Reform UK leader Nigel Farage at the party’s 2024 annual conference in Birmingham. Credit: Reform UK / YouTube
DeSmog and the New World have been blacklisted by Nigel Farage’s party.
A leading press freedom group has accused Reform UK of drawing from the “authoritarian playbook” by blocking media outlets from attending its annual conference this weekend.
The party informed DeSmog and the New World yesterday that its journalists would not be accredited for this year’s event. It did not offer an explanation.
The New World (formerly the New European) is a weekly newspaper with 35,000 subscribers whose contributors and editors include former New Labour communications chief Alastair Campbell, former global editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism James Ball, and former Spectator editor Matthew d’Ancona.
DeSmog is one of the UK’s leading climate investigations platforms. This year alone it has published stories in partnership with the likes of the BBC, The Guardian, the Financial Times, Private Eye, and The Mirror.
“It is shocking to see UK political parties seeking to pick and choose who can report on them,” said Fiona O’Brien, UK director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
“For democracy to work, journalists must be free to cover political events like party conferences and hold those in power to account, on behalf of the public.
“Reform UK’s actions in recent weeks – which include banning councillors from speaking to local journalists and falsely accusing journalists of activism – are straight out of the authoritarian playbook and should immediately be reversed.”
Reform’s leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, Mick Barton, has banned his councillors from speaking to local press outlet the Nottinghamshire Post and its online arm Nottinghamshire Live. The ban followed critical coverage of Reform by the publication, whose journalists were accused of acting “as activists” by the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice.
Reform’s leader Nigel Farage is paid more than £300,000 a year as a presenter on the anti-climate media outlet GB News, while Tice was formerly employed by GB News and its Murdoch-owned rival TalkTV.
Farage sported a GB News badge in Congress yesterday as he testified to U.S. lawmakers about supposed “free speech” issues in the UK.
The Reform leader used the session to compare Britain to North Korea, and to urge the U.S. to punish the UK for its alleged free speech infringements.
However, Farage was also held to account for his own questionable free speech record. Democrat Jamie Raskin asked the Reform leader: “Why do you ban journalists who oppose your views from coming to your events?”
“I don’t,” Farage responded. “I can’t think, if I go back over the past 25 years, of banning anybody.”
That statement is contradicted by Reform’s decision to ban DeSmog and the New World from this year’s conference.
Byline Times also announced today that it has been banned from attending this year’s Conservative Party conference. DeSmog and a number of other independent outlets were banned from last year’s Tory conference.
Reform Conference 2025
As reported by DeSmog yesterday, Reform’s conference in Birmingham will feature climate science deniers, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, and dark money campaign groups.
They include the Heartland Institute, a group close to Donald Trump’s administration that has called human-induced climate change a “delusion”, and Net Zero Watch – the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”.
By giving them a platform, Reform is “showing open contempt for the British public already living with the realities of climate breakdown,” said Tessa Khan, executive director of the research and campaign group Uplift.
A recent report by the New Economics Foundation found that Reform’s climate policies – which include scrapping clean energy investment and drilling for more fossil fuels – would cost more than 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the UK economy.
DeSmog previously revealed that Reform is offering access to Farage during the conference in exchange for hefty donations. A sum of £250,000 buys 10 seats at a champagne breakfast with the Reform leader during the two-day event, as well as “chauffeur-driven travel”, a personal assistant, and the sponsor’s logo on the main conference stage and battle bus.
DeSmog asked Reform to explain why it had been banned from the event, but did not receive a response.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel 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.Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
Reform is also giving a platform to a number of groups belonging to the Tufton Street network – an alliance of anti-government campaign outfits that lobby for more fossil fuel extraction and keep their donors a secret.
For the second year in a row, DeSmog has been banned from attending the event, which will be held in Birmingham.
The conference will also feature Together, a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theory group that has launched a campaign against the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target.
