Beelbeebub

"more North Sea drilling will lower UK fuel prices and ensure energy security...." So a country that is the world's largest oil producer and 2nd largest exporters should be fine..... Right.... Right?....

One of the oft quotes reasons for the UK to ditch NZ policies is "it doesn't matter what the UK does because China". Which is a terrible point of view and basically blame shifting to excuse doing nothing. Would any parents here entertain the argument from one child refusing to tidy their room because their sibling's room was in a bigger mess?

Globally no, we are not "ahead". The UK is ahead of where the pessimists, and even optimists thought we would be. The UK being miles ahead wont stop anything. Irrelevant to the thread - the UK more (and faster) the UK decouples itself from dependency on oil and gas the less our economy and living standards will be buffeted by external oil shocks. Case in point - inflation has jumped up again, mostly driven by the surge in fuel and transport costs. My point was globally. Not UK. Again, globally we are approaching peak emissions even as developing nations industrialise and increase consumption. There is work to do but it is far from hopeless. Once again, the point of the thread is that a raft of the net zero policies are desirable things to do from a purely selfish "what is best for the UK economy and security" perspective regardless of carbon emissions

Again, not so pessimistic. CO2 emissions are still growing but by ever smaller amounts. 2025 was only 0.8% higher than 2024. 2024 was 1% huger than 2023. Between 2019 and 2024 emissions gre from 33.5Gt to 34.9Gt - about 3.8% But they would have grown by over 11.5% if solar, wind, a tiny bit of nuclear plus electric car adoption hadn't curbed 2/3 of the growth. Almost all of the growth in electricity generation worldwide in 2025 came from renewables. 2026 is likely to be a big year for emissions reduction and renewable adoption. We will probably see emissions start to fall worldwide by the end of this decade. Which was unthinkable a decade or two ago. But all of this is focussing on emissions, carbon etc The whole point of this thread is that *even if you don't believe in any of that* we still should pursue policies like electrification of heating and transport plus a massive increase in domestically produced energy simply for national security and economic reasons. And the *only* way to increase domestic energy production is via renewables and nuclear.

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/the-solarisation-of-pakistans-energy-economy/ Estimated USD12bn saving in imported fossil fuels due to huge solar uptake Saw an estimate that they had imported 13GW of solar panels in 2025 alone - against a backdrop of 45GW total grid capacity. Ethiopia has gone big on electric vehicles because the cost of oil (in USD) was dragging the economy. One interesting nugget mentioned was that with solar becoming the cheapest power - places where solar panels work well eg near the equator are poised to have a huge advantage of their northern competitors in the coming years

Except the reality of where we are now is way ahead of where the "realists" (and even the optimists) thought we would be. The UK has shifted 10% (from 10 to 20%) of it's primary energy away from fossil fuels to renewables is under 15 years. Pakistan did similar in a little under 10 years. We still have a way to go but the two big prizes are the electrification of heat and transport. Which account for over half of our current consumption. Both of those could be achieved (switched to electrification for the majority of uses - there will always be edge cases like a remote highland cottage or heavy haulage to remote locations that will be hard/impossible to switch) by 2050. Few cars or boilers bought before 2030 will be in service then. Maybe 10%. So if we stopped selling/installing by 2030 - which there are no technical barrier to doing so (in the majority of cases) the problem will solve itself. And to power all that renewably our current renewable capacity has to triple. Which was the plan - no new boiler installs from 2030 and no ice car sales from 2030 either. Plus a tripling of our renewable capacity. It was planned for. Manufacturers were making investments to meet those targets etc. And then certain people started pushing the "it's impossible, it's too expensive, what about the poor people?!, it's woke nonsense..." Etc lines and suddenly those plans are watered down or shelved Meanwhile diesel is climbing above 1.90 for the second time this year despite the Iran war being declared over for the upteenth time this year and the UK is still dependent on imported petrol/diesel for 40% of it's transport.

This is one view and a pessimistic one (Also one that fits the oil and gas industry - it's hopeless so just keep buying our product) But action can and has been taken collectively. Anyone remember the ozone layer? If every country does their bit then we can have an effect. What definitely won't work is going "oh china blah blah let's not do anything"

Very sensible Don't forget to advise her to avoid a south facing garden or lots of south facing glass. And check the soil type. Clay areas will see alot more subsidence.

