The cost of reaching net-zero could be less than the cost of a single fossil-fuel price shock and provide total energy security, according to a new report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

Building on the CCC’s seventh carbon budget, which estimated a cost of around 0.2 per cent of GDP per year (£4bn) to reach its net-zero, the new report includes a full cost-benefit analysis that includes energy, avoiding climate damages and health. These would benefit the UK £110bn per year from 2025-2050 if the target of net-zero by 2050 is reached.

This cost has included an average net investment of £26bn per year, but in turn this is offset by £22bn in annual benefits.

The ‘tipping point’, at which benefits will outweigh costs, is slated to be around 2040.

The question is to what extent it is acceptable to ‘front load’ the costs of net-zero to create a cheaper, more secure future? And that rapidly enters a world divorced from reality: politics.

Commenting on new analysis Gareth Redmond-King, head of international programme at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) said: “The last fossil fuel energy crisis, when Russia invaded Ukraine, cost the UK £183bn over four years. And now we know that the cost of getting the UK to net-zero, the only solution we have to halting climate change, is less than the cost of a single fossil fuel price shock. As the world faces yet another fossil fuel crisis, it is clearer than ever that a clean technologies offer a less costly, and more energy secure future.”

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