Britain will delay a series of key climate targets, its beleaguered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is set to announce Wednesday, intensifying an assault on green policies that has been condemned by his predecessor Boris Johnson, a number of his own lawmakers, businesses and environmental experts.
Sunak is expected to say in a hastily organized press conference he will push back a ban on selling new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, slow down plans to phase out gas boilers, and reject calls to regulate efficiency for homeowners.
It marks a sharp turn away from a long-standing political consensus on the climate, announced just two years after the UK hosted the crucial COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, seriously undermines efforts to portray Britain as a leader in the fight against the climate crisis.
The move instead deepens a controversial electoral strategy by Sunak to confront and reject emissions-cutting policies, as he scrambles to reverse dismal opinion polling ahead of a vote that is anticipated next year.
Sunak sought to present the rollbacks as a “more proportionate way” of reaching net zero, in a rare late-night statement Tuesday that followed reporting in the British press that he was planning the changes.
In an attack on his own Conservative predecessors as prime minister, Sunak said “politicians in governments of all stripes have not been honest about costs and trade offs” about the climate, claiming “they have taken the easy way out, saying we can have it all.”
But Boris Johnson, whose premiership included the COP26 and embraced the net zero pledge, shot back at Sunak in a rare public attack on his former chancellor-turned-political rival.
“Business must have certainty about our Net Zero commitments,” Johnson said in a statement, calling on Sunak to give firms “confidence that government is still committed Net Zero and can see the way ahead.”
“We cannot afford to falter now or in any way lose our ambition for this country,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s comments led a chorus of concerns from within Sunak’s Conservative party at the plans, which were apparently hurriedly brought forward after Tuesday’s leaks to the media. Opposition lawmakers, businesses and climate groups joined the green wing of the party in attacking the shift.
Alok Sharma, a Conservative politician who served as president of the pivotal COP26 conference, told the BBC on Wednesday that rowing back from the cross-party consensus on net zero would be “incredibly damaging for business confidence.”
“Frankly, I really do not believe that it’s going to help any political party electorally which chooses to go down this path,” Sharma added.
Britain is legally required to have reached net zero – meaning the country would remove from the atmosphere at least as much planet-warming pollution as it emits – by 2050.
Sunak claimed Wednesday’s changes to the UK’s policies won’t prevent it reaching that target, but the Climate Change Committee, the government’s independent adviser on climate change, published a report in June that criticized the UK’s net zero plans and said targets were already being missed in almost every area.
“Rishi Sunak still has time to think again and not make the greatest mistake of his premiership, condemning the UK to missing out on what can be the opportunity of the decade to deliver growth, jobs and future prosperity,” Chris Skidmore, the Conservative former energy minister, told the PA Media news agency.
Sunak has leant into an anti-green agenda since his party unexpectedly and narrowly won a by-election in the far western edge of London in July that was dominated by plans to extend London’s low-emissions zone, charging drivers of the most polluting vehicles a fee for every day they used their car in the area.
The prime minister’s Conservative party is deeply unpopular with voters, with opinion polls projecting anything from a comfortable defeat to a historic wipeout at the next general election, which must be called by January 2025 at the latest.
Amid that context, and with a struggling economy that leaves the government with little wiggle room for dramatic fiscal changes, Sunak has emphasized a range of cultural issues and trumpeted socially conservative policies in a push to appeal to the party’s rightwing base.
But polls show that the climate crisis is increasingly high on the list of British voters’ concerns, and the opposition Labour party has sought to attack Sunak on what they describe as a withdrawal from Britain’s former position as a global leader. “Rolling back on key climate commitments as the world is being battered by extreme flooding and wildfires would be morally indefensible,” Friends of the Earth’s head of policy, Mike Childs, said in a statement.
Wednesday’s announcement comes at the same time as the Climate Ambition Summit at the UN General Assembly summit in New York, which Sunak is not attending.
British businesses also criticized Sunak’s plans on Wednesday. Lisa Brankin, the chair of Ford UK, said in a statement that the automobile giant “needs three things from the UK Government: ambition, commitment and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three.”
And Ed Matthew, Campaigns Director for independent climate change think tank E3G, said the moves would drive up household bills and “damage the UK’s ability to compete with other countries on clean technology.”
“Just as the United States, China and the European Union are racing ahead on green growth, Rishi Sunak appears ready to surrender,” he said. “The economic damage to the UK could be catastrophic.”
CNN’s Luke McGee and Laura Paddison contributed reporting