We are now past the point where we can avoid adaption, but we can still control the amount of adaption. If we try to reduce the amount of warming the adaptions we have make might not be too expensive and crucially can be made at slower pace. This is especially important for infrastructure where the natural replacement cycles are fairly long. But if we allow warming and the associated climate change to go unchecked (by ditching "net stupid zero" as some very stupid politicians advocate) the costs of adaption really start to mount up. Consider the asphalt on out roads is engineered for a specific temperature range that matches our historic climate. If our summers get hotter out roads will all start to need resurfacing. Our railways will need to be relaid to allow for the higher temperatures causing higher levels of track expansion. If rainfall levels increase our gutters on our houses will need to be replaced *and* our storm drains upsized. And then there are the cultural impacts. The same politicians who are against net zero tend to be extremely attached to a certain (and nebulous) idea of our natural culture. That will change as the climate changes - and some wag will say cash "warm summers and BBQs great" but it will be things like working hours, design of houses, clothing, the food we eat, the beer we drink etc. Adaption is expensive.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/sep/11/speed-up-electricity-grid-upgrade-or-else-face-higher-bills-warns-uk-watchdog Fingers need to be pulled out - but we knew that anyway.

This one. Territorial is CO2 from within our borders -so consuming stuff from abroad changes that figure alot. But Footprint includes that stuff and has still gone down - albeit not by as much. The footprint is very dependent on the CO2 output of the producer nations we import from (cough china cough).

Agree. Our Territorial emissions have fallen by alot more than our footprint (roughly 50% and 25% fall iirc) Ah yes, I would argue we have been successful at the generation end of decarbonisation - mainly building wind though solar and nuclear have been less successful. But the other, demand end, has been much more lackluster. Both in the deployment of heat pumps, definitely the upgrading of housing, transitioning to BEVs is only now starting to pick up. And for industry there has maybe been less success. Our high energy prices are largely driven by high oil and gas prices since 2022, though policy has very much made the spark gap wider. Ironically those same high energy prices are also driving some of the decarbonisation! On the whole I think we agree, though I think you are maybe a little to harsh on us given our pretty impressive decarbonisation of electricity generation but I agree we could do better at the other side of the equation.

Decarbonising doesn't mean stopping - merely removing (where possible - see pt 2). There are plenty of industries which burn gas and sometimes oinnthat can switch. Paper making, brewing, wood work and countless others use steam. Often generated by a gas boiler. Those processes can be replaced by electric heating - they can even be replaced by heat pumps in some situations. Secondly, there will always be some processes that just require gas (or oil or coal) normally because they are being used as much as a chemical feedstock as for heat (or even entirely as a feedstock). These processes will have to remain as fossil fuel consumers - it is net zero not absolute zero. Aviation is a classic example. I cannot see long haul aviation get away from fossil fuels for quite some time. We would need to have a significant surplus of electricity to begin to start making sufficient quantities of synthetic fuels (I don't think bio fuels from current farm practices will cut it). But my point was that industry changes all the time due to different pressures. Energy prices are part of the mix but probably don't affect a bespoke sports car maker as much as skilled labour and parts availability. I don't think Burberry and Mulberry are as bothered by the price of electricity as they are the availability if leather and skilled leather workers (and probably most importantly the whims of international fashion)

And they still do. https://alvancebritishaluminium.com/ The problem is it can only produce about 50,000 tons a year whilst the UK demand is around 1.2 million tons a year - so about 4%. So we either have to build another 24 such plants, decrease UK industry until demand is 4% of current, import from abroad (ideally, Norway and Canada as they use a lot of hydro for their smelting) Again, though I fully support the Scottish plant, it doesn't make a huge difference to the prices of our aluminum or the security. It, again, is a question of relative scale - which the British public seem to be bad at grasping i.e. £350 million a week sounds like a huge amount of money - except in the scale of a government that spent £14,000 million a week (2.5%)

The problem is the reason we should drop the policies is that "they cost too much and we should use the vast reeves or North sea gas and oil to make ourselves energy independent" Which is all bollocks. But sticks in certain minds alongside "we are being invaded" and "the most pressing issue facing our nation is where somebody takes a piss"