In November 2025, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) published a 170-page technical report setting out a range of routes to net zero by 2050. It is the fifteenth report of its kind from the system operator and its predecessor body, and it is intended to inform strategic energy planning: what choices the UK faces, what trade-offs sit behind them, and where the uncertainties lie.
NESO’s conclusion was clear. When you account for the costs of climate impacts – such as flooding and disruption – net zero is the lowest-cost option for the UK energy system. In other words, it is the economically rational path once you price in the consequences of inaction.
I first came across this report when it was used in a Times article claiming that net zero will ‘cost UK households £500 a year’, which sounded scary until I read that this figure ignored carbon costs and worsening climate change. But first impressions matter – net zero is unaffordable, net zero is driving up bills, net zero will bankrupt the country.
The report was, weeks later, used as the basis for the Institute of Economic Affairs pamphlet The Cost of Net Zero. This paper puts a staggering £7.6 trillion figure on the transition. Right-wing newspapers such as the Times, the Daily Express and the Sun ran with similarly large numbers. The Times, for instance, reported that Britain ‘will spend £4.5 trillion on the road to net zero’.
These figures are attention-grabbing for a fundamental reason. That’s exactly what they are designed to be.
But if you dig down into the numbers, they are also deeply misleading because they frame the transition as a unique cost, rather than as a comparison between two systems: the one we have today, and the one we need to build.
The UK will need to spend vast sums on energy infrastructure between now and 2050, whether that be on net zero or on fossil fuels. Cars will be replaced. Boilers will be replaced. Power stations, networks, and pipes will be maintained and renewed; new generating capacity will have to be built. The energy system is not a static asset we either keep or swap out for free.
To get to these large figures, the outlets simply ignored the cost of maintaining and renewing our current system. To sustain these numbers, you have to imagine a world of free cars, free boilers, free maintenance…
When you run the numbers fairly, including the cost of maintaining our current system, plus factoring in the costs associated with escalating damage from climate impacts, all the analysis reaches the conclusion that net zero is the cheapest route for the UK.
And that’s before you think about the upsides. Whatever the anti-lobby will say, the future of the global economy is a low-carbon one. China knows that and has invested hundreds of billions in stealing a march on net zero technologies such as EVs, solar and wind power.
If you don’t want to act because you don’t believe in climate change, then you should still act because it is an economic imperative.
First impression matters
However, the incorrect, big headline numbers travel faster than the nuance in a world where clicks and engagements matter.
This is the political challenge.
Misinformation is steering the conversation, and anti-net zero sentiment is now a well-established feature of parts of the right of British politics – amplified through sections of the press and a wider ecosystem of campaigning and commentary. It feeds on something real: high bills, low trust, and the sense that the transition is something being done to people rather than with them. It also draws power from the fact that some low-carbon choices still feel expensive or difficult, heat pumps being the obvious example.
Shifting the conversation towards visible benefits
If the argument stays stuck on long-run totals and eye-watering headline numbers, the anti-net zero side tends to win by default. A more productive approach is to anchor the conversation in what people can recognise in their own lives: control over bills, warmer homes, and a more resilient economy.
That does not mean pretending there are no costs. It means putting costs in context, and spending more time on what households and businesses get in return – and on what has to change for those benefits to show up sooner rather than later.
A few practical ways communicators and advocates could help move the debate in that direction:
- Make the benefits legible and immediate: It can be tempting to reach for sweeping claims about the ‘green economy’, but those can sound abstract when news coverage is dominated by industrial closures and job losses. Instead, it might land better to use examples that feel concrete and local: electricians retraining, installers working street by street, port activity linked to offshore wind maintenance, SMEs in supply chains, and so on. People believe benefits when they can picture where they sit, who gets them, and what changes as a result.
- Put homes and health closer to the centre: For many people, net zero feels like something happening elsewhere, to someone else. Talking about homes changes that. You can reasonably emphasise everyday outcomes: lower bills, fewer cold homes, less damp and mould, and cleaner air. 
- Move from ‘defending net zero’ to ‘improving delivery’: Another way to de-escalate the culture-war dynamic is to talk less as if the argument is about belief, and more as if it is about competence: planning, grid connections, skills, and investment confidence. The public does not need to love every policy; they do need to see that the state is removing bottlenecks so the promised benefits actually arrive
The scare-story version of net zero relies on a false choice: spend vast sums on net zero, or spend nothing, both at a national level and for households.
But there is a positive way to reframe the conversation: the choice is whether investment leaves households exposed to volatility and rising climate impacts, or whether it buys greater stability, healthier homes, cleaner air, and real progress on tackling climate change.
