u/Appropriate_Bell743

Net-zero has two parts to it. One is the energy supply side which relates to North Sea oil and gas production. The other is the far more important demand side which relates to EVs, heat-pumps, renewables, batteries, high-speed rail, etc.

Can someone who's a Burnham explain this choice? The UK is currently about to be hit badly by an inflation crisis where our dependence on imported oil and gas is the root cause. The fact that our haulage depends so heavily on diesel, our heating so heavily on gas, and our cars so heavily on petrol are huge vulnerabilities.

Why would the UK PM be seeking to increase such future vulnerabilities going into the 2030s? If anything he should be seeking to de-risk our haulage from high diesel prices as China is doing via electrified lorries.

It's not a simple cost-of-purchase argument as now the cheapest cars to buy are often EVs. The issues in adoption are often due to policy issues such as the lack of gully cables for terrace houses or charging pods for those in apartments. As he's the PM he shouldn't be lessening demand side net-zero targets due to this.

There's a wider discussion which few people are discussing. Gas heating is going to also be hugely expensive this winter. This is worsened due to a frankly poor heat-pump rollout over the last few years of which this government is partly responsible. When prices surge this winter as Cornwall Insight imply they will is it a good look to be lessening the ambition to make us more robust for the future?

How much is this due to lobbying from the US president?

The UK government can't control the wholesale cost of fossil fuels. These are volatile due to wars, the actions of Russia, US, etc.

It has the ability to stabilise electricity prices and this has been achieved. The energy price cap in October 2025 was 26.35p/kWh which is only increasing to 26.57p/kWh.

This is an increase of 0.8% so within the margins of error for most families. What's crucial is that those who've adopted heat-pumps or electrified transport will see no overall energy cost increases this winter. The correct action in a set of fossil fuel supply crises is what's being rewarded.

This is even more remarkable in the context of a year on year 26% increase in the cost of domestic gas. Whilst some of this electricity price stabilisation is due to policy changes at the taxation level (removing VAT and removing some costs from bills) it's also due to increased decoupling.

Below is from a website Agile Buddy which compared smart-tariffs to some fixed rate deals. We find that we are consistently paying, on average, a discount of around 40% compared to the flexible tariff.

I'd imagine that most people would pay less on a smart tariff unless your demand is peak-time concentrated. You can see that for us this is a saving of over £400 a year which isn't to be scoffed at.

It also goes against the narrative that "electricity is expensive" as the rates we are paying are competitive with historic UK rates. Electricity can be cheap if one innovates a tiny bit.

The question I have is why don't people try these more innovative tariffs? Why stay on fixed deals then pay extra? What's the logic people have here.

Our electricity usage for 12 months. Our rate of 15.7 far less than Fixed

I think plunge pricing is very useful when you can usefully load-shift (beyond doing pointless stuff). This is particularly useful when it happens at regular short intervals no more than 2 weeks apart.

Below is the calendar of 2025 plunge pricing where tones were clustered in September. In most other months there were many periods of more than 2 weeks without negative prices. At this time-interval it's hard to hold-off laundry or essential chores.

Negative prices of 2025

For 2026 it is a different story from April onwards. May was a dud month but in other months it has been quite easy to time unessential laundry and other chores with the plunge pricing events. Apart from May the biggest gaps have been 14 days. We tend to do our washing etc once a week which means very few weeks we've paid to do it.

Negative prices 2026 (so far)

Here's a take: Most of all the "gaffes" from Polanski have been social media related.

They tend to not being things he's said or written himself. They tend to be a result of him liking a tweet or suchlike without thinking. On the other hand I don't think he builds any support from liking tweets.

He'd be in a far better situation if his social media interaction were only in the form of writing posts or publishing videos he's made. These tend to come across quite well.

The situation with the Cambridge professor is a bit different but is in a category where one is making a judgement without all the information -- like social media likes.

All this requires is a social media manager who would act as a basic sanity-check filter.

I've been using Agile Predict. The reason I don't check the rates everyday which is tiresome but perhaps one or twice a week. This enables on to easily schedule stuff.

The prices appear to always be higher than what actually happens especially for when there are price plunges. Sometimes when the grid is constrained it's too low.

Are there better predictors of Agile prices which people use? Shouldn't Octopus innovate one given their position of probably having better information than what we'd have?

This story is being detailed in the Financial Times about a Kent solar farm. Here on this site someone has copied the text so beyond the paywall.

