Britain has a Department for Energy Security and Net Zero with hundreds of staff, an enormous budget, and a single unifying mission: to push the country down a road that is making electricity unaffordable, deindustrialising our manufacturing base, and rendering Britain less, not more, energy secure. Reform UK has now confirmed that, in government, the Department goes — and Net Zero with it. Richard Tice put it plainly: "When we win the general election, that department will be gone. Energy will be coming into my department and net zero will be for the dustbin."

Why This Matters

Net Zero is the most expensive policy commitment in modern British history. It was waved through Parliament in 2019 with a trivial debate and almost no costing. The bill is now landing — on factories closing, on smelters going abroad, on industrial chemicals plants relocating to lower-cost jurisdictions, on household electricity bills among the highest in the developed world. British industrial electricity is roughly four times the price it is in the United States and significantly higher than in the EU. That is not a foundation on which a manufacturing economy can be rebuilt. It is a foundation on which one is destroyed.

Independent economists have begun to spell out, with increasing bluntness, what supporters of Net Zero have spent years denying: this is making us poorer, less competitive, and less secure. The "Clean Power 2030" target, even on its own modelling assumptions, was always extremely ambitious. The world has shifted economically and geopolitically since the targets were set. The UK's framework has not adapted. Labour, with characteristic ideological rigidity, has dug its heels in.

The Policy Has Failed Even On Its Own Terms

Britain has cut its territorial emissions to among the lowest per-capita levels in the developed world. The cost has been the offshoring of manufacturing — meaning emissions associated with our consumption have not fallen anywhere near as fast. We have made ourselves poorer to make our balance sheet look greener, while exporting the actual emissions to China and India. That is not climate leadership. That is a moral pose, paid for by British workers.

The United Nations itself, in a recent intervention, warned about the security risks of "fossil fuel addiction." But the more honest reading is that energy security comes from owning your own fuel and infrastructure — not from being dependent on Chinese-manufactured solar panels, Russian gas in disguise, and weather-dependent intermittent generation that requires expensive backup. Britain sits on vast reserves of natural gas in the North Sea. Ed Miliband's response is to ban new licences. That is energy madness.

The Public Has Worked This Out

Online news coverage of Net Zero remains heavily critical, and pollsters have noted that public sentiment has shifted markedly against the policy as bills have risen. The political class continues to insist that "the public support Net Zero" — but only when the question is asked in the abstract, divorced from cost. Ask voters whether they will pay £500 more on their electricity bill to hit a target by 2030 and the answer is overwhelmingly no. The Reform UK position — abolish the Department, scrap the legally binding target, pursue a sensible, affordable energy mix that includes oil, gas and nuclear — is squarely where the public is.

Labour MPs from old industrial seats know this. They are watching their constituencies turn to Reform precisely because Labour has prioritised the climate concerns of London graduates over the heating bills of Sunderland pensioners. Net Zero is the issue that, more than any other, has created the political space for Reform UK in working-class England.

What Reform UK Would Do

A Reform UK government would scrap the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and fold its useful functions into the Department for Business and Trade. We would withdraw the legally binding 2050 Net Zero target and replace it with a commitment to clean affordable energy — without arbitrary deadlines that drive bad investment decisions. We would issue new oil and gas licences in the North Sea. We would invest in proven nuclear, including SMRs, and stop pretending that wind and solar alone can power a modern industrial economy. And we would have one simple test for every energy policy: does it lower bills and improve security, or does it raise them and undermine it?

The Net Zero consensus has been one of the great policy errors of the modern British state. Reform UK is the only party prepared to break it. That is why our support is rising — and why Labour, holding the line on a policy the country has already rejected, faces a very long electoral winter.