“By giving a platform to climate deniers like Net Zero Watch and the Heartland Institute, Reform is showing open contempt for the British public already living with the realities of climate breakdown,” said Tessa Khan, executive director of the research and campaign group Uplift.
“Homes are being flooded again and again, farmers are losing billions to drought, and Scotland’s firefighters are battling wildfires. This is not theory – it’s people’s lives and livelihoods at stake,” Khan said.
“Reform’s deluded energy policy wilfully ignores the fact that the UK has already burnt most of its gas. Official projections show, even with new drilling, the UK will be 94 percent reliant on expensive, dirty imports by 2050. All this while Reform seeks to block the UK from profiting from some of the world’s best resources for offshore wind.
“Our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels is exactly why energy bills are so high and why millions of families across the UK have been driven into fuel poverty. Reform knows this. And it simply does not care.”
Most senior Reform politicians, including Farage, deny basic climate science. At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, the Reform leader said it was “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant. In the same month, Farage’s deputy Richard Ticetold Sky News: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change the climate. Given that it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years.”
Last month, Reform’s Great Lincolnshire Mayor Andrea Jenkynssaid in an interview with Times Radio: “Do I believe that climate change exists? No.”
They have expressed these views despite representing areas exposed to the worst effects of extreme heat.
Reform received 92 percent of its donations between the 2019 and 2024 UK elections from polluting sources and climate science deniers, while its treasurer Nick Candy has claimed the party is actively raising money from oil executives.
In Farage’s constituency of Clacton, 68 percent of the public is worried about rising temperatures, according to a YouGov poll published last August – slightly above the national average of 66 percent.
A recent report by the New Economics Foundation found that Reform’s climate policies would cost more than 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the UK economy. The science of climate change is also unequivocal: scientists at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have stressed that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.
DeSmog previously revealed that Reform is offering access to Farage during the conference in exchange for hefty donations. A sum of £250,000 buys 10 seats at a champagne breakfast with the Reform leader during the two-day event, as well as “chauffeur-driven travel”, a personal assistant, and the sponsor’s logo on the main conference stage and battle bus.
Reform didn’t respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.
Below is a summary of the key anti-climate groups to be given a platform at Reform’s conference.
Heartland Institute
The Heartland Institute is a U.S. climate science denial group with close ties to the Trump administration.
It has denied that humans are driving climate change, which it has called a “delusion”. The group claims it is “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting scepticism about man-made climate change”.
Heartland received at least $676,000 between 1998 and 2007 from U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil, and has received donations from foundations linked to the owners of Koch Industries – a fossil fuel giant and a leading sponsor of climate science denial.
The Heartland Institute previously told DeSmog that it ”stands resolute in its mission to advance sound science, economic prosperity, and individual liberty”. It added that “our support comes from a diverse array of individuals and organisations who share our vision for a freer, more prosperous world.”
Heartland was one of the groups involved in drafting Project 2025, the radical blueprint for Trump’s second term, which proposed reversing climate policies, slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping state investment in renewable energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Earlier this month, President Trump hired Roy Spencer, a policy advisor at the Heartland Institute and a former fellow at the Heritage Foundation – the key group behind Project 2025 – as an advisor to the Department of Energy.
Heartland’s UK-EU director Lois Perry has claimed that the institute boasts “very strong affiliations” with “certain big individuals” in Trump’s team.
Nigel Farage attended a fundraising dinner for the institute in September 2024 during which he called for more fossil fuel extraction and the victory of Trump in November’s presidential election, saying: “Let’s get Trump back; let’s drill baby drill”.
He also advocated what he called “a bit of reverse colonialism”.
“Maybe it’s time that Heartland came and set up in Britain and Europe and brought some of the wisdom that you’ve brought to the American debate,” he said – adding: “I’d love to see Heartland on the other side of the pond.”
Farage soon got his wish. In December, Heartland announced it was setting up a UK-EU branch. The Reform leader was the “special guest of honour” at the group’s launch event in London, which also featured disgraced former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss.
