30 April 2025

What is behind Tony Blair’s net zero intervention?

The former prime minister aligns himself with Reform and the Tories on the climate change culture war.

Tony Blair has added his voice to the growing chorus of net zero scepticism. He joins the Tories and Reform in in turning his back on the policy which has defined Britain’s approach to climate change since it was signed into law by Theresa May’s government in 2019. Writing in the forward to a new report by his eponymous think tank, the former Prime Minister described the UK’s current decarbonisation trajectory as “riven with irrationality”. Current policies, so the report says, have asked demanded financial sacrifice from those whose impact on global emissions is minimal. Blair added: “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.” He also suggested net zero is losing public support.

The timing of this intervention is crucial, if not slightly bizarre. A selection of the country will head to the polls tomorrow for a set of local elections in which Reform is predicted to dominate. One of the party’s key dividing lines with Keir Starmer’s Labour government is on their approach to net zero. Farage and his deputy, Richard Tice, have made no secret of their opposition to the government’s energy policies. In a recent appearance on Talk TV, Tice described it as “ideological lunacy”. On the Today programme last week, Farage queried whether rising temperatures have actually been caused by human actions. Both have also used the widespread power outages in Spain and Portugal to double down on their attack on the transition to renewables (though the pair are old enough to remember the power cuts which engulfed England in the 1970s which were caused by a shortage of coal).

This intervention by Blair places him in a similar camp to Tice and Farage. The report lays out how the government’s money and resources would be better used to fund carbon capture and storage (CCS). This technology (which is still in the early phase of development) is used to capture C02 emissions from industrial processes and other fossil fuel heavy sources and store them deep underground. The UK Government has already invested heavily in CCS; Rachel Reeves announced £22bn investment in such projects just last year. CCS is being pushed hard by the oil and gas industry, who are hopeful it may offer a reprieve from the ongoing shift away from fossil fuels. But while CCS may offer some help on the journey to decarbonisation, climate experts have been clear that it is not a silver bullet.

Both Reform and the Conservatives were critical of the government’s decision to invest 22bn in CCS last year. Nevertheless, both parties are united with Blair in the assertion that net zero is costing the British public too much, both financially but also in terms of lifestyle adjustments (such as the shift from petrol cars to electric vehicles or Winter Fuel Payments).

Blair’s intervention has sparked fury in government and was described as “deeply unhelpful” by Dan McGrail, the chief executive GB Energy. Blair’s assertion that net zero policies are losing sway among voters has also been debunked: a recent YouGov poll found 61 per cent of UK voters support the government’s clean power plans with only 24 per cent opposed.

During PMQs on Wednesday, the Prime Minister was quick to assert that Blair’s climate views are “absolutely aligned” with that of the Government and the Tony Blair Institute itself even issued a statement clarifying that the former PM’s position is that the Government’s direction on climate is the “right one”.

Still, why did Blair feel compelled to make such an intervention in the first place, just days before a consequential local election? Blair’s intervention was a direct criticism of Starmer’s second mission – Clean Power 2030 – and the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s decisions on how to get there. The former PM’s critique speaks to this new phase of the net zero culture wars; one in which net zero is becoming as politically totemic as Brexit. We can likely expect the government’s defence of its net zero targets to be punchier and more aggressive as a result. Still, though efforts at damage limitation have been done by both sides – the former Prime Minister’s words likely won’t be forgotten quickly.