The gist of the story is that local Reform and the Greens are finding common purpose in opposing this local solar farm. I'm sure that the opposition will be for different reasons but it's clear how this is portrayed.

Land Smart should be essential reading when thinking about solar farms. They can be placed on too high quality farmland but equally if designed well can be havens for ecological recovery. There are also highly developed systems of blending agriculture and solar farms which can be established.

The pushback is that we should be focusing on available roofs. I don't think anyone disagrees but we must also acknowledge that this often has high costs involved due to complex installations. Scaffolding is often required for both installation and maintenance. In a climate emergency shouldn't we not be seeking to limit the available tools?

My position is that we are missing a trick where we could be instead fighting for strong ecological requirements for solar farms. Make them net-ecological gains. Clearly these will be pesticide free spaces but if managed correctly they can and do become havens for various wildflowers, mammals, insects, etc. which are suffering so much in the rest of the nation.

Anyway -- this is certainly something I think merits discussion. I am curious about what are the non-aesthetic arguments people have?

One argument one hears consistently is around food-security. This is despite the fact that around 10% of our petrol and diesel comes from biofuels. We actually have the ability to reduce our net-land use with a renewables + electrification rollout if done well. Biofuels for energy is far less land efficient than solar + electrification.

I've just watched his speech. Let's start with the very good:

• He's talking about these issues which have been highlighted by wildfires.
• He's pushing for measures to minimise the ongoing fallouts.
  • Water nationalisation to have a better water strategy
  • Making sure that the fire service is better equipped etc/
• He discusses oil/gas supply with North Sea oil and gas.

What is crucially missing is anything on how we can both alleviate the cost-of-living crisis with emissions reducing policies. If climate change creates issues where politics needs to operate to reduce the demand for fossil fuels, finally end the supply of fossil fuels, and manage the fallout from having burnt all these fuels... we do the last two but not the first.

We know that plugin solar and plugin batteries are being made legal for UK homes on the 27th August. Their costs are roughly of the order of a few years of winter fuel allowances. We could push for these to be provided to pensioners and poorer households.

We know that the middle classes -- like me -- have access to very cheap heating for the winter via heat-pumps but it's currently not provided for those in precarious or social housing situations at the scale needed. We need this call.

We know that the cost of Eurostar and other factors push many into aviation especially given that aviation is not subject to proper carbon pricing for the damage it causes.

We know that the EU is about to rollout ETS2 which covers the remaining sectors untouched by the joint UK/EU ETS approach.

We know that diet and land-use is not touched at all by existing policies.

Let's not ignore demand. Let's not ignore the causes of climate change. Let's create policies which enable the UK, EU, China, India, etc. and all the nations which don't produce sufficient oil/gas to create a coalition able to combat the interests of the US, Russia, Saudi, etc. like happened to (mostly) end global slavery.

A kind of day which keeps coming on Agile -- from https://agilebuddy.uk/latest/agile

Whatever Trump does in the Middle East there are continued repeated slots where it's cheap to get Agile electricity. Enough to do laundry and other easily staged jobs -- great for heat-pump hot-water cycles

https://preview.redd.it/0apsvfg1idhh1.png?width=1088&format=png&auto=webp&s=45755d5dadfe0cf28d2af967125b1be03cf1e0b6

A stark comparison is for gas rates where nothing can be done about what is happening in the Middle East. Any technology reliant on gas as an input just needs to accept that it's expensive. These rates are close to the 2022/2023 winter capped peak.

https://preview.redd.it/b5ob8uoaidhh1.png?width=1118&format=png&auto=webp&s=6fb6d845b930173d076e667523a6b0be0248c572

It's noticeable that the trend for octopus tracker electricity rates are positively calm compared to the octopus gas tracker rates.

The only surprise is the lack of heat-pump adoption in the UK given this is the route to price stability. We see from the UK's official heat pump BUS grant data that it's not really going up showing a huge public trust that Trump/Iran will find a peace accord before this winter hits:

Number of monthly grants paid for heat-pumps installed in England and Wales. Shows a public which believes peace will come and gas prices will stabilise.

Fascinating paper showing how perceptions and where people act to mitigate climate emissions don't correlate well with what does mitigate climate emissions. This shows a need to re-centre people's understandings of the magnitudes involved.

Climate Action to be effective needs to take into account these misunderstandings found at the public level.

