. You are conflating the two things to create an argument that doesn’t exist.
No one seems to know what these alleged tariffs and fines are!
Are you being deliberately obtuse. They are being fined for using ICE vehicles
He is indeed being deliberately obtuse. He’s not stupid or anything, he just possesses ideological blinkers where anything to do with climate change is concerned.
You are of course quite right: ULEZ cameras will obviously be used to enforce an expansion in the definition of air polluting vehicles to include anything that emits CO2. Anyone who can’t see this coming is so daft that they should lose their right to vote, quite frankly.
Given Khan’s record it’s only right to be cynical – it only affects a minority in London however. Unless of course we go down the French route – now that will get your knickers in a proper twist.
“Given Khan’s record it’s only right to be cynical…”
Given the record of the ecoBlob, it’s only right to be cynical.
There you go, fixed that for you.
So why have them?
ULEZ is a Net Zero policy dressed up as a pollution reduction measure.
ULEZ is a money making policy dressed up as a pollution reduction measure.
Anyone driving an older model into a controlled zone car like ULEZ is actually being fined.
Not if it’s more than 40 years old (a classic car). Which curiously includes stuff like Trabants !
….and Lincoln Continentals from the 1970s! I drove on in Colorado recently! There are canal boats that are smaller!
This fine, for one:
Boiler companies announce £120 rise in installation costs due to Clean Heat Market Mechanism plans | Homebuilding
Oh ya. Totally forgot about this.
Old news. That policy has been dropped.
If Britain went Net Zero tomorrow, we could reduce temperatures in 2100 AD by 0.02 degrees Centigrade compared to what they would otherwise have been.
What a pathetic achievement that would be!
It’s roughly equivalent to the adiabatic temperature gradient loss you might get by going higher up a mountain, from the warmth at the bottom of a mountain to the cold at the top
If you walk, say, 10 metres up a mountain, you could recreate the temperature change in 50 years time, caused by Britain going Net Zero tomorrow.
Exactly why international agreements and global action is needed.
That’s why taxpayers in Britain will be paying for Net Zero in Britain and also for Net Zero in South Africa.
If renewable energy is so cheap, why do developing countries demand untold billions to switch to cheap fuel?
Covid, Covid, Covid and Covid
Pray tell how you will get all the biggest polluters to comply?
We are the biggest polluters. Hence Net Zero policy.
I seriously doubt we are anywhere near the biggest polluter. you have a source on that?
We are 17th in the world league of CO2 emitters. We emit 1.07% of the total. If we froze and starved in the dark it would make 1% difference to the world.
First place; China 29%
Second; USA 14%
Third; India 7%
Here you are
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/
How is this political obsession any different from Stalin telling Ukraine it needs to be starved out for the common good? (Holodomor.) No different. Experts have agreed the Net Zero models and dissenters will be pilloried and incarcerated. For the common good. You’re meeting a lot of resistance here, Robbie. Do you know why?
It doesn’t matter if a few billion people die so long as it saves the planet.
Actually, what he said is exactly why “international agreements and global action” aren’t needed.
The UK is one of only 6 counties that have a legally binding agreement to reach net zero by 2050. It is unaffordable and will bankrupt us.
II keep hearing “legally binding”. In what way is it legally binding? No Parliament can bind its successor. Why can’t a sensible subsequent Parliament simply change the law?
I fear this is wrong. Mays fag packet no debate Net Zero spasm established co current 5 year Budgets and a Gospan like CCC bureaucracy to set them. It is the Law.
The great stupidity is that all it will really achieve is to make Britain a poor country, with developing nations in the East and global south leapfrogging us to possess the wealth that Britons once used to have.
Non-westerners in general do not believe the climate change political narrative. They are focused upon improving their own condition in life the same way westerners did a century ago, and the West has neither the right nor the power to stop them. Climate politics cannot stop this happening, all it can do is make sure we in the West destroy our own economies.
