LONG READ EXPLAINER: Why should the UK get to Net Zero? Won’t it cost us too much? What is the benefit? [15 minutes]

(TLDR – skip to two FREE Conversation Guides – two help you talk about Net Zero with your friends and family.)

1.       What’s the benefit of Net Zero?

“I can’t see how Net Zero is possible or beneficial to us.”

I have been thinking a LOT about how to respond to this statement a friend made to me a couple of months ago. (And this question has freshly hit the headlines again in the UK with Kemi Badenoch’s recent speech.)

I made several (failed) starts to gather my thoughts into something coherent, until I realised that the disconnect came from the differing points from which we were both starting.

As someone who works, and volunteers, in the climate space, I was approaching Net Zero from a scientific and physical world perspective, and therefore Net Zero (and fast) appeared as the only sensible answer.

Not being in the climate space, my friend was approaching from an economic, political and social perspective, and may not have the same level of understanding as to why Net Zero is so important in the fight against the climate crisis.

This being the case, I realised that I should go back to the beginning and explain why Net Zero is so important. I also thought it might be helpful in conversations you might have with your friends and family, hence this blog.

2.      Net Zero: An Explainer

a.       What is Net Zero?

Net Zero is mentioned a LOT, especially in recent years, but what does it actually mean?

Simply put, Net Zero is the point where we* have dramatically reduced greenhouse gas emissions to get as close to zero emissions as possible, and then actively remove  from the atmosphere those emissions that really can’t be avoided.[i]

* ‘We’ could be globally, or as a country, or as a business, or a council etc

b.      Why is Net Zero important?

Simple answer: Global warming will not stop until we reach net-zero emissions[ii].

Only when we achieve Net Zero will global warming stop worsening. The best available evidence currently shows that warming should start to stop once carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reach (net) zero[iii].

However, it’s worth noting that temperatures won’t drop rapidly or straight away - temperatures will fall so slowly that the Earth is likely to cool by only 0.5’C by 2100, and still be 0.5’C above “normal” in the year 2300. The temperature falls at such a slow pace because we are predominantly dependent on natural processes to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and cool the Earth[iv], plus air with high levels of CO2 in takes longer to cool than air with lower levels[v].

c.       Why is Net Zero by 2050 important?

But why the rush? Why are we pushing to get this done by 2050?

Well, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) found that to meet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5’C, global emissions need to be halved by 2030 and limited to Net Zero by around 2050[vi].

3.      And why is 1.5’C so important?

Before we look at why limiting global warming to 1.5’C is so important, it’s worth noting that 2024 was the first year recorded where the global average temperature was around 1.6’C warmer than the pre-industrial period[vii].

In fact, January 2025 ended up being 1.75’C warmer than pre-industrial times. It had been expected to be slightly cooler than January 2024 because we have switched from the natural El Niño weather pattern (which makes our weather warmer and wetter), to La Niña conditions, which should have the opposite effect[viii], so it being even warmer is puzzling and worrying scientists.

So, we are already very much in the zone 1.5-2’C of warming. But to consider that we have officially reached 1.5’C warming, the temperature increases are taken as an average over ten years, not just one. We will have to see what the rest of the coming years will look like.

It’s also important to remember that it’s not ‘Game Over’ at 1.5’C warming.

"It's not like 1.49’C is fine, and 1.51’C is the apocalypse - every tenth of a degree matters and climate impacts get progressively worse the more warming we have."

-              Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a research group in the US[ix].

a.       So what does the world look like at 1.5’C?

In 2018 (when the world had warmed around 1’C) the IPCC produced a report which looked at the impact of a 1.5’C world[x]. This is what they said it would look like[xi]:

1.        💧 100% increase in flooding globally

2.        🌾 Wheat, rice, maize and soy production suffers causing food insecurity worldwide (reduction in yields of wheat -6%, rice -3.2%, maize -7.4% and soybean -3.1%)

3.        🌊 Sea levels rise by 48cm (by 2100), 46 million people impacted / displaced

4.        🧊 Ice-free summers in the Arctic at least every 100 years

5.        🔥 41% increase in wildfires in average mediterranean summers

6.        🥵 9% of the global population (700 million people) will be expose to extreme heat waves at least once every 20 years

7.        😔 30,000 people will die of heat annually in Europe (up from 2,750 in 2018, 1’C)

8.        🌇 350 million urban residents exposed to severe drought by 2100

9.        🪲 6% of insects, 8% of plants & 4% of vertebrates affected

10.  🪸 Coral bleaching: 70% of world’s reefs are lost by 2100

11.  📉 Economic impact of reducing global GDP by 4.3% annually

b.       What does the world look like at 2’C?

