Last week, a new report by the Institute for Economic Affairs argued that the cost of transitioning to net zero could be billions – even trillions – more than some government  forecasts. That may sounds worrying, yet in many ways it still understates the problem. Net zero isn’t just hurting our energy sector, it has a complete stranglehold over the entire British economy – and it is making us all poorer.

This is the ugly reality of net zero

No large company in Britain can escape its grasp. Our regulators, in league with asset managers, are constantly pressuring companies into pursuing costly and fruitless green goals that make them less profitable. As a result  FTSE 100 companies now routinely have formal net zero targets. Their decarbonisation is largely measured using the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) protocol, which splits emissions into three categories: scope one, two and three. Companies are not considered properly net zero unless they meet their targets in every category.

Scope one emissions are those directly produced by a company’s operations, and are arguably the most intuitive and acceptable category for companies to tackle.

Scope two refers to the emissions that a company allegedly produces via its energy usage. This means companies are responsible for their energy supplier. Scope two obligations encourage companies to sign ‘Purchase Power Agreements,’ with specific renewable developers. These agreements make the company in question the sole customer of specific wind farms, purchasing their........

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