Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati. This week, a former
Speaker 1: Conservative lambas his party. In the UK, it feels like
Speaker 1: a make or break moment for net zero. The country's
Speaker 1: forward thinking approach to climate change has for some years
Speaker 1: now been a source of pride. The UK was the
Speaker 1: first major economy to create a national climate law and
Speaker 1: to make a net zero commitment. All that has helped
Speaker 1: the UK cut the most emissions among the world's major economies.
Speaker 1: It has also pushed other countries to move faster by
Speaker 1: leading the way at global climate summits, and the UK
Speaker 1: was pivotal in pushing through the twenty fifteen Paris Agreement.
Speaker 1: But the current government is moving away from all of that.
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has diluted key policies and backtracked
Speaker 1: on green commitments. It's something I asked Chris Stark of
Speaker 1: the Climate Change Committee about earlier this year. He acknowledged
Speaker 1: that the consensus that has existed across all political parties
Speaker 1: on climate action could finally be at a risk of crumbling.
Speaker 1: It's a consensus that's been taken for granted for more
Speaker 1: than a decade, and it's a bad time to lose it.
Speaker 1: But Stark was likely holding back in his criticism. This week,
Speaker 1: we weighed deeper into the reality of climate politics here
Speaker 1: in the UK. Take a listen to what a former
Speaker 1: Conservative minister who just quit the party earlier this year
Speaker 1: had to tell me about his party's stance on climate and.
Speaker 2: At its current states.
Speaker 3: The Conservative Party is endangering people's lives, people's jobs, the
Speaker 3: opportunities for communities to grow further by taking a negative
Speaker 3: approach from rowing back on the energy transition.
Speaker 1: That iss more. He spent fourteen years as a member
Speaker 1: of Parliament for the Conservatives. He was Energy Minister in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen when then Prime Minister Theresa May signed into
Speaker 1: law net zero by twenty fifty, and later he was
Speaker 1: tasked by his own party to review whether net zero
Speaker 1: is good for the economy or not. You can tell
Speaker 1: where he landed after the Conservatives started rowing back on
Speaker 1: climate he could not in good conscious stay. In January,
Speaker 1: he quit the party and politics altogether. He now wants
Speaker 1: to dedicate his life to getting net zero done. I
Speaker 1: interviewed Chris at the Climate Impact Summit in London last week,
Speaker 1: and he did not hold back on criticizing his former
Speaker 1: party or the weak position that the Labor Party, which
Speaker 1: is likely to come to power in the UK next
Speaker 1: is taking on the climate issue. Welcome to the Climate
Speaker 1: Impact Summit and welcome to the Zero Podcast. Chris.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Even before we start and get into the conversation, it's
Speaker 1: worth acknowledging that you're a former historian, a former politician
Speaker 1: who is now a passionate campaigner for net zero. It's
Speaker 1: a conversion story that might seem unusual, but as a reporter,
Speaker 1: I've seen this happen many times, most recently here in
Speaker 1: the UK. Alok Sharma, who is a Secretary of State
Speaker 1: after being COP twenty six president, is now a passionate
Speaker 1: campaigner for climate causes. What specifically makes such a conversion
Speaker 1: happen was there a moment when you realize that what
Speaker 1: you were doing was not just for government but was
Speaker 1: a calling.
Speaker 3: I think for any sort of politician, when you start
Speaker 3: off as an elected member of parliament, you're jack of
Speaker 3: all trades.
Speaker 2: You cover all different.
Speaker 3: Sort of areas of policy, and over time, obviously some
Speaker 3: individuals focus on specific areas of policy. I originally was
Speaker 3: my background was trying to focus on education, and I
Speaker 3: became university as Minister, and for me, that was sort of.
Speaker 2: Pinnacle of what I wanted to achieve.
Speaker 3: The more I sort of got to focus on science
Speaker 3: and technology is also part of that role. I realized
Speaker 3: a lot of people were focusing on tackling climate, focusing
Speaker 3: on the energy transition, and actually the more I was
Speaker 3: exposed to this, the more I sort of realized this
Speaker 3: was the one thing that I wanted to focus on,
Speaker 3: and that was the sort of initial challenge I think
Speaker 3: where I knew I was eventually move away from politics.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to be that sort of politician that
Speaker 3: tried to cover everything anymore. I just wanted to focus
Speaker 3: on one thing. When I signed that zera into law
Speaker 3: was coming up for five years, I genuinely didn't know
Speaker 3: at the time that moment would sort of trigger a
Speaker 3: domino effect other countries. And I think what we've seen
Speaker 3: now policy catching up with the economics of the transition,
Speaker 3: that you are seeing a rapid decline a neural and gas,
Speaker 3: but the narrative, so this comes back to sort of
Speaker 3: the historian in me hasn't called up politicians and populism
Speaker 3: is still sort of focusing on trying to preserve the past.
