Kemi Badenoch MP speaks during the Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons in London, Britain, February 12, 2025.
"Net Zero" means putting no additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by cutting emissions and from offsetting measures such as planting trees or using carbon capture and storage technologies.
Kemi Badenoch said pursuing the 2050 "Net Zero" target, a policy introduced by her Conservative Party while in government in 2019, would prove cripplingly costly for the British economy.
"Net Zero by 2050 is impossible. I don't say that with pleasure," Badenoch said in a policy speech. "Anyone who has done any serious analysis knows it can't be achieved without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us."
Britain's independent climate advisers have said that meeting the net zero goal is possible but would require an end to reliance on fossil fuels, with nearly all new car sales to be electric from 2030 and half of homes to be heated by heat pumps by 2040, up from just 1% now. Meat consumption would need to drop by around 35% by 2050 from 2019 levels.
Badenoch's policy shift aligns her Conservatives more closely with the right-wing, climate-sceptic Reform party ahead of local elections on May 1. It also comes amid a reversal of green energy policies by U.S. President Donald Trump, a staunch advocate of fossil fuels.
Mike Childs, head of policy at environmental group Friends of the Earth, said the transition to a low carbon future was crucial for the planet and also for the economy.
"It is dangerous and downright wrong for the leader of a major political party to play politics with our collective future...," he said.
The Conservatives, who suffered a historic defeat in last year's national election, are struggling in third place in the polls, behind the governing Labour Party and Reform.
