Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, announced the policy before her party’s conference coming up this weekend. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA
Tory leader says she would replace it with ‘cheap energy’ strategy, ending decades-long consensus on climate
Kemi Badenoch has vowed to repeal the Climate Change Act if the Conservatives win the next election, doing away with controls on greenhouse gas emissions and dismantling what has been the cornerstone of green and energy policy for successive governments.
Badenoch said: “Under my leadership we will scrap those failed targets. Our priority now is growth, cheaper energy, and protecting the natural landscapes we all love.”
Under the landmark legislation, which was passed with the almost unanimous support of the Conservative party under David Cameron in 2008, carbon budgets are set for many years beyond the current government’s remit. This in effect binds future governments to adhering to climate policies, though it does not specify what those policies should be.
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide’ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from
Unicorn horn dustElon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
“We are going to get all our oil and gas out of the North Sea”, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said recently. Her promise to “maximise extraction” sets up a clash between political ambitions, economic reality and geological limits.
Reform UK has also said drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea would be a “day one” priority. But even if the Conservatives or Reform were to be elected and lifted the current moratorium on new exploration licenses, there might not be the promised prizes of oil and gas under the seabed – or enough appetite from investors – to deliver on that promise.
BP, in those days British Petroleum, first extracted gas from under the North Sea in 1967. It marked the start of what was to become, for decades, one of the most valuable sectors of the UK economy, with more than 400 separate oil and gas fields developed to date.
But production peaked in 1999 and the North Sea now produces less than half as much as in its heyday.
It is now a “mature” basin: most of the biggest and easiest-to-develop fields have already been discovered and depleted. What remains are smaller, sometimes more remote, and often more technically challenging or expensive resources and reserves.
This is typical of ageing oil and gas provinces, where production declines even as operating costs rise. New projects must compete with oil and gas extracted from other parts of the world where it is easier and cheaper and more appealing to investors.
Finding oil and gas
Historically, only one in eight exploration wells in the North Sea led to a field producing oil and gas. That ratio has improved: between 2008 and 2017, a bit more than one in four wells led to a commercial success.
But far fewer wells are being drilled today. Even with the advances in technology, such as improved geophysical imaging which allows us to better define opportunities ahead of drilling, the big discoveries were probably made decades ago.
UK exploration wells vs offshore fields by year:
The number of exploration wells is down hugely from its peak in the 1980s and early 90s. Mark Ireland / NSTA
The UK government’s North Sea Transition Authority estimates there could still be around 3.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent in more than 400 undeveloped prospects. But most of these potential fields are small, isolated or technically complex. Developing them will require high oil and gas prices, fiscal stability, and a lot of investor confidence.
Politics vs geology
Even if a future government relaxes exploration licensing rules, geology will remain the bigger constraint. The North Sea is simply not as cheap as it was, and global fossil fuel giants have many other options. It is currently far cheaper to produce oil and gas in other regions, the Middle East or North Africa for example. Projects in these countries are all competing for the same capital.
Volatility in the energy sector will continue to make investors cautious. The 2015 oil price crash cut activity in the UK sector to its lowest level in decades, and it has never fully recovered. As fossil fuels are sold on the global market, political volatility, international and national, can lead to rapid shifts in investor confidence.
In the UK the introduction of a windfall tax in 2023 and changing requirements for environmental impact assessments are all making decision making on long-term projects riskier. And while the UK still needs considerable volumes of gas in future (and more modest amounts of oil) both are declining as our energy system evolves and renewable energy expand.
The UK’s mix of economic uncertainty, mature geology and smaller discoveries will make it harder to attract major international energy firms.
The future of the North Sea
That doesn’t mean the North Sea has finished as a source of oil and gas. For instance, undeveloped discoveries – where oil or gas has been confirmed but not yet produced – represent a lower-risk opportunity. But returns may be modest as many are relatively small and isolated from existing infrastructure.
New exploration licenses, if issued, might extend production modestly, but they are unlikely to deliver another game-changing discovery.
