Credentials

Background

Kemi Badenoch has been the leader of the Conservative Party since November 3, 2024, and has been a Conservative MP since 2017.³

She served as Secretary of State Business and Trade between February and July 2022, Secretary of State for International Trade between September 2022 and February 2023, and was also a Minister for Women and Equalities from October 2022 to July 2024.⁴

Before her political career, Badenoch worked as a software engineer⁵ and is the former digital director of The Spectator magazine.⁶

Badenoch has repeatedly suggested that the UK’s net zero targets would “bankrupt the country”, has boasted of standing up to “the green lobby” while in government, and has called Labour’s ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences “foolish”.⁷

Badenoch’s Conservative leadership campaign was part-financed and given office space by Neil Record, the director of UK climate denial campaign group Net Zero Watch, which is closely linked to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).⁸ Her manifesto attacked the “radical environmental policies” previously introduced by the Conservative Party.

Stance on Climate Change

October 2, 2024

Speaking at the 2024 Conservative Party conference, Badenoch described herself as a “net zero sceptic” but “not a climate change sceptic.” She added that net zero is “making energy more expensive and hurting our economy.”⁹

September 30, 2023

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Badenoch urged over caution the potential economic consequences of the net zero target, saying the UK should not “bankrupt” itself to reach net zero.¹⁰

She said:

“We still have the ambition to get to net zero by 2050, but we have to remember that we are only 1 percent of world emissions. If we bankrupt ourselves trying to get there, we won’t achieve net zero. We will also be in a worse position in terms of tackling climate change.”

The UK had contributed 4.45 percent of global cumulative emissions by 2022, according to OurWorldinData.¹¹

July 9, 2022

In an interview with The Telegraph, Badenoch described the net zero by 2050 target as “arbitrary” and “ill thought-through”, adding that there was “a better way of going about these things”. Badenoch did not provide any further details on what her vision of a “better way” would be.¹²

She said:

“I think that it was wrong of us to set a target without having a clear plan of the cost and knowing what it would entail. Setting an arbitrary target like that is the wrong way to go. I am not someone who doesn’t believe in climate change. I can see. But there is a better way of going about these things.”

Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, have said that without “immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors” limiting global heating to 1.5C is beyond reach.

Restricting global temperatures to this threshold – the target agreed as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement – would prevent the worst and most irreversible effects of climate change, but the window to do so is rapidly diminishing.

Key Quotes

July 19, 2022

In an appearance on TalkTV ahead of the 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, Badenoch said “there are scenarios” in which she would delay the UK’s 2050 net zero target, calling it “a bit of a red herring.”¹³ She criticised the 2050 target, arguing:

“Practically none of us will still be here for us to be held accountable for it […] what would happen if we moved it to 2060 or 2070? We’re not going to be here. Let’s be realistic.”

She added that she supported the goal of tackling climate change “but we have to do it in a way that doesn’t bankrupt our economy.”

Key Actions

November 29, 2024

DeSmog revealed that Kemi Badenoch’s head of policy, Victoria Hewson, called net zero by 2050 a “massive own goal” in a piece written for the Institute of Economic Affairs in 2022, a group which has received funding from BP every year between 1967-2018.¹⁴

November 5, 2024

Badenoch appointed her shadow cabinet including re-appointing former Secretary of State for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero Claire Coutinho, who had taken donations from Michael Hintze, a past funder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation climate science denial group.¹⁵

October 3, 2024

A DeSmog report revealed that a policy document circulated by Kemi Badenoch’s team during the 2024 Conservative Party conference borrowed evidence from an American climate denial think tank Unleash Prosperity, which has compared a belief in climate change to the belief that the earth is flat.¹⁶

The evidence was used to claim that net zero policies are only supported by high-earning graduates living in cities.

Badenoch’s document, titled “Conservatism in Crisis”, also praised the U.S’s shale and oil boom and asked why other countries had not followed suit.

August 19, 2024

DeSmog revealed that Kemi Badenoch had accepted £10,000 from Neil Record, director of the Net Zero Watch, a think tank that acts as the campaign arm of the UK’s premier climate denial think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.¹⁷

Badenoch’s campaign has also operated from Record’s house.

Record is also lifetime president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank that received funding from oil giant BP every year from 1967 to at least 2018. In July 2024, he wrote that achieving net zero by 2050 “will restrict our freedom, and is likely to be eye-wateringly expensive”.

April 4, 2023

A report from openDemocracy showed that Badenoch had dined with members of the climate denial group the American Enterprise Institute while on an official visit to the U.S. in November 2022.¹⁸

During the same official visit, Badenoch spoke at an event organised by the Cato Institute, an American climate denial think tank founded by Charles Koch.