Eliminating emissions from commercial property isn't worth it

Yet another example of the error of allowing the planners to try and deal with a problem. Actually, allowing the planners to do anything at all. The bill for upgrading commercial property to meet climate targets will be substantial:

The high street is facing a £90bn bill for upgrades as net zero rules force businesses to improve more than nine in ten of Britain's shops.

New energy standards will make 91pc of all retail space including high street stores and shopping centres across UK city centres unlettable by 2030 without urgent and costly action, according to Savills estate agent.

The Government intends to ban commercial properties from being rented out unless they are assessed as having a minimum energy performance rating of C by 2027, and B three years later.

Note that that doesn’t eliminate emissions, just reduces them. But let us assume that it would eliminate them just to make our maths a little easier.

Emissions from commercial property seem to be around the 24 million tonnes a year mark. Note, again, that’s all commerial property, not just retail, but we’ll run with that again. Our two broad brush estimates, all commercial not just retail and also eliminate not reduce make the calculation hugely biased in favour of this action.and plan.

We also know, from the Stern Review, that the social cost of carbon (actually, CO2-e, as with those emissions numbers above) is $80 per tonne. So, the saving to Gaia of this mithering about commercial property is 24 million times $80 per year: $1.9 billion or so, call it £2 billion given the level of accuracy we are using here.

The cost is that £90 billion investment. The cost is a once off, the saving is per annum. That equates to a 2.2% interest rate we’re getting on that capital investment. That’s too low to be worth doing.

No, we can’t go off and insist that Stern showed that we must use a really low discount rate about climate change. Because that is already in our $80 per tonne. To then include it again is to double count. By using $80 a tonne CO2-e we are already incorporating it and must therefore be looking fror market interest rate returns on investments.

We really have done this calcultion in a manner hugely in favour of the planners and their decision here. It’s also still a nonsense and will make us poorer. Therefore let’s not do it.

Which does bring us back to that Stern Review and the central lesson he tried to teach us and that central lesson which absolutely everyone is entirely ignoring. In determining what to do we must be guided by what adds value and what subtracts it. The only way to determine this is the use of prices. Finally, don’t use planning as the attempt at a solution because that will inevitably lead to more expensive solutions. Given the way humans are - doing less of whatever is more expensive - using planning will lead to less being done about climate change than the use of markets and prices suitably adjusted.

Demanding that commercial property reduce emissions in this grossly expensive manner is just the wrong thing to be doing for the planet. But that’s planners for you.

It’s not worth doing even before we consider that other plan, where we’re to have an all renewables, all electric, energy production system which itself will be net zero. At which point what emissions are there going to be from property anyway?