The Times’s latest inaccurate reporting on net zero

Bob Ward examines misrepresentation of a report by Great Britain’s National Energy System Operator in The Times newspaper – but also finds that improvements could be made to how the results of official analysis on net zero are communicated.

The Times newspaper has admitted that a recent front-page story misled readers about a new report on net zero by the National Energy System Operator (NESO). However, it is also clear that inconsistent and confusing language in NESO’s report made it easier to misrepresent the findings.

The Times has been publishing a series of misleading and inaccurate articles about energy and climate change policies over the past few years. An analysis by Simon Cocks of the University of Oxford, published in August 2025, found that the newspaper has been responsible for a significant number of misleading articles about electric vehicles, for instance.

This latest example of misreporting occurred on 11 December 2025, in a front-page article about an economic analysis carried out by NESO on scenarios for decarbonisation of the UK power sector. The headline in the print edition of the newspaper was ‘Net zero plan to cost households £500 a year’, while the online headline was ‘Scrapping net zero deadline could save households £500 a year’. Both these headlines misrepresented NESO’s analysis, and the accompanying articles misled readers about the findings.

The content and language of the NESO report

The NESO report in question, titled ‘FES 2025: Economics Annex’ (FES standing for ‘Future Energy Scenarios’), was the latest in a series of documents describing the results of a major analysis of the changes required in the electricity system to help achieve the goal of cutting the UK’s annual emissions of greenhouse gases to net zero by 2050. This analysis was carried out in the form of four Future Energy Scenarios for supply and demand. The executive summary of the overall analysis, published in July 2025, outlines three of these scenarios that are consistent with the achievement of the net zero goal by 2050, including a decarbonised power sector by 2030, through a combination of electrification and some degree of implementation of hydrogen technologies.

The ‘Holistic Transition’ scenario involves a balance of electrification and hydrogen technology, while ‘Electric Engagement’ and ‘Hydrogen Evolution’ represent end cases. In the fourth, ‘Falling Behind’, scenario, further decarbonisation takes place but without reaching the net zero goal.

The ‘FES 2025: Economics Annex’, published on 11 December 2025, assessed the costs and benefits associated with each scenario. It directly compared the ‘Holistic Transition’ and ‘Falling Behind’ scenarios and found that when total costs and benefits were taken into account, the former would, on average, cost £36 billion per year less than the latter. These total costs and benefits were separated into resource costs and so-called “carbon costs”, which include, for instance, those associated with air pollution through the consumption of fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, this important finding was tucked away on page 24 of the NESO report, which stated:

“The Falling Behind scenario also implies a substantially higher carbon cost, as carbon emissions remain high even in 2050, and would secure fewer of the wider benefits such as for air quality and health… With the carbon cost included, the Holistic Transition pathway would be the cheapest. Using the Green Book carbon appraisal values, costs in the Holistic Transition pathway are on average £36 billion per year cheaper over 2025-2050 compared to Falling Behind, a difference equivalent to around 1% of GDP.”

However, other parts of the report set aside the “carbon costs” and invited the reader to consider resource costs on their own. For instance, pages 23–24 stated:

“In comparison to the Holistic Transition pathway under our central modelled assumptions, the Falling Behind scenario sees lower investment initially and then similar total cost in absolute value from around 2035 onwards as operational savings in Holistic Transition start to pay back on the higher earlier investment. Across the 2025-2050 period, ignoring carbon, costs are higher by around £14 billion per year on average in the Holistic Transition pathway compared to Falling Behind… equivalent to an average premium of around 0.4% of GDP, although it achieves the UK’s carbon targets. Ongoing savings in the Holistic Transition pathway compared to Falling Behind are expected beyond 2050, so this average cost would fall in the longer term.”

The executive summary of the ‘FES 2025: Economics Annex’ also referred to these findings (on pages 3–4), but, again, highlighted the resource cost “if carbon costs are ignored”, and suggested that the Falling Behind scenario would result in a “saving” between 2025 and 2050. It stated:

“When carbon costs are included (at the UK Government’s Green Book values), the Holistic Transition pathway has the lowest cost over 2025-2050 and enduring savings beyond 2050. If carbon costs are ignored, the Falling Behind scenario is cheaper over 2025-2050, saving the equivalent of around 0.4% of GDP on average annually. It would have higher costs beyond 2050, given higher ongoing fuel costs and the need for further investment if net zero is to be achieved later. Falling Behind would also forego many of the non-financial benefits and could see negative trade effects as trading partners target faster emissions reductions.”