Speaker 3: When this is a transition very similar to electricity to
Speaker 3: the petrol car. It's going to happen, and for me,
Speaker 3: trying to articulate that has now become my passion and calls.
Speaker 3: But I knew when I did the net zero review
Speaker 3: and I sort of then began to focus down on
Speaker 3: net zero, I would probably have this sort of Thomas
Speaker 3: Moore moment where eventually I would have to be looking
Speaker 3: at myself in the mirror and saying, well, can I
Speaker 3: do what politicians do day and day out, which is cool,
Speaker 3: black is white, and defend my government against all the
Speaker 3: evidence for delivering that zero. And I reached the sort
Speaker 3: of crossroads where I had to go because I realized
Speaker 3: that my priorities and everything I was focusing on now
Speaker 3: told me that new or and gas licenses were the
Speaker 3: wrong thing to do.
Speaker 1: So, as a historian, need to say, you care a
Speaker 1: lot about the narratives at this political moment. It seems
Speaker 1: like the story that both conservatives and labor are campaigning
Speaker 1: on is that we are going too fast on net zero.
Speaker 1: But that's not what the science says, that's not what
Speaker 1: you believe.
Speaker 2: So what do you.
Speaker 1: Think is a winning strategy to change that? Narrative.
Speaker 3: So we I think this false narrative that somehow there's
Speaker 3: going to be a more proportionate version of net zero.
Speaker 3: When I signed that zero into law, I was really
Speaker 3: conscious that I was meeting with climate groups of saying
Speaker 3: net zero isn't going far enough. And this was very
Speaker 3: much a middle way of via media saying, look, we
Speaker 3: could still grow the economy and decarbonize at the same time,
Speaker 3: recognizing that there would be sort of new technological advances
Speaker 3: eventually coming on stream, but this is what we need
Speaker 3: to do now, and then obviously is what we need
Speaker 3: to buy twenty thirty. So this whole idea of net
Speaker 3: zero being somehow, or the calls of eco zalots, it's
Speaker 3: sort of completely false.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: However, there is this challenge now, how do you look
Speaker 3: at the vested interests of those that are trying to
Speaker 3: maintain the status quo when the status co can't hold
Speaker 3: Actually looking at oil and gas, it's not just an
Speaker 3: environmental issue, it's an economic one. It's simply uneconomic to
Speaker 3: invest in oil and gas that it would only come
Speaker 3: on stream by twenty forty when the demand for aill
Speaker 3: and gas is dropping by about forty percent. And we
Speaker 3: need to drop by sixty five percent. So for me,
Speaker 3: it's basing the argument in the facts and that might
Speaker 3: seem cold, and it's not meant to be unemotional, But
Speaker 3: what I don't want to do is see the climate
Speaker 3: movement sort of you somehow fall into an elephant trap
Speaker 3: of being sort of led by climate delayers who are
Speaker 3: now were the climate delaiyers, into being seen unreasonable.
Speaker 2: We've got to keep our heads at the same time.
Speaker 3: I know it's really frustrating, but how do you have
Speaker 3: that ability to prove that they're the extremists.
Speaker 2: They are the Zalots, not you.
Speaker 1: Well, emotions do take a hold of the narrative. We've
Speaker 1: seen here in the UK that the government has been
Speaker 1: pushing a strategy specifically tied to one election that happened
Speaker 1: in London, around pushing against a policy that was supposed
Speaker 1: to try and reduce the number of polluting cars. And
Speaker 1: they thought it's a winning strategy, and so they used
Speaker 1: what they thought was both an emotionally winning strategy but
Speaker 1: also a vote winning strategy and then applied it nationally.
Speaker 1: Now we've just recently concluded local elections here in the UK,
Speaker 1: and that seems to have backfired. Conservatives did quite poorly.
Speaker 1: In fact, Liberal Democrats now have more council seats than
Speaker 1: the Conservatives too, and of course Laborer is at the
Speaker 1: top of that chart. So is the Conservative Party wrong
Speaker 1: to think that voters want to push against screen policies?
Speaker 3: So just to say to start with this is not
Speaker 3: the reason etra for our thanking, for why we need
Speaker 3: to do net zero. I recognize it as being important
Speaker 3: in its own right, but politically, I said at the
Speaker 3: time when Rushie selected this rowback that this was going
Speaker 3: to be the worst mistake of his premiership.
Speaker 2: Now why is that the case.
Speaker 3: It's because there are conservatives like me across the country
Speaker 3: who believed that being a conservative also meant that you
Speaker 3: believed in conservation and demonstrating how you were going to
Speaker 3: ensure the best in the country was preserved at the
Speaker 3: same time as managing change appropriately. And now throwing all
Speaker 3: that away, he's seen conservatives like myself. You know, I've
Speaker 3: now become independent. I resigned the Conservative whip. I've left
Speaker 3: the Conservative Party now.
