£695bn for a World 0.00376°C Cooler, Lomborg Says. Burnham Recommits at COP31

News | By Matt, Editor

Net zero by 2050 will cost Britain £695 billion in today’s money, according to the economist Bjorn Lomborg. What it buys, on the climate models the UN’s own scientists use, is a world 0.00376°C cooler in the year 2100. That is under four-thousandths of a degree, and the figures come from Lomborg’s new cost-benefit calculator.

The sums were laid out by Matt Ridley in the Daily Mail after Andy Burnham’s trip to the COP31 climate summit in Turkey, where he was the only G7 leader to turn up. Lomborg, who runs the Copenhagen Consensus think tank, boils the British number down to one line: about 11p of climate benefit for every pound spent. This week the figure has been all over X, and Lomborg took it on to The Andrew Neil Report.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the COP31 lectern in Antalya, 12 November 2026 (No 10 Downing Street, OGL 3, Commons) and Barrow offshore wind farm (Andy Dingley, CC BY-SA 3.0, Commons), cropped and combined

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Key facts

• Lomborg’s website, netzerocostbenefit.com, puts the cost of UK net zero by 2050 at £695bn in today’s money, using the temperature and economic models behind the IPCC’s reports.
• On those models, Britain reaching net zero leaves the world 0.00376°C less warm in 2100. Lomborg works that out at roughly 11p of benefit per £1 of cost.
• Even if every country hit net zero by 2050, Ridley writes, warming in 2100 would be 1.38°C lower, for a benefit worth $24 trillion against a cost of $255 trillion.
• Burnham told COP31 on 12 November: “We’re committed to meeting our 2050 net zero target.”
• The government’s official advisers, the Climate Change Committee, put the net cost far lower, at around £4bn a year on average to 2050, or about 0.2% of GDP.

Where the £695bn comes from

Lomborg’s tool lets you pick a country and see what its climate plan costs and what it changes. For the UK, the answer is stark because Britain is a small and shrinking slice of world emissions. Whatever we cut, the global thermometer barely moves unless China, India and the United States move with us.

Ridley’s point is that nobody in power has ever put the bill and the benefit side by side like this. “I don’t know about you, but in my own life I don’t generally spend £10 for £1 worth of goods,” he wrote.

Matt Ridley writes about the expensive futility of net zero in the Daily Mail:

The UK's net zero in one number: 11p back on every pound

The bill is £695 billion ($934 billion), to make our great-grandchildren's lives "cooler by under four thousandths of a degree Celsius"… pic.twitter.com/aaFb23cYdb

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) November 14, 2026

The model counts the benefit as avoided climate damage only. Backers of net zero say that misses the point, and they make a fair argument about energy security: home-grown power can’t be switched off by a foreign gas supplier. But that is a different case from the one ministers usually make, which is about saving the planet.

The only G7 leader in Antalya

Burnham was the only leader from the G7 at COP31. Donald Trump, Mark Carney, Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, Giorgia Meloni and Sanae Takaichi all stayed away, Ridley notes, and so did Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi. Ridley says Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh and 255 British officials made the trip.

We reported on Thursday that the Prime Minister had flown 22,500 miles abroad in 115 days, almost 4,000 of them in just over a day for a 764-word speech in Antalya. In it he told delegates the “climate crisis is not a distant threat” and repeated the 2050 pledge.

Recent indications, including in the Budget, that UK government was edging away from net zero.
But that didn’t stop PM Burnham from flying thousands of miles by private jet to Turkey to make a <six-minute speech about net zero to a nearly net zero audience (the hall was… https://t.co/qtDgg9pZLJ

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) November 13, 2026

Money went with him. At the summit, British International Investment, the government-owned development bank, signed up to a $10 billion climate finance pact with its Norwegian and Canadian counterparts. The cash, including private money they hope to draw in, is meant for renewables, grids and storage in emerging markets by 2030.

What it means for your bills

At home the costs keep landing on households. This week Labour’s own Energy Secretary called its Clean Power 2030 goal, sold with a promise of up to £300 off bills, a “stretch target”. On a still day, wind fell to 2% of the grid and one gas plant was paid the equivalent of £1.4m an hour. Landlords face fines of up to £30,000 over energy ratings under Labour’s Energy Independence Bill, and the same bill could let energy firms see HMRC records so better-off homes pay more.

None of that shows up as a single line on your statement. It arrives as levies, standing charges and higher prices for everything that needs power to make or move.

Have our leaders ever done a cost-benefit analysis of Net Zero? If they had, they'd realise that Britain will pay £695bn just to make the world 0.00376°C less warm by 2100. How can that be worth it, asks Matt Ridley. https://t.co/qYRQyHrbXq

— Toby Young (@toadmeister) November 13, 2026

The other side

Climate scientists and campaigners say the whole framing is wrong. Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute at LSE, who has clashed with Neil this week, put it simply: “Climate change stops when the world reaches net zero emissions.” On that view Britain has to play its part, because every country could say its share is too small to matter.

It is surprising how many opponents of net zero do not understand the science behind it. They should educate themselves by reading this: https://t.co/NaxJidWu15

— Bob Ward (@ret_ward) November 14, 2026

The Climate Change Committee also argues that the bill is much smaller than critics claim. In its Seventh Carbon Budget it put the net extra cost of its preferred path at about £4bn a year on average between 2025 and 2050. It expects savings on running costs to outweigh the upfront spending by the late 2030s. Which number you believe depends a lot on how far you trust those savings.

New from The ANDREW NEIL Report: The true cost of net zero will leave you speechless.https://t.co/dvkUqIOnz2 via @YouTube

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) November 13, 2026

Our view

You can argue about the model. You can’t argue about the principle. Any family that spent £1 to get 11p back would stop. If ministers have their own version of this sum, the full cost to Britain set against the warming it avoids, they should publish it. Without it they are asking for blind faith.

Burnham flew to Turkey to be the only G7 leader in Antalya and sign Britain up for more. The leaders of China and India, whose emissions matter far more to the thermometer, stayed away. If the PM thinks the £695bn figure is wrong, he should put up his own. Until then, voters are entitled to ask why they are paying first, paying most and getting the least back.

Your vote: should Britain scrap its 2050 net zero target? Vote Yes or No below.

Sources

• Daily Mail, Matt Ridley, 13 November 2026: £695bn, 0.00376°C, G7 attendance, officials on the trip, world net zero sums
• netzerocostbenefit.com (Copenhagen Consensus): Lomborg’s calculator
• Climate Change Committee, Seventh Carbon Budget (2025): net cost estimate
• British International Investment, 13 November 2026: 10by30 climate finance pact
• Breaking Brexit News, 12 November 2026: Burnham’s COP31 speech and air miles (GB News tally)