Net zero and energy policy were on the ballot at last month’s local elections, even if it wasn’t explicit. Reform UK won seats in over 1,500 councils across the country, followed in gains by the Green party. The traditional parties, Labour and the Conservatives, were hammered, losing over 1,498 and 563 councillors, respectively.
Though local elections do not accurately predict a general election, Reform UK’s swing follows a year at the head of YouGov’s voter intention opinion polls. Among the things the election results do indicate is that the political climate and rhetoric in the UK around net zero, climate change and the energy transition have shifted dramatically.
Polling by More In Common shows that ahead of the local elections, the cost of living was the top issue for voters, and energy prices were the biggest factor in that consideration.
Political parties have latched onto that concern, resulting in the deep politicisation and polarisation of energy policy and climate change in Westminster and beyond. The prospect of an anti-renewables government in the next three years introduces uncertainty for the UK’s energy industry and could put the whole country at higher risk of future fossil fuel-based price shocks.
Parties diverge on net zero
A major UK political party is currently promising to “prioritise energy security, expand domestic energy production, and scrap policies that drive bills higher while making Britain more dependent on foreign energy”. It could easily be promising to double down on renewables – but that wording comes from the Reform UK policy document. Its previous “Contract” policy platform – now abandoned but still visible online – explicitly promised to “scrap net zero”.
We may see a test case of Reform’s policies in its recently won local governments, which do have sway in the UK’s energy sector. Projects below the 100MW size threshold for nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) are subject to local council approval, many of which may have just become less favourable to renewables. Research from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the London School of Economics has shown that the councils that Reform held before May 2026 do not “currently have a clear, explicit position on climate change but there is evidence to indicate the party and its councils may be returning to the ‘denialist’ stance that rejects anthropogenic climate change.”
Showing that lack of clarity, the Reform UK Mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, Luke Campbell, has said that he supports the creation of green jobs in his region – which was one beneficiary of a £30 million clean energy investment from Westminster earlier this year – and also claimed that “Net Zero is more or less bankrupting our economy”. Last July, the Reform UK leader of West Northamptonshire Council said that “net zero was on the back of every leaflet produced by Reform UK” in the May 2025 local elections, “and every resident who voted Reform UK voted for that”.
Regarding the party’s climate denial, in a recent podcast interview with Bloomberg, Reform UK’s deputy leader and energy spokesperson, Richard Tice, said he “fundamentally disagreed” with findings by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (while failing to cite any sources for his position) and said that the climate has “always changed” and that society needed to adapt to that. This position is not supported by the overwhelming majority of scientists. He also doubled down on his personal slogan, “net stupid zero”. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, has been comparatively quiet on climate issues in recent months and has somewhat softened the party’s official line since taking the leadership from Tice in 2024, though Farage has previously been sceptical of man-made climate change and renewable energy.
The Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch have also promised to rid the UK of legally binding net zero commitments, despite being the party that brought them in under Theresa May’s premiership. That change broadly coincides with the emergence of Reform UK as a political force dragging UK political discourse to the right. Current shadow Energy Secretary Clare Coutinho has said that “the left” is “infected with a poverty mindset” and “believe that Britain has a duty to make itself poorer on the altar of Net Zero.”
Badenoch herself has called to “Get Britain Drilling”, claiming that more North Sea oil and gas extraction would strengthen the UK’s “energy security” – this is a disputed claim, as the fuel extracted from North Sea reserves would be owned by the companies extracting it and sold on the global market, doing very little to insulate the UK from international fossil fuel shocks.
For its part, Labour has set and worked towards significant clean energy targets, aiming to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 and meet national power demand with clean energy generation capacity. This is a major undertaking that requires major investment, particularly when it comes to grid modernisation, reform and expansion. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has attracted vocal criticism over this policy.
Two weeks ago, a study by CBI Economics (the consultancy arm of the Confederation of British Industry) showed that the net zero economy generates around £105 billion gross value for the UK and supports 1.1 million jobs. Following the report, chief economist at the CBI, Louise Hellem, said: “The politics of net zero may be fragmenting, but the economic case has never been clearer.”
‘We don’t want to make’ a UK investment
The UK renewables industry is “completely” tied to political will and policy, says David Maguire, long-time CEO and founder of renewables investor and developer BNRG. “It’s a highly regulated industry, and if you don’t have an obvious route to market the investment is a very risky proposition in the UK.”
In an exclusive interview, Maguire tells us that the political uncertainty on the horizon for the UK’s energy policy could be a major barrier to investments, particularly for bigger projects with longer timelines. The queue for grid connections has been in the headlines for a long time, slowing project progression. BNRG has a portfolio of near-term projects that will be able to secure grid connections before the next general election (which must happen before August 2029), but he said “we are taking the view that we don’t want to make an investment” on larger, longer-term projects that will not connect in the next two-to-three years.
“We are not alone [in that decision],” Maguire continues, adding that there are “lots of investors and developers” in the UK who may “pull back…or even withdraw from the market” thanks to the combination of political uncertainty and the length of the grid queue.