Speaker 2: Have walked away.
Speaker 3: And that's been replicated hundreds of thousands of times, if
Speaker 3: not millions of times, by individuals across the country who've
Speaker 3: now thought, well, what does the Conservative Party stand for?
Speaker 2: And is not what I stand for?
Speaker 3: And having this sort of future facing vision of where
Speaker 3: the country's going rather than looking backwards and trying to
Speaker 3: maintain the past, I think for me has been disastrous.
Speaker 3: We've seen that in the local elections, not just obviously,
Speaker 3: and everyone focused on Reform and it's a fault of
Speaker 3: the media, not yourself, but obviously why was Nigel Frage
Speaker 3: and Richard Tice ever given a platform on Question Time
Speaker 3: when effectively Reform UK is a private company, not a
Speaker 3: political party. And they've only won two council seats at
Speaker 3: the local elections. The Greens actually gained one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty seats, one hundred and fifty six seats, sixty seven
Speaker 3: percent increase, the largest increase of any political party. And
Speaker 3: so actually we've seen a coalition now of those parties
Speaker 3: that are looking to promote environment and climate succeed and
Speaker 3: also in the mayoralties as well. The one Conservative that
Speaker 3: won was Ben Houchin, who proudly and published a net
Speaker 3: zero strategy for tea side that set out and I
Speaker 3: would encourage anyone to read that strategy is a great
Speaker 3: document that net zero is not about what we have
Speaker 3: to lose, but what we have to gain, and framing
Speaker 3: net zero is that opportunity was what the net zero.
Speaker 2: Review was about.
Speaker 3: Yes, obviously absolutely vital that we tackle the climate crisis,
Speaker 3: but this is a moment in time that won't come again.
Speaker 2: We're in a net zero race.
Speaker 3: You know, if the United States has taken forward the
Speaker 3: Inflation Reduction Act, the UK will fall further behind having
Speaker 3: been a climate leader if we do not continue to
Speaker 3: take action. And what we've seen with the Energy Secretary
Speaker 3: Flerkatino is to sort of rest on the laurels and say, well,
Speaker 3: you know, if the carbonized by fifty percent China is
Speaker 3: so bigre only one percent, that sort of narrative that
Speaker 3: defeat this narrative that suggests that the UK can't be
Speaker 3: an example for the rest of the world to follow.
Speaker 3: And for myself, you know, it's absolutely critical that we
Speaker 3: all work together, cross party, put together this local Climate Pledge.
Speaker 3: We've got about a one hundred council leaders to sign
Speaker 3: ahead of the local elections, including Andy Burnham, including Tracy Braben,
Speaker 3: to commit to working together. Because I know it's difficult
Speaker 3: sometimes everyone has their own political allegiances, but carbon DIYX
Speaker 3: said knows no political parties or no country borders, so
Speaker 3: we just have to work together. And this is where
Speaker 3: this politicization of net zero has been so tragic, and
Speaker 3: it will cost the Conservatives even more votes at the
Speaker 3: next general election. It's probably too late now to change
Speaker 3: the course that Richie Senaka set himself, but people historians
Speaker 3: will look back at this moment and recognize this was
Speaker 3: the moment that the Conservative Party lost the country because
Speaker 3: it no longer spoke to the country about what its
Speaker 3: future was going.
Speaker 2: To look like.
Speaker 1: Well, the next general election could be happening in months
Speaker 1: time if you believe some or before the end of
Speaker 1: the year. Now you were a member of Parliament for
Speaker 1: other Conservatives till January you've quit. Would it be fair
Speaker 1: to say that, given your context for where the Conservatives
Speaker 1: stand on climate today, that if people believe in climate change,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't vote for the Conservatives.
Speaker 2: I think that's right.
Speaker 3: It's difficult to say that because there's lots of colleagues
Speaker 3: who are friends. I've worked a large part of my
Speaker 3: career for the Conservative Party. But in its current state,
Speaker 3: the Conservative Party is endangering people's lives people's jobs, the
Speaker 3: opportunities for communities to grow further by taking a negative
Speaker 3: approach and rowing back on the energy transition.
Speaker 2: And we can see that recent.
Speaker 3: Report published by UK SIFTS demonstrated the sixty three percent
Speaker 3: of companies are seeking potentially to relocate jobs in investment elsewhere.
