Tories overstate net zero cost by nearly £500bn in apparent spreadsheet error
Summary
The Conservative Party’s policy document for their conference mistakenly said that reaching net zero emissions in the UK would cost nearly £957 billion, almost double the actual estimate of about £478 billion. This error seems to have come from incorrectly adding numbers in a spreadsheet, leading to a much higher reported cost.Key Facts
- The Conservative policy document claimed net zero would cost £957 billion.
- The real estimated cost from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) is about £478 billion.
- The error happened because a spreadsheet’s totals were counted twice.
- The CCC offers to explain their numbers but said they do not recognize the Conservatives’ higher figure.
- The CCC’s latest cost estimate for net zero by 2050 is about £110 billion (around £4 billion each year).
- The mistake was first noticed by Carbon Brief and shared with The Guardian.
- Some right-wing sources had already published the incorrect higher figure before the party’s document.
- The Conservatives describe their document as a precise diagnosis of UK problems, inspired by a 1976 Tory report.
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