COP30 has been taking place in Brazil, with just four countries not attending – the US, Afghanistan, Myanmar and San Marino.
Here in the UK the Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch and Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Claire Coutinho have become increasingly vocal about withdrawing the UK from its net zero commitments, much as the US is trying to do.
The Leader of the Opposition has likened net zero to “unilateral economic disarmament” during her leadership campaign in 2022. A suitably evocative phrase that can’t really be quantified, proved, disproved or ever need to be acted on.
Claire Coutinho made a speech at the Conservative Party conference last month, centred on net zero where she repeated a familiar line that “we’re only 1% of emissions. 99% are happening elsewhere and they’re rising”. The obvious implication is that we are too small to matter, and larger percentage emitters should carry the burden.
But I think it is worth looking back at where our net zero commitments came from in the first place.
The UK’s net zero targets are detailed in Parliamentary legislation. The original 2008 Climate Change Act introduced a target to reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. This was brought under the then Labour government by David Miliband – the Environment Secretary at the time. A grand total of 3 out of 645 MPs voted against it with 463 voting for it in the final reading, showing overwhelming cross-party support.
The Climate Change Act was amended in 2019 under Theresa May. The then Conservative government decided the 2008 Act did not go far enough and 100% reduction would be needed to meet the 2050 net zero target. This met with so little opposition it went through Parliament without the formality of a vote.
That was then. Claire Coutinho and Kemi Badenoch are now promising to repeal the Act if given the chance. Neither has gone into detail about how they will reverse a 463-3 vote, nor have I seen them comment on the numerous surveys which put UK voter opposition to net zero at only about 25% (YouGov November 2025, ACCESS Citizens 2025).
A third survey by Climate Barometer Tracker in May 2025 breaks it down by voting intentions. Even amongst Conservative voters, the number isn’t much higher with 32% opposed. But there is one outlier – 60% of Reform voters are opposed which may be a clue about where some of this is coming from.
Anyway, back to the speech. Claire Coutinho starts with the obligatory homage to “Mrs Thatcher’s North Sea oil boom” as if she discovered and drilled it herself. She repeats the “unilateral economic disarmament” phrase and links renewable energy to higher energy prices in the UK. She says this is forcing energy intensive businesses to relocate out of the UK, and we will be forced to import these things “often” from “countries still powered by coal”. This means that we wouldn’t be saving the world, only displacing the emissions somewhere else and we are handing economic advantages to other countries for no good reason.
Which largely coal powered countries might all these UK businesses be relocating to for a cost advantage on coal? Ember – a global energy think tank – puts coal’s share of global electricity generation at 34%. If you want to go where the coal is, the country with the biggest national percentage share of coal is Kosovo at 92%. Next is Mongolia at 86%, South Africa 82%, India 75%, Bosnia 63%, Serbia 63%, the Philippines 63%, Indonesia, 62%.
Despite vowing to repeal the Climate Change Act she identifies herself as a proud lover of the environment. The way she would square this circle is to back innovation by creating technology that we can export and she says this would be a bigger national contribution to tackling climate change than reducing emissions. She never denies that climate change is an issue.
She goes on to say she wants to “protect nature”. She gives examples of the amount of space taken up on a small island by wind and solar farms and says instead they will build relatively small nuclear power stations. I’m not sure the footprint on the ground is the real issue and it’s not a like for like comparison. As a thought experiment let’s say you hear of plans for either a nuclear reactor or a solar farm within a five-mile radius of where you live and you have to choose one.
Lastly, she says we need to prioritise cheap, abundant energy and shouldn’t feel bad about this and has some ideas about making electricity cheaper. She would scrap the Carbon Tax, and wind farm subsidies.
It’s good to see at least a few ideas in between the Thatcher tributes and mocking Ed Miliband. Two last things though. This idea that the UK is only 1% and the other 99% should take up the slack. The largest culprit of all – China – is doing exactly this. They aren’t waiting for the UK to do it for them. China has added over 300GW of wind and solar power in the first 9 months of 2025, following on from 333GW in 2024. This is more than the rest of the world combined. Its emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months – ahead of schedule.
If net zero is a battle as the unilateral disarmament language implies, the fight is not against renewables it is within them, and the weapons are scale and innovation. Opting out is not much of an argument in the longer term.
China has also become very innovative in areas such as energy efficiency, battery storage and electric vehicles. It is no longer just a low-cost supplier.
As of September 2025, the world’s fastest production car is the Yangwang U9 Xtreme – an electric vehicle designed by Chinese company BYD.
BYD and fellow Chinese company CATL have become popular holdings in sustainable funds. BYD is roughly equivalent to a Chinese Tesla, while CATL specialises in batteries both in cars and on the electricity grid.
CATL and BYD market caps combined are bigger than Shell and BP. CATL would be the second largest public company in the UK if listed here and BYD would be top five. Where are the UK equivalents? If we want to out-innovate this, we have some catching up to do.
Lastly the elephant in the room that she doesn’t address. The clue is in her job title, so I’m going to assume she knows. Energy security.
I don’t believe China, Europe, the UK or anyone else woke up one day and decided on “unilateral economic disarmament” or that saving the world was the right thing to do. I don’t believe President Xi is some ecowarrior gluing himself to the pavement for a cause. I think all these regions know very well they are beholden to a range of mostly undesirable partners when importing oil and gas.
Renewable energy offers a chance to be more independent and securely supply more of their own energy, which they do not currently have the natural resources to do. We have fought wars over this for decades, maybe even longer and investing in a different solution seems uncontroversial to me, as it has to multiple Parliaments.
Robert Fullerton – Senior Research Analyst
FPC25581
All charts and data sourced from FactSet
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