‘Greenflation’ is a myth

The UK needs to become a leader in the energy transition, or someone else will 

The global energy transition is no culture war. Despite contrarian arguments recently increasing in popularity - the long-term consequences of rejecting Net Zero will likely leave the UK poorer, more isolated, and increasingly dependent on foreign oil. We strongly believe that the discussions of such impactful topics should be left to the experts, as the benefits of following through on innovation, or indeed the potentially ruinous rejection of such, reach far beyond the political and social divide. The acceptance of Net Zero is on par with the acceptance of the Industrial Revolution - it will either propel the UK ahead as a green global economy, or its rejection will cause stagnation that would take decades to rectify.

Succumbing to contrarian arguments would likely slow the deployment of UK alternative energies. This only harms UK business and UK consumers: the 200GW of wind / solar will still be built globally this year, 10 million EVs will still be bought this year with over 300,000 in the UK – and at 40% pa growth to 420,000 next year. 

More EVs are sold every week globally than were sold in the whole of 2012.

If the contrarians slow this change in the UK specifically, whilst other nations such as The US, China, and those within the EU grow faster – who are they serving? 

It is unlikely that the contrarians really understand the difference between power and energy, capacity factors and Wright’s Law, manufacturing and extraction based learning curves. 

They believe they are a smart and savvy political elite who can reverse a global energy transition by pandering to near-term political issues such as gas prices being higher due to ‘greenflation’. In fact, many of these myths are becoming cliches – less and less interesting over time as the new energy system moves from being a scenario to a reality that can provide good jobs, good economics, and better health due to less urban and rural emissions.

Supporting the anti net-zero ideology and agenda has potential real-world UK consequences – it could kill off new energy jobs in the UK, and allow China, the EU and US to plant their flags in the new energy system as it takes hold. 

Our view is that the UK has far bigger issues and opportunities to grasp in the new energy system with our historic engineering skills and we should therefore listen far less to bad faith political actors as well as  incumbents in the fossil energy system.

The energy transition outcome can be great for Britain, or it could have a damaging impact if we choose to lose leadership in new technology such as offshore wind and EV gigafactories, and revert to the OPEC-managed fossil fuel system  – and thus badly impacting prospects for UK businesses, UK workers and UK consumers for a long time.