HEADLINE: “The tide is turning against the fantasy economics that prop up net zero”, by Matthew Lynn

“In reality, bosses are starting to admit what has been obvious for some time. Net zero is making us poorer – and that means we have to rethink the way we go about reducing carbon emissions.”

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• Matthew Lynn

The tide is turning against the fantasy economics that prop up net zero

Many of the things we take for granted are about to be become prohibitively expensive

It would drive a new industrial revolution. It would create lots of “well-paid, green jobs”. And the wealth it would generate would lower prices, raise living standards and spark innovations that would transform whole industries.

For most of the last decade, corporate leaders have insisted that the transition to a carbon-neutral economy was win-win.

We would save the planet and get richer at the same time. But hold on. The Australian airline Qantas has just broken ranks, admitting that flying may soon be the preserve of only the privileged, while a wealth of research is making it clear that environmental goals have hammered the economy.

In reality, bosses are starting to admit what has been obvious for some time. Net zero is making us poorer – and that means we have to rethink the way we go about reducing carbon emissions.

If you thought that summer flight to Malaga or Crete with the family was already looking eye-wateringly expensive, you have not seen anything yet. According to the data company Mabrian, budget – and the word “budget” is looking increasingly out of place for the no-frills aviation industry – flights to Spain will cost 26pc more this year than last and those kinds of price rises are becoming the norm for many destinations.

But it will get a lot worse very soon. Vanessa Hudson, the chief executive of Qantas, admitted this week that flying may well become “so expensive that it’s something only for the privileged”.

It doesn’t stop there.

Chris Wright, Trump’s energy secretary, delivered some blunt truths on UK policy last month when he argued that our roll-out of wind farms and solar panels “had not delivered any benefits”. In fact, he said that British politicians were impoverishing citizens “in the delusion that this was somehow going to make the world a better place”.

Likewise, earlier this month, an analysis by Peel Hunt showed that the steep decline in electricity supply since the early 2000s had coincided with a sharp fall in the growth of living standards and that the two were inextricably linked.

There is no point in kidding ourselves any more. The net zero drive is making us poorer.

Let’s take aviation, for example. Vanessa Hudson’s point was that sustainable aviation fuel, which will soon be mandatory for at least 10pc of an airline’s consumption, is far more expensive than the traditional fossil variety.

It can cost up to five times as much as kerosene and that increase means fares will have to rise prohibitively if airlines are to stay in business. We have only seen the start of the rise in ticket prices and there will be a lot more to come over the next few years. Very soon, only the wealthy will be able to fly and the rest of us will have to stay at home.

The trouble is, this is completely crazy.

To start with, affordable aviation is now built into the fabric of the economy. It is integral to tourism, with much of the Mediterranean completely reliant on it for its economic survival. It is crucial for exports, with sales trips dependent on getting around the continent efficiently.

The conference industry relies on it for its survival, and so does distribution and logistics. If costs rise four or fivefold, then it is not just a few budget flights that will be lost. Whole swathes of the economy will be wiped out.

The same is true of manufacturing. Perhaps renewables will deliver cheap, reliable energy one day, but there is not much sign of it yet. Instead, factories and chemical plants are closing down at an accelerating rate as energy prices, already 50pc higher than in France, and double that of the United States, mean it is impossible to make stuff in the UK.

We were told that transitioning to net zero would make us all richer. It was, apparently, “the economic opportunity of the century”. But sector by sector, those lazy assumptions are being taken apart.

At least Qantas is being honest. So are a handful of other corporate leaders, even if the majority are still living in the la-la-land where there is no trade-off between hitting our environmental goals and maintaining our standards of living.

We can all argue about how serious a threat climate change represents and whether the UK really needs to be a world leader in fighting it (or whether it doesn’t really make much difference given that we only account for 1pc of global emissions). But one point is surely abundantly clear. We need to rethink our approach to achieving net zero because the costs are becoming more than the economy can realistically bear.

In aviation, for example, we need to modify the targets for sustainable fuels until we have worked out a way of making them a lot more cheaply or come up with a completely different technology.

On wind and solar, we need to look again at whether they can function without subsidies, and if not, we need to switch to alternatives such as nuclear.

As for electric vehicles, we need to look again at whether they can really match petrol cars in the mass market or whether we should be focusing on hydrogen instead. The list goes on and on. In reality, the entire net zero strategy needs a radical rethink.

The corporate sector should take the lead in that. It should drop the wishful thinking, along with the fantasy economics, and start spelling out the price we will all soon be paying, whether it is higher ticket prices, fewer goods in the shops or lost jobs.

A few bosses are telling it straight, but we need many more to join them for the message to start getting through.

BOTTOMLINE: Hey, Net Zero Savants, you are making half of the world poorer and the other part energy empty.