The report further encouraged readers to ignore the carbon costs by suggesting that they are primarily associated with revenue-raising for the Government. It stated (on page 9):

“We do not include carbon costs in our resource cost estimates as they are not included in standard GDP accounting; they generally represent a transfer from businesses to the Exchequer, rather than an additional cost to the economy. However, reducing carbon is an important goal for the pathways and there is a recognised social cost attached to carbon emissions and the resulting climate change. We therefore illustrate this value of emissions by calculating carbon costs in the pathways, based on the UK Government’s Green Book values for appraisal. These are shown separately in our charts and do not form part of our calculations when considering overall cost.”

In addition, the report admitted that all its scenarios ignore the costs associated with the growing impacts of climate change, even though “these could be higher in the slower action path compared to the net zero pathways” (page 36).

The press release issued by NESO to accompany publication of the report did draw attention to the overall finding that the ‘Holistic Transition’ was the cheapest scenario, but cited only the quantitative figure for resource costs, while failing to explain the meaning of “carbon costs”:

“When carbon costs are included, the Holistic Transition pathway has the lowest cost over 2025-2050, as well as enduring savings beyond 2050. If carbon costs are ignored, the Falling Behind scenario (which reduces emissions more slowly) proves cheaper, saving costs equivalent to around 0.4% of GDP on average a year over 2025-2050. However, it would face higher costs beyond 2050 and miss out on the wider benefits unlocked by the decarbonisation pathways.”

The Times’s misrepresentation

Unfortunately, Emily Gosden and Oliver Wright, respectively Energy Editor and Policy Editor of The Times, failed to provide an accurate account of the NESO report, perhaps confused by the clumsy presentation of the analysis.

While they did not write the headlines for their article in the print and online editions, they buried the report’s main finding.

The opening two paragraphs of the print and online versions stated:

“Ed Miliband’s plans to make Britain net zero by 2050 risk costing the country £350 billion more than a slower approach to reducing carbon emissions, the government body in charge of keeping the country’s lights on has warned.

“In a stark analysis the National Energy System Operator found that the UK could save an average of £14 billion a year if the country were to forgo its legally binding target to reach net zero. The figure is the equivalent of about £500 for every household in Britain per year or 0.4 per cent of UK GDP.”

The £350 billion and £500 figures appear nowhere in the NESO report and were apparently calculated by the reporters. The £500 figure was bound to mislead not just the sub-editors who wrote the headlines, but also readers into believing that households would in some way pay an additional £500 to achieve the statutory target of net zero emissions by 2050. And the £350 billion figure was further amplified through a misleading quote from Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, who told The Times: “This report shows the truth – rushing to net zero is forecast to make our energy system £350 billion more expensive than going slower.”

Only in the 18th paragraph did the newspaper article state:

“Its figures also exclude the costs of carbon taxes, since they ‘represent a transfer from businesses to the exchequer, rather than an additional cost to the economy’. If carbon costs were included, the net zero scenario would be cheaper, it said.”

When challenged by me about its inaccurate and misleading front-page article, The Times agreed only to address its headlines, changing the online version to “Scrapping net zero deadline could save Britain £14bn a year”. And in its print edition on 23 December, the newspaper published at the bottom of page 22 the following correction to its front-page headline: “Our headline ‘Net zero plan to cost households £500 a year’ (News, Dec 11) was based on official findings about the plan’s cost to the British economy, which we divided by the number of households. The official report did not forecast how much of this cost would be borne directly by households. We are happy to make this clear.”

However, the damage was done, with many readers already likely to have been fooled by the original headline and article.

Further inaccuracies in a Times leading article

The misrepresentation of the NESO report was amplified in the newspaper’s leading article on 11 December 2025, which stated: “According to the National Energy System Operator, formerly National Grid, going full tilt to meet the legal requirement for a net zero UK in 2050 will cost some £14 billion a year more than maintaining the current pace of decarbonisation. That’s £500 per household, just to meet a deadline with a nice round number in it.”

The leading article included several inaccurate and misleading claims. It provided a misleading impression of the basis for the statutory target of reaching net zero annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. This was not introduced – as suggested in the article – because it has “a nice round number in it”. In fact, the 2050 deadline was set on the basis of expert analysis and advice by the independent Climate Change Committee. Its report to Parliament in May 2019, ‘Net Zero: The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming’, recommended the target, stating:

“A net-zero GHG [greenhouse gas] target for 2050 would respond to the latest climate science and fully meet the UK’s obligations under the Paris Agreement:

• It would constitute the UK’s ‘highest possible ambition’, as called for by Article 4 of the Paris Agreement. The Committee do not currently consider it credible to aim to reach net-zero emissions earlier than 2050.
• It goes beyond the reduction needed globally to hold the expected rise in global average temperature to well below 2°C and beyond the Paris Agreement’s goal to achieve a balance between global sources and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions in the second half of the century.
• If replicated across the world, and coupled with ambitious near-term reductions in emissions, it would deliver a greater than 50% chance of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C.”

