Kemi Badenoch has vowed to repeal the Climate Change Act if the Conservatives win the next election. Under the landmark legislation, which was passed with the almost unanimous support of the Conservative party under David Cameron in 2008, carbon budgets are set for many years beyond the current government’s remit, binding future governments to climate policies, though it does not specify what those policies should be.
The Tory leader says she wants to “scrap those failed targets”. But Ed Matthew, the UK programme director for the thinktank E3G, said: “This is a new low point for Kemi Badenoch as she blows up the Conservative party’s credibility for protecting nature and the climate in her quest to ape the far-right policies of Nigel Farage. This announcement is anti-science, anti-growth, anti-health and anti-nature. It is the kind of policy that Vladimir Putin would be recommending.”
So we thought we would take a closer look at the Tory claims:
The Conservatives are announcing their plans to prioritise cheap energy and economic growth and halt the deindustrialisation of Britain by replacing the Climate Change Act 2008 (CCA).
The CCA, passed by Ed Miliband under the last Labour government, has forced governments to introduce burdensome rules and regulations that have increased energy bills for families and businesses, eaten away at Britain’s manufacturing sector, and contributed to a worsening in economic growth.
Kemi Badenoch fails to mention that Cameron played a key role in the legislation. He and his advisers put out their own versions of potential legislation, ahead of Labour’s bill, which were similar to the final bill. Cameron led the entire Tory party, minus five rebels, through the House of Commons lobby to vote for it.
The Conservative party, under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, is focused on making sure our economy and our businesses are given the right regulatory framework to thrive and ensuring that elected politicians can make the right decisions for Britain’s economy and prosperity. This includes freeing the country from the economically harmful regulations that are holding it back, while ensuring we protect our natural environment.
The Confederation of British Industry (estimates there are 1 million people in green jobs in the UK today, and the green economy was the biggest success story of the last year, growing by 10% and adding £83bn to “gross value added” – a much faster clip than the rest of the economy could manage. Other countries are seeing similar success: globally, the green economy is the second fastest growing, behind only the tech sector.
That is why the next Conservative government will replace the CCA with an energy strategy that puts cheap and reliable energy as the foundation for economic growth first, and an approach to climate and environmental protection that prioritises enhancing and preserving our natural environment.
Studies show the climate crisis is one of the biggest threats to nature and wildlife, alongside the intensification of farming.
By replacing the CCA, ministers will be freed from legally binding targets that force them to make decisions to meet arbitrary climate targets, even if they make the British people poorer, destroy jobs, and make our economy weaker.
The UK’s legally binding target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is not “arbitrary”; the target – enshrined in law by Theresa May when Conservative prime minister – is in fact based on the highest scientific authority: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of thousands of the world’s leading climate scientists.
A future Conservative government will be able to balance the interest of the economy and our natural environment, without the constant threat of judicial review and eco-lawfare that has cost the taxpayer millions over the past decade, and driven up the cost and timeline of multiple government projects.
The 2008 legislation has forced successive governments to introduce punitive measures that have hit family finances – including the boiler tax which will push up the price of gas boilers to force people to adopt heat pumps just for the purpose of meeting a self-imposed target.
When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, the price of UK gas tripled. The resulting crisis in the cost of living revealed the UK’s deep overreliance on gas, most of which is imported because the North Sea is a basin in rapid and terminal decline. Heat pumps, which use electricity instead of gas, are three times more efficient than gas boilers and could save consumers hundreds of pounds a year, even if gas prices fall further from their peaks.
The act ignores the fact that climate change is a global problem. If the British chemicals, cement, or metals industry shuts down and moves abroad to countries with cheaper but dirtier energy, then Britain won’t need any less chemicals, cement, or metals – we will just import more from abroad instead, and lose out on all the jobs, tax revenue, and economic growth. Britain will be poorer and global emissions will increase.
The CCA was the world’s first legislation of its kind, but since then has been copied by scores of governments around the world. If the UK repeals the act, it will become an outlier among large developed economies, apart from the US. Without the CCA and a strong carbon price in place, the UK also faces being punished by its largest trading partner, the EU, which is putting in place a carbon border adjustment mechanism. This is a green tariff on industrial goods that penalises imports from countries that have weak climate laws.
The CCA has also forced ministers to support Drax, where trees are cut down in North America, shipped across the Atlantic in diesel-chugging ships, and burnt in a power station in Yorkshire, at great cost to billpayers and our environment, because it is labelled ‘clean’ for the purposes of our climate targets.
The Conservative governments from 2010 to 2024 supported the Drax power station, drawing up rules that granted billions of pounds in subsidy to the biomass plant. Earlier this year, Labour moved to crack down on Drax, halving its subsidies and imposing strict new environmental criteria.
The UK has already halved its emissions since 1990, reducing emissions by more than any other major economy. But global emissions are rising and countries like China are not following our lead. Continuing down this path of unilateral economic disarmament will make us a warning, not an example, to the rest of the world.
The first part is true: the CCA has been successful in helping to push down UK greenhouse gas emissions. However, the UK is not alone. The US, the EU, Japan, Canada, Australia and other leading developed countries have also put in place targets and policies to reduce emissions. Only the US has so far reneged on them. China will reach net zero by 2060, and is set to peak its emissions this year. China has also turned its green efforts into an engine of economic growth – low-carbon sectors now account for 10% of its economy, and were the key driver of growth last year.
The Conservatives support action on climate change – and believe in safeguarding our environment for future generations – but this has to happen when it makes people’s lives better. People should be able to adopt electric vehicles and electric heating when they want to and when it will save them money, not when they are forced to by a government mandate.
No one in the UK has been forced to adopt electric vehicles or heating, says E3G. There is a mandate for car manufacturers to produce all electric vehicles by 2035. “If it doesn’t move to manufacture electric vehicles, then the UK car industry will die,” says Matthew. There is also no regulation requiring households to stop using their gas boilers.
Cheap energy for families and businesses has to be our priority, but Ed Miliband is delivering the opposite, with his upcoming wind auction (Allocation Round 7) locking us into much higher electricity prices for longer, solely for the purpose of meeting climate targets. This latest announcement demonstrates the Conservatives and Kemi Badenoch’s commitment to making economic growth our central imperative – unleashing British businesses from crushing bureaucracy.
Electricity from renewable sources is still cheaper to produce in the UK than electricity from gas. Polling shows that most people in the UK are keen on renewable energy.