Speaker 3: And I wanted that investment to come to the UK,
Speaker 3: to demonstrate that this is an opportunity that will only
Speaker 3: come once in a generation. But what I'm not going
Speaker 3: to do is say to anyone that this is the
Speaker 3: particular party you know you should vote for. I mean,
Speaker 3: Keir Starmer has these sort of mission based approaches times
Speaker 3: very closely to my own Mission zero report, that long
Speaker 3: term certainty and clarity you can have by having stable
Speaker 3: policy frameworks. But I would say to anyone who's thinking
Speaker 3: about you know how to cast their votes. You know,
Speaker 3: look at the candidates sort of record locally, look at
Speaker 3: obviously the cup of the seat. You will have this
Speaker 3: moment in time, and it's so important I think personally,
Speaker 3: it's to look at if the UK is going to
Speaker 3: meet it's national determined contribution sixty eight percent emissions reduction,
Speaker 3: whoever forms the government will be the stewards of that NDC.
Speaker 3: If the UK fails to meet that NDC, it's one
Speaker 3: of the most ambitious obviously globally. Then what's to say
Speaker 3: any other country will want to meet their own national
Speaker 3: determined contributions they promises they made to the UN. So
Speaker 3: for me, this is not just about thinking about the
Speaker 3: political party that's going to form a government. This is
Speaker 3: actually about picking a government that's going to be the
Speaker 3: stewards of a really important policy framework that then the
Speaker 3: rest of the will be watching and waiting to see
Speaker 3: whether we succeed.
Speaker 1: So, if the polls are to be believed, Labor is
Speaker 1: likely to come into power here in the UK, and
Speaker 1: especially on climate Given how the Conservatives are playing the cards,
Speaker 1: it should all be a cakewalk for Labor. Do come
Speaker 1: up with a plan that already exists that the Climate
Speaker 1: Rae Committee has developed, back it and make it work.
Speaker 1: But the opposite seems to be happening. They are backtracking
Speaker 1: on their own previous commitments made in the opposition. But
Speaker 1: climate action is still popular with voters. So why is
Speaker 1: it that both the major parties in the UK are
Speaker 1: acting this way?
Speaker 3: I remember Tony Blair once said that Labour's best when
Speaker 3: it's boldest, and it's the case if you look at
Speaker 3: Sidi Khan's commitment to maintaining the expansion of ulets that
Speaker 3: he set himself a course. He put a lot of
Speaker 3: political capital on the line and he's stuck with it,
Speaker 3: knowing that there was this one moment in time when
Speaker 3: this by election happened in for the UK. For those
Speaker 3: who are familiar the Oxbridge by election, Boris Johnson resigned
Speaker 3: his seat behame available, the Conservatives held onto it by a whisker.
Speaker 3: If it was went four hundred and twenty five votes
Speaker 3: the other way, we wouldn't have been having this conversation. Actually,
Speaker 3: my resignation from Parliament was sparked also partly by trying
Speaker 3: to course correct, to say, well, you know, it calls
Speaker 3: one election, calls another by election, and then he lost
Speaker 3: that to labor.
Speaker 1: For listeners who don't live in the UK, here's a
Speaker 1: little bit of background on that pivotal Uxbridge election and
Speaker 1: the role climate policies played. As Chris said, the election
Speaker 1: was set off by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigning
Speaker 1: from Parliament last June. Steve Tucker, the Conservative Party candidate
Speaker 1: vying for Boris's old seat in Uxbridge, ran a campaign
Speaker 1: that was heavily critical of one of London Mayor Sadi
Speaker 1: Khan's key environmental policies. Ules or the Ultra Low Emission
Speaker 1: Zone scheme requires owners of cars that don't meet certain
Speaker 1: emission standards to pay a hefty fee for its use.
Speaker 1: It was introduced by Boris Johnson when he was Mayor
Speaker 1: of London back in twenty fifteen. At that time it
Speaker 1: only applied to central London, but under Sadi Khan its
Speaker 1: scope was expanded. Over the years, the zone has cut
Speaker 1: air pollution and raised millions of pounds for the city
Speaker 1: from the fees. Ducker for the Conservatives argued it put
Speaker 1: a too heavy burden on regular commuters. In the end,
Speaker 1: the Conservatives narrowly held onto the seat and the party
Speaker 1: thought doubling down on anti green policies could be a
Speaker 1: winning strategy in local elections around the country. That backfired.
Speaker 1: U Les remains in place and Chris says it's in
Speaker 1: fact exactly the sort of bold policy we need for
Speaker 1: the climate fight.
Speaker 3: The challenge is is how to maintain that sense of boldness,
Speaker 3: that sense of purpose, because there will always be a
Speaker 3: reaction to every action taken, there will always be vested interests.
Speaker 3: The role of politics and leadership is to demonstrate that
Speaker 3: you're going to stay the course. You're going to set
Speaker 3: out a vision and you're going to take people with you.
