A major Conservative donor and member of the House of Lords has made a series of recent speeches in Parliament that have lambasted the UK’s climate ambitions, while holding more than £300,000 in fossil fuel shares. 

Tory peer Lord Moynihan of Chelsea has shares worth at least £100,000 in the fossil fuel giants Shell and TotalEnergies, plus more than £100,000 of shares in Well-Safe Solutions, a firm that decommissions oil and gas wells. As of September 2024 he also held shares worth at least £100,000 in BP. 

In each of the past three months, the peer has made addresses in the House of Lords slamming the UK’s legally-binding target to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In none of the speeches did Moynihan declare his fossil fuel interests by name.

In October, during a debate on the alleged costs of net zero organised by Lord Lilley, Moynihan called the target “a religion rather than a logical decision”. He later called it a “children’s crusade”, claiming that “it will never arrive at its intended destination, but there will be plenty of misery along the road.”

“We owe it to our country to end this misguided, ultimately catastrophic programme as soon as possible,” he concluded.

Moynihan carried on these themes during an address on 14 November, during a debate hosted by Lord Frost, a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group. Lord Lilley was also a GWPF trustee from 2015 to 2021. 

Moynihan claimed that transitioning away from fossil fuels amounted to an “extraordinary destruction of value in our economy”. 

A month later on 2 December, he suggested that “the central prediction of all the major bodies is that there will be no major problem faced from climate change by 2050.”

In reality, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading climate science body, has stated that failure to limit global warming to 1.5C – by achieving net zero by 2050 – will lead to increasingly frequent and dangerous extreme weather events. These include heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, heavy precipitation and flooding, while also potentially triggering multiple climate “tipping points”. 

“These revelations are yet further proof that oil and gas investor Moynihan has no convincing evidence to support his reckless campaign against the UK’s vital net zero ambitions,” said Hannah Greer, Good Law Project campaigns manager.

House of Lords rules state that peers must “declare when speaking in the House, or communicating with ministers or public servants, any interest which is a relevant interest in the context of the
debate or the matter under discussion.”

At the beginning of his addresses in October and November, Moynihan referred peers to his register of interests, but did not specify that he held shares in Shell, TotalEnergies, and Well-Safe Solutions. He did not refer peers to his register of interests during his December address. 

Peers must record shareholdings worth more than £100,000 in their register of interests – or if they hold a controlling stake in a company – though don’t have to detail their exact value. 

“When contributing in the Lords, it is essential that peers provide a comprehensive description of their financial interests,” said former Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, who runs the campaign group Unlock Democracy. “Only then will other parliamentarians and the public get a full understanding of their shareholdings or other investments, and how this informs their contribution.”

Donors and Deniers

Moynihan is a significant Tory donor, having given more than £540,000 to the party over the last decade. 

New Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has openly called herself a “net zero sceptic”, and has repeatedly suggested that the UK’s net zero ambitions would “bankrupt the country”. She has also boasted of standing up to “the green lobby” while in government, and has called Labour’s proposed ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences “foolish”. 

Economic and scientific bodies have stated that the impacts of runaway climate change will be significantly more costly than transitioning to renewable energy. 

The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its net zero policies, has estimated that the cost of achieving net zero will be less than one percent of UK GDP. 

The government independent spending watchdog – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – has said that, “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.

Badenoch’s leadership campaign received money and office space from Neil Record, the chair of the climate denial group Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of the GWPF. Funders and directors of the GWPF have donated more than £7 million to the Conservative Party over the past two decades.

Lord Moynihan is a GWPF donor, having given £20,000 to the group since 2019. Over the same period, the Tory peer also donated more than £175,000 collectively to several think tanks based in and around 55 Tufton Street in Westminster that advocate for more fossil fuel extraction and against climate action.

DeSmog and Democracy for Sale revealed in June that Conservative donors had given over £6.8 million to Tufton Street think tanks since 2019.

In 2022, while working for the Institute of Economic Affairs – a Tufton Street think tank – Badenoch’s current policy chief Victoria Hewson criticised the UK’s 2050 net zero goal, calling it a “huge own goal”.

Lord Moynihan was approached for comment.