The UK’s opposition Conservative party published a policy booklet containing a claim about the cost of achieving net-zero emissions that appears to have originated from a mathematical error in data compilation.
The document asserted that the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s official climate adviser, had estimated the net-zero transition would cost approximately £957 billion. However, the CCC’s actual 2020 estimate was £478 billion—exactly half the cited figure. The committee subsequently revised this estimate downward to £108 billion in the following year, primarily due to declining costs in electric vehicle technology.
The source of the Conservative party’s erroneous figure traces back to a spreadsheet error occurring within the CCC’s own 2020 data publication. The spreadsheet contained a table listing capital and operational expenditures needed for building a net-zero economy across various sectors. When these figures were properly combined according to the CCC’s methodology, they totaled £478 billion. However, someone appears to have added together all individual line items in the spreadsheet without recognizing that annual totals were already included, resulting in figures being counted twice and producing the inflated £957 billion total.
The incorrect figure first appeared online in an article published in January 2026 by David Turver, described as a retired engineer and self-described accidental energy analyst. Turver repeated the error in a subsequent report for a free-market think tank. The mistaken number was later cited by another organization in March 2026 before eventually being incorporated into the Conservative party’s October 2026 policy document.
According to the CCC’s original 2020 assessment, the net cost represented less than one percent of GDP over three decades and was expected to generate broader economic benefits. The committee’s revised figures from the previous year indicated an even lower relative cost to the economy.
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