Speaker 3: And the narrative focus that you need is almost like
Speaker 3: polishing a pebble. It doesn't happen overnight. You know, you
Speaker 3: need to work and crafted it, come back and address
Speaker 3: faults and mistakes along the line, knowing that those are
Speaker 3: going to be made. And I think that both political
Speaker 3: parties are guilty of having that lack of purpose and boldness.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say that's the case with their millibant. He
Speaker 3: is absolutely committed and demonstrating. But we're in a new
Speaker 3: age now where social media creates these funnel mechanisms. GB
Speaker 3: News is not the rest of the country and they
Speaker 3: we shouldn't cow taw to their anti climate messaging because
Speaker 3: the rest of the country, a silent majority, wants climate action.
Speaker 3: See they are concerned about what that looks like and
Speaker 3: who will pay for it, and it's an important question
Speaker 3: about understanding how to bring investment in, which is why
Speaker 3: I'm so passionate about trying to promote the UK because
Speaker 3: it's not necessarily the tax pays paying for all of this,
Speaker 3: but nevertheless set out a vision and stay the.
Speaker 1: Course coming up. Chris responds to the current energy secretaries
Speaker 1: claim that net zero has become a crushing leviathan of
Speaker 1: central planning. And by the way, if you're enjoying this episode,
Speaker 1: please take a moment to rate and review the show
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Now, the UK Government and
Speaker 1: the UK political parties will do their thing, but the
Speaker 1: UK Government isn't just the political parties, it's also the
Speaker 1: machinery behind it. And there has been a lot of
Speaker 1: green hushing going on. So the UK Government is going
Speaker 1: ahead with some of the policies that it's set out.
Speaker 1: It doesn't want to advertise them as the Conservative Party.
Speaker 1: But let's come to the specifics. A key thing you
Speaker 1: did in your time in office is the net zero Review.
Speaker 1: This is a report that was commissioned by Liz Truss,
Speaker 1: who was Prime Minister for less than two months in
Speaker 1: late twenty twenty two. You spent more time being on
Speaker 1: the road for the review than she spent in Number ten.
Speaker 1: By the time the document was published, she Sunak was
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister, and you said you had one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five policy recommendations in the final report, most
Speaker 1: of which you say were accepted by the government. Can
Speaker 1: you give a specific examples of the ones that you
Speaker 1: are most proud of that the government has deployed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: There is the sort of green hushing going on because
Speaker 3: of the departments and the individual civil servants to work
Speaker 3: in them are truly committed to the transition. And I
Speaker 3: had some of those fantastic individuals working on the net
Speaker 3: zero review, and I think the UK is really blessed
Speaker 3: in that regard in having that sort of policy expertise,
Speaker 3: which why I still say we're a climate leader when
Speaker 3: we look at the civil society movements, our universities, our
Speaker 3: departments that are working on the transition. In terms of
Speaker 3: some of those policy recommendations, the government accepter have about
Speaker 3: a hundred. There are some that I wish they would
Speaker 3: still accept that it hasn't gone across the line. A
Speaker 3: net zero investment roadmap that would identify all these opportunities
Speaker 3: and set out what needs to be done effectively, an
Speaker 3: Office for net Zero, Office for Net zero Delivery. The
Speaker 3: Australia is doing to bring all these departments together, but
Speaker 3: of the ones that they did accept the recommendations, I
Speaker 3: think some of the ones I'm proudest of all, including
Speaker 3: net zero duty for off GEM, I think is absolutely
Speaker 3: vital if we're going to move beyond what sort of
Speaker 3: consumer price duty, the off GYM had to actually identify
Speaker 3: where is a coordinating function in the market going to
Speaker 3: take place. One that I was really sort of happy
Speaker 3: that it was accepted. I wouldn't sure it was going
Speaker 3: to be accepted was the rebalancing of gas electricity prices
Speaker 3: that the government's now committed to taking this forwards just
Speaker 3: fundamentally if we don't get this right, and we should
Speaker 3: have done it sooner. Actually while the gas price was
Speaker 3: still sort of artificially sort of high, we're not going
Speaker 3: to be able to embed the transition at a household
Speaker 3: level with the heat pumps and other forms of electricity
Speaker 3: like solar panels, So that for me was a real win.
Speaker 1: A little more on two of those policies. Off GEM
Speaker 1: is the UK's office for gas and electricity markets, and
Speaker 1: as of last June, of GEM was legally required to
Speaker 1: focus on reaching net zero emissions, not just on protecting
Speaker 1: the interests of existing and future gas and electricity cans.
Speaker 1: The other policy Chris mentioned, rebalancing gas and electricity prices,
Speaker 1: involves moving a green levee applied to electricity that makes
Speaker 1: it more expensive. That levee is used to fund subsidies
Speaker 1: for renewables and thus makes the grid cleaner. But currently
Speaker 1: the UK uses a lot of gas for heating homes.
