Leader of the Conservatives Kemi Badenoch has abandoned the party’s commitment to the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target, ending cross-party agreement to tackle climate change.
In a recent speech, kick-starting a wider review of Tory policies, the Leader of the Opposition said: ‘Net zero by 2050 is impossible.’
Existing plans for hitting the target were not realistic and ‘it doesn’t look like we are going to get remotely close to net zero by 2050’, she said. ‘Anyone who has done any serious analysis knows it cannot be achieved without a significant drop in our living standards or, worse, by bankrupting us.’
The 2050 net zero target was introduced by Theresa May’s Conservative government in 2019.
Badenoch said that, based on last year’s installation rate of heat pumps, it would take 340 years to reach the Climate Change Committee’s target for half of all homes to be heated with the devices by 2040. ‘There is no way we can do this quickly enough on that timescale,’ she added.
The speech was criticised by. Charlotte Lee, chief executive of the Heat Pump Association, who said backtracking on the 2050 target without another plan risked undermining market confidence.
‘Business confidence rests not just on what the current government says, but on the consensus across all major parties on climate action,’ she said.