“The length of time is one thing; the political uncertainty and rhetoric coming from Reform is another. The recent gain they made in local elections is really giving folks pause for thought, and that uncertainty is leading to a pausing of investment in renewable infrastructure in the development phase in the UK,” he explains. He goes on to predict a “hiatus” on investment in large renewable energy projects “for at least a five-year period” if the UK elects a Reform government.
This isn’t just a problem for renewable energy investors. Ukraine and Iran have shown how volatile fossil fuel prices are, and the UK is particularly exposed thanks to its heavy reliance on imported gas. Net zero ambitions and carbon reduction aside, the UK needs affordable power to compete on the world stage. Renewable energy offers the fastest way to achieve that, as it can reduce the number of hours where UK power prices are set by wholesale gas.
A Reform government will potentially damage the UK’s energy security and competitiveness by wounding or even killing off investment in renewables. Richard Tice has pressed the case for the North Sea as an energy security solution, and while new oil and gas fields could create jobs and investment at a difficult economic moment, it is clearly not a route to long-term energy security, especially as global investment continues to head more and more towards renewables.
Why is energy politicised?
Energy policy and net zero has been sucked into the culture war. Alongside the polarisation by political parties, opposition to climate change has become a package deal with opinions about immigration, transgender issues and other unrelated societal dividing lines.
Scientifically, “the argument of climate change is over”, Maguire – a former scientist in Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency – says. The volatility of fossil fuels and their global supply chains is also demonstrable based on global events. Yet debate continues in certain media and in politics as though the science were a matter of opinion.
Societies are increasingly politically polarised. The US is the prime example, with aggressive lines drawn between one side and another on a raft of issues. Based on the stark divergence between parties on core matters like energy, the uptick in demonstrations, civil unrest and the cracks in the two-party system shown by the local elections, things are changing in the UK too.
“Climate change has been associated with the ‘woke’ movement, for want of a better phrase, and there’s been a backlash against that, and nobody wants to look at facts,” Maguire says.
He adds that he and BNRG have seen an increase in opposition to renewables development and “NIMBYism” in the UK in recent years, which he attributes to the capturing of the UK’s “really strong” protections and traditions around community engagement by a “very vocal minority”, alongside misinformation.
“That’s caused real challenges for us in the sector,” he says.
Opinion polls paint a somewhat murky picture of the public’s view on energy and climate. A YouGov poll showed that as of March 2026, 51% of the UK either wants more emphasis on renewables from government (27%) or thinks the current balance is right (24%). 25% think there is too much emphasis on renewables and 23% don’t know.
Another poll from Early Studies published last month found that, when it comes to energy infrastructure, Britons are significantly more focused on industrial competitiveness (39%), reducing air pollution (37%) and protecting jobs (25%) than on the visual impacts of new projects (11%).
Yet, local elections in May and a year’s worth of opinion polling boosted Reform UK to national significance on a “net stupid zero” platform, even if their parliamentary numbers remain in single figures.
Money talks
According to the climate information site DeSmog, Reform UK has received £24 million from donors with financial interests in the fossil fuel sector, amounting to around 67% of the money it has raised. Those include cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harbourne, who owns the jet fuel sales firm AML Global, and Jeremy Hoskings, whose hedge fund Hosking Partners reported has over $300 million invested in fossil fuel interests and has ramped up its exposure during the Iran conflict. Another $2.4 million has been donated by what DeSmog called “individuals who have disputed basic scientific facts about climate change.” Jolyon Maugham of the Good Law Project said: “What these extraordinary numbers make clear is that Reform is less a political party and more a very highly paid public-facing lobby group for oil and gas interests.”
According to DonationWatch, the Labour Party has received over £6 million since 2014 from Ecotricity, a renewable energy firm founded by controversial businessman Dale Vince, and over £10 million from Lord David Sainsbury since 2010, whose foundation and charitable trusts have actively supported climate causes and funded environmental foundations.
The politicisation of energy policy has turned away from “facts and hard data”, posits Maguire. “Look at the pure economics – what’s the right thing to do? It’s to deliver value for money to consumers and cheap power. Strip away all the supports for thermal generation, strip away all the supports from renewables, and what are you left with? Probably renewables and batteries and other long-term storage solutions, on pure economic grounds. Then you layer on top of that what’s good for the planet, right?”
But the “pure economics” for energy consumers over the long term aren’t involved when energy and climate change are drawn into the wider culture war, or parties act in the interests of individual donors.
Putting debates about the UK’s overall role in global emissions and the moral responsibility for climate conservation aside, uncertainty for the UK’s energy sector makes the country more vulnerable at a time of growing global instability, competition and change.
The solution? Maguire says that the renewables industry and its supporters should adopt a message about energy security, reliability, low cost and stability for consumers. Short election cycles do not lend themselves to long-term strategic thinking about climate, and the data shows that energy bills are top of the UK public’s concerns. By contrast, research has shown that a greater distance from international gas prices has a deflationary effect on the UK’s energy prices.
“Political stability gives investors the confidence to invest in projects that are there for 50 years,” Maguire says, to the broad benefit of the country. It seems likely that the next few years will not look like that.