Speaker 1: In the future, ideally people will use electricity to power
Speaker 1: heat pumps, thus making electricity cheaper is key. The review
Speaker 1: came out in January twenty twenty three. You quit in
Speaker 1: January twenty twenty four, and of course we talked through
Speaker 1: the change in stance for the Conservative Party in that period.
Speaker 1: How has that affected the implementation of the recommendations that
Speaker 1: were accepted by the government. Has there been backtracking on
Speaker 1: the very things that they agreed on doing.
Speaker 3: The review covered everything, so it wasn't just around looking
Speaker 3: at the sort of focus of supply so I, but
Speaker 3: also on the demand side, and that's where I think
Speaker 3: there's been a real now challenge which is going to
Speaker 3: imp act on our climate targets, which is we needed
Speaker 3: to maintain a focus both on retrofit, on setting the
Speaker 3: private rented sector a focus on how to commit to
Speaker 3: minimum energy efficiency standards.
Speaker 2: That's been scrapped.
Speaker 3: You know, there was a need to maintain focus on
Speaker 3: a boiler mandate as the equivalent of the TV mandate,
Speaker 3: which would say no new gas boilers sold from X state.
Speaker 3: I actually wanted to sort of push it further forward
Speaker 3: to twenty thirty three instead of twenty thirty five. Year
Speaker 3: that's been canned, and without that there is no certainty,
Speaker 3: there is no sense that the industry will have to
Speaker 3: move towards this, and so that in itself has been
Speaker 3: entirely retrograde. Will probably cost households up to eight pounds
Speaker 3: over the next ten years in additional costs on oil
Speaker 3: and gas bills. So that was deeply regrettable. But then
Speaker 3: on the renewable side, you know, they've done a huge
Speaker 3: amount of positive things. They've got the Solar Task Force
Speaker 3: is a recommendation that zero review that's coming forwards. I
Speaker 3: am worried about potentially them sort of regrading agricultural land
Speaker 3: that will stop solar farms being expanded. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: a political choice that will probably feature in the general election,
Speaker 3: and that really then sets the sort of binary vision
Speaker 3: now between is net zero going to happen. You're going
Speaker 3: to vote for parties that believe in that zero. You're
Speaker 3: going to vote for party that no longer wants net
Speaker 3: zero to be delivered.
Speaker 1: So as part of the review, you were on the road,
Speaker 1: you did a lot of listening from businesses but also people.
Speaker 1: In April, Energy Secretary Claire Cortino give a speech warning
Speaker 1: against a future where I quote a net zero leviathan
Speaker 1: of central planning crushes our brilliant enterprise economy. Was that
Speaker 1: what business has told you?
Speaker 2: No, it couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker 3: It's probably I talked about false narratives, but this is
Speaker 3: a corrupt narrative also, you know, it's simply the framing
Speaker 3: is polar opposite to what I've seen, which is, if
Speaker 3: you go around the country, there are businesses and industry
Speaker 3: raring to go. They know that their supply chains internationally
Speaker 3: are going to be effective by what is happening, and
Speaker 3: they don't want to be crushed by a net zero
Speaker 3: race where the countries are taking advantage. They want to
Speaker 3: be able to sell knowing that they're producing low carbon products,
Speaker 3: that they are reaching low carbon sort of targets that
Speaker 3: are being required, not by government, but by other industries
Speaker 3: and companies globally. But they need direction, They need certainty, clarity, consistency, continuity.
Speaker 2: The four seas of policy.
Speaker 3: Direction that identified and net zero is part of a
Speaker 3: mission that would set out goals that then businesses can
Speaker 3: row in behind. They need leadership, and that leadership is lacking.
Speaker 3: Who is this leviathan? These are straw men that are
Speaker 3: being created by the government. At the moment, they simply
Speaker 3: don't exist. All that exists are individuals seeking to make
Speaker 3: a living, companies seeking to create growth, communities, seeking to
Speaker 3: regenerate post industrial landscapes. And they need support. And that
Speaker 3: is not a net zero leviason. That is a net
Speaker 3: zero opportunity that we should be seizing.
Speaker 1: Well, let's take all of what's happening in politics and
Speaker 1: let me paint a bear case for UK's future in
Speaker 1: a net zero world, and I would hope you would
Speaker 1: respond by making a bullcase. So, for the fifteen year period,
Speaker 1: sixteen year period that the Climate Change Act has existed, science, politics,
Speaker 1: and eventually economics all aligned with a net zero target.
Speaker 1: Now science and economics are still pretty aligned, but the
Speaker 1: politics is pushing away. There's been Brexit there's been a
Speaker 1: cost of living crisis. The National Health Service is in distress.
Speaker 1: Putting it mildly, there is just a lot of near
Speaker 1: term harm that's happened to the UK economy because of
Speaker 1: political choices or because of external impacts such as the pandemic.