But at least we will see boat loads of illegal immigrants landing in small boats on French shores
If Britain went Net Zero tomorrow, we could reduce temperatures in 2100 AD by 0.02 degrees Centigrade compared to what they would otherwise have been.
Those who have been vaccinated against COVID will not get sick and will not infect others.
PS. I am sure that the transition to renewables causes much more damage to the environment than a total return to coal
I don’t think we needed research and a report to state the blindingly obvious.
….and future proposals include special taxes on meat and flying as well as mandatory car-sharing.
What a dystopian world that will be.
i remember as a boy that men carpooled to the factory because it saved them money, wear-n-tear on the car, and they liked each other. it just made good sense. i’m guessing many people don’t carpool now is mainly because we don’t like each other anymore.
It’s not about not/liking each other any more – In most communities we no longer have whole streets of workers going in the same direction at the same time.
The funny thing is that we already have numerous special taxes imposed on us, which we ignore. Have you looked at the detailed receipt lately for air travel, phone and cable bills? It borders on insanity.
I don’t think I am in the poorest 40%, but there is NO WAY I could afford an electric car (not that I would dream of getting one, unless absolutely forced at gun point).
If for “update their homes” you mean a heat pump, see above.
We’ve known all of this for more than a decade. It’s so blindingly obvious. In the end, net zero will make us all poorer, but crap rolls downhill so the poorest of us all will pay the greatest price.
Net Zero is killing Canada
Have we thought about the fact that the poor are most likely to be impacted by climate change too?
The rich won’t because they will carry on with their behaviours as before.
How, exactly?
in this country they would benefit
In Britain?
How?
No. The poor are most affected economically by a rise in energy costs, which affect the cost of everything including food, heat and transportation. Making energy cheaper would mitigate any change in global temperatures up or down, however caused. Easy. But too easy to create a scam off of.
Have you noticed that “global warming” dogma all started because oil companies like Exxon were making too much money in the 70s and alarming the green Left? So the green Left created their own “renewable” energy companies and stole the political high ground, while their own multi-billion companies sucked up all the dollars that governments could borrow to stave off a fake apocalyptic future they invented? It’s really been quite masterful. Per Pete Townshend: “Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.”
Suck it up proles, we’re doing it for you!
It’s almost as if this Net Zero stuff is some new form of tithe where the masses are forced to pay over taxes to a religious cult in exchange for some intangible promises.
Great analogy.
I have absolutely no doubt that we will end up burning every bit of accessible fossil fuel on the planet, regardless of these lunatic policies.
Yes the poor in UK are going to be hit, but it is the poorer developing nations that are going to be hit far harder – who cares? we will do when they all want to migrate here because the opportunities for growth and development in their own counties have been curtailed by this lunacy.
Adrian – energy is not a zero-sum game. Yes, fossil fuel sources on the planet are limited, but our ingenuity in extracting them and extending their life is not limited. Human ingenuity is not limited. Every time the doomsayers announce the end of a resource, the technology increases in efficiency.
How many GB of memory is in your phone? How much memory was in the 1969 moon landing computers? Technology. We’re aren’t going to burn all the fossil fuel so long as we don’t restrict innovation by dogma posing as science.
It’s just lies by people who want total control of the planet.
There was a time when leftists would have been keenly concerned — if not outraged — about policies that caused deeper poverty. But now Leftism is the leisure class hobby of people who simply aren’t interested in how the other half live.
…..or How the other half die.
Excellent summary. What calls itself the left seems to be about identity politics, microaggressions and worshipping the god of climate.
let them eat solar panels
If the Government’s push to cut emissions really does enjoy majority support, I can only suppose that this is because respondents do not yet fully grasp the implications for them.
The majority doesn’t matter anymore, because we obviously don’t know what is good for us or our family. They call it “democracy” in the U.S.