Cementing his Heartland links, Farage headlined an invite-only event in June this year entitled “Net Zero: The New Brexit?” held at 55 Tufton Street.
As revealed by DeSmog, Heartland has been working closely with far-right politicians in Europe to undermine the bloc’s green reforms.
Perry, who is speaking at Reform’s conference, has previously said she does not believe climate change is caused by humans. She has said it’s her “personal belief” that climate change “is happening” but “is not man made”.
Like Farage, Perry is a former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). She used to run the anti-net zero pressure group CAR26, which has claimed that carbon dioxide is “essential to all life” and that its “welcome growth has greened our planet saving countless human and other lives”.
She recently claimed on a Heartland Institute podcast that she “knows for a fact” Farage credits Heartland with helping to shape Reform’s climate policies.
Heartland Institute president James Taylor told DeSmog: “Climate realism and energy realism are gaining traction throughout the world. The Heartland Institute appreciates that the Reform Party is on board and recognises Heartland as the global leader courageously providing truthful information on these topics. We also appreciate the encouragement and support provided by many policymakers among the UK Conservative Party. A rising tide lifts all boats and we are excited to be prominently leading the charge in the UK and throughout Europe.”
Institute of Economic Affairs
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a radical anti-government campaign group that is part of the Tufton Street network.
The IEA, which has close ties to Liz Truss, advocates for increased fossil fuel production and against state-led climate action.
The IEA is a prominent supporter of the continued and extended use of fossil fuels. The group has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”. The IEA has also said that the ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences is “madness”, has criticised the windfall tax imposed by the UK on fossil fuel firms, and said that the previous government’s commitment to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves was a “welcome step”.
In 2018, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism unit Unearthed revealed that the IEA had received funding from oil major BP every year since 1967. In response to the story, an IEA spokeswoman said: “It is surely uncontroversial that the IEA’s principles coincide with the interests of our donors.”
The IEA also received a £21,000 grant from U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in 2005. The IEA is a member of Atlas Network, a Washington-based umbrella organisation that suppors over 450 “free market” groups around the world. Both the IEA and Atlas were founded by Antony Fisher. Fisher’s daughter, Linda Whetstone, was chair of the Atlas Network as well as a director of the IEA until her death in December 2021.
The IEA does not publicly declare its donors, and it’s not known if the pressure group has received funding from BP or ExxonMobil in more recent years.
The group is currently under investigation by the Charity Commission. The IEA was approached for comment.
TaxPayers’ Alliance
The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA), based in 55 Tufton Street, also campaigns in favour of fossil fuel extraction and against climate policies.
The group, which claims to be a grassroots movement while being supported by anonymous private donors, has supported ending the windfall tax on oil companies, scrapping the UK’s 2050 net zero target, and restarting fracking.
The TPA was approached for comment.
Net Zero Watch
Reform’s conference will also feature Net Zero Watch – one of the UK’s most notorious anti-climate campaign groups – on a panel entitled “Drill baby drill: abandoning net zero and restoring energy abundance”.
Net Zero Watch has urged the government to “recommit to fossil fuels”, including “a new fleet of coal fired power stations”, and has called for renewable energy from wind and solar to be “wound down completely”. From May 2023 to 2025, Reform’s Andrea Jenkyns sat on the Net Zero Watch board.
In a report published last March, the GWPF claimed it was “naive and entirely unrealistic” to believe that CO2 is causing climate change, that record global temperatures are “normal”, and that “there is no observational evidence for any global climate crisis”.
The group has previously expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised”, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet” and should be “two or three times” higher than its current level.
Net Zero Watch campaign director will be speaking alongside Kathryn Porter, a fossil fuel industry consultant who has written several reports for the GWPF and Net Zero Watch.
Net Zero Watch and the GWPF were approached for comment.
Prosperity Institute
The Prosperity Institute – formerly known as the Legatum Institute – is hosting several events at Reform conference.