Speaker 1: All of that has to be dealt with. Interest rates
Speaker 1: aren't falling anytime soon. The UK doesn't have a climate champion.
Speaker 1: You go to the US, there's the Inflation Reduction Act
Speaker 1: as a climate champion. Maybe, but there's Tesla. You go
Speaker 1: to China, there's bid. You go to Denmark, there's austed.
Speaker 1: Each country that cares and wants to do anything on
Speaker 1: climate has a champion. The UK has the Climate Change Committee.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know what the champion is. There's no
Speaker 1: industry that I can pick. There's no company that I
Speaker 1: can pick that is going to be UK's calling card
Speaker 1: for the future. So it doesn't look very good. What
Speaker 1: do you think is the bull case for why the
Speaker 1: UK's future is bright in an zero world?
Speaker 3: So when I became a member of Parliament fourteen years
Speaker 3: ago in twenty ten, fossil fuels made up seventy four
Speaker 3: percent of hart grid renewals was made up two percent.
Speaker 2: I stepped down in January.
Speaker 3: Renewables then made up forty percent of rkgrid, fossil fuels
Speaker 3: thirty three percent. There is a transformation that is underway
Speaker 3: that is one of the most dramatic in the world.
Speaker 3: And I know it's tempting to look across the oceans
Speaker 3: and other countries and what they're doing, but when I've
Speaker 3: traveled abroad, every other country also wants to talk about
Speaker 3: the successes the UK has seen in its policy frameworks,
Speaker 3: not least the contract for different to other countries, you know,
Speaker 3: want to listen and learn, and they sit up when
Speaker 3: the UK speaks, because the UK is still regarded as
Speaker 3: the prime example of how to deliver a successful transition
Speaker 3: that also delivers economic growth. As I mentioned, we've decarbonized
Speaker 3: our economy by fifty one percent. We've also grown in
Speaker 3: that period at the same time by eighty two percent.
Speaker 2: We are a.
Speaker 3: Paragon that regardless of recent sort of political headwinds, this
Speaker 3: is ultimately flotsam and jets and sort of floating on
Speaker 3: a sea that I think ultimately remains a course and
Speaker 3: a current towards decarbonization that's here to stay. And if
Speaker 3: we look at those opportunities within a net zero economy.
Speaker 3: Research report show that the net zero economy grew by
Speaker 3: nine percent in the last year alone. It's helping now
Speaker 3: to hold up an economy that is fragile. But the
Speaker 3: more than an economy you can move into a net
Speaker 3: zero economy, the stronger that economy becomes. The Net Zero
Speaker 3: Review set out a opportunity for inward investment to trillion
Speaker 3: pounds four hundred and eighty thousand new additional jobs by
Speaker 3: twenty thirty five if we want it. And we're seeing
Speaker 3: the signs now of an industrial strategy in the US
Speaker 3: that is working. For every dollar of public investment, it's
Speaker 3: returning a co private investment of five point four to
Speaker 3: seven dollars and we've seen that also in the UK,
Speaker 3: not necessarily from the UK government, but policy frameworks such
Speaker 3: as the Bristol City Leap taken forward by.
Speaker 2: The Bristol Mayor Marvin Reeese.
Speaker 3: Seven million pounds worth of public investment has unlocked to
Speaker 3: start with four hundred and thirty five million pounds of
Speaker 3: private investment from Moresco.
Speaker 2: Up to a billion pounds will follow.
Speaker 3: The economics are moving in the direction of change, and
Speaker 3: change is moving regardless of the government in the direction
Speaker 3: of net zero. The case for net zero is that
Speaker 3: it's here to stay. It is happening. It just depends
Speaker 3: on how slow or how fast we want this transition
Speaker 3: to happen.
Speaker 1: And now you're taking this message abroad. In March of
Speaker 1: this year, you launched Better Earth. It's an initiative that's
Speaker 1: supposed to help countries achieve net zero. And you say
Speaker 1: it's not a consultancy, it's not McKinsey, it's not a
Speaker 1: think tank, it's not the Tony Blair Institute. The idea,
Speaker 1: if I understand it, is that you assemble teams to
Speaker 1: build and get these net zero projects off the ground
Speaker 1: around the world. Could you talk us through some specific
Speaker 1: projects you're working on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 3: So when I stepped down, I sort of said I
Speaker 3: wanted to commit, as I said Earliert the beginning of
Speaker 3: the podcast, that I wanted to commit the rest of
Speaker 3: my career's net zero. Obviously, I want to help focus
Speaker 3: on what's going on in the UK, but if we're
Speaker 3: going to meet our missions reduction targets of fifty by
Speaker 3: twenty thirty, I also want to try to help other
Speaker 3: countries as well, and I've been sort of cooped up
Speaker 3: in Westminster the last fourteen years, and it's having the
Speaker 3: opportunity to spread my wings and think how to help
Speaker 3: other countries has been a passion of mine. So what
Speaker 3: I'd quite like to do with Better Earth is to
Speaker 3: almost take a net zero review process forwards to help
Speaker 3: other countries, partly with their national determined contributions that have
Speaker 3: to be prepared ahead of Brazil, but even beyond that,
Speaker 3: to try and help them think through strategies that are
Speaker 3: going to create that sense of ownership and take people
Speaker 3: and industries in business with them. Because the transition isn't
Speaker 3: secured in other countries, there is an opposition.
