UK Opposition leader is on record as backing the need for net zero, so why is she now back-tracking on previous commitments?

In a column for the April issue of Energy in Buildings and Industry, Andrew Warren, who chairs the British Energy Efficiency Federation, and is a friend of EiD, analyses why Kemi Badenoch, leader has suddenly changed her views on the importance of Britain achieving its net zero emissions target, dismissing the OECD’s conclusions of how fundamentally important achieving net zero is.

Badenoch’s abandonment of net zero commitment

Timing is everything. My column last month, entitled” Calculating Net Zero’s Boost to the Economy”, concentrated upon the stark difference between the approach of the new American government and that of all the major parties represented in the House of Commons.

Trump may dismiss climate change as a “ Chinese hoax.” His energy supremo, Chris Wright, the self-styled King of Fracking may damn the UK’s net zero by 2050 push as “a sinister tool to shrink human freedom”.

But , I argued, we have grown-up politicians in the UK. At least, grown-up when in Government. As a Treasury Minister during the last government, new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch endlessly endorsed the need to meet net zero targets. I quoted many of these enthusiastic statements.

Two days after that column was published, Badenoch caused embarasment to me. But more importantly profound dismay among millions of others. She unceremoniously ditched the policy, saying politicians needed to come clean with voters that net zero was “impossible” to achieve “without a serious drop in our living standards. Or by bankrupting us”.

She added: “We’ve got to stop pretending to the next generation. It’s exactly the reason that the political class has lost trust. The only way that we can regain it is to tell the unvarnished truth – net zero by 2050 is impossible.”

After her speech, Theresa May, who introduced the target when Prime Minister, countered that “net zero by 2050 is challenging but achievable… It is supported by the scientific community and backed by the independent Climate Change Committee as being not just necessary but feasible and cost-effective.”

At the time, her Parliamentary Private Secretary was the Scottish MP Andrew Bowie and therefore presumably privy to her commitment to net zero.  Now Conservative net zero spokesperson, he immediately parroted the new Badenoch “bankruptcy” line.

Previous pledges

Chris Skidmore served as the last government’s energy minister. He has revealed  that Badenoch had made clear to Tory MPs at  leadership hustings in 2022, when she was seeking their votes in the race to replace Boris Johnson, that she backed the policy to reach net zero by 2050.

Skidmore  recalled “how she told a Conservative Environment Network hustings of 60 MPs that I organised with former business and energy secretary Alok Sharma that she believed in net zero – and made that promise in private to us all.”

Skidmore, who led a high-level review setting out precisely how the UK could achieve net zero by 2050, added: “While I was conducting the net zero review, I spoke with her during a cabinet committee meeting chaired by Alok Sharma. She restated again the importance of net zero for green trade and building international supply chains.”

Former Tory cabinet minister John Gummer, who as Lord Deben chaired the Climate Change Committee from 2012 to 2023, said Badenoch appeared not to have talked to anyone in the party who had been involved at the highest levels in examining the feasibility of achieving net zero by 2050. Nor did she appear to have taken on board the findings of numerous reports by official bodies.

“You would have thought she would have talked to the Climate Change Committee, which was set up under the Conservatives to provide just such independent advice,” said Deben. Her approach would be “very damaging” and harm “green investment” into the UK, he added, as well as lead to higher electricity prices by making the country reliant on oil and gas for longer.

Why the change of tune?

So the question remains, why did Badenoch decide suddenly to join the Trump camp,  making a complete  U-turn on not just her Ministerial views, but also a very clear Conservative general election manifesto commitment? Step forward two very rich men who recently have clearly been in prime position to  influence Badenoch.

Paul Marshall owns the right-wing UK television broadcaster GB News and the Spectator. Marshall runs a hedge fund  that in 2023 had $2.2 billion in fossil fuel investments Marshall is also still in the running to buy the Spectator’s sister publication, the Telegraph newspaper –- which routinely  questions climate science, denounces climate activists, and criticises green reforms. As does the Spectator. As does GB News.

During a keynote speech in February on a platform shared with Badenoch, Marshall attacked net-zero as a form of “climate derangement syndrome”.

“Countries have been infected by an ideological zeal, which is leading us to sacrifice our economic prosperity and our peoples’ livelihoods, all for the sake of making some fractional changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” he claimed.

Just before her “net zero bankruptcy” U turn, Kemi Badenoch also enjoyed a £14,000 week-long “residential” with her family , courtesy of Neil Record, who had also provided her with offices during her leadership campaign.

Record chairs Net Zero Watch (originally Global Warming Policy Forum). He wrote, unsurprisingly in the Telegraph, an opinion piece  entitled “The true cost of net zero? Ruinously high bills, for decades,” He argued that “household electricity bills will rise relentlessly and then stay high if Britain sticks to its net zero ambitions.

Record added :“This is the inevitable consequence of the shortcomings of all current means of generating clean electricity – and demand for electricity is certain to soar if we scrap gas boilers and force people to buy electric cars.”

Coinciding with the Badenoch announcement was yet another report , this time from the inter governmental thinktank the OECD. It concluded unequivocally that adopting ambitious targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and setting out the policies to achieve them, would result in a net gain to global GDP by the end of the next decade. Whereas a third of global GDP could be lost this century if the climate crisis runs unchecked.

Sadly, absence of space meant the remaining readers of the Telegraph, the Spectator and both viewers of GB News never heard about the OECD ‘s complete rebuttal of Kemi Badenoch’s cowardice. More’s the pity.