Ten hours on the road from London to Northumberland means a lot of time to think. It also provides glimpses of the opportunities and obstacles that face Britain on the path to a net-zero economy. We can get there, if we get the relationship between government and markets right.
It’s about 60 miles north of the capital that the politics and economics of decarbonisation become visible. From the M1 in Northamptonshire, the first wind turbines of the journey appear. They’re a mundane sight now but not long ago they were a matter of fierce politics. In 2012 more than 100 Conservative MPs wrote to David Cameron telling him to abandon onshore wind power. Tellingly, they argued that wind power was expensive and inefficient.
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