Did Conservatives turn over a new leaf with “Green Day”?

The story of the Conservative governments during the ‘Age of Brexit’ is one that has been marked by an almost constant state of contradiction when it comes to the UK’s efforts to position itself as a climate leader. At some points the UK has shown itself as an actor with real ambition – committing to levels of ambition that other leading economies soon followed and that others will likely follow in years to come. At other times, the UK has squandered significant chances to push forward strong climate action, with Tory governments seemingly hesitant to fully commit to the role of climate leader. 

Such is the varied progress that the UK has made on climate action under the Conservative governments, that one fitting description of their approach to tackling climate change is that they are ‘consistently inconsistent’. 

This is the argument that I made in a chapter on UK climate action since 2016 in Conservative Governments in the Age of Brexit, published by Palgrave Macmillan last month. This book focused on the Age of Brexit as a period between the 7th May 2015 general election and the Johnson government’s passing of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act on 23rd January 2020. 

However, a contemporary observer would have good reason to believe that the UK is still very much in the grip of the Age of Brexit. Similarly, the character of the Conservative government’s approach to climate change does not appear to have taken a significant shift in the “post-Brexit” age – as evidenced by the government’s “Green Day” last week on Thursday 30th March. 

Ambitions and disappointments

The story of the moments of ambition and ensuing disappointment with Conservative ambition on climate action are well documented. David Cameron’s move from pledging to lead the “greenest government ever” to later calling for his government to “get rid of all the green crap” laid a haphazard path to climate action that other governments followed. 

In a bid to establish an environmental legacy, Theresa May’s government committed the UK to net zero emissions by 2050 – making it the first major economy to do so (and preceding “Europe’s man on the moon moment” with the von der Leyen Commission’s similar commitment by some months). However, it was a target undermined by ignoring the advice of the Climate Change Committee to abandon the use of international carbon credits. 

Boris Johnson gave considerable rhetorical commitment to the need for ambitious climate action and yet the UK’s hosting of the UNFCCC’S COP26 summit, a key moment in the UK’s potential for international climate leadership, was largely disappointing with the measures agreed at the conference not strong enough to limit the world to 2°C of global warming.

Given this record, some measure of consistency on climate change could have quickly set the Sunak government apart from its predecessors. 

“Green Day” – Powering Up Climate Action? 

One could be forgiven for thinking, considering the level of enthusiasm that Grant Schapps, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, put into the Ministerial Foreword to the Powering Up Britain policy paper, that the Sunak-led government was looking to add that consistency to the Conservatives’ governmental record on climate action. 

Certainly, there is a serious uptick in ambition in the document. As analysis from Carbon Brief has shown, by 2035 nearly every sector in the UK will be markedly transformed by the net zero plan if it’s fully enacted. 

However, this is not necessarily a turn to full-throated environmentalism for the Conservatives. Instead, the Powering Up Britain paper is, in fact, a replacement for 2021’s Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener policy paper which was shot down by the UK High Court for being too vague on how the UK would reach the net zero finishing line.

In the lead-up to last Thursday’s announcement, government messaging around Green Day was already suffering from inconsistency. The day itself was hastily renamed Energy Security Day before the paper was launched – presumably after someone looked up the term on Urban Dictionary, but also because of fears a focus on net zero might cause a Conservative backlash. 

There were expectations that Green Day would be on par, in terms of scope, ambition, and the extent of promised incentive packages, with the level of actorness seen in the US with the Inflation Reduction Act and in the EU with the European Green Deal. Yet, the reality of the announcements disappointed in many quarters. Furthermore, for all the rhetorical commitments to action – the documents shared showed that the government is already falling behind on previous aims. The Carbon Budget Delivery Plan revealed that the UK is not on track to reach its 2030 emissions reduction target. 

Of course, for all the criticism that Powering Up Britain didn’t go far enough in terms of environmental protection, critique followed that it was going too far. In particular, accusations that the policy proposals would lead to further elevation of energy bills immediately followed the announcement. 

Maybe there really is nothing particularly special in the UK case – certainly not anything “world leading”. This is a time-honoured tale of a country talking big and delivering small – a good old-fashioned credibility gap. As the Financial Times’ Nathalie Thomas described the situation, ‘What all of these plans have in common is they are strong on platitudes and far-off targets. Delivering them is a bigger problem’. 

The consistency of Conservative governments’ inconsistent approach to climate action was again confirmed the following day. In the wake of the Green Day announcements, the Department for Transport announced that it would be slashing taxes on domestic flights.

Therefore, despite the splurge of new environmental measures and funding that Powering Up Britain seems to have brought, there is still good reason to question whether the Conservatives really have turned over a new leaf with “Green Day”.