Boris Johnson admits Net Zero is unworkable, and he “got carried away”

Mr Johnson said he got “carried away” by the idea that renewable energy sources could replace fossil fuels and, as a result, electricity is “too expensive for ordinary people”.

Mr Johnson told Lord Elliott: “I think net zero, we went far too fast. And I’ve got to be honest about that, I got carried away by the idea that sustainable and renewable forms of energy could fill the gap.

So he’s known since 2022, but said nothing until now:

“When the price went up and the Ukraine thing happened, it was obvious that that wouldn’t work. And I think we did allow some more hydrocarbons but I think what you’ve got to do now is just say, you’ve got to see. You’ve got to be like St Augustine. You’ve got to say, ‘we will be chaste, but not yet’.”

The wild prices of fossil fuels showed Boris that during a crisis everyone needed coal, oil and gas. It was the grand test. If windmills and solar panels were even slightly useful, everyone would have rushed to order them in 2022 instead of paying nosebleed prices for fossil fuels. Worse, it showed that countries that already had wind and solar had no protection against the price rises, because they needed gas, oil and coal too.

Boris can probably sense that if he left it any longer it will be too late for a mea culpa. The rush is on, now that Kemi Badenoch has promised to axe the Climate Change Act, the conservative parties in the UK are both competing to get rid of Net Zero. The cat is out of the bag and it’s having kittens.

According to Boris, the price rise in gas and coal during the Ukraine War was the moment he knew Net Zero “wouldn’t work”. However, the price of gas and coal was high all through 2022 and hit wild historic peaks by August. Yet here is Boris later that same year in November raving about how wind and solar were remarkably cheap and we needed to “double down” on unreliable renewables to win the war?

Boris Johnson: U.K. Must ‘Double Down’ On Green Energy To Weaken Putin

By David Vetter, Forbes

Britain will “double down” on investments in renewable energy as a way of achieving energy independence while weakening Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed this week. But in a newspaper article sketching out a revised energy strategy, Johnson also called for additional fossil fuel exploration in the British isles, as well as further investments in nuclear power, leaving some commentators nonplussed.

Writing in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, Johnson noted that “Putin’s strength—his vast resource of hydrocarbons—is also his weakness. He has virtually nothing else.”

He went on: “If the world can end its dependence on Russian oil and gas, we can starve him of cash, destroy his strategy and cut him down to size.”

Johnson argued that renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, offered the best path to achieve this, saying his government would “double down on new wind power” and “do more to exploit the potential of solar power,” which is “remarkably cheap and effective.”