My understanding is that it works this way (I assume based upon returns):

• Flight 1: £0 levy
• Flight 2: £25 levy
• Flights 3-9: Increasing rapidly with each flight.
• Flight 10+: Adds £585 per ticket.

Is this correct? The premise seems to be to continue the normalisation that one-return flight per year is okay but more is bad?

This is where I'm a bit stumped by it. I might be misunderstanding the policy but here goes.

What is the levy for a family who has a yearly trip is to Australia? A family of 4 doing this would contribute around 32 tonnes of CO2e I believe which is incredibly far beyond planetary boundaries.

My understanding that despite this huge amount of emissions the levy would only be £0. Is this correct?

Now, let's take someone who flies regularly London to Dublin. I believe a return trip is around 1/3rd of a tonne so a family of 4 would need around 24 trips to be similar to one Australian trip.

Let's say such a family exists making 15 trips a year. Is it fair that they pay over £15k more than the visitor to Australia despite emitting fewer emissions? Shouldn't this be based upon climate impact and not some arbitrary notion that all flights are equal?

Now, I support the limiting of new airports from being constructed. However, there seems to be a problem if this policy is just letting off the 1-2 times a year long haul flights. The airports would pivot from doing mainly short haul flights to the more profitable long haul alternatives.

Short haul fights are 80% of the flights but 20% of the emissions. This can have the unintended consequence of raising emissions in total.

Taking this all into consideration I should state that our family's train trips to Italy pay a carbon price which is more than what one long haul trip to Australia pays under this policy. This is despite our trip having 240 times fewer emissions.

Why don't we just advocate for the EU's carbon price to be applied fairly to all sectors including aviation? The short haul holidays to Spain wouldn't pay much. Those travelling a lot would pay a lot and long haul would be appropriately taxed.

Why do we have this policy where we decide somehow a long haul trip is okay but not my train trip to Italy?

Our family tries to live as sustainably as possible. We'd like to go further on this via using rigorous offset where they exist. I'm quite excited about the potential of biochar.

What's more we have friends who are also concerned about sustainability but due to various family reunion commitments end up flying. They'd be keen to offset the immense amount of emissions this creates.

It'd be good to have a respected resource where such offsets could be bought which were more than mere greenwashing. Where do people buy them?

A common thread of logic when discussing climate action is to decry individual action or collection action.

Those against people discussing individual actions worry that they "crowd out" the need also for collective actions. The fear is that individuals focusing on their lifestyle-based emissions means we are less likely to affect change on the systemic side of emissions.

This study sows a lot of doubt into these claims:

>Overall, the findings challenged the crowding-out effect and suggested that increases in individual action do not undermine broader forms of climate engagement.

What's exciting for the Green Party is the following:

>This finding suggests that individual actions may foster policy support mainly among less motivated or concerned individuals.

I think this is a study we should engage with. We shouldn't simplistically believe that someone prioritising their family's sustainability end up less motivated about collective or systemic actions to boost sustainability.

This is similar to how nations such as Denmark, which prioritise sustainability, are not suddenly less motivated by creating more international actions. If anything the more sustainable a nation is in its domestic policies the more determined they are to push for global change.

What's more this really shows us how everything adds up.

I'm not expert in how heat-pumps work but have tried to educate myself since owning a Daikin Altherma heat-pump.

The recent announcement from Octopus suggesting that they can make existing air-to-water cosy heat pumps also cool made me have a few questions:

1. How does this work?
2. What would be the operational costs?
3. Can all air-to-water heat pumps be adapted this way?

Thanks for any explanation

This article by Michael Le Page has a provocative headline but really details the debate in a balanced manner.

The points are summarised this way:

1. Banning North Sea oil/gas won't reduce emissions but change the source of oil/gas.
2. Accelerating heat-pump/EV/e-bike/public-transport/etc. adoption will reduce emissions.
3. Too many global producers exist.
4. Allowing North Sea won't lower domestic prices.
5. 90% of the available resources are already extracted.
6. It's only slightly lower in emissions than LNG.
7. It'd reduce payments to the US/Qatar and other climate denying countries.

I think these are all good points. Allowing North Sea oil/gas won't make the UK rich or self sufficient. Blocking North Sea oil/gas won't reduce our contributions to climate change.

We need the focus on how to reduce flying, switch to heat-pumps, e-bikes, public transport, EVs, etc. should be our focus.