A pro-Brexit think tank, the Prosperity Institute is run by the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum Group, which co-owns the anti-climate broadcaster GB News alongside hedge fund mogul Paul Marshall. GB News employs Farage to the tune of more than £300,000 a year.
In May, after Reform’s local election gains, Prosperity published an article entitled “Farage has the power to defund Net Zero” which claimed that “energy bills have skyrocketed, industries have fled and living standards have fallen” due to the UK’s climate policies.
According to the Spectator Australia, at a Prosperity Institute event in July, Farage said he would need the think tank to bring “fresh young talent into current affairs” and provide “policy solutions we can give to the electorate next time round”.
He said “the great revolution that took place from 1979” – a reference to the election of Margaret Thatcher – was based on the “hard work and good thinking” of neo-liberal economists like Keith Joseph and Milton Friedman.
“That in many ways is your role today”, he told the Prosperity Institute audience – urging the group to produce “the ammunition” to “those of us on the front lines”.
As revealed by DeSmog, the Prosperity Institute previously donated £50,000 to the New Conservatives – a faction of the Conservative Party.
Centre for a Better Britain
The conference will also feature the Centre for a Better Britain – a new Reform-aligned think tank set to launch this month.
The group is funded by Mark Thompson, an investor with interests in metals, fossil fuels, and renewable energy, and his business associate David Lilley, a senior metals trader and former Conservative donor who has given over £270,000 to Reform.
The Centre for a Better Britain, which is attempting to raise £25 million – including from Trump donors – intends to “support Reform with policy development, briefing and rebuttal,” according to plans seen by the Financial Times.
The think tank is chaired by James Orr, a Cambridge academic who has been described as the “philosopher king” of U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
Orr has expressed radical anti-climate positions, claiming in an interview with the European Conservative last month that the UK’s energy policies are “crazy” and that the pursuit of net zero is “fiscal suicide”.
At an event in Hungary last month hosted by the oil-funded think tank Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), Orr also accused the UK of adopting a “naive and dangerous” approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and instead praised Hungary’s approach, which has seen the country systematically block and delay EU military aid packages, and sanctions on Russian oligarchs.
In the European Conservative interview, Orr suggested the war was a “regional Slavic conflict”.
“It is a conflict happening in the world that I don’t care very much about,” he added.
Farage, who used to appear regularly on state broadcaster Russia Today, has previously said that Putin is the world leader that he most admires, though he has also called him a “bad man”.
Together and Farmers to Action
Established in 2021 to oppose mandatory Covid-19 protection measures, such as lockdowns and vaccines, Together has since launched a “no to net zero” campaign that calls for the UK to scrap climate policies.
In January last year, the group said it was “incredible” that the then prime minister Rishi Sunak should “mindlessly assert ‘Covid vaccines are safe’” in a post on X. It has also backed a report which called for the government to pause its vaccination programme over a number of widely debunked conspiracy theories about its safety, including that the vaccine alters human DNA.
Together has recently partnered with Farmers To Action – a protest group also set to feature at Reform’s conference. The group has used recent anti-inheritance tax campaigns to spread anti-climate views.
The leader of Farmers to Action, Justin Rogers, has claimed that “climate change is one of the biggest scams that has ever been told”, propagated by “our governments and their puppet masters.” He has also claimed that oil and gas are renewable, and that carbon dioxide cannot be dangerous because it “feeds plants”.
At an event co-hosted by Together and Farmers to Action in February, Farage endorsed a conspiracy theory popular among the far-right.
Speaking in front of around 50 tractors at Belmont Farm in North London, Farage insinuated that the Labour government had a “sinister agenda” to acquire “lots of land because they’re planning for another five million people to come into the country”.
This claim is borne from the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that progressive immigration policies are a mechanism to replace white people in the West, and has been cited by Donald Trump in recent months.
Farmers to Action and Together were approached for comment.
Nigel 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.Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
The government has been accused of making a “secret exchange deal” with fossil fuel firms to compensate for the tax hike.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves told a fossil fuel giant that the industry would receive a “quid pro quo” in return for higher taxes on its windfall profits, DeSmog can reveal.