Seeing as we are knocking on the door of 2’C already, why don’t we just ‘give up’? Why does limiting 1.5’C as opposed to 2’C matter? Is it that much worse? This is what the same IPCC report said a 2’C world will look like (compared to 1.5’C):

1.        💧 170% increase in flooding globally (+70%)

2.        🌾 Agricultural yields fall rapidly. Maize yield reductions increase from -6% to -54%.

3.        🌊 Sea levels rise by 56 cm (by 2100), 49 million people impacted / displaced (+8cm & 3 million people)

4.        🧊 Ice-free summers in the Arctic at least every 10 years (10x as frequent)

5.        🔥 62% increase in wildfires in average mediterranean summers (+21%)

6.        🥵 28.2% of the global population (2 billion people) will be expose to extreme heat waves at least once every 20 years (+19.2%)

7.        😔 In South Asia, nearly three times as many people would be exposed to combinations of heat and humidity that would kill even a healthy person within hours, even assuming the population remains the same. 

8.        🌇 410 million urban residents exposed to severe drought by 2100 (+60 million people)

9.        🪲 18% of insects, 16% of plants & 8% of vertebrates affected (2-3x as many)

10.  🪸 Coral bleaching: virtually all of world’s reefs are lost by 2100 (+29.9%)

11.  🦠 Increase in vector borne disease like malaria and dengue

12.  📉 Economic impact of reducing GDP by 11% - including -7% in North America, -8% in Europe.

c.       What would the world look like at 3’C?[xii]

·       🌾 Food shortages: Rapid fall in food production

o   Globally, nearly all crop yields will have fallen rapidly.

o   The cost of adaptation and damages to crops may hit $128 billion a year.

o   Fish species go locally extinct, with serious impacts on ecosystems and the people who depend on them.

·       🌊 Sea Level Rise: Potential for catastrophic sea level rise

o   The near-complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet is triggered somewhere between 1’C-4’C.

o   The whole process could take hundreds of years, but it would ultimately lead to a sea level rise of several metres.

·       🔥 Wildfires

o   97% increase in wildfires in average mediterranean summers (+56% from 1.5’C)

·       🥵 Heat & Humidity: Lethal heat and humidity

o   711 million people globally would experience lethal heat-humidity combinations at least once a decade.

o   Around 96,000 people will die in Europe annually.

·       🌧️ Rain & Water: Changes to rainfall and water shortages

o   Reduced groundwater, which supplies the majority of public water supply in England.

o   Half of the Mediterranean area would suffer drought, with the drought duration would increase to 5.6 months annually (from 2.1 months per year before global warming).

o   Globally, the population exposed to water stress would double.

·       🪲 Extinctions: Extinctions of plants and animals

o   1/3 of endemic (those unique to a particular area) land species, and about 1/2 of endemic species living in the sea will face extinction.

o   On mountains, 84% of endemic animals and plants would face extinction, while all endemic island-living species are likely to go extinct.

o   Marine ecosystems may collapse - certain fish species begin to go extinct.

·       🦠 Disease: Increase in insect-borne diseases[xiii]

o   Well known vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever, Lyme disease, tick-borne encephalitis and West Nile fever all become wider-spread.

o   The cold-blooded insects that carry the diseases have a higher survival rate at warmer temperatures, as do the pathogens inside them, plus the locations in which they can live increase as everywhere warms.

·       📉 Economy: Economic damage

o   The world could lose 18% of total GDP – including about 10.5% of GDP in both North America and Europe.

·       ❌ Irreversible Tipping Points: High risk of hitting tipping points

o   A 3’C temperature rise increases the possibility that fragile natural systems like the Arctic or Amazon experience “abrupt and irreversible changes” by melting entirely or drying out.

·       🧳 Mass Migration: Climate Migrants

o   The IEP (Institute for Economics and Peace), an international thinktank, predicts that 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050 due to rise in extreme weather and natural disasters[xiv]. At 3’C warming this could be even higher.

d.      What does the world look like at 4’C?

