Tory Boss Vows to Torch Net Zero Laws
The leader of the Conservative Party will vow to scrap wide reaching net zero laws.
Hot on the heels of the Reform upsurge, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch told The Spectator on Wednesday that she will likely repeal the “failed” Climate Change Act 2008.
The policy has been blamed for higher energy bills and deindustrialisation in the UK.
“‘That has to go,” she said.
The Climate Change Act 2008, requires the government to set a legally binding target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The UK was the first country to set such laws.
‘Ministers have to do lots of stupid things just to hit the target, even if they are not cutting [worldwide] emissions or even if we can’t afford them or they’re impractical,’ she says.
‘We have to hit a certain number of heat pumps to meet the target, but at the rate we’re going, it’ll take us about 300 years,” she added.
Net zero has become a major flashpoint in UK politics.
According to the Prosperity Institute think tank, energy bills have skyrocketed, industries have fled and living standards have fallen.
“Rather than driving decarbonisation, Net Zero policies have offshored our emissions. Whilst we boast of closing down our coal fired power stations, India celebrates their one billionth tonne of coal produced,” it said.
Nigel Farage’s Reform, which is currently leading in the polls, has pledged to scrap net zero.
In May, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would like to see drilling restart in the North Sea.
“I strongly recommend to them that, in order to get their energy costs down, they stop with the costly and unsightly windmills,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social on May 23.
He said the UK should “incentivize modernized drilling in the North Sea, where large amounts of oil lay waiting to be taken” and that the country’s energy costs “would go way down—and fast.”
Trump described Aberdeen, Scotland, as the “hub” of a region with “a century of drilling left,” and criticized Britain’s “old-fashioned tax system” for pushing away investors.
Badenoch faces resistence from her own party.
Unherd reported in September that the leader in a speech, made to executives from fossil fuel firms in Aberdeen, repudiated the green policies of the last Conservative government, responsible for setting Net Zero targets in the first place.
The day after she pledged to make drilling for North Sea gas and oil a “cornerstone of Britain’s future.” Her shadow housing secretary, leadership hopeful James Cleverly struck a different note.
He published a volume of essays published by the Conservative Environment Network (CEN), which has 49 Members of Parliament and 31 peers, saying that Britain must “keep pushing and go further, and go faster” in pursuit of decarbonisation, and so “set the pace” for the globe.