In a meeting with the Norwegian state energy company Equinor on 27 August last year, Reeves suggested that the government’s carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) subsidies were a payoff for oil firms being hit with a higher tax rate.
Minutes of the meeting obtained by DeSmog state that Equinor CEO Anders Opedal raised concerns over the Energy Profits Levy – also known as the “windfall tax” – and “its impact on the value” of Equinor’s UK portfolio.
In response, Reeves said that raising the windfall tax from 35 percent to 38 percent was a “manifesto commitment”, but stated that “Equinor should recognise the quid pro quo – the funds raised enable government investment in CCUS etc.”.
CCUS is the controversial practice of trapping the emissions produced by fossil fuel plants before they enter the atmosphere.
The technology is accused of being a favourite climate “solution” of the fossil fuel industry since it allows for the continued extraction of oil and gas. Experts have also suggested that the technology is not economically viable at scale.
The Labour government announced in October that it would provide £22 billion in subsidies to CCUS projects over 25 years following a surge in lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, as revealed by DeSmog.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer MP claimed that Reeves and the Labour government had been “caught out making promises in a secret exchange deal which goes against the interests of the British people”.
Denyer added: “In public they claim to be taxing fossil fuel giants more fairly by raising the windfall tax, but behind closed doors they are giving back with dodgy deals to allow the fossil fuel corporates to continue with business as usual under the guise of CCUS – an expensive distraction and largely unproven technology.”
An Equinor spokesperson said: “Government regularly meets with companies like Equinor. This is standard and necessary practice. As with any official meeting, minutes were taken of the conversation between the chancellor and Equinor CEO as a public record of what was said and readily available via a Freedom of Information request.”
Equinor is one of the principal firms investing in the UK’s CCUS sector. In December, the government signed deals with Equinor, BP, and TotalEnergies to develop carbon capture facilities in Teesside. This will involve the development of the Net Zero Teesside Power plant, which will be 25 percent owned by Equinor and aims to be the world’s first gas-fired power station featuring CCUS.
Earlier this year, following a DeSmog investigation, Equinor retracted the claim that it stores 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually at its flagship carbon capture project in the North Sea. Equinor has not captured 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year at the site since 2001, and only captured a tenth of that figure in 2023.
The firm made an $28.7 billion (£21.2 billion) post-tax profit in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered higher oil and gas prices – a figure that stood at $8.8 billion (£6.6 billion) in 2024.
Tessa Khan, executive director of the campaign group Uplift, said: “Oil companies, like Equinor, have held sway over successive UK governments, for years shaping policies to benefit their bottom line and slowing down climate action. This Labour government must stand up to them and put our needs – for affordable clean energy and a safe climate that we can pass on to our children – ahead of their insatiable need to profit.”
The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC) – which scrutinises government spending decisions – released a report in February describing the UK’s CCUS subsidies as “risky”.
The report noted that the government has downgraded its ambitions for CCUS storage, scrapping its previous commitment of storing 20 to 30 million tonnes annually by 2030. It also highlighted that the UK’s new CCUS projects don’t allow the government to share any potential profits or for local consumers to benefit from lower energy bills.
The committee also reported that producing liquid natural gas, which will be used in the UK’s CCUS projects, leaks more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than previously thought.
“This could undermine the rationale for pursuing certain schemes,” the report said.
After being sued by environmental consultant Andrew Boswell over the Net Zero Teesside scheme, the previous Conservative government admitted that it had not taken into account the plant’s full potential emissions, which Boswell estimated could reach more than 20.3 million tonnes during its lifetime.
In summer 2024, a judge rejected Boswell’s case, which argued that officials did not fully explore the environmental impacts of the scheme before approving it. The government also won the appeal in May.
Boswell, who leads the Scrap Carbon Capture campaign, called Reeves’ Equinor meeting “an outrageous spectacle”.