Terrifyingly, adaptation to 4’C may not be possible.[xv]

A 4’C world would see multiple severe impacts all happening at the same time: reduced water availability, new diseases, and heat extremes.

Eventual sea-level rise of between 6-19 metres (as would trigger the melting of both the Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets). Up to half the Amazon could shift to savanna through drought and fire.

In a 2012 report on the impacts of a 4’C temperature rise, the World Bank concluded:

“There is no certainty that adaptation to a 4’C world is possible … the projected 4’C warming simply must not be allowed to occur.”

4.      So, how hot is it going to get?

What temperature increase are we currently heading towards?

[xvi]

If governments deliver on the emissions reduction pledges (i.e. current global policies and actions) made in the Paris climate change agreement, but don’t go further, temperatures should climb but then stabilise somewhere between 2.2’C and 3.4’C.[xvii]

If we start to roll back current policies and actions (or even abandon them altogether), we’re looking at an even higher temperature increase.

What are the chances of staying at 1.5’C or below?

The world emitted 41 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2022.² To have a 50% chance of staying below 1.5°C, we can only emit another 250 billion tonnes. That’s just six years of our current emissions![xviii]

[xix]

To put it another way, in terms of continuing to burn fossil fuels, to keep warming to a maximum of 1.5’C, 58% of oil, 56% of gas and 89% of coal reserves (identified by 2021) must remain unburned. If we used all the fossil fuels available via existing extraction sites, we would cause three times the emissions of the carbon budget that consistent with a 50% chance of staying below 1.5’C warming[xx]. We would massively overshoot 1.5'C.

5.      Why the world must get to Net Zero

Part of the question posed was ‘What is the benefit?’ I hope that in showing what will happen if we don’t get greenhouse gas emissions under control, get to Net Zero and stop global warming, I have answered that part of the question. The reality is, if we want a liveable future, we don’t have a choice. We (the world) need to get to Net Zero.

6.      Why the UK must get to Net Zero

Answering why the UK must get to Net Zero is multi-faceted:

1. The UK’s ‘fair share’ of responsibility for current emissions

There are 195 countries in the world, meaning that as one country the UK makes up about 0.5% of all countries. The UK currently (as of 2023) emits 0.81% of global greenhouse gas emissions[xxi] – above our 'share' of being 0.5% of all countries.

(However, it's also worth nothing that emissions from international aviation and shipping are not included in any country or region's emissions. They are only included in the global total emissions.)

In addition, there are only six countries in the whole world whose emissions are 2% or over of global emissions: China, the US, India, Russia, Japan and Iran.

Every other country emits less than 2%, adding up to 36% of total. If all these countries decided their climate action was ‘negligible’ and do did nothing, that leaves over 1/3 of emissions on the table. (Of this ‘Rest of World’ bucket, only 5% are small islands or territories, the majority are rich countries, such as the UK[xxii].)

If we look at ‘Per Capita’ emissions of greenhouse gases (emissions divided by our population), the UK is at 5.7 tonnes per person[xxiv], which is above the needed 2.8 tonne per capita maximum to stay below 1.5’C[xxv]. To compare, for example, India’s per capita is only 2.1 tonnes, and Kenya 0.4 tonnes.

We may not be the highest emitter of greenhouse gases, but we do emit more than our ‘fair share’, so at the very least we should be reducing our emissions multiple fold.

2. The UK’s ‘fair share’ of responsibility for historic emissions

Whilst our current emissions are a relatively small percentage of global emissions, even if we include our consumption emissions, if we count the UK’s cumulative emissions, the picture changes.

Looking at CO2 emissions from since they were first recorded in 1750 until today (2023), the UK is the fourth highest emission of all time, only behind the US, the EU, China and then us.[xxvi] We may not be one of the highest annual emitters now, but our country’s emissions over the last 270+ years all add up.

[xxvii]

In fact, for the first 50 years of fossil fuel consumption, the UK accounted for between 99.29-100% of global emissions. Up until 1883, the UK produced 50% or more of all emissions. Even by 1950 we were still at high as 17.99% of global emissions, with China at that point only accounting for 1.03%[xxviii].

