Energy policy – change is coming

Net Zero policy is financially ruinous, ineffective and inimical to prosperity, freedom and human flourishing. Time to return to the principles of a free society.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has made headlines by declaring the UK's Net Zero 2050 target "impossible," promising instead to "maximise extraction" from the North Sea and remove all climate requirements on oil and gas companies.

This represents a fundamental break from the cross-party consensus that has dominated British climate policy for years, reaching its zenith when Theresa May legislated the Net Zero target with the unanimous support of the House of Commons.

I recall being there with now Lord Craig Mackinlay in the Commons: we decided not to divide the House for a mere protest – we would have only been a handful – because we knew the only people with us were also Eurosceptics. We could not afford at the height of the dramas over leaving the EU to hand a loaded political weapon to our opponents. That’s why there was no division.

Kemi's position reflects growing public unease with Net Zero's mounting costs and practical challenges. Her strategy is both right and targets voters who have drifted toward Reform UK, which has long opposed Net Zero as economically ruinous. This shift comes as energy bills soar and the true scale of the cost of decarbonisation becomes apparent to ordinary households.

For me, it represents the partial success of a campaign I waged despite the political cost, working with my mentor Lord Lawson. Change to policy now seems inevitable.

The hidden costs of climate virtue signalling

In The Sun, I detailed how the then government's heat pump mandate would leave Britain's poorest families facing a brutal choice between expensive retrofits or living in cold homes. The reality is stark: heat pumps cost three times more than gas boilers, are more expensive to run, and only work effectively in well-insulated modern homes – precisely what most vulnerable households lack.