Kemi Badenoch launches Policy Renewal Programme by telling the truth about Net Zero

Today [Tuesday 18^th of March 2025] Kemi Badenoch MP, Leader of the Conservative Party, announced her Policy Renewal Programme.  

At her speech launching this programme, Kemi Badenoch said: 

Checked against delivery

“We are living off the inheritance of previous generations.

For three centuries every era in our country's history left a better legacy for its children.

The greatness of the UK was forged by the sacrifices of our ancestors.

They built, they innovated, and they took tough decisions. They never assumed prosperity was guaranteed—they made sure it was.

But that has bred an assumption that Britain will always be wealthy.

We are a wealthy country, but we are becoming weaker, through complacency.  We are losing our resilience.  We can't make things like we used to; we don't build as quickly. We are spending too much on debt, too much on welfare, and too little on defence.

We are not growing like we should be.

That's us.

That's Canada a little higher.

That's the US growth.

And up there at the top is Australia.

We are not creating a legacy for the next generation.

Worse than that, we're mortgaging our children's future by not recognising the world has changed, we're making things harder and harder for them across the board.

You look at real disposable income, GDP per capita or home ownership and you'll see things are stagnating or going backwards. In 1974, you could save up for a deposit to buy a house in less than 6 months.

Now, the average time is more than 11 years.

Conservatism is about ensuring the very best of our society is preserved for the next generation. Not just our own.

As Roger Scruton said, “Conservatism is about the love of what exists, not because it is perfect, but because it is ours, and because it has grown from the lives of those who came before us.”

Our Party has a proud history of helping the country recover from crisis, the cold war, the economic reforms of the 1980s, the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash.  It has often been our duty to shepherd our country's recovery.

Yet last July, we suffered the worst defeat in our party's history.  We replaced the principles-based government that brought us success with the managerialism of Labour that gave our power to quangos and courts.

We assumed that we would always be wealthy and focused on the status quo rather than the future.

And now, Labour are back

And they are already making everything worse. Jobs are disappearing, taxes are rising and growth is shrinking.

They are vandalising education and are completely clueless on the need for real reform of regulation.

But we have to acknowledge that Labour are there because we made mistakes.

And the public made it very clear that the Conservative Party needed some time away from government.  Our job right now is to use that time wisely, just as Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron did in generations past.

And, just like the 1970s and 2000s, our Party cannot shortcut our way back into office with easy answers or rushed announcements. We must develop credible plans that are based on shared conservative values. Personal Responsibility, Citizenship, Sound money, Family, Freedom and so much more.

Plans that show we are thinking about tomorrow. Plans that are ambitious, tackling problems with the detail they deserve but rooted in realism, not wishful thinking.

Today, I'm talking about one of the biggest ways we are destroying our children's inheritance.

Let's start by telling the truth on energy and net zero.

Every single thing we do in our daily lives is dependent on cheap, abundant energy.

When energy became cheap and abundant, living standards began to rise, health and life expectancy grew.

Cheap, abundant energy is the foundation of civilisation as we know it today. We mess with it at our peril.

And that's exactly what we've been doing for twenty years.

And it's now starting to cause real pain for everyday people and businesses.

The cost of electricity - far too high - much higher than nearby and comparative countries with the real possibility of it going even higher with environmental levies.

A big chunk of our existing bills are not direct energy costs.

People are struggling to pay businesses, especially manufacturing businesses are closing down, and there is no real plan for bringing costs down.

That surely cannot hold.

It's fantasy politics. Built on nothing.  Promising the earth. And costing it too.

As a society, we are – or we have been – trying to do two things at once.

Keep energy costs down, whilst reducing our impact on the environment.

These are both noble aims.

Conservatives, like Margaret Thatcher, have always been custodians of our natural environment.

Cherishing the forests that breathe life into our world, protecting the rivers that nourish our lands, and preserving the landscapes that inspire our souls.

It is our duty to safeguard the delicate balance of nature for future generations.

But the current policies the UK has been implementing are not really doing this while, at the same time, driving up the cost of energy.

We're falling between two stools – too high costs and too little progress.

And why?

Because there's never, ever been a detailed plan.

Ed Miliband's Climate Change Act 2008.

No plan.

The Carbon budgets.

No economic plan.

