Why Net Zero?

You might think from media coverage that stopping climate change is difficult and expensive. This is not true. We already have most of the technology we need to get to net zero, and it is consumer-ready, proven and available to home owners right now. To prove this, we have made our home net zero carbon - and we have done it for a smaller investment than a new kitchen. Not only is our home net zero carbon, it is net zero cost in terms of energy bills, so that investment pays back.

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You may be sceptical, and wondering how the misfit between our experience and standard media coverage has arisen. This is how:

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• Things have changed. When I started working on climate solutions 30 years ago, we didn't have mature, zero carbon solutions for power, heat and mobility. What little we did have was expensive and underperforming. But human technology has found ways, many ways, of making renewable heat and power and electric vehicles work well, at scale - so that in 2023 an electric car is not only the world's best selling vehicle, but can give a fossil Ferrari a run for its money!
  Neither the media nor our politicians have caught up with this positive reality.
   

• Cost confusion: Most media coverage, looking for alarmist clickbait, focuses on initial costs, regardless of whether they would be incurred anyway or make a return. But in fact most of the supposed "costs" of Net Zero are little or no more than the costs we face anyway in maintaining our fossil fuelled habit, and most of them give you a return on your money, turning costs into savings and income. 
  And for context, the UK currently spends £100bn per year on imported oil and gas - this is what we get to avoid as we go to Net Zero and rely on our own energy.
   

What does Net Zero mean?

We know we have to get to zero emissions to stop climate change getting any worse. But while we now know that many human activities can become zero emission, there are others, such as from agriculture or mining, that we may not be able to stop completely. The solution is Net Zero: we accept some residual emissions, but we will do other things that take carbon out of the atmosphere, such as reforestation, and the net result of emissions and removals is zero. This is the end goal for around 2050 - for removals to balance remaining emissions, and this will work for the planet.  We can think about Net Zero at a national, global, company, individual or (in our case) home level.

 

What does Net Zero mean for a home?

For Net Zero carbon, your home's net carbon emissions, balanced out over the year, come to zero or less. This is because, although you import some electricity in winter which has associated carbon emissions, you export as much or more electricity in summer, making your net electricity use zero or negative, and so your net carbon emissions from electricity net carbon or negative. We are considering the home and its energy here, and not your wider activities such as car, shopping, holidays etc. (It may however be possible to bring an electric car within your Net Zero scope, and that is our next target).
Note that, if you cause emissions from other sources, eg a wood burner, gas cooker or lawn mower, these are additional carbon emissions which could count against your net zero goal. Cooking and garden gear are likely to have small emissions compared to your PV generation, but a wood burner could be significant. Burning wood is not necessarily carbon neutral, and produces significant harmful local air pollution.

For Net Zero cost, the same applies except in £££ rather than tonnes of CO2. Whatever you pay out in winter you get back in summer, making your net energy cost zero or even an earner.

Note that we are using an operational definition of Net Zero for your home: just the energy it uses and generates. We are not including embedded carbon from manufacture of equipment and materials such as solar panels and heat pumps in the calculation, although you will find discussion of these factors in several sections of this site. This is why you may see other homes described at "first net zero home" or similar - these very unusual new houses have achieved net zero even including the materials they're built from, which is great, but hard for most of us who are dealing with houses that are here already.

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Is Net Zero the same as Carbon Neutral?

While the two terms have semantically similar meanings, they are used differently in the climate change world. Carbon neutral is a term that has primarily been used by businesses to make their business actually or apparently greener, normally by buying carbon offsets - pledges by some other organisation, often far away, to cut emissions by a certain amount. While offsets can work in principle, they have been open to abuse and their reputation is poor, as it is hard to be sure that the offsetting emissions reductions promised really take place, endure, and are additional to what would have happened anyway, and their location and timescale may be hard to pin down. Carbon neutral claims have therefore sometimes been accused of being greenwash.

Net Zero is a more recent term and is most often used at a national level, it is used in climate science and in national emissions targets, and is directly relevant to stopping climate change, as global Net Zero is what is required to stop warming. In normal use it is more rigorous than carbon neutrality, with a tighter geographical scope such as a country, and tighter timescales, most typically a single year, and offsets are not normally part of the approach.  Businesses are beginning to look at becoming "net zero businesses". Although this is likely to be more complex than our Net Zero Home, their way forward is becoming clearer, particularly now that Science Based Targets (ie, in line with Net Zero) are replacing carbon neutrality as a corporate goal.

We think we are one of the first to apply the Net Zero approach to homes. There are enormous advantages to doing so, at a personal, national and global level. Households are one of the biggest contributors to UK greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for around a quarter of all emissions, so what we do at home matters. We have also been facing worrying rises in energy bills, and a level of national insecurity as we find we are reliant on either Russia or the Middle East for most of our gas supplies. By making the shift to a Net Zero Home we address all three of the big energy worries - affordability, carbon and security - by making our homes a domestic source of clean energy and income. So time to get started!