Can’t help thinking that many of these policies affect the mass majority of the working poor. Some will probably aim to put many of these green policies into place at the same time. Once one policy in a particular sector is in place with no resistance, another policy in another sector will likely come into place. Tariffs, etc aim to restrict movement and citizens’ ability to pay for things themselves. The report’s suggestion for government subsidies will make citizens beholden to the government, all increasing big government. Have read of scientists saying that the climate changes are caused by changes in the sun instead of human activities. But that’s not our current climate change narrative. X
Well, Kasandra, the planet has managed to get into and out of several ice ages with no input from humankind. So it’s strange that now, apparently, human activity is all that’s driving climate change.
It is quite interesting that when one follows the science, it leads to those truths. Yet, some completely ignore these facts. Including the fact that it takes hundreds of thousands of years for these cooling and heating ages to take place, if not millions.
“The report recommends that the Government gives financial support to the poor to help cover the cost of transportation and housing upgrades, as well as rising costs of food and fuel associated with the transition.”
Or, the Government could just stop spending £Ts to make a small difference to less than 1% of global emissions.
The phrase no-shit-sherlock springs to mind every time one of these news items appears. This time though, the last paragraph is a masterclass of self-contradiction: it cannot be possible that meat-taxes, holiday-taxes, forced car-sharing and banned home heating appliances that actually work are policies that possess broad support.
What possesses broad support is the idea of a CO2 reduction strategy that only costs other people money. Nobody thinks of themselves as carbon-hogs: each person thinks every ounce of CO2 they emit is strictly necessary, and that it’s other people who must cut back. In this respect it’s like taxes and government spending: it’s other people’s money not one’s own that ought to be spent by the government instead of oneself.
As for Rishi Sunak apparently having lost support over his Net Zero rollback statements, I don’t believe that for a moment. He’s in the vicious position of being the country’s whipping boy for the catastrophic damage done by reckless pandemic policy and incompetent bloatocracy. He could cure cancer, clear the national debt and buy everyone in the country a pony and he’d still lose the election.
About that last paragraph you cite: when the people who sponsor and support that sort of thing walk their own talk, they might gain a measure of credibility with the rest of us.
Eco Communists have no intention of ever living the “authentic” low-energy lifestyle (ie poverty) the rest of us are to be locked into.
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” – Ecclesiastes 1:9
I don’t usually quote the bible, but this one’s apt. Climate zealotry is not new: it’s the same old tyranny against the proles that has always existed.
Thr difference being that nowadays the elites need the proles less and less so that they (we) become not even expendable, but a resource drain that needs to be eliminated.
You can’t commit commercial suicide without suffering economically.
Is this really news? There has been loads of publications, including books and documentaries, showing that net zero is impossible to reach without seriously impoverishing the population, not to mention that the goal is politically unreachable (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands, and now the US).
The story is simple. Standard of living, lifespan, health, and well-being are all tied to energy use per capita. We benefit from machines producing food, doing house chores, making cars, appliances, etc., and making out environments livable. Lower the energy level, and you will regress to a more primitive, poorer civilization. And fossil fuels are providing cheap and abundant energy and have been the powering force of humanity. Wind and solar, the darlings of politicians and activists, cannot even provide the electric energy needed to power the world grids, let alone alleviate the need for commercial transport and industrial heat, and if you exclude nuclear, you find yourself marching to the land of childish utopia. All of this comes without even mentioning that the current AGW theory needs to be revisited and is likely to fail re-validation.
The UK Government’s Net Zero transition policies risk making the poor poorer, a new report has found. — > Isn’t that the point? Nothing in what the climate cult suggests points to a maintenance of living standards, let alone an improvement. In typical fashion, this represents first-world hubris that essentially tells developing and third world nations that they are not allowed access to the same abundant, accessible, and affordable energy that helped fuel our way of life.
Low-income households are less likely to be able to afford carbon-cutting measures — > No kidding. It’s always been that way, from every safety initiative dreamt up for cars and homes to anything else. These ideas always raise the cost of whatever is affected, pricing out a segment of the population with each incremental increase. It’s the perverse nature of the do-gooder’s tactics: the people who are ostensibly being ‘saved’ are instead being harmed.
