Article originally published at North West Bylines, 31 July, 2025
Based on a longer, fully referenced pamphlet, jointly published by Steady State Manchester and DegrowthUK
available HERE

The road towards a viable net-zero world is long and full of obstacles, but all economies need to reduce their carbon footprint.

Net zero, that is the government plan to reduce climate damaging emissions, is increasingly a politically divisive issue. The vocal right-wing critics are largely denying the impact of fossil fuels on emissions, and therefore on the future prospects for humanity, but the net zero lobby is pursuing strategies that are inadequate and simplistic. If we truly want net zero, then the only way forward is down, with far less overall energy use and less complex technology.

Net zero by 2050?

The UK signed up to the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, following a trajectory that, when the agreement was made in 2015, was supposed to give a fair chance of avoiding a 1.5 degree rise in global temperatures above the pre-industrial average.^. The situation has worsened considerably since then and we are close to exceeding 1.5 degrees. The UK’s Nationally Determined Contribution commits to an 81% reduction by 2035 and relies on a number of technological solutions including tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling the average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements.

Allocation to the Warm Homes Plan of £13.2Bn is dwarfed by what could be seen as a reckless new commitment to military spending, in which the UK, despite being an originator of the non-proliferation treaty, will spend £99Bn “upgrading” the nuclear arsenal over the next decade. Moreover, the government is wasting at least £9.4Bn on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS, unproven at scale) and £19.7Bn for nuclear power (betting on unproven technology and ignoring the unresolved problem of radioactive waste), which would come on stream too late anyway. Seriously improving home warmth, with an emphasis on passive measures to reduce heat loss, would significantly reduce the third of emissions attributable to buildings. Unlike CCS and nuclear, this is the kind of low tech, low risk, labour intensive solution that would yield benefits for local economies and their communities.

Carbon capture

That emphasis on Carbon Capture can be understood given that, despite becoming carbon neutral by 2050, what matters is the cumulative emissions before then. The carbon budget, set in law, could well be exceeded, hence the desperation to pull back the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The principal means proposed involve capturing carbon emissions from power plants (whether burning fossil fuels or biomass) and burying them underground, or locking up carbon in rocks or crystals. However, in addition to the technology so far not yet credibly existing, it would consume vast amounts of energy, and would not necessarily be secure from leakage, while the irreversibility of climate change, once tipping points are passed, means it wouldn’t work anyway in mitigating climate chaos.

That carbon budget has been set too high. According to the Committee on Climate Change, the UK’s share of global emissions is approximately 1 per cent. However, the carbon budgets they have recommended, up to 2043, are equivalent to 1.79% of what they acknowledge to be the available global budget for only a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. Britain is setting too large a carbon budget for itself, taking nearly twice its fair share, and the government has not yet agreed the proposed budget for 2038 to 2042, nor even identified the budget for the remaining years, 2043-2050. That’s us, a country with a historically enormous contribution to cumulative global emissions.

That 50% chance is hardly good odds anyway, and as we know, the notion of keeping warming below 1.5% by 2050 is pure fantasy. We are already at, or on the threshold of that much warming. So, the government’s legislated advisors are giving flawed advice.

For the UK to get to net zero emissions by 2050, it would need to reduce emissions by at least an average 10% per year (nearly 5% more than the reduction during the Covid crisis), but that would actually still emit 1.71 times the minimum fair share of the global carbon budget. Moreover, it is emissions made within the UK that are counted in the carbon budget. If we include emissions caused by manufacture of the goods and services we consume, then the figure is more than 50% higher.

UK should lead the way in emission control

The far right (Reform UK and their followers) assert that the UK controlling its emissions will have no impact on the global picture, but of course every tonne of emitted carbon matters. As the CCC tells us, “Over a quarter of global emissions are produced by countries with a share of global emissions less than 1%”. On this Ed Miliband is right: the UK has the responsibility to show climate leadership. We also have a historical responsibility and have not seriously considered the need for reparations for the cumulative damage caused – worse, we are cutting overseas aid, which includes climate-related projects, to fund more military expenditure. Even over the period 1970 to 2023, the UK was still the seventh largest emitter.

The far right typically has what seems like visceral hatred of renewable energy. They point to the problem of intermittency, and that is a problem, with the UK still projecting reliance on ‘unabated gas’, for electricity generation to fill the gap, once the huge projected increase in renewable capacity is in place. What the right-wing critics don’t mention is a more fundamental problem with what are perhaps better termed ‘renewable energy capture systems’.

Fossil fuels needed to make wind turbines and solar panels

Building and installing wind turbines and solar panels is dependent on fossil fuels. Wind turbines use large amounts of steel and concrete. Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels use the very common element, silicon. However, it requires intensive processing to yield the crystalline form used in the panels. This smelting process uses coal or oil derivatives and, surprisingly, large amounts of hardwood chips. There is no large scale renewable energy technology that can be produced without the burning of fossil fuels.

