5 Comments
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George Day's avatar

A long way of saying that policy making has been done in silos - with inadequate focus or understanding of what each intervention does to total system costs.

MICHAEL DAWSON's avatar

Thanks for this very good analysis. It's depressing, though, to see yet another example of how badly we are governed.

Marsh Woundwort's avatar

A lot of words to say: Net zero has been a disaster. Now let's try to sweep the evidence under the general taxation rug.

Kevin Langford's avatar

It would be helpful to look at the different sectors where demand is expected to grow in relation to the wider policy environment.

For example, the CCC is modelling increased demand for electricity from heat pumps, but only on the basis that (a) new gas boilers are banned from 2035 and (b) that significant policy costs associated with the development of electricity infrastructure and decarbonisation are moved onto taxation. Their analysis on this point is probably correct. But unless a government is prepared to commit to these policy changes, they probably should not be forecasting increasing demand for electricity from the introduction of heat pumps.

There appears to be stronger policy commitment to resolving some of the barriers to moving to increased proportions of electric vehicles, and the underlying economics here are also more favourable - so increased demand from this source seems a more defensible proposition.

Mitchell Stirling's avatar

Lovely porcupine graph. Just what forecasters love to see.