Net zero chance

What exactly is net zero and how can it ever save the planet? If the politicians who impose net zero policies on us don’t know, how can we?

Renewable energy projects, which are meant to help us reach this ambiguous, seemingly-infinite net zero target, are extremely carbon emitting. Besides the preliminaries – the sourcing of the materials in developing countries where regulations are slack; the dirty production of turbines and solar panels in foreign countries where pollution control is woefully inadequate and slave labour used; the transportation across the world on ships not powered by wind but by diesel. Once these “green products” hit our shores the real joke of “carbon neutral” begins.

Peatlands and heather moorland are dug up to allow for tens of thousands of tonnes of rebar and concrete to be poured into the land for the turbine towers, service tracks of quarried stone and Tarmac are constructed, covering once pristine wild land. Forests are felled to make space for turbines, pylons and overhead lines. The seabed is churned and pummelled by pile driving and the anchoring of offshore turbines. Prime agricultural land is covered in solar panels, substations, and battery storage units. Peatlands, moorland, forests and seabeds are some of the greatest carbon stores we have. When we destroy agricultural land for heavy industry we limit even more what we can grow to feed ourselves, resulting in needing to import food, which results in a serious accumulation of unnecessary food miles.

I wonder if the renewable energy industry knows that to keep the money coming in you have to keep emitting Co2, and the best way to do that is to destroy the very things in nature that control it. That way, net zero can never be reached and the industry can keep on growing, never really cleaning up the planet, just making billions off the back of the environment it is pretending to save – just like every other big dirty industry has in history.

Denise Davis Kiltarlity, Highland