Net Zero Stagnation: Emissions, Industrial Capacity and Real Net Wage Growth All Fall, and Little or Nothing Is Accomplished

Daniel Lacalle is a PhD Economist and investment fund manager, and writes on both economic and financial matters. He just put out another outstanding post on why climate policies are all wrong. Here are the best parts of his story:

Net zero is proving to be a failure wherever it is implemented. From 1996 to 2024, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Canada cut CO₂ and greenhouse gas emissions, but most of the reduction came from economic stagnation and deindustrialization, higher domestic energy costs, and a rising dependence on imported manufactured goods from more carbon-intensive economies such as Russia, China and India.

EDGAR’s 2025 release provides country and sector time series from 1970 to 2024 and shows that global greenhouse gas emissions reached 53.2 Gt CO₂eq in 2024, up 1.3 percent from 2023, even as many advanced economies continued to report lower domestic emissions.

The central issue is not whether emissions in Europe, the UK and Canada fell. They did. The issue is whether almost two decades of tax-based climate policy, net-zero mandates, and CO₂ price mechanisms delivered durable decarbonization without hollowing out productive industry. The evidence shows that most of the apparent success came from weaker domestic industrial output and a larger share of energy-intensive production moving abroad.

Since the late 1990s and especially after the mid-2000s, European climate policy has relied on carbon pricing, emissions caps, renewable mandates, massive energy taxes, and direct subsidy programs, added to net-zero targets.

The EU Emissions Trading System, the UK’s successive carbon budget framework under the Climate Change Act, and Canada’s federal and provincial carbon-price architecture all aimed to make emissions expensive and low-carbon investment more attractive.

These policies did reduce domestic emissions intensity in several sectors, but they also increased costs for energy-intensive industries that compete globally on thin margins. OECD analysis of the clean-energy transition and job displacement in energy-intensive industries finds significant adjustment costs and employment losses in exposed sectors across OECD economies, even where aggregate employment data obscure the local and regional damage.

EDGAR’s long-run database shows that for Europe and the UK, emissions trends since 1996 show substantial territorial declines, especially after 2005, while Canada’s progress is more limited and uneven.

In 1996, the advanced industrial economies of Europe, the UK, and Canada still retained a larger share of heavy industry and manufacturing capacity than they do today. By 2024, these economies had reduced domestic emissions significantly, but global emissions had risen, with China and India accounting for a far larger share of world industrial output and CO2 emissions.

EDGAR’s 2025 report shows that global emissions continued to climb in 2024, despite the years of climate policy architecture in Europe and the expanding net-zero agenda in advanced economies.

If the policy model were decisively successful, one would expect falling emissions in high-tax, high-regulation economies to be matched by a broader flattening of global emissions, especially after years of carbon pricing and climate spending. Instead, emissions have often been redistributed geographically through trade and offshoring.

Furthermore, if the green policy framework had worked, there would have been stronger job creation, economic growth and manufacturing output from these policies. It was the opposite.

The IEA notes a changing landscape of global emissions in which advanced economies account for a smaller share while emerging Asia’s role expands rapidly. EDGAR’s country data and reports indicate that China and India have posted large increases in absolute emissions over the same broad period in which Europe and the UK pursued ever tighter climate goals. Global supply chains absorbed a meaningful share of the industrial activity no longer produced domestically in the West.

This is why territorial accounting for emissions is misleading. A country can reduce emissions on its balance sheet while increasing consumption of imported goods whose production is more carbon-intensive abroad. In that case, domestic policy changes the location of emissions more than the level of global emissions.

The economic cost is visible in the structure of output, employment, and investment. Research on net zero in power and industry shows that job creation and value added depend heavily on keeping supply chains local. Therefore, as production is imported, the economic gains shrink while domestic adjustment costs remain.

The Resolution Foundation’s work on net-zero jobs highlights that the shift to a greener economy affects jobs differently in various regions and industries, with industrial areas suffering even though overall green investment figures are not enough.

All this has meant slower industrial investment, higher electricity and fuel costs for consumers, and more reliance on fiscal transfers, subsidies, and industrial-policy packages to offset the damage caused by the initial policy shock.

Thus, governments first make domestic production pricier through taxes, carbon prices, and mandates, then spend billions of public funds trying to compensate some firms and households for the resulting loss of competitiveness and purchasing power.

Canada is a clear example of this policy failure. Climate spending and carbon-pricing frameworks are justified as tools for long-run competitiveness. However, none of that has happened and it has been virtually impossible to preserve industrial activity when firms can relocate investment to lower-cost jurisdictions. The same logic applies in Europe and the UK, where subsidy races and compensation schemes have become a permanent feature of climate policy rather than a temporary bridge.

The strongest criticism of tax-heavy climate policy is empirical. Global emissions are still rising nearly two decades after the expansion of carbon markets, energy taxes, and net-zero commitments. EDGAR reports that global greenhouse gas emissions hit 53.2 Gt CO2eq in 2024. The IEA similarly describes a global emissions landscape in which reductions in advanced economies are offset by increases elsewhere, particularly in countries where coal remains central to power generation and manufacturing.

China and India became indispensable to global manufacturing during precisely the period in which Western governments tightened domestic climate policy. In essence, European, UK and Canadian climate policies have worked as a giant subsidy to Chinese and Indian growth paid by domestic consumers.

The result is a model that can be called net zero stagnation. Although domestic emissions fall, so does industrial capacity and real net wage growth, while the world remains on a rising emissions path. Europe, the UK, and Canada have proven that taxes, carbon pricing, and public spending suppress local emissions at the expense of displacing domestic industry. These policies tend to reduce global emissions only by displacing production, weakening competitiveness, making citizens poorer, and increasing the role of the state in the economy.

A stronger climate strategy would focus less on symbolic targets and punitive taxation and more on technological innovation, free markets, domestic energy supply, productivity growth, and open competition. Until then, much of the celebrated emissions progress in advanced economies will come from disappearing factories and weaker competitiveness.

Hat Tip: D.S.

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Daniel Lacalle (Madrid, 1967). PhD Economist and Fund Manager. Author of bestsellers "Life In The Financial Markets" and "The Energy World Is Flat" as well as "Escape From the Central Bank Trap". Daniel Lacalle (Madrid, 1967). PhD Economist and Fund Manager. Frequent collaborator with CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Hedgeye, Epoch Times, Mises Institute, BBN Times, Wall Street Journal, El Español, A3 Media and 13TV. Holds the CIIA (Certified International Investment Analyst) and a Master's in Economic Investigation and IESE. View all posts by Daniel Lacalle.