Net Zero

The most important policy project of our lifetime. Is anyone actually delivering it? Everyone has an opinion on net zero. Almost nobody understands it. Climate change is real, the science is robust, and the case for urgent action is not in question. What is in question - and what almost nobody is asking loudly enough - is whether the programme assembled in its name is honest, effective, or fair. Net Zero is the book that asks. In eleven minutes, without a vote, the UK became the first major economy to put a legally binding net zero target into law. The chamber was distracted. The commitment was enormous. And the gap between what was promised that afternoon and what has been built since is the subject of this book. D.C. Ashcroft takes readers inside the machinery of the net zero transition: the carbon budgets quietly missed year after year; the green finance market where billions flow toward the appearance of progress as much as its substance; the lobbyists who have set the pace of change at the rate incumbent industries can manage, not the rate the climate requires; and the electricity grid, built for a world of power stations, that cannot yet carry the weight of a world of heat pumps and electric cars. Net Zero examines who benefits from the transition and who is being left behind. It looks honestly at the science, what is settled, what is genuinely uncertain, and where public communication has failed both sceptics and believers. It follows the money through green bonds, carbon offsets, and corporate pledges that, on close reading, cover a fraction of the emissions they claim to address. And it asks the question that the dinner-party debate never reaches: what would a credible, honest, deliverable net zero programme actually require?