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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/09/2026

What we need to face up to is that there isn't enough industry to go around. We counted 18 places with 2.7m workers that have been made big net zero promises, but estimate that there's only enough permanent (and clustered!) direct jobs on offer to give them a 2-3% employment share. That's not much

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/09/2026

The likely reason? Despite being fundamental to economic growth in the area, the electricity sector accounts for very few jobs, accounting for just a percentage point or two of the areas workforce. These are simply not labour intensive industries.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/09/2026

On the face of it things are going well - wages have shot up, after a difficult post crisis period. But other data looks murky - the min. wage workforce is one of UK's largest, jobs growth is tepid, inactivity up, and hours down. Not the sign of a place attracting great new full-time jobs.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/09/2026

And what about Grimsby? Wind really got going in the late 2010s - when wages in the town were a fifth below the UK average. Since then Grimsby has a hand in a third of all the UK's offshore wind, a carbon capture project and EV charging: a clean sweep of net zero industries operating in the area.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/09/2026

With years before these constraints are resolved, and drilling more a dead-end, that leaves Aberdeen looking for a stop gap. Workers won't wait around for new jobs to arrive, and are already leaving in droves. Decomissioning is one such possibility - lots will be needed near Aberdeen.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/09/2026

But wind is struggling to fill the boots left by this declining oil industry. One key reason for that is capacity constraints - we didn't build the cables in time for Aberdeen to be the offshore wind centre it wants to be, so some Scottish wind farms are turned on as much as 70% of the time

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/09/2026

Make no mistake, this decline isn't being caused by net zero - oil output has been falling for decades and the endless debates on licenses are a sideshow. The oil is just running out. Even if things did pick up, that's not a jobs story - we find employment and oil production are barely related.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/09/2026

In Aberdeen offshore wind doesn't seem to be slowing the decline caused by the oil industry's contraction, which started when the oil price declined in 2013.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/09/2026

The promises made of net zero are often talking about a particular type of industry, the kind that can bring new life to local economies. We can't reindustrialise with a few extra retrofitters here and there - but there are new industries that could cluster, like EVs, wind, or carbon capture.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 22/07/2026

There are other things Burnham could do to keep buses cheap – rail services have a plethora of (poorly) targeted discounts, which affect a far larger portion of passengers than the bus equivalents. Extending these would be a sensible next step

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 22/07/2026

Reducing the cap won’t do much to help most bus passengers – just a fifth of bus journeys cost over £2 – but the passengers it will help are disproportionately lower income

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 22/07/2026

It’s good that Burnham has focused on buses rather than trains for his first intervention – buses are the favoured public transport of the poorest households most likely to be struggling with the cost of living, and particularly important for those without a car

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 22/07/2026

Burnham’s instincts to turn to transport first are on the pulse of public opinion, the public service that people across the country seem most dissatisfied with

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 30/06/2026

Why did Starmer not just shave a bit more off CDEL? Probably because there’s £7bn of new resource spend to find as well as more capital – so CDEL cuts (which don’t score) can’t satisfy the fiscal rules. New taxes, borrowing or spending cuts will be needed instead.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 30/06/2026

The PM announced £15 billion extra funding compared to the last Spending Review (SR), delivered over next four years (ie to 2029-30). The plan graciously includes a breakdown of the new settlements, totalling £298 billion.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 15/06/2026

And the implications for carbon policy won't be costless. Ultimately electric cars are the biggest and the cheapest plank to the government's plan to meet carbon budgets in near future. Unless Gov wants to ditch our legally binding targets, weakening the ZEV will add costs to meeting net zero

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 17/04/2026

An unsung hero here is the ZEV mandate, which is pushing down on prices with discounts and big incentives for manufacturers to give EVs mass appeal. Shame we can't muster the same ambition for heat pump regs - MCS show HPs are still rising in price!

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 18/03/2026

And the framework takes risks to tenant farmers seriously: we can't let land use change become a source of insecurity for those renting their land. The Law Commission review to ensure tenants are included in this transition looks like the right kind of intervention

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 18/03/2026

There are other things to applaud - developing the data for making good decisions isn't flashy but it's necessary (and exciting for us wonks) and long overdue - h/t to @guyshrubsole.bsky.social's long decade of campaigning for this!

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 18/03/2026

What we need next is a better picture of how we will make sure decisions match principles. The Government needs to direct where change happens, not just publish maps. The framework hints at spatial targeting of subsidies and strong use of the planning system - but the devil will be in the detail.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 18/03/2026

Now Defra has set out what has to happen, they will need to be tougher to make it happen. Defra's principles on where land should change use, including most importantly that it should be the "right use, right place" are exactly right.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 18/03/2026

The Government's set out modelling showing around 15% of farmland needs to change by 2050 for climate reasons. Publishing that breakdown sends an important signal about the scale of change required - and shows that renewables aren't the main story

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/02/2026

We also need to protect tenant farmers, who don't get to make their own decisions on how land is used. They're some of the nations best but most vulnerable farmers. A fair transition can't sweep away productive tenants in favour of passive landlord income.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/02/2026

Land use is a different challenge. Nearly a fifth of farmland may need to shift away from food - mostly to forestry and restored peatlands (solar and energy crops will play a much smaller role)

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/02/2026

The bad news: farmers can't absorb these costs. With razor-thin margins, even a 2.5% cost increase would cut average farm income by a fifth - from £43k to £35k. Farmers have almost no pricing power, so they can't just pass costs to supermarkets.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/02/2026