And then in 2019, Parliament legislated for Net Zero by 2050. But no plan.

A multi-trillion pound, 30-year project, touching every single aspect of our lives.

Was decided in 90 minutes without a single vote.

Of the 22 MPs who spoke that day, only two sounded notes of caution.

I was one of them.

I asked for the plan, I asked for it that day. I asked for it many days after.

And I waited and waited and waited.

840 days later, a plan came.

And it wasn't enough.

So much so that environmental bodies are taking the government to court – and winning – because there isn't enough detail.

We are closing down oil fields in Scotland that we need for transition from gas to renewables because the plan doesn't make sense.

Let's think about it for a minute – we're already one-sixth of the way through Net Zero 2050 that we planned that day.  And we are still arguing about whether we have the plan to get there.

And all the politicians who glossed over the lack of a plan will be long gone when these targets are missed in the future and our children suffer.

So please, don't be fooled and certainly don't be fooled by other party's rhetoric. I remember Nick Clegg dismissing the idea of building new nuclear because it would not come online until 2022.  That decision has cost us billions.  Who was the Lib Dem Energy Secretary? Ed Davey.  Now leading the Liberal Democrats.

New parties will turn up, like Reform, who don't have real answers to our country's challenges that's why their energy policy fell apart after they announced it

We need a serious approach.

We've got to stop pretending it's simple.

And we have got to stop government by press release announcements without a policy plan.

Making promises and not delivering is 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.  I want a better future and a better environment for our children. But we have to get real.

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.

Responsible leaders don't indulge in fictions which are going to make families poorer. Or mortgage their children's future.

Without the rest of the world doing the same, we are making our country less safe, less secure and less resilient.

Let me give you three truths at the heart of net zero.

First: the published plans are completely muddled.

It is true that the UK has made the greatest progress on carbon emissions in the developed world. Yet we are only responsible for 1% of global emissions.

Even if we hit absolute zero, we will not have net zero around the world, if other countries are not following us. And they are not. They certainly will not if they see us bankrupting ourselves to get there.

Our success at reducing emissions has also come at a significant cost: the highest electricity bills in the developed world.

What's extraordinary, is that so much of the cost of our energy bills is not directly from the wholesale cost of the energy. Huge amounts are being spent on switching round how we distribute electricity because we must effectively build two systems of electricity generation – one based on renewables and one not.  One for when the sun shines and the wind blows. And one for when they don't.

Instead of dealing with these challenges, Labour play rhetorical games, talking about missions, goals and mistaking press releases about GB Energy for actual solutions.

The real reason no one in their government is talking about a proper overall plan is that they know it would reveal just how catastrophic the actual costs will be for families, for businesses, and for our economy.

Those costs include families being forced to replace perfectly functioning cars, boilers, and cookers with more expensive, less reliable versions of the same thing.

The costs will mean businesses paying much more than we already are for energy, so our industrial base and manufacturing businesses get weakened even further.

And it will mean our economy losing out on exploiting our own natural resources in the North Sea, while being saddled with ever greater debt.

That's just the first truth.

Second: even where there is a plan, we're behind.

Let's look at one easy example.

By 2040, the Committee on Climate Change says more than half of UK homes need to rip out their boilers and replace them with a heat pump.

There is no way we can do this quickly enough on that timescale.

17 million houses need to be fitted with an expensive heat pump in just 15 years.

How many houses have one now? Fewer than 300,000 – because heat pumps run on a lot of expensive electricity and it turns out, many people just don't like them.

But let's look at the good statistics. Last year saw the highest number of heat pumps ever installed in the UK, 50,000. That's the best we've ever done. So, at that rate it'll take 340 years not 15 to get to the target.

And most of the 50,000 were installed with some form of government subsidy, or as I prefer to call it taxpayers' money.

There's a lot less of that about now and that's before government spending gets further constrained by the need to spend more on defence

This is not a criticism of green technology.

I support the shift to renewables when they make energy cheaper and more secure.

However, they are not a perfect solution and come with their own challenges.  Which brings me to the third truth.

We are massively exposing ourselves to countries who don't share our values.

Take solar panels – the good news is that costs have dropped in the last decade.

But here's the less good news.

Ten years ago, we were heavily dependent on China for all of the key components

Today we're even more dependent.

