Overview ”Premeditated Industrial Destruction?” published by the Great British Business Council, argues that the UK’s Net Zero policies have not merely been misguided but amount to a deliberate, if poorly considered, dismantling of British industry. The authors contend that decades of carbon taxes, environmental regulation, and restrictions on fossil fuel production have devastated manufacturing, employment, and export competitiveness — without making any meaningful dent in global emissions. The paper pairs its critique with a detailed policy agenda for reversing the damage.

The Net Zero Problem A foundational argument is that Net Zero as currently pursued is unachievable and economically irrational. Around 80% of UK energy still comes from oil, gas, and coal, with gas alone accounting for 40% of total consumption. Yet policy has actively suppressed domestic production through the Energy Profits Levy (windfall tax), the Carbon Price Support tax, and tight restrictions on exploration and fracking. The result is that the UK increasingly imports the very fuels it could produce at home, widening the trade deficit and exposing the country to volatile international prices and supply shocks.

The paper also challenges the integrity of the UK’s emissions reduction claims. Under UN accounting rules, carbon embedded in imported goods is not counted against the importing country’s territorial emissions. The authors calculate that the UK imported goods carrying approximately 180 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2024 — meaning that much of the apparent 300-million-tonne reduction in UK emissions simply reflects offshoring production rather than genuine decarbonisation.

Sector-by-Sector Damage The paper works through a wide range of industries to show how high energy costs and carbon levies have eroded each one. Steel, cement, ceramics, and glass all require intense industrial heat that cannot practically be supplied by renewables with current technology; carbon taxes have steadily made these sectors unviable in the UK. Primary aluminium production — a key input for vehicles and aircraft — has collapsed, with 95% of capacity now located overseas, driven out by high electricity costs and environmental regulation.

Oil refining and petrochemicals have also contracted sharply, with consequences that ripple into pharmaceuticals, plastics, and fertiliser production. The car and aerospace industries, among the UK’s top export earners, depend on these upstream materials and are therefore doubly exposed — both to high domestic energy costs and to the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which will raise the cost of importing the steel, aluminium, and other inputs they rely on.

Natural Resources Being Left Unused A recurring theme is that the UK is sitting on substantial energy and mineral wealth it is refusing to exploit. The North Sea still holds significant oil and gas reserves; the UK has high-quality anthracite and thermal coal; old mine waste contains rare earths and critical minerals. The paper contrasts the UK’s posture unfavourably with Norway, where the state owns a majority stake in Equinor, actively encourages exploration, and has accumulated a vast sovereign wealth fund from its resources.

The Policy Agenda The proposed remedies are wide-ranging. The authors call for scrapping the windfall tax and carbon levies on oil and gas, lifting the ban on fracking, reopening coal mines, and building modern coal-fired power stations for firm, dispatchable power. They advocate withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the European Convention on Human Rights (insofar as it constrains energy policy), and the Emissions Trading Scheme. The ZEV mandate and EV subsidies should be scrapped, public procurement should drop Net Zero requirements, and financial regulation should return to assessing real commercial risk rather than hypothetical long-run climate scenarios.

The full paper is available to download here:

https://gbbc.uk/uk-deindustrialisation-energy-policy/