Some analysts argue that future licensing should be highly strategic, limited to projects with clear economic importance or climate compatibility. That approach could reduce reliance on imported gas, which tends to be more carbon-intensive than gas produced domestically. This would certainly make more sense than restarting fracking. But it would still not recreate the industry’s heyday.
Easy oil is over
The North Sea will still produce oil and gas for years to come, but its role will shrink. Even with friendlier policies, the era of big discoveries and rapid growth isn’t coming back.
Maximising extraction may sound appealing to politicians, but geology, economics and climate commitments all point to the North Sea’s best oil and gas days being behind it. The real challenge now is managing the investment during decline while investing in the cleaner solutions that will replace it.
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide’ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from
Unicorn horn dust
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has described her plan to “maximise extraction” of the UK’s oil and gas from the North Sea as a “common sense” energy policy.
Politicians are using language like this increasingly often – calling themselves “pragmatic” on climate change and invoking “common sense”. It sounds reasonable, reassuring, and grownup – the opposite of “hysterical” campaigners or “unrealistic” targets.
But new research my colleagues and I conducted, calling on a decade of interviews with UK MPs, shows that political “pragmatism” is fast becoming a dangerous form of climate delay. By framing urgent action as “extreme” and steady-as-she-goes policies as “pragmatic”, leaders across the political spectrum are protecting the fossil-fuel status quo at the very moment scientists warn we need rapid, transformative change.
Badenoch’s latest intervention is a perfect example. She said “common sense” dictates that every drop of oil must be extracted from the North Sea, and that net zero by 2050 was a policy pushed by “bullies”. This came just a day after the UK Met Office declared summer 2025 as the hottest on record.
We found that members of parliament deploy the same language of pragmatism to defend fossil fuel companies and to insist to their constituents that nothing needs to change too fast. The paradox, of course, is that more urgent social and economic change is precisely what the world’s climate scientists say is necessary to avert climate breakdown.
In our recent interviews with politicians, MPs from across the political spectrum tended towards gradual change in order to maintain political and public support. One said:
First and foremost be pragmatic. Accept incremental change, because incremental change often accelerates, but you take people with you. If you didn’t take people with you, you’ll start getting resistance.
Another MP contrasted a pragmatic approach with the calls from some campaign groups for more rapid action:
There are campaigns that say we’ve got to be net zero by 2025, or 2030. [laughing incredulously] … do you realise what the consequences of that will be … you’d have a revolution in Britain if you tried to do that, in terms of destroying people’s quality of life.
Interestingly, despite rejecting more ambitious targets, later in the interview the same MP acknowledged that faster change was needed:
We need to do more, we could do more, we are, you know, I’m sure the government will do more. I’m certainly pushing it to do more. But fundamentally we’ve halved our emissions since 1990.
Here we see the nuance, and the danger, of the language of pragmatism. It allows politicians to hold two positions at once. They can acknowledge the need for rapid change, while promoting a “pragmatic” position against it.
The calls for pragmatism appeared to stem from MPs’ desire to present a reasoned and rational case for climate action that does not impinge on constituents’ lives. They also used pragmatism to distance themselves from arguments they portrayed as “extreme” or “shrill”.
The flawed assumption underlying these calls to pragmatism is that the public will not support ambitious, transformative climate policies. We concluded that whereas a few years ago MPs promoted climate policies “by stealth”, meaning they did it on the quiet, now they turn to ideas of pragmatism in an attempt to maintain a fragile political consensus in favour of net zero – a consensus that is already fracturing.
Top-down pragmatism
This turn to pragmatism can now be seen at the very top of British politics, threatening the UK’s steady ratcheting up of climate ambition to date.
Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair recently wrote in the Blair Institute’s report on climate change: “People know that the current state of debate over climate change is riven with irrationality.”
Blair then asserted: “Any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.” This is despite the widespread consensus among scientists that both phasing out fossil fuels and reducing consumption of at least some products are essential.
The report goes on to say: “A realistic voice in the climate debate is required, neither ideological nor alarmist but pragmatic.” This language is intended to sound rational, reasonable and even scientific. The problem is that it can be used to justify actions that appear to ignore what the science is telling us.
