8 in 10,000 Net Zero — The Poor Pay First

Hint Click a step on the left to see which groups bear the cost from that part of the chain.

From CO₂ Target
to Household Burden

Affected Groups and Regressive Impacts

Core Audit Questions

1

Which costs are direct, and which are transferred?

Direct costs sit on a household bill (energy, fuel, appliance). Transferred costs flow through prices, rents, and product markups — invisible on the bill but real in the budget.
2

Who can absorb the costs, and who cannot?

A 10% rise in energy costs is a small share of a high-income budget and a critical share of a low-income budget. Distributional capacity is the audit, not headline impact.
3

Are mandates regressive in practice?

Mandate compliance costs are often structurally regressive — fixed costs to comply land hardest on smaller budgets and smaller businesses. Audit the practice, not the design intent.
4

What distributional effects are omitted?

Headline modelling typically reports national averages. The audit asks which sub-populations are missing from the average — and whether the omitted detail would change the policy verdict.
5

What trade-offs are justified?

The framework's signature question. The CO₂ target licenses concern; it does not pre-justify which households carry the cost of meeting it. That decision needs its own audit.

Typical Missing Checks

A Net Zero target is not self-explanatory.

Audit who pays first before relying on the policy pathway.