“She begs Norway’s oil colossus to tax its huge profits, and then gifts it with far more in return – many billions over decades for climate-wrecking CCUS.”
Equinor and Shell have formed a joint venture to become the UK’s largest North Sea fossil fuel producer. In November, the government admitted that it had unlawfully approved the development of the country’s largest untapped oilfield, Rosebank, which is operated by Equinor, by not taking into account the climate effects of burning the oil and gas extracted from the field. Equinor intends to re-apply for approval to develop the project.
The Labour government has been steadfast in its support for the UK achieving net zero emissions by 2050, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer stating that “home grown clean energy” is “in the DNA” of his administration.
The Climate Change Committee stated in its 2025 appraisal of the government’s net zero policies that the UK needs to scale up its CCUS capacity to 73 million tonnes a-year by 2050 to help meet its climate commitments.
“Investment in carbon capture and storage is a gamble on unproven technology,” said Lily-Rose Ellis, campaigner at Greenpeace UK. “All it does is give oil and gas giants carte blanche to continue causing planet destroying emissions in the hopes that one day they might be able to capture the carbon and store it for all of eternity. Public money should be spent on renewables which guarantee to lower emissions, bring bills down, and boost the economy with new jobs.”
“Equinor has been a reliable energy partner to the UK for over 40 years,” a company spokesperson said, “providing a stable supply of oil and gas, developing the UK’s offshore wind industry, and pioneering solutions to decarbonise the UK economy, including carbon capture and storage.
“Using our experience of decarbonising energy production in Norway, including safely storing carbon emissions under the North Sea for over 25 years, we are supporting the UK to develop its own home grown energy transition.”
A government spokesperson said: “We are delivering first of a kind carbon capture projects in the UK, supporting thousands of jobs across the country, reigniting industrial heartlands and tackling the climate crisis.
“Money raised from changes to the Energy Profits Levy made at the Autumn Budget last year support the transition to clean energy, enhance energy security and independence, provide sustainable jobs for the future, and help protect electricity bills against future price shocks”.
A DeSmog collage. The Institute of Economic Affairs has its headquarters on Lord North Street, Westminster. Credit: Des Blenkinsopp(CC BY-SA 2.0)
The regulator has opened a case against the Tufton Street group.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) pressure group, which campaigns against clean energy policies, is being investigated by the charities regulator.
The Good Law Project (GLP), a legal advocacy group, yesterday announced that it had been successful in forcing the Charity Commission to open a “regulatory compliance case” against the IEA.
A Charity Commission spokesperson told DeSmog: “We can confirm that, following an internal review, we have opened a regulatory compliance case to assess potential regulatory concerns about the Institute for Economic Affairs.
“Our case will examine the trustees’ management of perceptions of potential political bias, perceptions of a potential lack of transparency around funding, and perceptions that the charity may have pre-determined policy positions which would not be in keeping with its charitable purposes to advance education.”
The IEA is registered as a charity, and the regulator states that “political activity must not become the reason for the charity’s existence.”
In 2018, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism unit Unearthed revealed that the IEA had received funding from oil major BP every year since 1967. In response to the story, an IEA spokeswoman said: “It is surely uncontroversial that the IEA’s principles coincide with the interests of our donors.”
The IEA also received a £21,000 grant from U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in 2005.
However, the IEA does not publicly declare its donors, and it’s not known if the pressure group has received funding from BP or ExxonMobil in more recent years.
The IEA has extensive influence in politics and the media. It was pivotal to Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership as prime minister, and has boasted of its access to Conservative ministers and MPs.
The IEA is a prominent supporter of the continued and extended use of fossil fuels. The group has advocated for the ban to be lifted on fracking for shale gas, calling it the “moral and economic choice”. The IEA has also said that a ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences would be “madness”, has criticised the windfall tax imposed by the UK on fossil fuel firms, and said that the previous government’s commitment to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves was a “welcome step”.