Former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak warned against treating climate change as an “ideology” . Notably, Sunak referred to “pragmatic, proportionate, and realistic” climate action shortly after his government announced hundreds of new licences for oil and gas fields in the North Sea.
His message coincided with ongoing road-building programmes, plans for airport expansion, and insufficient action to insulate the UK’s housing stock, all of which could jeopardise the UK’s climate targets. Again we see the language of pragmatism working against the rapid societal changes that are necessary.
The pragmatic road ahead
In general, the MPs we spoke to were not using pragmatism in bad faith. Rather it was a way of navigating the complexities of climate politics where the huge changes demanded by climate mitigation are deemed too challenging to sell to constituents. But this political strategy is a very risky one and underestimates the public’s appetite for “strong and clear” climate leadership from government.
The current government is already struggling to reconcile net zero commitments with its economic growth agenda, which includes a new runway at Heathrow airport. Not only is prime minister Keir Starmer facing divisions within the ruling Labour party over net zero ambitions, he is also dealing with increasingly prominent net zero scepticism from the leaders of the Conservative and Reform parties.
The political language of “pragmatism” therefore risks spreading from Badenoch to Starmer, becoming a discourse of delay that promotes non-transformative solutions.
Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.
Police officers ahead of a demonstration outside the former Bell Hotel in Epping, July 27, 2025
ASYLUM-SEEKERS are to be removed from a hotel in Essex after the High Court today granted a “terrible concession” to racist protests organised by the far right.
Epping Forest District Council was granted a temporary injunction blocking migrants from being housed at the Bell Hotel in Epping after arguing that owner Somani Hotels Limited was in breach of planning rules.
The court heard that the site has been the centre of a series of protests in recent weeks after an asylum-seeker who was staying there was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.
Mr Justice Eyre said that while the council had not “definitively established” that Somani Hotels had breached planning rules, “the strength of the claimant’s case is such that it weighs in favour” of granting the injunction.
His judgment added that the “risk of injustice is greater” if a temporary injunction was not granted.
Stand Up to Racism co-convener Sabby Dhalu said: “This is a terrible concession to racist protests organised by fascists. It will embolden the far right and encourage yet more protests to close down more hotels housing refugees.
“People have the right to seek asylum. Britain takes a minority of the world’s refugees and those that come here must be able to live in peace and not be threatened with racist violence.”
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Keir Starmer chases Nigel Farage’s racist bigot vote.UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide’ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from
Unicorn horn dust
Ed Miliband said the Conservatives had ‘abandoned 20 years of bipartisanship when to comes to climate’. Photograph: UK Parliament
Energy and net zero secretary lays out stark picture of how climate crisis and nature depletion is affecting UK
Ed Miliband has accused the Conservatives of being “anti-science” by abandoning a political consensus on net zero as he gave MPs a stark outline of how the climate crisis and nature depletion are already affecting the UK.
In the first of what is promised to be an annual “state of the climate” report, the energy and net zero secretary set out the findings of a Met Office-led study that detailed how the UK was already hotter and wetter, and faced a greater number of extreme weather events.
Miliband, who told the Guardian before the statement that politicians who rejected net zero policies needed to be accountable for their decisions, called for opposition parties to unite around the need for urgent action.
But speaking after Miliband, Andrew Bowie, a shadow energy minister, criticised what he called the government’s “shrill” language, saying the party was sticking by Kemi Badenoch’s decision to ditch the 2050 target for the UK to reach net zero.
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Miliband quoted the former prime minister Theresa May, who put net zero targets into law in 2019 and had argued that the real climate zealots were “populists who offer only easy answers to complex questions”. He added: “I couldn’t put it better myself.”
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“The lesson is clear. The choices we make as a country have influenced the cause of global action, and in doing so, reduced the impact of the climate and nature crisis on future generations in Britain. To those who say Britain cannot make a difference. I say: you are wrong. Stop talking our country down. British leadership matters.”
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide’ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from Unicorn horn dustNigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Police officers ahead of a demonstration outside the former Bell Hotel in Epping, July 27, 2025
