By Adam Vaughan
Protesters have called for the UK to hit net-zero emissions
Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images
The UK government has refused a request to explain why its estimated cost of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is tens of billions of pounds more than its independent advisers found.
Last summer, shortly before the UK enshrined the net-zero target in law, a leaked letter from Phillip Hammond, the then chancellor, warned that the transition to a zero-carbon economy was likely to be well in excess of a trillion pounds”.
Hammonds letter cited analysis by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) that put the cost of meeting the 2050 goal at £70 billion a year. That was 40 per cent more than the £50 billion that the UK’s independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC) had arrived at. But unlike the CCC analysis, the letter supplied no evidence or methods to explain the significantly higher figure.
New Scientist attempted to use freedom of information legislation to obtain the evidence supporting the bigger net-zero price tag, but BEIS declined to release the information. Following an appeal, the UK’s Information Commissioners Office last week ruled in favour of BEIS withholding the explanation.
BEIS told the ICO that releasing the evidence now could harm public understanding due to a lack of context. There is real potential to distract the public debate away from the substantive environmental issue of climate change with cost estimates that are not properly contextualised,” the department said.
The refusal means Hammond’s £70 billion figure, provided without context, is the only information available to the public on the cost of the government hitting the net-zero target.
The Treasury plans to publish the governments official net-zero cost review in November, the same month that the UK is hosting a major UN climate summit in Glasgow.
But it appears the ultimate cost could differ from the £70 billion figure, which Hammond had warned would mean less money being available for other areas of public spending. The ICO reported that BEIS is: Currently completing and refining their analysis in the context of the new legislated target.
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