Nearly half of UK Tory voters still favour net-zero climate target: Study

LONDON – Tory voters in the UK still favour the nation’s net-zero climate target and want the government to help them go green, according to research by Onward, a conservative think tank.

In a survey of those who voted for the Conservative Party in 2019, 49 per cent of the respondents said they back the target of reaching carbon neutrality by mid-century, while 20 per cent said they oppose it, the group said in a report.

Still, both the public and Conservative voters ranked the threat of climate change as just the fifth-most significant issue facing the UK, the research showed. Onward and consultant Public First polled more than 4,000 adults in August and held focus groups with Conservative voters across England.

The UK’s climate policy has come under renewed scrutiny after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last week announced

plans to soften key parts of the government’s green agenda

, including delaying a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

The Prime Minister cast the decision as an effort to protect families struggling with bills, but he has been accused of trying to weaponise net-zero ahead of elections next year, while risking investment in clean-energy industries.

British lawmakers have called on the government to provide a cost-benefit analysis of Mr Sunak’s decision to roll back some its climate policies.

The Energy Security and Net-Zero Committee wrote to Secretary Claire Coutinho yesterday, saying that it cannot understand how the government’s decision to delay key green initiatives will make anything cheaper for the average person. 

“Alarm bells are ringing over the government’s ambitions when it comes to its environmental agenda,” said lawmaker Mr Angus MacNeil, who is chair of the parliamentary committee. “The Prime Minister seemed to undermine the actual gains that have been made under previous governments.”

The majority of the 11-member committee, whose mandate is to scrutinise government policy on energy security and net-zero, is from Mr Sunak’s Conservative party.

He has insisted that he is still committed to reaching net-zero by 2050, saying that because the UK has met its carbon emissions reduction goals in the past, it will continue to make progress even if it delays some formal targets.

However, investors may take the recent backpedalling as an indication the UK is no longer the best place to deploy green capital. Britain’s official policy now represents “a risk for anyone considering an investment in the UK that’s dependent on government policy”, according to Mr Ian Simm, founder and chief executive of London-based low-carbon fund Impax Asset Management Group. BLOOMBERG