Ditch ‘impossible’ Net Zero target before it bankrupts us: Kemi Badenoch prepares to opens major divide with Labour in speech TODAY_Nhy
Kemi Badenoch will today say it is ‘impossible’ for the UK to hit its target of Net Zero emissions by 2050 and vow to ditch efforts to try if she becomes Prime Minister.
The Conservative leader will use a speech this morning to reject plans introduced by then PM Theresa May in 2019 and backed by other Tory leaders including Boris Johnson.
She will argue that drastically cutting carbon emissions cannot be achieved without bankrupting the country or hitting living standards at a time when families are struggling.
She will seek to put clear blue water between her party and Labour, blasting Energy Secretary Ed Miliband for spending ‘all of his time serving up dollops of lofty rhetoric’.
She is also struggling to win back voters from Reform, which has made Net Zero scepticism a key plank of its platform.
But Mrs Badenoch also risks angering swathes of Tories as she takes aim at her predecessors for putting the Net Zero emissions target into law.
Some backed her move, with MP Alec Shelbrooke said she was right to ditch ‘artificial deadlines that will make everyone a lot poorer’.
‘Kemi’s engineering and logic based expertise is allowing a sensible policy path to be outlined, that doesn’t just chase populist headlines, or a dogmatic approach that will bankrupt us all,’ he told MailOnline.
But Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, whose membership includes almost half of Mrs Badenoch’s MPs and 500 councillors, said she had ‘jumped the gun’.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch speaking at the Centre for Policy Studies conference at Guildhall in London
Mrs Badenoch is poised to ditch a legal commitment to reach Net Zero by 2050, saying hitting the target is ‘impossible’
‘This undermines the significant environmental legacy of successive Conservative governments who provided the outline of a credible plan for tackling climate change,’ he said.
‘The important question now is how to build out this plan in a way that supports growth, strengthens security, and follows conservative, free market principles.
‘Kemi is right that Labour’s approach is not credible … however, the Net Zero target is driven not by optimism but by scientific reality; without it climate change impacts and costs will continue to worsen.
‘Abandon the science and voters will start to doubt the Conservative Party’s seriousness on the clean energy transition, damaging both growth and the fight against climate change.’
In 2019, the UK became the first major economy to pass legislation requiring it to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to Net Zero by 2050. It means any emissions must be balanced by schemes to offset an equivalent amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere – from planting trees or using carbon capture.
But Mrs Badenoch will say today that there has ‘never, ever been a detailed plan’ to meet the target.
The goal is a ‘multi-trillion, 30-year project touching every single aspect of our lives’, she will say, yet it was ‘decided in 90 minutes without a single vote’.
Mrs Badenoch is expected to urge politicians 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.
‘I don’t say that with pleasure. Or because I have some ideological desire to dismantle it – in fact, we must do what we can to improve our natural world.
Mrs Badenoch will insist the Tories ‘care deeply about our natural environment’ and ‘badly want to improve it’, but the current policies are failing to do this while also driving up the cost of energy
‘I say it because to anyone who has done any serious analysis knows it can’t be achieved without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us.’
Mrs Badenoch will insist the Tories ‘care deeply about our natural environment’ and ‘badly want to improve it’, but the current policies are failing to do this while also driving up the cost of energy.
‘We’re falling between two stools – too high costs and too little progress.’ As well as drawing a dividing line with Labour, the policy marks a break from previous Tory leaders including Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron.
Lord Cameron once urged people to ‘vote blue, go green’, while Mr Johnson criticised Rishi Sunak over his plans to U-turn on some Net Zero commitments. Earlier this month, Mr Sunak told the BBC that the Net Zero commitment – put into law by Baroness May – should be ditched.
Mrs Badenoch will make the comments as she launches the Conservative Party ‘policy renewal process’ today – a bid to build a strategic policy programme for government. She will say the party cannot ‘shortcut our way back into office with easy answers or rushed announcements’, but must ‘develop credible plans that reflect the shared conservative values of personal responsibility, citizenship, sound money, family, freedom and so much more’.
It is understood that ditching the legal commitment to reach Net Zero by 2050 is on the table in the policy discussions, though it is unclear if she would replace the target date.
Other ideas to be examined include pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights and other international treaties, as well as the idea of a single tax rate on all incomes, something Mrs Badenoch said last year was ‘very attractive’. But Mrs Badenoch is expected to face a backlash from some within her own party over the Net Zero plans.
Last night activists interrupted a speech by Mrs Badenoch to the Centre for Policy Studies.
Two women from a campaign group called Climate Resistance shouted out during an event at central London’s Guildhall centred around commemorating the legacy of Baroness Thatcher, a founder of the think tank.
As Mrs Badenoch began to speak, a woman held up a banner that said ‘Abolish Billionaires’ and began to shout.
She was ejected from the hall by members of the audience before another protester began to call out about the cost-of-living crisis.
Mrs Badenoch could be heard to say that Baroness Thatcher could ‘hardly’ be blamed for the rising cost of living.
