In 2019, the House of Commons unanimously passed legislation committing the UK to a legally binding target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, an unusual display of parliamentary unity. That political consensus is now under strain.
New Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has repeatedly criticised the net zero target, and Nigel Farage’s Reform party — albeit with only a handful of MPs — is openly hostile to it.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, whose Labour party enjoys a huge majority in the House of Commons, says he is firmly committed to the climate target.
Yet he insists — to critics’ scepticism — that it can be achieved without big changes to consumer behaviour, such as reducing flights or eating less meat.
Starmer’s government faces a moment of truth as it pushes industry towards low-carbon products such as electric vehicles and electric heat pumps for which consumer demand is uncertain. Last week, industry lobbying over targets for EVs and heat pumps demonstrated the pressure the government will face if it sticks to its pledges.
Under the 2019 update to the Climate Change Act, the UK is committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 with a clear trajectory of increasingly tough five-year “carbon budgets”.
Badenoch has stopped short of calling for the net zero target to be abolished, but in 2022 she described it as “unilateral economic disarmament”.
During her leadership campaign she took £10,000 from Neil Record, chair of Net Zero Watch, a climate action-sceptical group, while also using his house as a campaign office.
She declared at the Tory conference: “I’m not a climate sceptic. But I am a net zero sceptic. ”One ally said she believed the target had left Britain vulnerable and with an “undue reliance on China”, the world’s biggest exporters of green technology.
On Thursday Badenoch said Starmer’s “rush to a further cut in our emissions” — referring to a new target announced at the COP29 summit of an 81 per cent cut by 2035 — was prioritising “short-term publicity” over long-term planning.
Her position is a far cry from Boris Johnson, Tory prime minister during the COP26 talks in Glasgow in 2021, who was a passionate advocate for Net Zero 2050.
Starmer said there had been a “real unity” during those Glasgow talks three years ago.
“I think the fact that [Badenoch] has now taken the position she has of attacking the very idea of setting targets shows just how far the party opposite has fallen,” he told the Commons on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Reform has put anti-green policies at the centre of its platform, vowing it would scrap the net zero target altogether, which it claims has sent energy costs soaring and is “making us poorer and colder”. Deputy leader Richard Tice says he wants to fight the next election against the “extreme cult of net zero”. Reform only has five MPs but polls indicate it has the support of 18 per cent of voters.
Doug Parr, policy director for Greenpeace UK, said Labour had a large majority and was unlikely to “go into retreat” any time soon.
“The UK is not the US in terms of public attitudes to climate change. Reform voters tend to be more net zero sceptic, but they are not opposed to climate action,” he argued. “If the Tories increasingly adopt a net zero or climate sceptic attitude, they are putting a ceiling on their own votes. ”
But Chris Venables, director of politics at Green Alliance, said the group was “really alarmed” by the shift in tone. “It’s a really worrying time for climate politics in the UK. ”
Polling by More in Common shows there is no constituency in Britain where concern about climate change is lower than 50 per cent of voters, and a YouGov poll in July found that 74 per cent of the public support the net zero target, up from 69 per cent in April.
But voters broadly supporting green policies is not the same as them being willing to pay for them.
There have been two significant policy shifts in recent days illustrating the challenge of going green without penalising consumers or industry.
Firstly, ministers are seeking loopholes to help carmakers hit a stretching “electric vehicle mandate” under which a rising percentage of sales must be EVs every year. Secondly, the government cut the level of planned fines from next April from £3,000 to £500 per unit for boilermakers who fail to sell enough heat pumps.
“There is a real job on our hands to articulate why all of this policy matters and translate it back to the lived reality of people in this country,” said Venables. “The government has to be really careful about not going too fast in pushing forward on policy, in order to bring the public with them. ”
Labour has claimed its green policies will cut energy bills by £300 by 2030. But its analysis has been criticised as it was based on research by the energy think-tank Ember, which took as its starting point autumn 2023 when bills were high due to the knock-on effects of the energy crisis.
Electricity bills have already fallen significantly since then. Claire Coutinho, shadow energy secretary, has claimed the figure is a “lie”.
A Labour spokesman said on Saturday that it was committed to the goal of cutting bills by up to £300 by 2030, compared to 2024 averages.
Not all Tory MPs agree with Badenoch’s stance. A poll by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit think-tank recently found the proportion of Conservative MPs supportive of net zero rose from 70 per cent before the general election to 81 per cent after — albeit based on a much reduced cohort.
Mike Childs, head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, said some rightwing politicians were being “irresponsible” and attempting to “create a culture war”.
He said the big challenge for Labour was “to convince people that the measures they are going to take are fair and are not disproportionately impacting people struggling with the cost of living”.