The Times’s attempt to portray the 2050 target as arbitrary rather than based on expert analysis is a tactic used by other newspapers too, The Sunday Telegraph among them, which are campaigning against climate change policies.

The fourth paragraph of the leading article in The Times stated:

“And then there is that other target: the destruction of Britain’s offshore oil and gas industry. Labour wants a ‘clean’ grid by 2030 and appears intent on hounding producers out of the British sector of the North Sea. The slow strangulation of investment in offshore exploration and production is a deliberate goal of the government.”

This is false. The current Government has not set any target for “the destruction of Britain’s offshore oil and gas industry” or for “hounding producers out of the British sector of the North Sea”. Oil and gas production in the North Sea is currently guided by the strategy, which came into force in February 2021, introduced by the former Oil and Gas Authority. This strategy, which is now overseen by the North Sea Transition Authority, states: “compliance with this Strategy will not lead to any individual company investing in a project or operating existing assets where there is not a satisfactory expected commercial return on that investment or activity. Such a return does not necessarily mean a return commensurate with the overall corporate return on their portfolio of investment, e.g. a low risk investment could give low returns.”

The fourth paragraph of the leading article also stated: “No matter also that mega-emitters like China and the United States care not a jot for the green policies of what in energy consumption terms is a minnow.” This is another untrue statement. The governments of both the United States and China are on record expressing views about the decarbonisation policies of the UK – both positive and negative: President Trump has criticised the UK’s shift from fossil fuels to renewables many times, including as reported by The Times on 15 July 2025, while more supportive views have emanated from China.

The UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, met the Chinese Vice Premier, Ding Xuexiang, in Beijing on 17 March 2025. According to the official statement from China’s State Council about that meeting, “China is ready to work with the UK to earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of both countries, consolidate the momentum for improvement and development of bilateral ties, deepen cooperation in areas such as financial services, trade and investment, and low-carbon development, and jointly address climate change to better benefit the people of both countries and the world.”

The fifth paragraph of the leading article stated: “The hard reality is that Britain needs domestically produced natural gas in the coming decades. Wind and solar cannot provide the ‘dispatchable’ power needed to meet sudden peaks in demand.” This, too, is misleading. While the UK is likely to need some natural gas even in the 2040s as back-up for electricity generation, the supplies do not need to come from domestic sources. In addition, as NESO points out in its ‘Future Energy Scenarios: Pathways to Net Zero’ executive summary, management of the power system of the future will require far more flexibility of both supply and demand, and although solar and wind provide variable electricity generation, they can help to provide flexible supply when combined with batteries and other storage.

The sixth paragraph of the leading article made a further inaccurate statement: “At present, Britain produces only a third of its gas requirement, and Norway provides half via undersea pipelines”. In fact, the most recent figures published by the Government show that in 2024 the UK’s domestic production of natural gas was 30.83 billion cubic metres, equivalent to 49.4 per cent of the demand of 62.42 billion cubic metres. The Government’s publication on ‘Diversity of supply of natural gas in Europe, 2024’ stated: “The UK had a self-sufficiency score of 0.49 meaning that just under half of gas demand could have been met by production in 2024.” That report further stated: “Norway remained the UK’s largest import source, accounting for 43 per cent of gross supply.”

And in the seventh and final paragraph, the leading article stated: “More North Sea investment does not mean capitulating on net zero; it means a gentler glide path to the same destination.” This is fundamentally wrong. If the UK carries on extracting oil and gas, it cannot expect other producers to cut their production. The impacts of climate change in the UK will only stop growing in intensity and frequency when the world reaches net zero emissions of greenhouse gases, so we have a vested interest in achieving this as soon as possible. This cannot happen simply through measures to increase the supply of clean energy: it requires concomitant action to curb the supply of energy from fossil fuels.

As the International Energy Agency stated in its report on ‘The Oil and Gas Industry in Net Zero Transitions’, published in December 2023:

“A productive debate about the oil and gas industry in transitions needs to avoid two common misconceptions. The first is that transitions can only be led by changes in demand. ‘When the energy world changes, so will we’ is not an adequate response to the immense challenges at hand. An imbalanced focus on reducing supply is equally unproductive, as it comes with a heightened risk of price spikes and market volatility. In practice, no one committed to change should wait for someone else to move first. Successful, orderly transitions are collaborative ones, in which suppliers work with consumers and governments to expand new markets for low-emissions products and services.”

The importance of clear communication

All this is further evidence of the undeclared editorial campaign against net zero and climate change policies by The Times under its current editor Tony Gallagher, which involves the publication of inaccurate and misleading opinion and news articles.

But the NESO report also shows the clumsy way in which some public bodies have been communicating about net zero policies, making it easier for opponents to misrepresent their work.