Net zero is not just good science – it’s also a good deal for ordinary people

By Anupama Sen, Sam Fankhauser, University of Oxford

As the UK moves into a general election, a misinformed debate over the country’s climate transition and legally binding net zero targets risks further dividing people.

Much of this debate in the UK focuses on the “cost” of net zero. For instance, energy secretary Claire Coutinho recently stated the government did not want a “net zero leviathan” to crush the nation’s “brilliant enterprise economy”, while the Labour Party had to backtrack on its own headline climate investment pledge, citing “affordability” and “fiscal rules”.

But the true “cost” is tricky to evaluate. How do we value the benefits from investing in a climate transition that will occur over decades, against the immediate cost-of-living pressures faced by households and businesses today?

In a new study, we show that achieving net zero and economic wellbeing are not mutually exclusive goals. In fact, the additional annual cost of pursuing net zero is somewhere between 0.7% and 1% of GDP, or £5-£7 a week per person.

By contrast, the cost of inaction, in the form of more severe climate impacts, has previously been estimated at 1.1% of GDP. This number will only continue rising. According to one estimate the UK, along with Switzerland, is set to see the world’s most dramatic relative increase in uncomfortably hot days (a 30% increase).

Many investments will happen anyway

To estimate the “cost” our first step was to look at the additional investment, or upfront capital expenditure, that will be needed every year for the UK to meet its targets. Specifically, we looked at what it costs to install and use a “clean” technology (an electric car, for example) compared to a “fossil” technology in the same use (a petrol or diesel car). We considered this both in a low and a high inflation environment.

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