The relevant question though is whether the energy captured justifies this input: can we grit our teeth and splurge on fossil fuels to get a return of abundant clean power? The evidence is not good. When the whole lifecycle of these technologies is taken into account, from mining of the minerals through manufacture, transportation, deployment, servicing and eventual disposal, the average ratio of energy in to energy out is around 2.9 for onshore wind, 2.3 for offshore wind, and 1.6 for solar PV. However, in the climatic conditions of the UK, the ratio for solar PV is worse, only about 1.0.

In its Clean Power Plan, The Department of Energy and Net Zero optimistically projects that 37% of generation capacity will be from solar by 2030, but if the research on the energy return on energy invested is correct, that 37% share, under current manufacturing conditions will still entail an equivalent burning of fossil fuels and hence greenhouse gas emissions. For wind, we could be looking at 23% of the generation capacity entailing equivalent fossil fuel burning. For the UK mix in 2030 as a whole, that would be some 60% of the renewable capacity compromised in that way.

These figures will improve as the producing economies (predominantly China for PV) decarbonise, but that will only be relative without a miraculous transformation of the way in which silicon is refined, panels are constructed, and vast tonnages of raw materials, final products and waste, are transported. At the same time, if the increasingly scarce critical minerals (a further problem whose extraction causes dire impacts) that are used in generators, panels and associated technology, are substituted with more abundant ones with lower performance , then the energy produced per unit invested would decline further.

We need to decarbonise our lifestyle

This puts us in a very difficult position. On the one hand we need to decarbonise rapidly, far more rapidly than the government plans to. On the other hand, the available renewable technologies will only deliver relative decarbonisation. The implications are twofold.

Firstly, there needs to be an emphasis on greatly reducing the energy the country uses. That means more than just improved efficiency, a major and very challenging transformation in the way we live, with less consumption, less mobility, fewer imports, and a more collective culture of sharing, what has been called private sufficiency and public luxury.

Secondly, it means a change in technology, from high tech solutions, highly reliant on electricity, to the mass deployment of passive and lower tech solutions. Examples include: use of passive solar warming and cooling for buildings, direct transformation of wind energy to mechanical power for industrial purposes. Regenerative, low impact cultivation, less reliant on diesel and artificial chemicals yet producing a much greater proportion of our food.

Frugal abundance

This is not a return to the dark ages, but if we get it right, an advance to what the pioneering degrowth thinker Serge Latouche called a ‘frugal abundance’. I find it attractive, but how do you sell that to the population at large, told at every hour of the day that happiness lies in the ability to consume what we like at will – not that this is in any case a realistic prospect for large sectors of the population. The answer must lie in the re-vindication of fairness, equality, solidarity and community.

This article is based on a longer, fully referenced study being published jointly by
Steady State Manchester, download here, and
DegrowthUK, download here.

Added 2 September, 2025:
An article from Kevin Anderson and colleagues at the University of Manchester Tyndall Centre appeared three weeks after ours.  It makes a similar point about the CCC’s setting of a carbon budget that takes a bigger share than is fair.  However, they use a more recent estimate of the remaining global carbon budget, 160 gigatonnes for a 50/50 chance of not exceeding 1.5°C. The CCC is using a budget almost 50% higher, at 235 gigatonnes. They point out that the,

CCC disregards the UN principle that wealthy nations, whose prosperity was built on fossil fuels, must shoulder greater responsibility to rapidly cut emissions.

With just 0.84% of the global population, the UK’s equal share of the remaining 1.5°C carbon budget (160 GtCO₂) would be 1.34 GtCO₂. The CCC allocates it 3.7 GtCO₂ – nearly three times its equal per person share. However, even an equal share allocation would fall far short of the UN’s equity framework. Past CCC analyses have likewise embedded significant inequities.

Such misappropriation of the carbon budget shifts the burdens of climate change on to more vulnerable communities globally, prioritising the UK’s high-carbon norms over the right of low-income nations to sustainable development. The CCC’s departure from the UN’s core equity principle reveals how colonial norms remain deeply embedded in climate policy.”

Our point still stands but the Tyndall authors indicate that the situation is even worse than our comparison suggested.  They add,

“The UK’s net zero 2050 framing isn’t just delaying urgent action, it normalises ecological breakdown while maintaining the illusion of responsible stewardship. It worsens climate impacts and undermines preparedness by presenting inadequate measures as 1.5°C compatible. A fundamental rethink of the UK’s climate policy requires a consensus that is grounded in equity, scientific integrity and transformative ambition.”

Teaser image credit: A building based on the passive house concept in Darmstadt, Germany. By Passivhaus Institut – Copied to Commons from http://en.wikipedia.org. Original source Passivhaus Institut, Germany – http://www.passiv.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1256639