Our thinking

Mission impossible?

21 March, 2025

Kemi Badenoch made headlines this week for asserting that achieving net zero by 2050 is impossible. In a recent speech, she dismissed the UK’s target as an ‘abstract concept’ that could bankrupt the country.  In the same sentence, she went on to say she also ‘wants a better environment and better future for our children’. Essentially, she wants to have her cake and eat it.  

Unfortunately for the Conservative leader, the climate doesn’t care if net zero is expensive. It’s not checking government balance sheets, it’s responding to what we put into the atmosphere. But she did raise some important challenges. The transition requires upfront investment, it’s disruptive, and, if handled badly, risks hitting those who can least afford it the hardest. Rising energy bills, upfront costs of greener technologies, and job losses in high-carbon industries are real challenges that need real solutions. Pretending these don’t exist is naive (at best) and downright damaging (at worst). But stating that reaching our legally binding net zero target is impossible with no tangible alternative doesn’t help, it hinders us.  

And here’s the thing, we’re already making progress. UK emissions fell about 3% in 2022, continuing a decade-long decline, largely thanks to the near phase-out of coal. Meanwhile, the green economy isn’t dragging growth, it’s accelerating it. The CBI reports that net zero industries are expanding three times faster than the wider economy, contributing £83 billion and employing nearly a million people. Hitting net zero by 2050 means cutting emissions by that much every year for the next three decades, which is not easy. But it is possible. 

So instead of writing net zero off as unrealistic, let’s focus on making the transition fairer and more practical. Because the challenge isn’t going away, whether politicians like it or not. 

By Budd Nicholson