‘All the Ways Kemi Badenoch Is Completely Wrong About Net-Zero’

This week, Kemi Badenoch torched her own party’s prior stance on climate action, with an attention-grabbing speech claiming that hitting net zero by 2050 is “impossible” without bankrupting the country and driving down living standards.

Here are just a few of the ways in which she is completely wrong.

Firstly, it’s not impossible to hit net zero by 2050 — we’re well on our way. Just last week, the Government’s independent climate advisers published its latest report on the upcoming seventh Carbon Budget which offers a detailed, feasible and deliverable pathway to net zero. We have a plan, it’s an orderly transition to a clean economy, and we should stick to it.

When it comes to bankrupting the country, the OBR has made it clear that delays to this deadline could double the costs, not least because you’ll be dealing with all the wider impacts of a hotter world with all the extreme weather events that brings.

On the contrary to bankrupting us, it’s the green economy that’s driving a disproportionate amount of economic growth at the moment.

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) recently found that the net zero economy in Britain is growing three times as fast as the economy as a whole, and it grew by 10% in 2024 alone. That dwarfs the paltry growth we’ve been seeing in the whole economy for years on end. 

What about the real economics of actual households? Well, if we stay stuck on fossil fuels, we’ll keep pushing more and more families into fuel poverty because it’s not homegrown renewables which are sending energy bills sky high — it’s the cost of gas. We saw that during the energy crisis which followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The generation costs of renewables are a fraction of the cost of fossil fuels, so they’ll be bringing down bills for households across the UK. 

Going through her words line by line and pointing out the distortions, inaccuracies and outright lies is so easy that it’s almost a bore.

The more puzzling question is why she’s bothering to do this at all, given that Badenoch is completely out of step with public opinion on this. Of all the things she has gotten wrong, her political instincts have missed the mark by the biggest margin.

All the available evidence and polling shows that the British public is really supportive of climate action and supports Governments in going further and faster. So if she’s trying to piece back together a voting coalition which charts a path back to power, she’s picked a really odd issue to pick a fight on, because there’s really no chance of turning the British public against climate and nature. 

It’s not just that we care about it, it’s hard-headed economics and pragmatism in an increasingly unstable world. Rolling out homegrown renewables, insulating homes, investing in the new economy, all of this will cut the cost of living, create jobs, strengthen our energy security, and build a better Britain. That’s why people support it, and Badenoch is wandering off into the wilderness if she carries on banging the drum for such fringe and unpopular positions.

Plenty of Conservatives have their heads in their hands, because it was them who put this 2050 target into law as recently as 2019. Just three years ago, the then secretary of state for international trade gave a speech which praised the opportunity and growth offered by the clean energy revolution, touting it as the “future-proofing force that will help us create a better tomorrow”. That secretary of state went by the name of Kemi Badenoch.

The most obvious reading of Badenoch’s intentions this week is that she wants to woo Reform voters back to the Conservative party by throwing some anti-green red meat.

However, although it is true to say that Reform voters are the only set of voters with more people who oppose the net zero target than support it (although even then, still not a majority) — it’s way down on the list of issues that they care about, with immigration being the dominant concern by a country mile.

And it somewhat ignores the fact that the Conservatives have shed votes in pretty much every direction to every party, not least 64 seats to the Lib Dems whose voters are not known for their strident climate denial.

Appealing to an extremely fringe part of the electorate with this desperate attention grab did result in a few of the rightwing broadsheets dutifully splashing Badenoch on their front pages, but this impression of political polarisation on climate as represented by the billionaire owned legacy media shouldn’t be allowed to distort the reality of public opinion. 

In the real world, away from Badenoch’s fantasies, the public consensus around acting on climate remains rock solid.