A feature – not a defect of the Net Zero policy – is that millions from poor nations will starve, thereby reducing the planet’s human population and carbon production. (So long as it’s not the elites dying.) Climate change doctrine is the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the West. (The second greatest was accepting perpetual global mandatory mRNA vaccination as the solution to COVID pandemics.) Same global corporate interests, same scams.
“Climate change doctrine is the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the West.”
It is in fact one of the things accelerating the collapse of the Western-led unipolar order. Any Westerner surprised at this deserves a hefty dose of the low-energy poverty that 2/5 of the rest of the world is still trying to escape from.
What we need is a massive increase in nuclear power or a huge increase in volcanic eruptions or a massive meteorite impact. The last two would be the cheapest since we’re all broke.
Classic distraction stuff. What is making the poor poorer is the Rich getting Richer, esp the v Rich.
It’s the multi-millionaires who’ve massively benefitted from QE and asset price inflation, who’ve stripped wealth from the working people, who, as just one recent example, massively benefitted from Covid’s £800b support package (where did it all go?), who own nearly everything, who are chummy with the Oil and fossil fuel Oligarchs, who fund all the secretive Think Tanks of Tufton st, who’ll ensure tax legislation conveniently give them exclusions, and who also control as much as the Press and media as poss too – including when you dig into it Unherd.
Now because a society with growing disparity between the many and the few creates an economic catastrophe our ability to drive the next generation of investment gets compromised. Clever if you can then blame others, like doh – the Green lobby. In truth many of the v rich would quite like the sort of monarchical control of power and oppression of dissent they see in the Oil states or similar Strongman to ‘ratchet in’ and protect them from the one thing they fear – mass movement of people who finally ‘get’ what’s going on.
“Classic distraction stuff. What is making the poor poorer is the Rich getting Richer, esp the v Rich.”
No it isn’t. That’s simply the same baseless leftwing dogma that gets in the way of any insight into the matter. What has made poor Westerners poorer lately has been the inflation that is the direct consequence of defective multiple policies. Energy policy is indeed one of them, but so too were the bank bailouts, the pandemic, overregulation, transport, employment law, welfare state perverse incentives etc. All these factors have destroyed productivity growth, which is why we have a growing precariat class that is forced to depend upon low-paid work permanently instead of it being entry-level work that a person is promoted out of.
The rich have, in many cases, got richer as an unintended consequence of how money printing has boosted asset values, true, but it’s the wrong thing to focus upon here: the actual cause of the problem is persistent misgovernment that delivers bad policy.
‘Climate change’, ‘environmental’ … call them what you will; these are all policies designed to exercise ever greater control over us; the ‘Little People’ (thank you ‘Call me Dave’ Cameron!), ‘The Deplorables’ (Hillary Clinton’s damnation of 50% of the US electorate) while the Woking Class elites continue to live in their enormous homes and travel by private jet (Prince Harry). Just remember how quickly Gordon Brown introduced punitive car tax increases, during his (mercifully) short term as Prime Minister, which chiefly hammered the Little People and Working Class who couldn’t afford fancy new environmentally acceptable vehicles for which low taxes were correspondingly levied. Net Zero (thanks to the awful Theresa May) is the ultimate control mechanism.
Of course, the underlying socialist/globalist agenda is not to save the Planet, but rather to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor nations under the guise of environmentalism policies and a virtue signalling ‘care’ for those in poverty elsewhere; disregarding the poverty at home (UK).
the “net zero” nonsense is just a thin veil over truly draconian freedom destroying legislation. the government has no right to determine what i eat, what i say, how high i set a thermostat or if i have the right to travel on my own using infrastructure we all pay tax for. Every time i see so called net zero being discussed it looks to me like a group of tyrants are attempting to justify that this “emergency” needs to be cured by handing them the powers to micromanage and control the entire population. not buying it.
How many more red flags are going to be flown in peoples faces before the useful idiots throwing soup on paintings and blocking roads realise they are protesting for their own rights to be stripped from them.