Kemi Badenoch is right to question the path to net zero, but pandering to Reform by writing it off would be a mistake for the party, writes CEN director Sam Hall

In her first speech of 2025, Kemi Badenoch apologised for enshrining net zero without a plan to achieve it.

She’s right that setting climate targets without policies to meet them is simply virtue signalling. She’s also right to point out the official government net zero strategy wasn’t published until 2021 – over two years after the target was set.

But successive Conservative governments did eventually develop a net zero plan that was reducing emissions and attracting private investment. And it would be a mistake for the new leadership to disown all of this and the Conservative record on climate change it delivered.

In fact, the party should take a lot of pride in its achievements, from phasing out coal power, to building the largest offshore wind sector in Europe, to rewarding farmers for adopting more sustainable farming practices.

Other important policies were in train too, such as restarting the new nuclear programme,........

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