The IEA is part of the Tufton Street network – a cluster of libertarian think tanks and pressure groups that are in favour of more fossil fuel extraction and are opposed to state-led climate action. These groups are characterised by a lack of transparency over their sources of funding.
The Charity Commission initially rejected the GLP’s complaint about the IEA, which was lodged in March 2024 and backed by MPs from the Green Party, Liberal Democrats, and the Scottish National Party. The Charity Commission rejected the complaint after just 12 days.
However, after the GLP threatened formal legal action against the Charity Commission for failing to properly consider the evidence against the IEA, it has agreed to open a compliance case.
“We welcome this screeching u-turn from the Charity Commission who raced to clear the IEA last year,” said Good Law Project’s executive director Jolyon Maugham.
“It shouldn’t have taken the threat of legal action to force the regulator to do its job. The IEA’s activities are the polar opposite of public benefit and we’re now urging the Charity Commission to go further in its investigation.”
However, it’s unclear what action, if any, will be taken against the IEA if the regulator finds it in breach of charity rules. A previous case brought against the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – the UK’s leading climate science denial group – didn’t lead to any meaningful sanctions against the Tufton Street group.
The GLP accused the GWPF of breaching charity law by spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on one-sided research attacking climate science, and by funding the lobbying activities of its campaign arm Net Zero Watch. However, the Charity Commission asked the GWPF to make only minor changes to its ownership structure and output.
An IEA spokesperson said: “We have received a letter from the Charity Commission and will be responding to them thoroughly in due course.”
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks to ARC by video. Credit: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
In exclusive interviews, they called the Trump administration official “terrific,” “very smart,” and someone who “gets it.”
In mid-February, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright described the global effort to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in dark and conspiratorial terms.
“Net zero 2050 is a sinister goal,” he told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), an international gathering of conservatives convened by Canadian podcaster, author, and anti-climate powerbroker Jordan Peterson. “It’s certainly been a powerful tool used to grow government power [and], top-down control, and shrink human freedom.”
Then in March, Wright did a speech at the 43rd annual CERAWeek where he attacked the Biden administration’s climate policies as a “quasi-religious” agenda “that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.”
Those views put Wright, formerly a CEO with the fracking company Liberty Energy, far outside the Paris Agreement consensus among many world leaders and heads of major corporations that climate change is an urgent issue that requires fundamental changes to our global energy system.
But Wright’s reactionary statements are winning him praise from fossil fuel advocates who acknowledge that human-caused climate change is real but deny that it presents existential threats to civilization – what watchdog nonprofits such as the Center for Countering Digital Hate refers to as “the new denial.”
In exclusive interviews with DeSmog and Canada’s National Observer conducted during the ARC conference, three prominent figures who deny there is a climate emergency explained why they’re excited that Wright holds one of the most consequential cabinet posts in the Trump administration, with one referring to the U.S. energy secretary as “a good friend.”
Bjorn Lomborg speaks about his most recent book during a press briefing at ARC. Credit: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
Bjorn Lomborg
One particularly influential climate crisis denier is Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist who for decades has been trying to convince policymakers and the public that there are more important global challenges to address than climate change. This is the subject of his most recent book, Best Things First, which Lomborg was promoting at ARC. Last year, Peterson personally presented a copy of the book to Elon Musk.
“We’ll have to wait and see if he actually reads it,” Lomborg said of Musk in an interview with DeSmog and Canada’s National Observer at the conference.
Lomborg, who is an advisor to ARC, said during a keynote speech that efforts to transition off fossil fuels are a “green fantasy.” Lomborg acknowledges that climate change is real but claims, contrary to decades of scientific and economic evidence, that it will be relatively easy and painless for humankind to adapt.
Those arguments have resonated with Wright, who during a 2020 podcast referred to Lomborg’s previous book False Alarm as “fantastic,” and earlier this year described him as a “friend” on LinkedIn.
Asked what he thinks about Trump’s pick for energy secretary, Lomborg replied: “Look, Chris Wright is a great guy and he’s very smart. And I’m very happy that we can get a more sense-based approach to how we do energy.”