This fossil fuel usage is what powered the Industrial Revolution, which led to both the UK’s economic and political strength, the relative economic and political weakness of other countries (primarily former colonies, mainly in the Global South), and to the current climate crisis.

In short, the UK is one of the main countries who causes the climate crisis and benefited in the process. It is our responsibility to take a lead in addressing it by reducing our emissions. Richer countries such as the UK should get to Net Zero as quickly as possible not only to reduce climate change impacts for poorer countries, but also to give them greater access to the global carbon budget, to help with their development[xxix].

3. Our impact is much greater than our 1.3% emissions[xxx]

Arguing that the UK is ‘too small’ to make a difference, rests on the assumption that domestic (and consumption) emissions are all that matter. This isn’t true.

To decarbonise, we need cheap, low-carbon technologies. This happens through innovation and then scaling these technologies. When countries invest early, when these technologies are expensive, they bring down the prices for the rest of the world, shaping the global emissions trajectory into the future.

Rich countries should take the lead, as they have the money to invest, built on burning the fossil fuels that have caused the problem.

4. The UK can be the proof that Net Zero is possible[xxxi]

Until something is done, it can seem impossible – just like running a sub four-minute mile, until Roger Bannister did it.

If the UK is dramatically reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, other countries, such as our European neighbours can’t argue that it can’t be done. Small countries, such as the UK, can punch above their weight by resetting expectations of what can be done. For example, Norway emits just 0.13% of global emissions but has smashed the glass ceiling on rolling out electric cars. In 2021, 85% of new cars sold in Norway were electric, up from just 1.4% ten years previous in 2011. We have the opportunity to do the same / similar.

5. The UK will benefit from leading in emissions reductions.

The benefits to the UK getting to Net Zero, and leading the way in doing so, will be covered in more detail in part two of this blog, but at high level, there are two main categories of benefits:

·      Economic, e.g.

o   The path to Net Zero can lead to innovation, new jobs and long term prosperity[xxxii]

o   We are already seeing the economic benefits: between 2023 and 2024 the Net Zero sector grew by 10.1%, three times faster than the 3.2% growth in the overall UK economy[xxxiii]

o   And it is predicted that Green Growth could deliver £37-57 billion to GDP, equivalent to between 1.6-2.4% GDP[xxxiv]

·      Health and Social, e.g.

o   Fossil fuels are a major contributor to air pollution, which is responsible for between 28-36k deaths a year in the UK (compared to 1,800 deaths from road collisions).[xxxv]

o   Electrification of power, especially to renewables will protect UK consumers from the volatility and steep prices rises of fossil fuels.

o   Better insulated homes will mean warmer homes in winter, cooler in summer, not only better for health, but also cost.

o   Increased ‘greenification’ of urban areas in particular, such as tree planting, will bring down temperatures in the summer, and is also beneficial for residents’ mental health.[xxxvi]

o   Researchers in Denmark have shown that vegetarian and vegan diets (which are more climate friendly) help reduce the risk of heart attacks by cutting bad cholesterol by 10%, cutting total cholesterol by 7% and cutting apolipoprotein B (the main protein in bad cholesterol) by 14%.[xxxvii]

I hope that in this section I have also shown why the UK must get to Net Zero, and why doing so is beneficial to UK citizens and residents as well as the world.

7.      So, how do we get to Net Zero?

The big questions when we start to look at the 'How' are:

1. How do we do this?
2. How much will it cost?
3. Who will have to pay for it?
4. How do we ensure it’s fair? (Both cost and benefit.)

And so, in the next blog, I’ll be looking at the economics (and politics) of getting to Net Zero. But hopefully for now, I’ve provided a compelling argument as to why the world needs to get to Net Zero, and why the UK should get to Net Zero as part of that.

COMING SOON(ISH)... "The Costs and Benefits to the UK of Transitioning to Net Zero (by 2050)"

But for now... Download your FREE Net Zero Conversation Guides:

1.        Why Do We Need Net Zero?

2.        Why should the UK get to Net Zero?

I'd love to know what you think of this Long Read Explainer on Net Zero. Is it interesting? Is it useful? Does it help you create a narrative that helps you to explain to others outside of the climate movement why Net Zero is so vital? Is there anything major I've totally ignored and should include in an update / re-write?

My inbox is always open, so feel free to drop me an email.

With love, learning and difficult conversations,

Elena x

References & Further Reading