Speaker 2: So what I'm quite keen to.
Speaker 3: Do with Better Earth is to try to work with
Speaker 3: governments and also some of those sectors in helping to
Speaker 3: prepare documentation that could be used with that.
Speaker 2: Also, we've got.
Speaker 3: Potential sort of engineering teams that would focus on some
Speaker 3: of them, maybe you can call it low hanging through
Speaker 3: capping oil wells, reducing sort of methane emissions, trying to
Speaker 3: look at what can be done ahead of twenty thirty
Speaker 3: it was only sixty something months away. And also we've
Speaker 3: got the potentially the investment that would come in so
Speaker 3: and asking governments for any money. So I see this
Speaker 3: as a wrap around approach to just get on with
Speaker 3: the job. It's absolutely vice. So obviously we meet sort
Speaker 3: of our climate finance commitments that are a COP twenty nine,
Speaker 3: whether that's the Loss and Damage Fund, whether that's new
Speaker 3: quantified collective finance goal. But we can't wait for COPS
Speaker 3: to swing into action. So what I want to try
Speaker 3: to do with better is is to get in on
Speaker 3: the ground and make things happen now.
Speaker 1: But for good or bad, your credibility when you go
Speaker 1: abroad and when you try and get these projects off
Speaker 1: the ground will be tied to the UK, will be
Speaker 1: tied to your achievements, and government will be tied to
Speaker 1: your party's achievement in government. Whereas Johnson has joined Better Earth,
Speaker 1: you know he quit as an MP in the Conservative Party.
Speaker 1: So why do you think you will be able to
Speaker 1: convince other countries to do the stuff that they need
Speaker 1: to do on net zero when you couldn't convince your
Speaker 1: own party.
Speaker 2: It's a very good question.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think what I did manage to do
Speaker 3: is convince business and industrial communities to maintain their focus
Speaker 3: and that's what they've done. I think with the net
Speaker 3: zero review, time and time again have people coming up
Speaker 3: to me and saying, this is fantastic. We've been given
Speaker 3: this opportunity to have a voice, and that voice wasn't
Speaker 3: really heard previously. And also the review allowed for every
Speaker 3: sector to sort of see in itself what needed to
Speaker 3: be happening across the piece. So I think there is
Speaker 3: a narrative moment that I hope I can take to
Speaker 3: other countries. And I would say, you know, with Boris
Speaker 3: Johnson joining as co chair, obviously he has been committed
Speaker 3: to net zero. He took forwards the COP twenty six,
Speaker 3: the Glasgow Climate Pact. He's recently come back from an
Speaker 3: event with the COP twenty eight president, and he's committed
Speaker 3: to trying to work internationally on decarbonization and taking climate action.
Speaker 3: And we have to work with everyone. And that's the
Speaker 3: challenge is that, yes, we've we've got to put our
Speaker 3: sort of political allegiances, sometimes our own individual personal views aside.
Speaker 3: So I said Carbon dox side knows no borders, it
Speaker 3: knows no political parties. One of the challenges we are
Speaker 3: facing this year internationally is this is obviously the year
Speaker 3: of elections and more elections being held internationally than I
Speaker 3: think any other of the year, and obviously particularly with
Speaker 3: America if Donald Trump comes back, we've got to continue
Speaker 3: to be able to make the center right case, even
Speaker 3: if you are not personally center right for delivering on
Speaker 3: the transition, but it won't happen otherwise. So for me,
Speaker 3: bringing anyone on board who's going to be able to
Speaker 3: try to make that case, working with any country that
Speaker 3: is going to need help is vital. And I think
Speaker 3: sometimes personally that can seem strange, that you might be
Speaker 3: decisions might be taken, but that's what we need to do,
Speaker 3: and I think anyone working in climate recognizes we have
Speaker 3: to work with everyone who's willing to be able to
Speaker 3: be engaged with and that's.
Speaker 2: What I hope two intend to do.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Chris, Thank you very much. Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to Zero. If you liked this episode, please take
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Speaker 1: is Mithy Lira, Our theme music is composed by Wonderly
Speaker 1: Special Thanks to Kirra Byndrim Alisha Clanton, and to climate
Speaker 1: impacts Stephen Murphy and Socia kelders I am Akshatrati back
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