Shadow Net Zero Secretary Claire Coutinho has publicly urged the government to invite climate crisis deniers to scrutinise its policies. 

In a post on X.com on 12 January, the Conservative Party’s energy and net zero lead urged Labour to “bring in” a group of well-known opponents of climate action to “red team” its analysis of renewable energy costs. 

Three of the four people she named have worked for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s principal climate science denial group, or its campaign arm Net Zero Watch.

They include Andrew Montford, director of Net Zero Watch, and consultant Kathryn Porter, who has links to the oil and gas industry. 

DeSmog revealed in September that the Conservatives had received £7.2 million from funders or directors of the GWPF over the past two decades. 

Coutinho, who was net zero secretary from August 2023 until July 2024 under the last government, also shared claims by Porter that the UK almost faced energy blackouts earlier this month – claims that have been debunked by experts. 

New Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who took over the position in November, has described herself as a “net zero sceptic” and has suggested that she may scrap the UK’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

As DeSmog has reported, in her first two months in post Badenoch has hired a policy chief who has publicly attacked net zero, and has met with prominent U.S. climate deniers.

During the Tory leadership contest, Badenoch received donations and use of office space from Neil Record, chairman of Net Zero Watch and life vice president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank that received funding from the oil major BP every year from 1967 until at least 2018. 

As revealed by DeSmog, Badenoch also received a £10,000 donation during the contest from a director of the fossil fuel giant Chevron.

Climate scientists warned last week that 2024 was the hottest year on record and that global temperatures are “dangerously close” to breaking the 1.5C global warming target set by the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 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.

“I do not recall Coutinho using a red team approach to test her policies,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. “Perhaps she has already forgotten that she was energy secretary until about six months ago.”

A ‘red team’ approach involves simulating attacks on an organisation’s systems or modes of analysis in order to test their effectiveness. 

Ward added that Coutinho “seems to have more time now to spend on social media, where she has obviously seen some people attacking government energy policy, and decided that they would make a good red team. I think the government would be better off seeking advice from actual experts.”

Coutinho’s Climate ‘Red Team’

Coutinho’s post on 12 January claimed that the Labour government was underestimating the cost of renewable energy. She suggested that if Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband “really cared about cheap energy” he would “bring in” Kathryn Porter, Steve Loftus, David Turver and Andrew Montford “to red team the analysis”. 

She added: “Because bad data = bad policy = expensive energy.”

Montford is the director of Net Zero Watch, which 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”.

Montford himself has cast doubt on the climate crisis. In a 2021 Spectator article, he wrote: “As I watch the snow blow past my window, it’s hard not to scoff at the idea of a ‘climate emergency’.”

Last March, Montford told GB News that Labour and the Tories were “wedded to the religious dogma that we have to decarbonise the economy”, and are “going to run the country into the ground unless they are forced to turn back”.

Another expert tagged by Coutinho was Kathryn Porter. As DeSmog reported in June 2023, Porter’s energy consultancy Watt-Logic works with “businesses with projects across the electricity, gas and oil industries”. According to Porter’s website, these include “clients with conventional energy assets including gas-fired power stations, gas storage, upstream oil and gas production and [Liquid Natural Gas]”.

Porter has written blog posts that have cast doubt on climate science. In a 2017 post, she wrote that “climate models overstate global warming”. In fact, climate models accurately predict global temperature rises, with observed warming reflecting scientific forecasts. 

She also wrote that “the counter-argument to current climate change orthodoxy is that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 are the result of, and not the cause of, rises in global temperature”.

The IPCC has said that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, while IPCC scientists 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”.

Porter has also cited research by the GWPF on her blog, and in November 2023 wrote a report for the climate denial group about nuclear energy. 

The GWPF’s director Benny Peiser has suggested it would be “extraordinary anyone should think there is a climate crisis”, while the group has also expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mis-characterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”.

Last week, Coutinho shared an article by Porter claiming that the UK had come “very close” to a blackout in early January, citing the National Energy System Operator (NESO), previously part of the National Grid. However, as pointed out by Jess Ralston, head of energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), NESO never said there was a blackout risk. 

Coutinho also urged Miliband to consult Steve Loftus, who describes himself as a “business owner” on the “centre-right” of politics who provides “unbiased talk about the state of UK water and energy”.

Loftus is a prominent critic of net zero policies on X.com. In April he posted: “Net Zero is a regressive policy. It’s less energy. Less travel. Less food. Less industry.”

Despite Coutinho’s suggestion that Loftus could help to scrutinise Miliband’s ideas, he replied under her post: “I can save myself the potential journey and just tell him now that all his plans are impossible and dangerous.”

Loftus told DeSmog he accepts that human-caused climate change is real, and that he comments on energy rather than climate policies. 

David Turver is another active anti-net zero poster on X.com and writes a newsletter offering “fundamental analysis of energy policy and net zero”.

On 2 January, he claimed that climate science is “just junk ideology given a fig leaf of respectability by academics and institutions who have their noses in the trough.”  

A few days later, Turver said: “Miliband and his supporters are among the most dangerous people in Britain. Net zero is killing the economy.” 

The same week he posted: “Ed Miliband, when will you end your obsession with net zero and get coal back on the grid?”

Coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. In 2021, the International Energy Agency reported that coal power plants still produced a fifth of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

Last July, Turver wrote a report for Net Zero Watch attacking the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s independent advisory body on net zero. 

Coutinho has additional ties to the GWPF, its funders, and other climate science deniers. While serving as net zero secretary in January 2024, she received a £2,000 donation from Lord Hintze, a Tory donor and one of the few known funders of the GWPF.

The same month, Coutinho met and praised Howard Cox, the then Reform UK candidate for London mayor, who campaigns against fuel taxes and low-emission zones. In 2022, Cox said: “I am now even more convinced man is not responsible for global warming.”

During last year’s general election campaign, Coutinho attacked what she called Labour’s “mad plans to decarbonise the grid in just six years” and its alleged desire to “shut down our thriving oil and gas sector”. 

ECIU has estimated that the net zero economy supported 765,700 full time equivalent jobs in the UK in 2022-23, equal to nearly 3 percent of total employment, and contributed £74 billion in economic output. 

The Conservative Party, Coutinho, Net Zero Watch, the GWPF, Porter, and Turver were approached for comment.