Look at the top dozen makers of solar panels - they are nearly all Chinese.

That's an extraordinary dependency given what we learned during Covid about over-reliance on these supply chains.

What about wind farms?

Where do we think that most production is currently?  You guessed it, China.

Which means they are all produced using Chinese energy.  60% of their supply comes from coal fired power stations, they are building a new one every other week to keep up with our demand.

Look at electric vehicles. All reliant on batteries to work. One country dominates production of the component parts which create them.

Those three truths are why I call myself a net zero sceptic. Muddled plans, unrealistic targets and deadlines, over-reliance on China.

We have got to start acknowledging what is in plain sight.

Net zero makes us dangerously dependent on countries who don't share our values, and it is risking our energy security.

It's time to stop pretending everything will be fine.

And I'm certainly not debating whether climate change exists. It does.

I badly want to leave a much better environmental inheritance for my children and for yours.

But it doesn't look like we are going to get remotely close to net zero by 2050.

And neither will any autocracy not that they're trying to, anyway.

This is what happens when politics turns into fantasy.

Maybe some of it will change.

But it doesn't look promising.

Ed Miliband spends all of his time making big promises.

Telling people, he will cut household bills by £300 while having no idea how.

And by the way, they've gone up by almost £300 since Labour came into office.

I often say that “when you want to help people, you tell them the truth.  When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they need to hear.”

We have to tell the truth.

The plans for Net zero by 2050 are impossible.

We have to do better than this.

That's why, as part of our policy renewal, we are going to do something that Labour failed to do in 14 years of Opposition.

We are going to deal with the reality.

Confront the real problems, answer the real questions, and be ready with a plan.

We will cover numerous areas, but today we start on energy and net zero.

To do that, our team led by Shadow Secretary of State, Claire Coutinho will be looking at all aspects of the UK's future energy and net zero policies.  Few have spent more time trying to unpack the muddled thinking at the heart of the net zero debate than Claire.

She will be supported by Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Andrew Bowie, and Lord Offord.

I am tasking her team with finding and working with the people who know the truth and who can come up with achievable solutions.

People who can answer from experience

How we can deliver cheap and clean energy, without bankrupting businesses, without eye-watering bills for households, without dependencies on hostile or unstable countries.

Labour may not be interested in these questions – but we are.

We are interested because, as Conservatives, we want to protect our environment, we want to secure our energy and deliver a better world for our children.

Someone has to save these noble objectives from the zealots who have hijacked this agenda.

The best way to deliver clean energy and a better environment is with the market.

Not state diktat. Not pretend statistics from vested interests or rent seekers who want to keep this fiction going for as long as possible.

Telling the truth on net zero and energy is just the start of actually ensuring we leave an inheritance for the next generation.

I said at my party conference speech that, we were going to rewire, reprogramme and reboot the way government works so it serves the public again.

Today, the Conservative Party is taking the first step in the UK's biggest policy renewal programme in 50 years.

Tomorrow, my Shadow Cabinet will begin to do the same with many of the other problems that we see.

Getting people back to work.

Dealing with a society that is fragmenting not integrating

Fixing healthcare.

Repairing the mess Labour are making night now in education.

Improving productivity.

Controlling immigration and dealing with the lawfare that stops elected officials from making democratic decisions.

And there will be so much more.

In the weeks ahead, I will say more on the academics, experts, businesspeople, members from all walks of life who will help us get to the root cause of our country's problems.

Our party members shape our policy, and they will be at the heart of this.  They join the Conservative Party because they want to change the country for the better.  Our policy renewal will be the foundation of making that happen for the next decade.

And, if you are not a Conservative Party member but like what you hear, join us.  We need your support, your help and your expertise.  Join us and help provide a better inheritance for our children.

The party is under new leadership, and we are going to do things differently.

We are serious about changing our country for the better.

The first way to do that is to realise we don't just exist to win elections.

We have to know what we are winning for and what we are going to do after we win.

Diagnosing the real problems

Finding workable solutions

Building a proper plan.

Then being ready to rebuild and make our country stronger again – just as we have done in generations past.

Fighting for ordinary people.

For the institution of the family.

For business.

For common sense.

For less tax, less state, and less interference.

And, finally, ensuring that our generation can leave a real and true inheritance – a better world – for our children once again.”