Europe Scraps Unaffordable, Unsustainable 'Net Zero' Energy Policy
You know you’ve stumbled through the looking glass when European politicians start sounding saner on climate policy than the Americans do. Well here we are, Alice: Europeans are admitting the folly of net zero quicker than their American peers.
The latest example, or perhaps “victim”, is more apt—is Humza Yousaf, who resigned this week as Scotland’s first minister. That region within the UK enjoys substantial devolved powers over its own affairs, including on climate policy. An administration led by Mr. Yousaf’s left-leaning Scottish National Party had hoped to rush ahead of the national government in London in slashing carbon emissions.
Until, that is, someone noticed the costs. A recent report from the UK’s Climate Change Committee noted Scotland had fallen far behind on its climate goals. The government aimed to reduce by 20% the aggregate distance driven by Scottish motorists, compared with 2019 levels, but had no plan to accomplish the reduction in personal mobility by the 2030 deadline. To get back on track with the government’s goal of a transition to home electric heat pumps, Scotland would have to replace natural-gas fire boilers at a rate of more than 80,000 households a year by the end of the decade. That’s a big ask considering that in 2023 it managed 6,000 boiler replacements. The government resisted imposing an aviation tax to discourage excess flying. And so on.
Mr. Yousaf did the only thing he could under the circumstances: He all but abandoned net zero. His administration announced it is ditching firm annual emission-reduction targets in favor of fuzzier “carbon budgets.” The Green Party, with which Mr. Yousaf’s SNP governed in a coalition, balked. After a series of political machinations that were one part “Macbeth” and two parts “Comedy of Errors,” Mr. Yousaf’s administration collapsed and he was forced to resign.
Observe two salient details. First, the specific list of targets the country was missing. Scotland had reached the point where further net-zero progress would have made obvious and material demands of household budgets. That isn’t counting the additional costs of renewable power hidden in utility bills.
There are farm protests in nearly every country on the main continent and Greens are likely to get clobbered hard in the European Parliament elections in June.
The puzzlement is that the US is headed in the opposite direction, economic collapse. President Biden is pressing ahead with aggressive net-zero policies such as an electric-vehicle mandate - EVs which no one wants or are buying due to current lifestyle demands - and pouring trillions of wasted dollars of borrowed government and hard-earned household debts into climate boondoggles that will not work or be sustainable. This is obviously a sign the American government has abandoned free market capitalism and is trying to interfere and ruin economic stability for millions of innocent Americans.
