As most of us are beginning to realise, getting to net zero is going to be very difficult (or more likely not possible at all), so the government will need to use tricky accounting in order to give an impression of success. One way of doing this is by excluding the emissions created by products manufactured overseas. They also exclude emissions from shipping and aviation.
By increasing taxes and levies on the CO2 emitted by UK businesses the government is driving them out and making their products more expensive than those from overseas. We are exporting our emissions and our jobs. but this all makes our CO2 emissions look as though they are falling more quickly.
Just to take one example the cost of electricity in the UK, according to UK steel was £46.60 per MWh in 2020/21, whereas even in Germany it was only £25, and £28.74 in France. We now import 61% of our steel.
Queensland has just suffered a hurricane and flooding causing outages in many areas that need weeks to normalise. Residents of the effected areas have been provided cummunal diesel generators to see them through the ordeals. Wind turbines don't cut it.
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