Tony Blair calls for reset of ‘irrational' net-zero policies in Labour clash

Times

30-04-2025

Sir Tony Blair has warned there needs to be a radical reset of 'irrational' net-zero policies because they are 'doomed to fail'.
The former prime minister said that voters were being asked to make 'financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle' that would have 'minimal' effect on global emissions.
Blair said that attempts to phase out fossil fuels in the short term were 'doomed to fail', arguing that the 'inconvenient facts' were that the production and demand for them was rising.
He argued that a backlash against climate change policies threatened to 'derail the whole agenda', in the latest sign that the mainstream consensus on green policies is collapsing.
Blair's intervention, days before the local elections, was met with anger in government as it could bolster opposition parties. Reform and the Conservatives have criticised the government's net-zero policies. However, there are also concerns Labour will lose votes to the Greens.
One Labour source said that Blair's intervention was a 'public tantrum' and was 'really unhelpful'. They pointed to the fact that Blair's organisation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has advised the government of Saudi Arabia.
The boss of Britain's publicly-owned energy company rejected Blair's suggestion of a reset on climate change policy, warning that it would be 'deeply unhelpful'.
Dan McGrail, interim chief executive of Great British Energy, said the UK's climate policy framework gave private investors in the energy sector a stable environment compared with other countries. 'When you think about that, resets, stops, massive changes or 180-degree changes in strategy are deeply unhelpful,' he said at the Innovation Zero conference in London.
An ally of Sir Keir Starmer said: 'Keir has been consistently clear that he sees net zero as one of the key growth opportunities for the British economy, which is why it was in the manifesto that helped deliver the biggest gain of Labour seats in a general election since 1945.'
Blair has become the most senior Labour figure to question the approach to net zero, which he says 'isn't working'. His use of the term 'inconvenient facts' undermining green policies is a reference to Al Gore, the former US vice-president, who referred to climate change as an 'inconvenient truth'.
Blair's comments came a day after Spain and Portugal were hit with nationwide power cuts. Downing Street dismissed suggestions that a reliance on renewable power was behind the blackout, after Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said it was likely to be the cause.
Starmer put net zero at the heart of Labour's manifesto, pledging to ensure that 95 per cent of the UK's electricity would be from green sources by 2030. The government has also said that it will ban new North Sea oil and gas exploration licences, a move that is opposed by the unions.
However, the prime minister has signalled a change in direction in recent months, pushing ahead with plans for a third runway at Heathrow and delaying plans to ban the sale of hybrid cars in 2030.
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In a foreword to a report from his think tank, Blair said that climate 'activists' have successfully brought the issue into the mainstream, but policies adopted in response to their pressure 'are distorting the debate into a quest for a climate platform that is unrealistic and therefore unworkable'.
Blair wrote: 'Political leaders by and large know that the debate has become irrational. But they're terrified of saying so, for fear of being accused of being 'climate deniers'.'
He urged politicians to shift to 'pragmatic' polices that focus on harnessing technology to deal with emissions, such as turbocharging carbon capture and storage.
Blair said that airline travel was set to double globally over the next 20 years, while urbanisation was expected to contribute to a 40 per cent increase in demand for steel and a 50 per cent increase for cement.
He pointed out that two thirds of global emissions would come from China, India and southeast Asia by the end of the decade, while China's increase in emissions last year was bigger than Britain's total carbon dioxide output.
Blair wrote: 'People know that the current state of debate over climate change is riven with irrationality. As a result, though most people will accept that climate change is a reality caused by human activity, they're turning away from the politics of the issue because they believe the proposed solutions are not founded on good policy.
'In developed countries, voters feel they're being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal. Whatever the historical responsibility of the developed world for climate change, those with even a cursory knowledge of the facts understand that in the future the major sources of pollution will come.'
Blair said carbon capture should be 'at the centre of the battle' and there should be a greater focus on funnelling research and money into the technology.
He added: 'The disdain for this technology in favour of the purist solution of stopping fossil-fuel production is totally misguided principally from the developing world.'
While Starmer has promised £22 billion for research into carbon capture technology, it is not expected to be operational at scale until the 2030s.
Britain and other countries also needed to put greater emphasis on adapting to a changing climate. Blair said that mitigation measures must not be 'the poor relation of climate action because it seems to accept that some climate change is inevitable'.