The Conservative government’s hostility to net zero and environmental policy will make it tougher for Labour to pursue green growth and mend the damage to the UK’s economy and climate goals if elected, experts have warned.
Anti-green rhetoric was one of the strongest themes of the Tory party conference last week, with the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, warning about the costs of net zero policies as his ministers took even stronger attack lines.
Recent weeks have seen the rollback of key climate policies, including a delay to the phase-out of fossil fuel cars and the scrapping of most of HS2. Ministers have signalled that policies could harden still further, which would wreak more harm in the next year before an expected general election late in 2024.
Tom Burke, a veteran government adviser and co-founder of the E3G consultancy, said: “The problem with climate change is time – we don’t have much of it. Delaying regulation or spending wastes more of that time. And there is a real problem with government incoherence, which is putting off investors.”
Across a range of green policies, from housing and investment to water and transport, the government has not only delayed progress, but made it harder for any new administration to recover.
Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “This cynical approach leaves us with potentially disastrous long-term consequences, beholden to volatile fossil fuels and exploitative energy companies, while ensuring our economy suffers by failing to seize the opportunity of green technology industries, like clean power.”
There is yet more that the government could do to damage the prospects for net zero before the election. For instance, local government is key to action on emissions – and councils around the UK have been quietly putting in place net zero strategies for several years – but threats to ban “15-minute cities”, hailed with applause at the Tory party conference, could open the way for restrictions on their ability to pursue green policies.
Burke said: “This is a real danger. Local authorities have done a lot on net zero under the radar, and if they are prevented from doing more it will make a big difference.”
Shaun Spiers, the executive director of the Green Alliance thinktank, said the escalating rhetoric was also damaging: “The real concern is that they have been trying to polarise people, to make this a wedge issue. It’s up to Labour [at its party conference] this week to be robust about this. Voters care about these issues.”
The costs of repairing the damage wreaked by policies already announced or enacted is likely to run to many tens or even hundreds of billions, and some damage may be irrecoverable. As well as scrapping the northern part of HS2, ministers are selling off the land that had been acquired for it, a move described as “spiteful” and like “salting the earth” as it will make it almost impossible for the next government to revive the plan. Instead of HS2 the government plans to invest in some local rail projects and a large number of roads, with the added pollution that entails.
Moves across other green policies are likely to have a similarly damaging impact on the ability of the next government to turn things round, campaigners fear.
This week, the Guardian revealed that housebuilders have saved at least £15bn since 2015 by not having to construct new homes to low-carbon specifications. The cost to housing developers of equipping new-build houses with heat pumps, solar panels and high-grade insulation is about £8,000, and thanks to the government scrapping low-carbon building rules in 2015, about 1.5m homes have been built without this equipment.
Those houses must now be retrofitted to low-carbon standards at an average cost of £33,000 a property, which will fall on homeowners or taxpayers instead.
Housebuilders provided about 10% of donations to the Tory party since 2010, Guardian analysis shows.
Water companies are another prime example of the dilemma and extra cost that will face any incoming government. The cost of upgrading the UK’s crumbling sewage infrastructure and building new reservoirs is likely to top £70bn – a sum similar to the £72bn that the companies have paid their shareholders in dividends since privatisation.
But those shareholders will not foot the bill for the upgrades needed, and water bill payers or taxpayers must make up the cost, or face worsening problems from sewage pollution, flooding and drought.
Labour has promised to “double down” on its environmental commitments, arguing that tackling the cost of living and climate crisis are one and the same. Policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as insulating homes and boosting renewable energy, also bring down energy bills, while green growth attracts investment and new jobs.
Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, said: “After 13 years under the Conservatives, the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and we have the highest levels of illegal sewage discharges in our history. Labour has a proud environmental legacy from creating national parks, introducing the Rights of Way Act and delivering the world’s first climate legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
“We will take this legacy forward to restore our great British countryside by reinstating nature at scale across the country and putting the water industry under special measures to force them to clean up their toxic mess.”
There are voter dividends in this for Labour, according to research from Friends of the Earth (FoE). It found that constituents in Labour seats were more likely to have poor insulation than those in Tory areas, and less likely to have access to nature, while one in five neighbourhoods in Labour seats suffered dangerous levels of air pollution.
Mike Childs, head of policy at FoE, said: “Keir Starmer needs to stand firm and commit Labour to tackling the environmental harms that are so damaging to people’s heath, the economy, and the future prospects of young people. [He] must truly put the best interests of people and the planet above short-termism by showing he has a real vision for the future, which is green, prosperous and – crucially – fair.”
