Net Zero ‘caught in cloud cuckoo land’ attributable to ‘astronomical’ price

Plans to decommission the UK’s fuel grid as a part of the online zero drive will price an estimated £2,300 per family, in line with a leaked draft of an official report.

And most households might be left to foot this invoice by increased vitality payments or taxes, a nationwide newspaper claims. This is as a result of vitality corporations should not obliged to cowl the prices – and there’s no provision for decommissioning in present authorities budgets.

The draft National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) report states that the entire price of decommissioning the 176,000-mile community of buried pipes might be round £65bn. The grid may change into out of date underneath plans to succeed in web zero carbon emissions. Experts say unused pipes have to be eliminated, or they’ll decay and danger the potential collapse of roads.

The NIC thinks the fuel community may, in idea, be transformed to hold hydrogen. However, this might additionally price “tens of billions of pounds” – and whereas hydrogen could also be a cleaner choice than pure fuel, doubts stay about its effectiveness as a mass heating answer.  

The costings are reportedly elevating issues amongst senior conservatives. Former enterprise and vitality secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg mentioned the Government’s web zero plans are “stuck in cloud cuckoo land”.   

“The Government cannot decommission the gas grid, because it can’t afford to,” said Rees-Mogg. “They have got to look very seriously at whether the legal obligation to reach net zero is realistic.”

Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay, chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, instructed The Telegraph: “Bit by bit, the true astronomical cost of net zero is being revealed, and it’s far from clear the products we are being forced to switch to are any better than their forebears.”

Mackinlay highlighted the “forced conversion from gas boilers to heat pumps” as a “case in point”. And he said it will “leave the country with a vast network of redundant infrastructure that will take tens of billions of pounds to decommission”.

However, another former business and energy secretary has said that the decommissioning costs are “hypothetical”. Kwasi Kwarteng instructed the Telegraph “it doesn’t make sense to decommission the entire grid at huge expense” – and that he “can not see a authorities doing that”.

“It’s unrealistic to expect that all household heating in this country will be electrified,” added Kwarteng.