The Committee on Climate Change has decided to favour us with its thoughts on how we do indeed deal with climate change. In the process they’ve illustrated why the Stern Review insisted we do not plan for this, rather, we set the market up with the correct incentives then see what emerges. Just as the one example we offer you this:

Energy networks must be strengthened for the net-zero energy transformation in order to support electrification of transport and heating. Government has the regulatory tools to bring forward private sector investment. New hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure will provide a route to establishing new low-carbon British industries.

We have not elided anything from that quote. That is actually what they say. The problem with it being that in the third sentence they entirely contradict the first. For hydrogen - one of us has done substantial work on hydrogen to power cars - is an alternative to electrification. Hydrogen can be burnt, for example, producing both heat and cooking. It can also be used as the equivalent of a battery in storing power. It can be used to power transport as well, there are a number of different possible fuel cell technologies out there.

The Stern Review really did say that we should not be using planning to try to deal with this problem. Simply because planning ends up in foolishness like the above. Instead, set the incentives and leave the market to do the heavy lifting - as Hayek pointed out, that entire economy out there is the only calculating engine we’ve got capable of working at the required level of complexity.

What really irritates is the number of people who will use the Stern Review as proof that something must be done but then gaily go off to ignore what the Stern Review insists what must not be done.