Kemi on Climate Change

"Net zero scepticism is not climate-change denial

Net-zero scepticism is too often confused with climate change scepticism. But they are not the same thing. It is an elementary distinction, but an important one. Climate change is a scientific phenomenon. Net zero by 2050 is a political programme.

One can accept the science while questioning whether a particular collection of laws, subsidies, targets and prohibitions will actually solve the problem. The current net zero 2050 plans do not.

That is my position and has been my position for years.

Yet writing in The Telegraph on Wednesday Ambrose Evans Pritchard accused me of flirting with “climate nihilism”. He warns that the Conservatives are becoming Trumpian and trying to stop the clock on technological progress.

Unfortunately, he has either not listened to what I have said, or has decided that my argument would be easier to attack if he replaced it with a different one.

Climate change is real. We can see its effects all over the world, not least the current spate of heatwaves here in Britain.

Conservatives have always understood that we have a duty to protect our natural inheritance. We should preserve our countryside, encourage biodiversity, invest in flood defences and ensure that Britain is resilient in the face of a changing climate.

The question isn’t whether we should act. The question is whether the policies imposed in the name of climate action are effective, affordable and honest.

Too many people cannot tell the difference between talking about climate change and dealing with it. They have accepted that the Left’s chosen policies are the only practicable policies, and that anyone who questions them must secretly want the planet to burn.

This is intellectually lazy. It’s also dangerous.

Net zero has become a slogan where Britain needs a plan. It allows politicians to announce a virtuous destination without explaining how we will reach it, what it will cost, who will pay, which industries will survive, or whether it will reduce global emissions at all.

I raised these concerns before almost anyone else in Parliament. Back in 2019, when Parliament legislated for net zero 2050, of the 22 MPs who spoke that day, only two sounded a note of caution. I was one of them. I stood in the chamber, heavily pregnant, and asked the most basic question imaginable: where is the plan?

There was no answer.

This was long before Nigel Farage discovered the issue. In fact, Nigel’s de facto deputy, Richard Tice, was praising many of the net zero ideas back then.

The plan did finally arrive 840 days later and was still inadequate. Environmental organisations subsequently took the government to court and won because the policy lacked sufficient detail.

We are already years into this supposedly settled national project, yet the people defending it still cannot explain credibly how it will be delivered.

The best way to deliver cleaner energy and a better environment is not through state diktat, arbitrary deadlines and an ever-expanding bureaucracy paid to inspect the consequences of its own policies; it is through markets, innovation and competition.

Britain now has the highest industrial electricity prices in the world. Four times higher than those in the United States and 50 per cent higher than in France and Germany. Britain’s domestic electricity prices are some of the highest in Europe.

In the UK, net zero taxes, subsidies and system costs are estimated to account for 40 per cent of electricity-generation costs, around £22bn every year. The Carbon Tax alone adds roughly a third to wholesale electricity prices.

Since 2002, families and businesses have paid more than £67bn through the Renewables Obligation subsidy scheme – a Miliband-era boondoggle that no one’s ever heard of.

These are not minor inconveniences to be brushed aside before moving on to predictions about the unstoppable march of electrotech. Energy costs determine whether factories open or close, whether restaurants survive, and whether families can afford to heat their homes.

Nor can Britain ignore where these technologies come from. China is building a new coal-fired power station roughly every other week while British workers are told that their own industries must close to save the planet.

The world’s leading solar-panel manufacturers are overwhelmingly Chinese. Electric vehicles depend on batteries whose supply chains are dominated by China. There are already serious questions about whether foreign-made energy technology can be controlled or disabled remotely.

There is a further absurdity. We are closing lower-carbon North Sea production while continuing to import dirty oil and gas with a higher carbon footprint, thereby increasing global emissions.

If our model creates the highest industrial electricity prices in the world, shuts factories and transfers production to countries burning more coal, nobody will follow us. Instead, other countries will take our jobs and grow their economies.

Meanwhile, in Britain more and more people are employed to inspect emissions, write climate compliance documents and distribute subsidies. Their salaries are ultimately funded by the workers and businesses being regulated out of existence.

We have to do things differently. The Conservative Party’s plan will repeal and replace the Climate Change Act, which causes many of these problems without actually tackling climate change.

We will remove its rigid targets that put artificial deadlines ahead of prosperity and energy security.

We will axe the Carbon Tax, cutting wholesale electricity prices by around a third. Our Cheap Power Plan will cut a typical household electricity bill by about £165, the average restaurant will save approximately £5,100.

We will build nuclear power. We will back domestic North Sea oil and gas. We will invest in resilience, flood protection and our natural environment. We will put British energy first and pursue power that is clean, cheap, abundant and secure.

Previous Conservative governments made mistakes on this issue. But this Conservative Party gets it. No other party does.

Labour remains trapped in the belief that declaring a target is the same as delivering it. Reform complains about Net Zero, but when you get into the detail of the legislation and the technicalities, they head off to the pub.

If you think Reform have done any of the work needed to dismantle decades of net zero laws and regulation, restructure the energy market, and deliver cheaper power, I have a bridge to sell you.

I know people may be sceptical because of what’s happened in the past. Let me reassure you that this Conservative Party is different to Labour, different to Reform, and different to the Conservative Party to which people said “no thanks” in 2024.

Led by me, an engineer, with my shadow energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, a mathematician, we have a team with the intent and brains to sort this intractable policy problem for good. We are approaching this task with energy, confidence and optimism because Britain is capable of doing far better.

We can have cleaner energy without sacrificing prosperity. We can protect the environment without destroying our industrial base. We can reduce emissions while strengthening our security and restoring public consent."

Kemi Badenoch

Conservative Leader