We need to frame ‘net zero’ in a completely different way.
It’s the height of summer, when everyone should be having a carefree break without thinking about the ills of the world.
Instead, our news feeds are filled with stories of wildfires in Europe and closer to home, in the Cairngorms in Scotland, in South Wales, or in Dunwich Heath, Suffolk.
Weirdly, climate change has barely factored into any of the whirlwind announcements emerging from Andy Burnham, our new prime minister, in the last two weeks.
Heat
Nothing about crop failures and rising food prices, nothing about water resilience or long-term insurance to deal with the impacts that are only going to get worse.
Burnham’s answer? A paltry reduction of VAT on energy bills to deal with rising energy prices - and a resumption of drilling in the North Sea. Let’s ignore the latter, because it simply belies belief.
This £45 taken off the average energy bill is going to do little to address the threat of food shortages that we are no doubt going to see in the near future.
I live in a typical terrace home. Over the past few years, we’ve spent about £14,000 adapting the house to be greener. The motivation wasn’t just about reducing our emissions – it was about making our house more comfortable.
We’ve put in loft insulation, upgraded our windows and installed ceiling fans to deal with the heat. This is in addition to installing a heat pump when our boiler conked out during Christmas a couple of years ago.
Bills
These adaptations have largely worked – the house is fairly warm in winter, not too hot even in this summer’s heatwave. And as an added bonus, our energy bills are actually going down, the most recent direct debit reduced by a whopping £70/month - far exceeding Burnham’s annual savings. And there is still a lot more we can do.
Everyone talks about the elusive idea of ‘net zero’. But in reality, that’s quite an unhelpful framing and has probably been a barrier to climate action.
Conservative and Reform positions are to abandon net zero, alleging that it is these targets that are responsible for our higher energy bills.
This is in spite of the fact that 78 per cent of the population has expressed concern about climate change, according to regular polling from the Department of Energy and Net Zero.
Plug-in
In reality, the issue is far more personal for most people, as my own experience attests to. How do we adapt to a changing climate and make our lives better, not worse? And how can we afford to do so?
The government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) estimates that achieving net zero would cost about £26bn a year, without giving a specific figure for housing.
We need to frame ‘net zero’ in a completely different way.
We can expect this to be a wild overestimate. The Climate Change Committee estimates have already fallen dramatically since they were first published.
Just look at solar. When renovating our home, we recently received an estimate of just £65 per panel + labour (albeit without a battery). And when plug-in solar is approved - which is coming at the end of August 2026 - it’ll make solar even more accessible to DIY enthusiasts.
Wellbeing
But the urgent need isn’t necessarily net zero – it’s now about adaptation. The cost of not adapting is threatening people’s lives and livelihoods. And the cost of avoiding doing something is going way up.
A farmer, speaking on the BBC Radio Four Today programme, was saying that they wished they had invested in water resilience 15 years ago. Of course. It’s now more expensive and also unavoidable.
We need to frame ‘net zero’ in a completely different way. Adapting our own homes to deal with the immediate impacts of excessive heat in the summer, flooding in the winter, or high energy bills because of our dependence on foreign oil and gas becomes a more pressing issue for most people. And it may spur more people into action, including our politicians.
How we adapt to this changing climate will do more to define our health and wellbeing for decades to come. And it can’t be pushed into the long grass – as we can see, that’s a recipe for a burning disaster.
This Author
Deborah Doane is the co-director of Verdant, a think tank committed to the values of social and environmental justice.