The good news: decarbonising food production shouldn't be ruinously expensive. Costs peak at ~2.5% of farm output. If passed to consumers, food prices would rise by comfortably less than 1% - some individual months last year saw bigger jumps.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/02/2026

The sector isn't starting from a position of strength to deal well with further burdens. In 2024, the typical family farm made enough profit to pay its owners just £6/hour - half the minimum wage. Nearly 1 in 3 farms lost money. Another quarter were only profitable because of government subsidies.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/02/2026

There's no silver bullet here. Unlike EVs for transport or heat pumps for homes, farming needs 30+ different measures to decarbonise - from greener machinery to changing what land is used for entirely. And this comes on top of nature targets and major subsidy reforms already underway.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 03/02/2026

The transition hasn't really hit UK farms yet, with emissions declining just 5% since 2010. That's set to change soon, and it should - delaying further would add £12 billion to the capital cost of meeting net zero

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 13/11/2025

While esteemed colleagues won prestigious awards for great work last, I'm also proud to have won 2.5kg of smarties for best report title of the year, the best return on writing two words I'm ever likely to get www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

An jar containing an ungodly number of smarties

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 13/11/2025

May be other factors but a) SW is bigger than the other regions b) the farms there are smaller so more of them

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 14/10/2025

Salary sacrifice is a poor way of subsidising. More cash for those with higher tax rates (meaning more income) is the opposite of what we should be doing - getting solar panels onto the rooves of fuel poor families. Poorer families have less salary to sacrifice, meaning less or no subsidy for them

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 09/07/2025

But this will inevitably affect some vulnerable households so must be balanced with consumer protection - a time of use price cap, seeing fixed prices in peak and off-peak hours, is one way to manage the risks posed by fluctuating prices.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 09/07/2025

We should start by making sure that households with the most 'flexibility' to contribute do so - that's those with big electricity intensive technologies like electric vehicles.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 09/07/2025

That would be a big shift for households, who largely pay the same price for electricity at all times of the day

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 24/06/2025

So we need consumer protection too – a new regulated time-of-use with caps for peak and off peak would set consistent and fair prices for all who want or need a variable tariff. Crucially, this would also protect from short term price volatility that families can't be expected to manage

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 24/06/2025

But that risks hitting other household types like big families and those with electric heating.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 24/06/2025

But there are ‘flexible technologies’ that can be shifted easily. A tumbledryer run in the morning won’t save much – but an EV uses enough electricity in peak times that average savings of charging overnight reach £120 a year

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 24/06/2025

Those with children and unmovable work schedules will find the highest costs of moving to time of use, as they consume (slightly) more of their energy in the expensive peak hours. That means more costs of pricy peak energy and less saved in off-peak discounts.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 24/06/2025

But this inevitably means transferring price risk to households, who might struggle to manage it. The evening peaks are when households are coming home and cooking – not schedules most will want to shift.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 24/06/2025

Electricity is around twice as expensive at peak times (430pm-8pm), when domestic and industrial demand overlap. But almost nine-in-ten households pay the same price all day

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 14/05/2025

Salary sacrifice for heat pumps (shorturl.at/0D5lf) not the way forward - we should be making heat pumps cheaper for poorest not the richest As we showed for the EV scheme, salary sacrifice locks most low-income households out of meaningful subsidy and chucks huge sums to the highest earners

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 09/04/2025

A Spending Review settlement that allocated funding in this more balanced way would deliver a cash-equivalent gain of £370 a year on average for the poorest decile, compared to a £150 boost for the richest.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 09/04/2025

This approach, where day-to-day health spending grew at 2% (vs. 3.6%), would avoid cuts to other departments, raising in kind benefits at the bottom by 1.4% a year. Higher capital to health than before could make this, and NHS productivity gains, more feasible.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 09/04/2025

A ‘health only’ approach – in which NHS spending rose by 3.6% while unprotected departments faced cuts up to 1.1% each year – would see all households receive similar cash-equivalent gains of around £260.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 09/04/2025

We analyse new YouGov polling to show lower-income families (with incomes less than £25,000) report lower satisfaction on a range of public services than richer households (£70,000+). Addressing this satisfaction deficit should lie at the heart of the upcoming Spending Review.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 09/04/2025

Day-to-day public service spending is tilted towards low-income families. Poorest fifth of households receive £15,900 benefits-in-kind, 53% more than richest fifth. Some services (e.g. schools and adult social care) are much more weighted towards the less well-off.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 09/04/2025

Post-Covid, the British state is estimated to have reached a historic high of 45 per cent of the size of the economy. Past strategies to cope with increasing pressure on public services such as cutting defence and cuts to ‘unprotected’ public services have run out of road.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 11/03/2025

That's why we argue the Government should ensure rooftop solar goes to fuel poor and lower-income households that benefit most from the energy bill reductions. Upfront costs make solar hard for most to afford, so there are a lot more panels in richer neighbourhoods. Policy can change this.

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Zachary Leather @zackleather.resolutionfoundation.org · 13/02/2025

With well targeted grants and loans Government can use solar panels to make a dent in fuel poverty - one in three solar-suitable fuel poor homes (defined as those spending 10%+ of income on energy) would be taken out of fuel poverty by a 3kw solar panel

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