Part of that, according to Lomborg, is acknowledging — despite low-carbon investment surpassing $2 trillion in 2024 — that a transformative global shift to green energy isn’t happening anytime soon. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “And that, I think, is what Chris Wright can help us to do, which is to say, ‘let’s be realistic now and let’s find smarter ways to have greener energy sources in the future.’”
Scott Tinker does a speech at ARC. Credit: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson
Scott Tinker
During his 13-minute presentation at ARC, Scott Tinker outlined his view that energy has to be affordable, reliable, and clean, criteria that in his view disadvantages renewable energy. “If you want 100 percent clean you don’t get much of these other things,” he told the conference. “There are trade-offs in the real world.”
Tinker runs an organization called Switch Energy Alliance that creates videos about energy and climate change for classrooms, museums, and professional training sessions. The organization says that it wants an “energy-educated future that is objective, nonpartisan, and sensible.”
But Tinker tends to promote the benefits of fossil fuels while downplaying the urgency of addressing global temperature rise. During a podcast interview in March, Tinker said it was “a very strange form of economic colonialism” to argue against developing world countries burning fossil fuels “because we’ll wreck the climate.” We shouldn’t fear a bit of atmospheric warming, Tinker added, urging listeners to instead consider “all the positive things” countries gain from oil, gas, and coal.
Wright has used similar language, telling a gathering of African leaders in March that it would be “a paternalistic post-colonial attitude” for the U.S. to stand in the way of their fossil fuel resources.
The similarities between Wright’s and Tinker’s views aren’t a coincidence. Tinker told DeSmog in an interview at ARC that he and the U.S. energy secretary have known each other for years. “Chris is a good friend,” Tinker said. “We’ve bounced a lot back and forth.”
One other area they seem to agree on is rejecting carbon dioxide’s legal status as a pollutant in the U.S., which helps provide the basis for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions. That’s been a long-time goal of climate denial organizations such as the CO2 Coalition and Heartland Institute.
“We shouldn’t confuse [CO2] with being a pollutant,” Tinker said.
Robert Bryce speaks at ARC. Credit: ARC / YouTube
Robert Bryce
For years Robert Bryce has been on a mission to convince the world that renewable energy can never replace or out-compete coal, gas, and oil. Previously a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute— a think tank with a long history of accepting fossil fuel money and questioning the scientific consensus on climate change — Bryce now attacks climate solutions as an author, speaker, and filmmaker.
During his speech at ARC, he claimed that “we are inundated with climate catastrophism,” and argued without evidence that the primary motivation for environmentalists to be opposed to fossil fuels is because their organizations have “enormous” budgets, saying “it’s a big business.”
Bryce is a long-time proponent of nuclear energy, something he shares in common with Wright, who stepped down as a member of the board of directors at the nuclear company Oklo after he was confirmed as energy secretary in February.
“Chris gets it,” Bryce said in an interview with DeSmog. “Chris knows what the score is. He’s a natural gas guy, a hydrocarbon guy. He’s promoting nuclear power. Hopefully this administration, now that they’re actually talking about nuclear, can actually move the ball forward, it’s overdue.”
Bryce and Wright also seem to share opposition to carbon capture and storage, a technology widely favored by oil and gas producers, which tout it as key to reducing emissions from their operations despite it being widely used to pull more oil from the ground. Under Wright, the U.S. Department of Energy is considering cutting billions of dollars’ worth of funding for projects utilizing the technology.
“There is only one reason why any of these hydrocarbon companies are doing carbon capture,” Bryce said. “Subsidies, that’s it.”
“It will never work at scale,” he added. “Once you get that CO2 super-compressed and you’re pushing it down underground, there are very few places where you can actually sequester it. So it’s a lot of money wasted.”
This special investigation between Canada’s National Observer and DeSmog was produced in collaboration with the I-SEA and TRACE Foundation.
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