Does Tony Blair have a point about net zero?

By Thomas Lane2025-05-02T07:20:00

The former prime minister has said the government’s energy policy is doomed to fail, a line taken by Reform and the Tories. Thomas Lane asks what this means for Britain’s decarbonisation ambitions

Tony Blair’s intervention on Britain’s net zero ambitions just before the local elections has unsurprisingly caused consternation. His statement that net zero is “doomed to fail” aligns with the stance of Reform and the Conservative party and is surprising coming from the former leader of a party that made decarbonising Britain’s electricity by grid 2030 a key policy commitment.

Putting aside the timing of this statement, it is worth examining why Blair said what he did. His central tenet is that countries such as China, India and potentially much of Africa, are growing at such a rate that carbon emissions are going up rather than down despite attempts to mitigate them.

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